The Scottish Bride (Sherbrooke Brides 6)

“You make it sound like you do nothing at all save sit about eating sweetmeats,” Mary Rose said. “Remember, I was there at Chadwyck House. I saw how you never slowed from dawn until dusk.”

“Well, I quite enjoy being responsible for all our tenant farmers. I can tell you the very best sheep-breeding methods, the most efficacious manures to be plowed into our fields, the best milking cows to be had—goodness, I am quite the expert on crops. Just let me tell you all about barley and rye sometime.” She laughed gaily, adding, “In addition, naturally, I have to keep my dear husband under control, always a fascinating and demanding job.”

“I saw that it was,” Mary Rose said.

“Ha,” Alex said, poking her elbow into Sophie’s side. “Ryder dotes on you. He gets within three feet of you and he’s licking his lips. It’s embarrassing, Sophie.”

“And just what about you, Alex? You’re one to talk. I can see Douglas staring at your bosom from across the room, and he is supposed to be attending to what poor Tysen is trying to say.”

Mary Rose listened to the good-natured bickering between her sisters-in-law. She liked them both, impossible not to. They were open, friendly, and didn’t seem to mind at all that she was from Scotland and spoke with a lilt.

Alex said then, “Max was telling us all what he said to you at dinner one evening when you first came. Something about he wouldn’t eat his broccoli—and he said it in Latin. Then you answered—also in Latin. Well done, Mary Rose. Max seems so much less, well, how do I say it? He seems more lighthearted, more ready for fun, than he ever has before. It’s amazing, don’t you think, Sophie?”

“Oh, yes,” Sophie said thoughtfully. “And Leo. He simply couldn’t sit still at Chadwyck House. He was just telling me that he likes to ride, primarily with you, Mary Rose. He said that you could sing to a horse and the horse would start running faster than the wind.”

Mary Rose thought about that small jest with Leo, still so surprised that her borrowed mare, Dahlia, had actually nearly run her legs off when she’d sung that Robert Burns ditty. “They are both dear boys,” Mary Rose said, “unlike Meggie here, who gives me nothing but trouble. She is always criticizi

ng me, always telling me what I should do and what I shouldn’t do.”

Meggie only laughed and pulled Mary Rose’s earlobe.

Sophie and Alex looked at each other. They’d been pleased before when a laughing Tysen had brought his bride to visit them. They were even more pleased now. Tysen had chosen well this time.

Meggie said, “Mary Rose has nearly as sweet a smile as you do, Aunt Sophie.”

“Very well,” Sophie said on a sigh. “You may wear my garnet bracelet, Meggie.”

“Thank you,” Meggie said.

“That was well done,” Mary Rose said, tilting her head at Meggie. “Am I as easy as your aunt?”

“I haven’t yet tested you, Mary Rose. We will see.”

Mary Rose later went to the stables with Leo to see his uncle Douglas’s stallion, Garth, a brute with a vile temper, Leo told her, that made Uncle Douglas laugh with pleasure when he tried to fling him off his back. She was to sing a Robert Burns ditty to Garth, and then they would see. She opened her mouth and managed to sing nearly one complete verse to the huge horse before he did his best to trample them. She moved nearly as quickly as Leo.

Yes, Mary Rose thought as she dressed for dinner, her new family were very nice people, delightful really, and they seemed to like her very much—the Scottish bastard who was now, magically, an English vicar’s wife. She’d even brought her husband a hundred-pound dowry.

She managed to find beds for all their guests. The three boy cousins would sleep with Max and Leo, and she imagined that they would be awake most of the night. Grayson, Sophie and Ryder’s son, was a mesmerizing storyteller, despite his meager eight years, or maybe because of them. In the dark of the night, Ryder had told her at Chadwyck House, his boy could make his listeners’ hair stand on end. He’d told his first ghost story at three years old, and his old nurse had run screaming from the nursery.

She gave Meggie’s bedchamber to Douglas and Alex, and once again Meggie would sleep in their bedchamber. It was a pity. She wanted to know what was bothering Tysen.

At dinner that evening, just the adults present, he was quiet, his expression austere, his speech, when he was required to say something, really quite cool, detached. He simply sat there at the head of the table, eating little, just listening to his family toss jests and insults to and fro across the table. He was, Mary Rose thought, uninvolved, and she hated it. Had it been just the night before, he would have been laughing as much as they were now. Dear God, she missed his humor, his lightness of touch, his kindness.

What had happened?

What was wrong?

When at last the house was quiet and Meggie was asleep on her cot against the wall on the far side of the bedchamber, Mary Rose came up on her elbow, bent over her husband and kissed him.

What he did was the last thing she expected.

He didn’t move. His mouth stilled beneath hers, and he said, “Don’t.”

She whispered, “But I love to kiss you, Tysen. It’s been far too long. I won’t wake Meggie. Just another kiss.” He was wearing a nightshirt because Meggie was in the room, and Mary Rose hated it. Her hand strayed to his belly. She loved to touch him, feel his entire body tense, feel the power of him.

He grabbed her hand and lifted it off him. “Go to sleep, Mary Rose.”

Slowly, she pulled back. She couldn’t see his expression, just the shadow of his face in the dark of night. “Do you feel all right, Tysen?”