Page 122 of Ghost of the Ton

“Would you thrash her?”

“Of course not. But…” He hesitated, tempering the sorrow that lay in his mind, barely concealed by the anger. “I-I dinnae want to fail her, and I have failed her. And Ma will be heartbroken.”

“Iona will tell your mother when she’s ready,” Mia said.

“Why did she tell ye?”

Mia pushed open the cottage door, and he followed her inside. “She didn’t exactly tell me,” she said. “But she told me nonetheless.”

“Do ye talk in riddles?”

Her lips twitched—the precursor, he hoped, to a smile.

“She wanted me to find out, but couldn’t bring herself to tell me, so she asked the right questions.”

“Aye,” he said, almost to himself. “Ye do talk in riddles.”

Mia twisted her mouth, as if to prevent her smile from widening. “Imagine a wife is thirsty and she wants her husband to bring her a pot of tea,” she said. “What would she say to him?”

“I suppose she’d say, ‘Fetch me a pot of tea, husband.’”

“Spoken like a man,” she said. “And what would the husband say? What would Murdoch say if Evie said such a thing?”

He shrugged. “Any self-respecting husband would tell her to fetch it herself because it’s women’s work.”

“Very well,” she said. “Now imagine I’ve come to visit you at the castle. If I were shivering by the fire and told you that I was terribly thirsty and my body was aching with the cold, what might you say?”

“I’d offer ye a cup of tea.”

“And you’d wait for me to fetch it?”

“No, lass, I’d…” His voice trailed away as she burst into laughter, and his heart soared. Anything was better than her contempt.

“You’d make the tea?”

“Och, no, but I’d go to the kitchen and ask Mrs. McBride to make it for ye.”

“What a shockingly modern individual you are for your sex,” she said, and he winced at the edge in her voice. Then she sighed. “I’ve no wish to argue with you, Hamish.”

“But ye’ve still not answered my question. Why did Iona tell ye? She’s hardly shown any liking for ye. In fact, she and Murdoch—”

“Perhaps the less we say about Iona and Murdoch in the same breath, the better. I don’t know for certain who the father is. I believe she was happy for me to know about her condition because I’m soon to leave Glenblath. And whom can we trust more with our most intimate secrets than a stranger? After all, I shan’t be the one staring at her with judgmental eyes after the baby is born.”

“Will ye stay until then?”

“Yes,” she said. “I made a promise. And I keep my promises.”

All except one.

But Hamish refused to voice the riposte. After all, the dissolution of their marriage was at his insistence. Or, at least, it had been.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said. “What are you doing here? I thought we’d agreed to remain apart after…” She colored and looked away.

“I came to take the vaccination,” he said.

“For yourself?”

“Aye, and for the benefit of others. How many families haven’t taken it?”