And with no more ado than that, Hester soon found herself in a private compartment with Fiona and Spathfoy, watching as the child waved madly out the window while the train pulled away from the station, and Spathfoy kept a dignified silence at his niece’s side.

* * *

Tye had just completed a lengthy discussion with his horse about the need to develop fortitude regarding train travel—they’d be coming back to Ballater; on that point, Tye was already quite determined—when Balfour informed him Hester was accompanying Fiona to Northumbria. Hester would make the journey with them, and stay long enough to see the child settled in.

Balfour’s tone had carried a distinct sense of, “Don’t be fookin’ this up, too, laddie.”

Tye sat back and regarded a woman he was sure would rather be anywhere than in a private compartment, knee to knee with him. He’d kept his powder dry until Fiona was asleep with her head on a pillow and her feet in her aunt’s lap.

“Why did you change your mind, Hester? This journey cannot be something you contemplate willingly.”

She didn’t even turn her head, but answered while the scenery hurtled by beyond the window. “Fiona guddled me. Don’t expect me to stay long in Northumbria.”

“I do not understand.”

Now she did look at him, her expression one of bleak humor. “She tickled my sympathies, and I would likely have told her to go to blazes with her big green eyes and pleading looks, but I do not trust your father to treat her well, Spathfoy.”

Tye didn’t either, not now that he’d met the child. “You don’t trust me, then, to see to her well-being?”

She averted her eyes again, which Tye felt somewhere in the middle of his chest as a desolating loss.

“Your father has not treated you well, Spathfoy, to send you out to do his dirty work. If Quinworth had come himself, if he’d even bothered to make Fee’s acquaintance, Ian would have made sure the marquess got a fair hearing with Mary Fran and had a decent relationship with Fiona. Instead, Quinworth puts you up to high-handed legal tactics and base subterfuge. I ask again, what hold has he over you that you’d undertake such doings?”

She asked, but her tone was bored.

“I will not disrespect my father by answering that, Hester, and the subterfuge, as you call it, was mine. I fully intended to collect the child the morning after I met her, and be on my way, but then Lady Ariadne offered me hospitality, and it struck me I ought to familiarize myself with Fiona’s circumstances, and then…”

The Deeside scenery was beautiful. No wonder Her Majesty had chosen the Highlands for the private castle she shared with her handsome prince.

“Then, Tiberius?”

In for a penny… “Then I met you.” Met his own personal tempest ready to rage him into submission over the well-being of a child she wasn’t even related to.

Silence, while they passed through Scotland’s beautiful countryside. When they reached Aberdeen, the wisdom of having Hester accompany them became apparent. Fiona needed to use the necessary, she needed to fidget, she needed to cling and whine and generally carry on like a fretful child while Tye oversaw the transfer of their trunks—and his nervous horse—for the next leg of the journey.

And fortunately, they had no more transfers to make before reaching Newcastle. This left Tye hours to regard the woman he still hoped to marry, and to consider his options.

First and foremost, he hoped she was pregnant with his—their—child. She would marry him if that were the case, he was certain of it. Even Balfour would encourage the match if a child were involved.

Second, Tye could strive mightily to convince his father to return Fiona to her family in Aberdeenshire, and forget whatever crotchet had prompted this wild start in the first place. This option had dubious chances of success. The marquess was not one to back down once he’d taken a position.

Not ever.

The third option was the one Hester had suggested: to find some means of compelling his lordship to reconsider his schemes. Tye had been reluctant to speculate regarding what leverage he could find to put the light of sweet reason in his father’s eye.

Such machinations seemed disrespectful. Almost as disrespectful as presenting oneself as a guest when one intended to comport oneself as anything but.

Fiona sighed in her sleep, her second protracted nap of the day. “Shall we wake her?”

Hester brushed the child’s hair back off her forehead, the gesture tender and, to Tye, unsettling. “To what purpose?”

“So she isn’t keeping you up half the night when you’re obviously fatigued from looking after her the livelong day.”

“I’ll manage.”

With two words, she might as well have kicked Tye out of the compartment, so vast was the indifference she conveyed. She put him in mind of his mother after a particularly vexing donnybrook with his father.

“Hester, I am not your enemy.”

“No, you are not.” She studied him for a moment in the dim light of the compartment. “You are not my friend, either.”

The hope he’d been guarding for a hundred miles curled up under his heart with a weary whimper.

But it did not die. He was nowhere near ready to allow it to die.

* * *

They arrived to Quinworth well after dark, though even by torchlight, Hester could see the place was imposing. The facade was a vast expanse of pale blond stone, the same shade as Alnwick Castle, but modernized to boast many windows, and terraces abundantly graced with flowers.

Fiona would delight in exploring the place.

“Is she still asleep?” Hester kept her voice down, lest the child slumbering in Spathfoy’s arms waken.

“Out like a candle.”

“I can take her.”

“Get out of the coach, Hester. She’s too heavy for you, and you’re dead on your feet.”

He sounded amused and so damnably patient, Hester had no choice but to comply. A liveried, gloved footman assisted her from the carriage and stood by while Spathfoy managed to maneuver himself and his burden out of the coach.

“Has a room been prepared for the child?” Spathfoy’s voice was soft in the gloom.

The footman kept his eyes front. “In the nursery wing, my lord. There’s a room for the child’s nurse as well.”

“Miss Daniels is not the child’s nurse, but rather, my guest. Please inform Mrs. Hitchins that Lady Dora’s room is to be given over to Miss Daniels’s use, and have a truckle bed put there as well for the child.”

The footman snapped a bow. “Pardon for my mistake, and I’ll see to it at once, my lord. I’m to tell you there’s refreshment awaiting you in the library, my lord.”

Hester glanced at Spathfoy to see if all these obsequies were making his head spin, but he appeared quite at home.

He was home. She surveyed again the enormous edifice before them, and realized how humble Fiona’s household in the Highlands must have seemed by comparison.

“Miss Daniels, are you coming?”

She was Miss Daniels now, not Hester. That was to be expected. She moved along at his side while footmen and porters swarmed the coach, unloading boxes and trunks and yelling at one another to have a care with that bag.

This was Tye’s welcome home—three “my lords” and a tray in the library.

This was Fiona’s welcome as well. Hester was not at all pleased, not for the child, and not for the son of the house who’d been sent north to retrieve the child. She followed Spathfoy through an enormous, soaring foyer, down a lighted hallway, and into a cavernous library.

“We’ll need to give the servants some time to make up Dora’s bed for you,” he said as he laid Fiona on a leather couch, then rearranged the blanket she’d been wrapped in. “And you should eat something.”

“Does it strike you as odd that the marquess is not on hand to greet his long-lost granddaughter?”

Spathfoy straightened but continued to regard the sleeping child. “His lordship is an early riser. He and Fiona will have plenty of time to greet each other tomorrow. May I fix you a plate?”

He crossed to a sideboard where Hester spied a veritable feast. “Is this how the help indicate they’re pleased to see you?” Beef, chicken, and ham slices were arranged on one tray, several kinds of cheese on another; hulled strawberries were piled high in a crystal bowl; and various pastries and tea cakes with all the fixings sat on a second tray.

No chocolate cakes, though.

“Pleased to see me? I haven’t a clue. This is how they indicate they wish to continue in my father’s employment. As I recall, you like a deal of butter with your scones.”

She let him do this, let him prepare her some sustenance, just as she’d let him manage all the details of getting them safely half the length of the kingdom. He was good at it, in part because people seemed naturally to heed him, but also because he had the knack of anticipating which detail was about to need attention—like putting a truckle bed for Fee in Hester’s room.

She accepted a plate from him, piled high with good food. “Thank you, Spathfoy, but you’ve served me far more than I can hope to consume.”

“We’ll share, then. Will you pour?”

She ought to balk. She ought to shove the plate at him, fix herself a more modest serving, and find a single chair on which to seat herself.

But it was late, they were both exhausted, and the remaining sofa looked comfortable. “I’ll pour. I should also make up a little something for Fiona if she should wake in the night.”

“Ring for the kitchen—one pull is the kitchen, two is the servants’ hall, which will get you a footman.”