Ilona’s steps lagged tiredly, but she crept slowly up the stairs with her.As they climbed, signs of life stirred by way of the muffled laughter and squeals of small children and the low murmur of feminine voices coming from the family parlor.
“Certainly, we should be happy to help in any way we can.”Fiona recognized Eve’s voice easily.
“Honestly,” Moira declared clearly in turn.“I cannot believe that you did not come to us with this sooner.Your friends!”
Fiona paused at the top of the stairs and shared a look with Ilona, only to have a muffled male voice murmur unintelligibly in return, heightening her curiosity.
A curiosity Ilona shared.“I wonder who they are talking to?”
Since they had left the older women playing with their children not long ago, Fiona could not think of any man outside family who might be welcomed into their midst.Unmistakably, it was not one of her brothers.Their voices were recognizable even at a hushed whisper, which they rarely were.
“I suppose we might ask Hobbes,” Fiona suggested, looking back down into the hall, wondering why their efficacious and usually well-informed butler hadn’t mentioned a visitor.
“Or we could just go in,” Ilona suggested, guilefully.“It is thefamilyparlor, after all.”
Turning to the right at the head of the stairs, Fiona opened the door, but what she found there robbed her of any further thought, curious or otherwise.
For the last thing—quite literally, theverylast thing—she expected to see upon entering that room was one Lord Harrison Brudenall, Marquis of Aylesbury, sitting on their settee with an infant cradled tenderly in the crook of his arm and a toddler on his knee.
All higher brain function might have ceased, but her heart was still demonstrably present, kicking up a rapid, arrhythmic cadence that Fiona was sure must be audible to the entire room.
Good Lord, she thought, stifling the urge to press a hand to her quivering bosom.
And he just had to be holding a baby!
“Oh,” Ilona said with some surprise to the room at large and then murmured.“That’s him.That’s who Lord Ramsay reminded me of.”
Fiona swallowed tightly.
Yes, that was him.
The room fell silent as the marquis and all the other occupants of the room turned toward the interlopers...er, newcomers to their conversation.However, she was truly aware of no gaze on her but Aylesbury’s.His brilliant blue eyes, far more serene now than the previous night, met hers with unmistakable surprise.Obviously, he had not been expecting to see her any more than she had expected to find him in her parlor.
That realization roused enough irritation to override Fiona’s momentary dysfunction.Why should he look so startled by her appearance?She did live there, after all!The annoyance promptly turned to self-disparagement.Why should she be any more taken aback than he?She looked from the marquis to Moira, who was snuggly by his side, one hand resting familiarly on his arm.
Wasn’t he right where he had always longed to be?
Standing with uncharacteristic clumsiness, Aylesbury slid Moira’s toddler slowly down one leg until she landed gently on the floor and shifted the infant in his arms away from the warmth of his chest as if wondering what he should do with it.
“Let me!”Ilona offered brightly, sweeping into the room with renewed energy.With a practiced hand, she relieved Aylesbury of his burden.
* * *
With his hands freed, Aylesbury ran his palms down the warm creases that now pleated the lower half of his morning coat.He was only vaguely aware of their presence, as his entire attention was now fully occupied by the woman lingering at the door.
He’d been surprised to come across any MacKintosh at the ball the previous evening, but seeing Fiona, in particular, had utterly taken him aback.Her appearance was so unexpected and altered since their last meeting that, given the strain of his temper, he’d been unable to absorb the changes until long after he left.
It was only now that the impact of those changes truly hit him.
If it was even possible, Fiona MacKintosh was even more beautiful now than she had been when he’d last seen her two years ago.Her loosely upswept dark hair supported a modishly mammoth piece of millinery covered with pleated blue silk encircled by a wide starched white lace brim that did little to shadow the perfection of her features, an undeniably feminine version of her brothers with a perfect nose impishly upturned, a stubborn jaw, incredible cheekbones and smooth, creamy cheeks that dimpled when she smiled.Wide-set green eyes were framed by thick, dark lashes and arching brows that lifted just so.Her tantalizing mouth, once set in a perpetual smile, was now bent into a frown, fighting the natural curve of her full lips as his thorough gaze took her in and drifted downward.
She was dressed at the height of fashion, the tailored lines of her walking suit at their best advantage, clinging to her tall, athletic frame.Her robin’s egg blue skirt hugged the curve of her hips before flaring out to fall to the floor in soft folds.In contrast to the dull sheen of the linen skirt, the shine of her satin sash with the silver accents drew attention to the narrowness of her waist just as the deep lapels and nipped waist of her jacket and white pleated shirtfront exposed by the waist-deep V of her bodice beneath it pronounced the fullness of her bosom.And if nothing else could be said about the huge leg o’ mutton sleeves that were currently in fashion, a gentleman could readily appreciate the way the added breadth across a lady’s shoulders only served to exaggerate the pleasing hourglass of her figure.
Fiona’s was eminently laudable.
Gone were the frilly frocks and grass-stained skirts.A time when not a strand of her hair would be in place.Now, nary a strand dared to escape.
Like her vibrancy, her vivacity...still there but contained by a newfound sophistication.
