“Is her ladyship home?” Aden asked, brushing from his shoulders the last of the rose petals he’d acquired climbing out of Miranda’s window.
The butler bent down to pick up one of the petals and crush it in his fingers. “Lady Aldriss is in her rooms. She has a luncheon this afternoon.”
He’d forgotten about that. Francesca and Eloise were about to hie themselves over to Harris House to dine with Miranda and her mother. Well, his timing continued to leave something to be desired, but he’d already begun the hunt. No time now to call back the dogs. With a short nod he trotted up the stairs.
“Master Aden, your cravat is untied,” Smythe called up after him.
“Aye.” Slipping it off, he hung it over one of Rory the stuffed deer’s antlers. Somewhere the stag had now acquired a red dancing slipper with one lace broken off, but it looked rather fine tied about his front left hoof.
His mother’s bedchamber door stood open, but he stopped short of the doorway and knocked on the heavy oak frame anyway. He and his brothers barreled in on each other all the time, but he didn’t feel nearly as familiarwith Francesca—which made the conversation he was about to have even more awkward and pride-pricking.
“Enter,” the countess called, and squaring his shoulders, resisting the urge to tug on the front of his coat, he stepped inside.
Even without her standing before the dressing mirror, her maid holding a pair of bonnets, he would have known the space belonged to a lass with a great deal of blunt. The light-green curtains had been embroidered throughout with wee gold-threaded birds, warblers or swallows or the like. Fresh flowers, mostly white and yellow roses, sat in an identical pair of vases on either windowsill overlooking the garden, and oddly enough a Highlands landscape painting of the Falls of Clyde that looked like it had been done by Jacob More himself, hung on the near wall.
“Ye’ve a Scottish painting?” he asked, moving closer to look at it.
“Yes. The Scottish landscape is beautiful beyond words,” she said, facing the painting as well. “And it should always be painted by Scotsmen.”
“I’m a wee bit baffled, then,” he commented.
“Why? Because I fled Scotland?”
“Aye, that would cover it.”
“I never said it wasn’t lovely. It was also lonely and desolate.”
“And full of Highlanders.”
“Not full enough.”
At that he turned around. “Ye’ve lost me now.”
“You may have noticed that your father isn’t one to… socialize.”
“Ye mean he’s nae fond of going about prancing in other people’s parlors when there’s work to be done?”
“Nor was he one to invite a neighbor over for dinner or luncheon or breakfast, or to take a stroll about the villageand stop in the bakery for tea, or to do anything social at all unless it involved drinking.”
Aden narrowed one eye. “Ye did marry him, ye ken.”
“Yes, after he danced me off my feet and charmed all resistance out of me with one damned smile.” Her brow furrowed. “That is neither here nor there. As you didn’t know I had a Jacob More painting in here, I presume you came for another reason.”
“Aye.” Good. He disliked the idea of chatting about nonsense and past deeds with her, anyway.
“Does it have something to do with why you’re coming home at nearly midday and still wearing the clothes you had on at the Darlington ball? Or most of them, anyway.”
He ignored that. She likely had a good idea where he’d been after that waltz last night, but she would have known that whatever he’d decided to wear. “I’d like to borrow a thousand quid.”
Francesca drew a breath in through her nose. “Hannah, I changed my mind. I’d like to take the barouche to luncheon.”
Behind her the maid set aside the bonnets, bobbed, and hurried out the door, pulling it closed behind her. The countess took a seat in one of the green overstuffed chairs by the window, but didn’t offer him the seat opposite her. He wouldn’t have taken it, but she’d read him well enough to know that. Lady Aldriss would have made a fine card player, herself, Aden reflected.
“Now, where were we?” she asked, her dark-green eyes very like Coll’s in color, but far more sly than the oldest MacTaggert brother’s.
“I’m asking ye for a loan of a thousand pounds,” Aden said, keeping his voice cool and level.
“Ah. No. Is there anything else, my dear?”
