He smiled. “So your people love you?”
She nodded. “The women do, I think. The men are afraid. My uncle can be cruel to those who don’t obey.”
He pressed a kiss to the top of her feet. It was a reverent gesture and she blushed to see it. He was treating her like a princess, and she had never seen herself as such. But she couldn’t deny the appeal, especially as he slipped her shoe onto her foot.
“My childhood was different than yours, and yet similar in that. My mother set my hand to everything at home, and then my father put me to work with everyone he knew. He said it was because I was too expensive to feed.” He grinned up at her. “I did eat everything I could find.”
“Most boys do.”
“But now I see the wisdom in what I learned.”
“Which was what?”
“Every business, every task. I learned how shoes are made by living for a season with my father’s cousin, the shoemaker. I protected my uncle’s fruit cart from thieves during the summer. I spun yarn in the winter with my mother, and even made soap with the nuns.”
“The nuns had a hand with you?”
He nodded. “When my mother was sick one winter, we all stayed with the nuns. That is where I learned to read.”
“From one winter with the nuns?”
He nodded. “I had already figured out the letters, some words, and the numbers.” He winked at her. “Numbers are important for money.”
“Certainly.”
“But putting the words together into stories fired my imagination. And the Bible has plenty of stories.”
She gaped at him. She had known he was clever, but this was something beyond. She had spent many winters teaching children to read with mixed results. Most had little interest, some had no ability, but there were a few whose minds caught fire with learning. Those were the special ones, the smart ones, the ones she sent away to find better schooling. At night when she despaired of her future, she thought of the little ones she had saved merely by sending them to relations in other clans. Ones who had educated people among them. Those children had a future even when she did not.
“If you had been born in my clan, I would have sent you to Edinburgh to study. And I would dream about your future.”
He touched her chin. “When we are in charge of your clan, we will bring the tutors to us, and they will teach all our little ones.”
That was the first she thought of anything beyond the end to her uncle. Never before had she imagined that she could be a true mistress of their clan with a say in how the castle was run, who could come, and who might teach their children. Certainly, she had pretended things as a child, but her mother had silenced her the moment she spoke of when she might be in charge. “Your uncle will never allow it.” And so, she had given up dreaming the day she understood her uncle was a monster.
He must have seen the shock on her face. He must have realized how her mind was spinning at the possibility of a real future. Because while she was reeling from the thoughts he put in her head, he cupped her face and whispered words that she never thought a man would say, much less believe.
“I can make it happen. You only have to tell me what you want.”
Chapter Twenty
What a boldthing to tell any woman.I can give you whatever you want.It was a ridiculous statement, but Reuben didn’t care. Iseabail needed reassurance, and he was the man who would do it. Especially since he didn’t think his promise was unreasonable.
With her uncle brought to heel, the two of them could remake her clan into whatever fit best. Education for the young was the least of the possibilities.
So he pulled her up to a stand, tucked her elbow into the crook of his arm, and began to meander as if this were a sunny afternoon in Hyde Park. Perhaps the continuation of the one this afternoon that had been so horribly interrupted.
“Take a breath of that air,” he said. He took a loud inhale relishing the sweetness of it all. “Not a speck of coal in it.”
“In Scotland, the air is so clear, I swear we can see halfway around the world.”
He wanted to see that. Indeed, he was itching to stand at the top of his castle and spread his arms wide as if he embraced the whole world. Especially if he had her and his son standing right next to him.
“Remember how I said I watched a fruit cart? To protect it from thieves?”
“You must have been very young.”
“So were the thieves.”
