The Scottish Bride (Sherbrooke Brides 6)

He was still shaking his head in disbelief as he walked among the graves, eventually wending his way through the stones to his favorite. The man buried here had been a violent warrior, yet when Tysen came to the grave, he felt peace, a measure of serenity. He laid his hand on the ancient headstone, feeling the centuries-old texture that was still changing, year by passing year. It was just possible to make out the nearly obliterated lettering: Sir Vincent D’Egle, born in 1231, died in 1283. There were fresh flowers on the grave, leaning against the marker. Meggie had brought them, he knew, because she’d long known that he somehow identified with this one particular grave. They were bedraggled now, the rain tearing them apart. He felt as bedraggled as those wretched flowers. He moved just a bit away from it and sat on the long stone bench. He looked up at his church, at its magnificent spire,

rising so tall above every other building in Glenclose-on-Rowan. The thick gray stone looked solid and timeless beneath the gray-clouded, weeping sky. He’d sat here many times listening to the bells rung by his sexton, Mr. Peters, feeling the incredible sounds seep into his very soul.

He closed his eyes and prayed for a very long time.

27

THE VICARAGE WAS crammed to the attic rafters. Douglas and Ryder and their families had all descended, unannounced and unexpected, late that Saturday afternoon, piled into three carriages that overflowed the vicarage stable.

The vicarage was filled with shouting children, laughing adults, a housekeeper who was nearly in hysteria from the pressure of it all, and him and his wife.

Mary Rose was gowned in the new dress Sinjun had given her, a dark-green wool with lace at the neckline, long fitted sleeves, banded with a dark-green satin ribbon beneath her breasts. It looked, he thought, very well indeed on her.

Mary Rose was overwhelmed, he knew, but looking at her now, not as her husband and a man who was coming to know her, but as a stranger would, he thought her nervousness wasn’t obvious. She smiled, she was gracious, she dispensed tea and small cakes and tarts, she listened intently to any child who happened to engage her, and she smiled happily at him whenever she had the chance.

As for Tysen, he wanted to close himself in his study and remain there, in the darkness, steeped in the pain and doubt and uncertainty that had penetrated to his very soul. But he couldn’t. His brothers and their families had come to visit, only the good Lord knew for how long, because neither Douglas nor Ryder would say. All they did was poke him in the shoulder and laugh. He sat there quietly, a teacup in his hand, saying nothing, just listening to everyone talking, arguing, all of it so very normal and, yes, lighthearted. Just a bit over a week ago, he’d held Max up by his ankles as punishment for saying merda to his cousins. He closed his eyes against the pain of it, against the inevitability of it.

Mary Rose didn’t know what was wrong. Tysen was acting strangely, and it wasn’t brought on by the visit by his siblings—no, he’d been abstracted for the full hour before they’d arrived. When he’d come in, his hair plastered to his head from the hard-blowing rain, she’d skipped up to him, laughing, scolding, smiling, so filled with pleasure at the simple sight of him, sodden but here with her again, and she’d come up on her tiptoes to kiss him. He’d not moved.

Slowly, slowly, her arms had fallen away and she’d stared up at him. “What is wrong, Tysen? What happened?”

“Nothing,” he said and left her.

She’d wanted to yell after him to get out of his wet clothes, for he was probably soaked to the bone, but she didn’t. She just stared after him.

Now he was acting as though the world was going to end at any moment, and he didn’t know whether he was going to heaven or to hell.

What had happened?

Because Mary Rose was worried about her new husband, she wasn’t particularly nervous about the unexpected visit of her new family in her own home. Besides, she knew them now, had seen naked statues with Alex and had made an apple pie with Sophie. Still, Meggie stood by her, her hand on her shoulder, her small protector, and she felt a rush of love.

Meggie said, “In this darker light, your hair and Aunt Alex’s look exactly the same color.”

“I know,” Alex said. “In the bright sunlight, Mary Rose’s hair is shinier and richer, altogether more charming.”

“I wasn’t intending that exactly,” Meggie said, and grinned at her aunt.

“You have no guile, Meggie,” Alex Sherbrooke said, and popped a small apricot tart into her mouth, closing her eyes as she chewed. She said then to Mary Rose, “As I told you at Northcliffe Hall, we are both cursed and blessed, you and I, what with all these curls and twisters and waves. At least there is so much hair, we should never go bald in our later years.”

Mary Rose offered Alex another apricot tart and took one herself.

“You’ll also never become flat-chested,” Sophie Sherbrooke said, eyeing her sister-in-law’s bosom. “What do you think, Mary Rose? Don’t you think that God was overly generous to Alex when he handed out bosoms?”

Mary Rose laughed. “Very unfair, indeed.”

“What is this about breasts?” Douglas Sherbrooke said, walking lazily to where his wife sat, sighed as he looked at her bosom, and lightly kissed her mouth.

“Douglas, that is not at all appropriate,” his wife said.

“I have told you, dearest, that ‘bosom’ is a very faint vague sort of word used only by females. What you have are breasts. Thank God.”

Sophie cleared her throat. “Actually, whatever we were speaking about, Douglas, it wouldn’t hold your interest. Do go torment poor Tysen. To be perfectly blunt, our conversation isn’t for your tender ears, my lad.”

Mary Rose said a few minutes later to Sophie Sherbrooke, after Douglas had strolled off, an eyebrow arched upward, a smile on his lips, “I so enjoyed meeting all the Beloved Ones. I have never seen Tysen shouting and laughing quite so much as when a dozen of the children had taken him to the ground and were holding him down and sitting on him.”

“He did enjoy himself,” Sophie said, and frowned slightly as she looked over at him now. Mary Rose knew what she was seeing. A man who was distracted, a man who wasn’t really with them, but off somewhere, deep in his thoughts, and she’d bet those thoughts weren’t wonderful.

Sophie turned to smile at her husband as she said, “It is bedlam.” She saw that Ryder was standing in the middle of the drawing room, holding Leo’s head under one arm and Max’s head under the other, rubbing them together. “Ryder loves them all so. Give him a crying child and that child will be smiling within moments. You know he is also a member of the House of Commons. That job and the children keep him very busy.”