“No,” she cut in. “But thank you.”
“I might just toss you in when you least expect it,” he warned.
“I’m not going near water, and besides, my guards wouldn’t allow it.”
“I could throw you in when they aren’t looking.”
“Snow wouldn’t allow it.”
“Well, that’s different, I concede to the brute. But if you change your mind, just let me know.”
When? After they’d already gone their own ways? But he suddenly steered his horse a little closer to hers and she felt something on her head. When she glanced at him she saw that he’d stood up in his stirrups to reach her. Had he just caressed her hair with the Scots right behind them?
“What are you doing?” she asked, a little alarmed.
“It was a butterfly about to land on your head, attracted by that lovely bright copper color no doubt. I brushed it away for you.”
She glanced up and around her before saying, “I don’t see any butterfly.”
He laughed and said, “That’s a shame. It was beautiful.”
Another double entendre? Vanessa’s mood turned a little gloomy when she realized how much she was going to miss this man once their paths diverged. She’d also be parting with her two guards soon, not that she’d gotten to know them well enough to miss them.
But when she followed the two brothers into the stable next to the inn where they were staying that night, she did say to Donnan, “So you’ll return to Scotland after we reach Dawton Manor?”
“Nay, we’re with ye, lass, till ye marry.”
“But I thought—”
“Yer faither was specific. I dinna think he trusts his estranged wife tae keep ye safe.”
She was incredulous. Her father had encouraged her to return to Kathleen, so she’d assumed—wrongly, apparently—that he considered Kathleen’s care all the protection she needed here in England. But the more she thought about it, the more it made sense to her that he didn’t trust her mother even for that. She recalled what her father had said when she’d asked him a few years ago if he had forgiven her mother: “For my exile, which she is indirectly responsible for, I might forgive her one day. But I’ll never forgive her for betraying me and our marriage vows. That sort of pain can dim but will never be forgotten.”
Now her mother was on her mind to the exclusion of all else. There would be no hugs or kisses for her. For her sisters, Layla and Emily, yes, she was eager to see them. But she was afraid that the moment she saw Kathleen, she would revile her quite loudly, which would lead to a terrible fight. She didn’t want that to happen. It would make her stay at Dawton Manor intolerable.
Somehow, she was going to have to restrain herself from throwing down the gauntlet. She would have to pretend she didn’t hate her mother, pretend that Kathleen hadn’t single-handedly split their family apart. What, after all, could her mother say for herself if Vanessa did end up making the accusation?
With thoughts like that, she didn’t get much sleep that night and woke to rain blowing in the window she’d left open. At breakfast she gave Monty a smug smile and said, “I told you so,” blaming him for the downpour because she’d warned him that his gloating about the fine weather would bring rain.
She wouldn’t object to riding in the coach with him and Charley until it stopped, although he must have thought she would because as they left the inn, he reminded her, “I did warn you we would see rain, and I’m bloody well amazed it didn’t happen sooner, so no complaints. You’ll travel dry or you better have a very good reason why you won’t.”
“Did I say, ‘No, thank you’?”
“You were about to.”
She laughed. “No, I wasn’t.”
In the coach, Monty opened a deck of cards and told her, “I’ve been teaching Charley how to play whist, not that it’s a game he really needs to learn when we won’t be attending any parties where it might be played, but he expressed an interest in it. D’you play?”
“I know how, yes,” she replied. “My father taught me over a long winter, though we preferred chess, a game for two.”
“Yes, Charley is having a hard time grasping that whist is played with a partner to whom he can’t talk or hint about his hand.”
Vanessa nodded. “That would be cheating, Charley.”
The boy gave Monty a pointed look. “You could have said that instead of making me think some skill must be involved. I don’t cheat. If I cheated inadvertently, someone would need to be punished.”
Vanessa choked back a laugh, guessing, “Your teacher?”
