CHAPTER 1
“It’s a tiger? A lion?”
Athena Oliphant hummed thoughtfully and continued her invisible sketch on the naked back draped across her lap.
“Nay,” she murmured, one finger drawing the curve of the feline’s back. “But close.”
Her wee son propped his chin in his hands and frowned as he concentrated on her touch, trying to feel the shape of the image. “There are whiskers, aye?”
“Aye, indeed.” The gentle burble of the river, wide and calm here and excellent for swimming, seemed to echo throughout the perfect summer afternoon. “What else has whiskers?” she asked as she sketched the animal’s fluffy tail.
“A dog has whiskers!”
Callan was almost five years old, and visiting this part of the river had become a part of their daily routine thissummer. She would pack a picnic lunch, and they’d swim and eat until he was exhausted, then he’d nap in the shade of a magnificent oak while she read. But first she had to calm him to a restful state, so she’d invented this game where she drew pictures on his back and he tried to guess what they were.
“A dog does indeed have whiskers, my love.” She drew claws beside where she thought she’d drawn the creature’s feet a few minutes ago. “But ye were closer with yer guesses of lion and tiger.”
“Oh! A panther!” Callan guessed in excitement, thrusting his upper body up by straightening his elbows. “It’s a panther!”
This wasn’t calming him for a nap, was it?
Smiling gently, Athena wiped her palm across the lad’s back, gently pushing him back down. “It is no’ a panther.”
“A jackal?”
Lightly, she pinched her son’s bare arse, which wasn’t as white as it had been at the start of the summer. Perhaps sheshouldfind him a bathing costume. But it’s not as though anyone came to this remote bend in the river; it was the far end of Oliphant land, where it butted up again the Dumpkins Estate. Lady Dumpkins had been hosting a house party all summer—and with three of Athena’s siblings finding love, it was no wonder the Countess crowed at the party’s success—but Athena had done her best to avoid the festivities, and knew that none of the activities ever drew people to this area of the river.
“A jackal isnae a feline, son.”
“What’s a feline?”
Hmm. Perhaps she ought to have a word with her son’s nurse. The lad knew his letters, but was more content to have someone readtohim than practice his own vocabulary.
“A feline is acat.” To punctuate this lesson, she added a sketch of what she imagined might’ve been a dead mouse by the feline’s front paws. “Like the barn cats back home.”
When he still didn’t pick up on the hints, Athena began to stroke her palm across her son’s back, as if she were stroking the cat’s fur.
“Ye’re certain it’s no’ a panther?”
She couldn’t hide her grin. “Nay, it is no’ a panther.” The lad wasn’t tired at all, was he? “But he is gray and white?—”
“Like the barn cats back home?”
Ah, he was beginning to understand.
“Aye, just like the wee beasts,” she murmured softly.
“Panthers are gray and white?—”
“Nay, they are no’. It isno’a panther, Callan. It is a feline who has just caught a mouse.”
He pushed himself up on his arms once more. “Like the barn cats?”
“Aye,” she huffed in exasperation. “Like the barn cats! He is gray and white like the barn cats, and he has whiskers like the barn cats.”
“But how can ye be certain it’s no’ a panther?”
Athena’s frustrated laughter burst out of her at the lad’sdogged line of reasoning just as a new voice said quietly, “Is it a barn cat?”
