Read Online Once Upon a Tartan by Grace Burrowes - Free Book Online

with your chatter.”
    Fiona fell silent as Tye stroked his fingers back and forth, back and forth. “I’m close.” He was whispering, and when he glanced up, he saw both Fiona and Miss Daniels’s expressions were rapt with expectation.
    “Another moment.” Another moment and his calf submerged in the burn would cramp or lose sensation altogether. Tye slid his hands around the fish and closed gently.
    “That’s it. There we go.”
    He lifted the fish up out of the water, feeling inordinately pleased with himself.
    “He’s enormous!” Fiona reached out a hand then dropped it. “May I touch him?”
    “Of course, though he’ll start to thrash here directly.” The fish was panting, dazed, and soon to realize its mortal peril.
    “He’s very pretty, and cold.” Fiona ran a finger over the fish’s side. “He looks like the light from the water is caught in his skin.”
    “His scales,” Tye said. “If we don’t toss him back soon, he’ll die.”
    “Toss him back?” Fiona glanced over at her aunt. “Won’t Deal want him for the kitchen?”
    Miss Daniels looked horrified at the very notion. “We won’t tell Deal quite how big he is.” While Tye watched, Miss Daniels ran her fingers down the cold, scaly length of the fish’s body. “Best toss him back quickly, my lord.”
    Tye hadn’t expected her to touch the fish then command its rescue. He gently lobbed the creature to the far side of the stream, and they all three watched as it swam away down the current.
    Fiona slapped her hands together. “That was capital! If we see another, may I try?”
    “You may,” Tye said, slogging up onto the bank. “With your aunt’s permission.”
    “Not by yourself, Fiona MacGregor. The burn is a pretty little stream now, but one storm higher up in the hills, and it can rage over its banks.”
    “Why can’t I ever do anything by myself?” The fish forgotten, the child repaired to her tree—a reading tree, rather than a treaty oak—and began to climb.
    Tye waited while Miss Daniels resumed a place on the blanket, then took a spot immediately beside her just to see what she’d do. “You allow her to address her elders in such a manner?”
    She picked up her book. “Why don’t you give her a stern talking to, Uncle ? Let her see that with merely a cross word, she can pique your interest and rivet your attention. As fascinated as she is with you—or perhaps with your horse—she’ll be bickering the livelong day in no time. And she’s right: she is left little to her own devices.”
    Miss Daniels turned a page, as if she were reading in truth.
    “You’ve piqued my interest, Miss Daniels.”
    She looked up, her expression gratifyingly wary. “My lord?”
    “You mentioned the words jilt and tease. These are pejoratives, and I would have you explain them.” He kept his voice down out of deference to the child’s proximity, though Fiona was warbling among the boughs in Gaelic about her love gone over the sea.
    The lady closed her eyes and expelled an audible breath. When she opened them, as close as Tye sat to her, he could see flecks of gold in her blue irises and flecks of deeper blue.
    “If you frequent London society, my lord, then you are as aware as the next titled lordling that I’ve recently broken an engagement to Jasper Merriman—Lord Jasper. The situation was particularly nasty, because the gentleman had been counting heavily on my dowry. He threatened to bring suit.”
    “God in heaven. Suit? Against you? I’ve never heard of such a thing—a lady is permitted to change her mind. Even the courts know that.”
    “Breach of promise, though he was convinced to take the more gentlemanly route.”
    “Convinced by a goodly sum of coin, no doubt.” He couldn’t keep the anger from his voice. A woman brought suit for breach of a man’s promise, because a man’s word was the embodiment of his honor. A young woman’s word was hardly hers to give, because she was in the care of her parents