Page 140 of Aurelia

Celsa had been in a vile mood since well before she had passed her due date. Now, two weeks later, she was inconsolable.

Aurelia could not blame her. She could not imagine carrying a child past term. It was possible that Dr. MacMillan had mistaken how far along Celsa was—he was, after all, on the far side of eighty—but everyone in the village swore it would be the first time if he had.

“This is the only child I am having,” Celsa said—not for the first, or even the thirty-first time. “If it is not a boy, I do not care. It would serve Gideon right for not allowing a girl to inherit.”

“I don’t think the entail is Gideon’s fault.” Aurelia felt compelled to defend her dear friend, who had been a model husband to a wife who had been less than model for the past several months.

Celsa gave a piteous groan. “I am being dreadful to him, aren’t I, Lia?”

Aurelia smiled at the nickname, which she loved hearing from her stepdaughter who was more like a sister. “Yes, Celsa, you have been quite dreadful. Luckily for you, Gideon has already forgiven you.”

“He is a darling, isn’t he?” Celsa said, her voice suddenly dreamy.

Aurelia decided that was a rhetorical question.

The door opened and Roland entered, a child holding each hand.

“Mama!” her daughter Judith shrieked, and then tore across the room and flung herself on Aurelia.

“Ooof!” Aurelia grunted as the small body scrambled into her lap.

“Judith demanded to see you. And you know I cannot deny her,” Roland said, looking proudly at his hellion of a daughter’s wild tawny curls.

“Mama, Erik ate an insect,” Judith said, scowling at her little brother.

Erik, at barely three, merely regarded her with his serious hazel gaze, clinging tightly to his father’s hand.

“What sort of insect, Erik?” Aurelia asked her son, who rarely spoke more than five words a day.

But Erik pressed his lips together, almost as if the insect might still be in there.

Aurelia glanced up at Roland who knew what she was thinking and shook his head. “I checked. Whatever he had in there, it is gone.”

“It was an xestia alpicola,” Judith informed them, her slight lisp making the Latin name sound adorable.

Roland grinned proudly at his daughter, who had inherited her father’s fascination with wildlife, while his son evidently preferred to eat it.

“At least Erik did not eat anything too rare, darling,” Aurelia said philosophically. “There is no shortage of xestia alpicola on the island.” Aurelia smoothed back her daughter’s riotous curls, which were the same color as her own hair.

Unfortunately, neither of her children had inherited their father’s guinea gold locks or his icy blue eyes. Indeed, except for their tall, lean bodies they both resembled Aurelia so closely that it appeared—at first glance—that nobody else was involved in their creation.

Judith scrambled off her lap as quickly as she’d scrambled onto it, darting across the room to something that had caught her attention.

“Papa? Have you seen Gideon?” Celsa asked.

Roland gave his oldest daughter a wry look. “He has locked himself in the dungeon.”

“No, he hasn’t.” She paused and narrowed her eyes at Roland. “Has he really?”

Roland laughed. “No. But I would not blame him if he had.”

Celsa’s lower lip trembled. “I have been awful to him.”

“Yes,” Roland agreed. “But Talbot is so besotted with you that he does not care. He has rowed over to the mainland to see if there is even one berry left anywhere in Scotland.

Celsa’s eyes became glassy and a fat tear slid down her cheek. “He is such a darling.”

Roland’s eye-roll showed what he thought of that.