He kept that vow, but when her body was convulsing around him, wringing the last drop of passion from their joining, Tye’s self-restraint collapsed, his good intentions disappeared, and he followed Hester into a pleasure as intense and as soul deep as it was bittersweet.

* * *

“This is my mother’s direction in Edinburgh. You should not need it, but I don’t like sending you off without even a maid.”

Hester’s lover from the previous night was nowhere to be found, except perhaps lurking in the green eyes of this serious, handsome man. “We’ll be fine, Tiberius. I’ve gotten quite used to traveling about by train.”

Fiona swung Hester’s hand. “I’ll be fine too. Will you say good-bye to Albert for me?”

“Of course, and let me stow this fellow for you.” Tye held up the carpetbag housing the rabbit. “You’ll have to watch that he isn’t nibbling through the fabric, Niece. A rabbit loose on Her Majesty’s rails will not do.” He stuffed the bag on the overhead rack, and the train whistle sounded a warning blast.

“I wish you were coming with us, Uncle, and Flying Rowan too.”

“I’ll write to you, Fiona, and I don’t want to hear about any cheating at cards either.” In the cramped confines of the compartment, he went down on his haunches and hugged the child tightly. “You are my favorite niece. Never forget it.”

“I’m your only niece.”

And again, for the hundredth time in twenty-four hours, Hester’s heart broke, this time simply from seeing Fiona share her favorite-niece joke with Tiberius, proof positive the man was secure in the child’s love and affection.

“Aunt.” Fiona tugged on Hester’s skirts, forcing her down into what was nearly a huddle with the child and the earl. “You must tell Uncle you love him and you will miss him.”

She’d spoken in Gaelic. With childish good intentions, she’d driven spikes into Hester’s composure and into her heart. Hester managed an answer only haltingly, and not because she stumbled over the Gaelic.

“I will miss him badly, but it’s like with the fox, Fiona. Spathfoy needs to be with his family, and they need him. They need him desperately.”

“We’re his family.”

Hester could only nod and rise to her feet, feeling older than Aunt Ree on a wet, chilly night. Spathfoy took her hand in his without even sparing a glance at the passage beyond the open door.

“You will write to me if there’s need?”

Another nod, while a lump as wide as the Highlands formed in her throat. The damned man kissed her forehead, and when he would have stepped back, Hester held on to him. “Tiberius, I am sorry.”

The train whistle blasted twice, and the look he gave her was torn. “I cannot fathom what you’d be apologizing for. Please get word to me when you’ve arrived safely in Ballater. I want a wire, Hester, not some damnable polite letter arriving after Michaelmas.”

“Uncle said a bad word.”

He tweaked Fiona’s braid. “I’m expressing strong feelings, probably not for the last time.” Then he swung his gaze back to Hester. “My dear, I must leave you now. There are things I must resolve with my father and my sisters before I am otherwise free. You will send word?”

He was harping on this. Hester finally realized he was concerned that she was with child. “I will send word if there’s need. Good-bye, Tiberius. Read your brother’s will.” The words had slipped out. She might send a wire, a few sentences of platitudes, but this admonition she’d give him in person.

The train whistle sounded three times, and on the platform, the conductor was bellowing the “all aboard.”

“Good-bye, Uncle. I won’t cheat. I love you!”

“I love you too, Fiona. Safe journey.”

A swift, hard kiss to Hester’s lips, and then he was gone. Hester took the backward-facing seat as the train began to move, the better to stare at Tiberius’s tall, still figure growing smaller and smaller, until a bend in the tracks took him entirely from her sight.

* * *

“But when are we going to get there?” Fiona’s question had long since taken on the singsong quality of a child determined to pluck the last adult nerve within hearing and pluck it hard.

They’d made the transfer smoothly enough in Edinburgh, but now, not twenty miles north of the city, the train had stopped dead on the tracks.

And not moved for an hour.

“I do not know when we’ll make Aberdeen, Fiona. Would you like to play another game of matches?”

“No. It’s too hard to spread out all the cards in this stupid train.”

“Shall we walk beside the tracks for a moment?”

“It’s going to rain, and then I shall get wet and stay wet until we get home. Why isn’t the train moving?”

“There’s an obstruction on the tracks.”

“What kind of obstruction?”

“I do not know.” Just as Hester hadn’t known five minutes earlier, and ten minutes, and twenty. Hester suspected it was not a trivial obstruction—a downed tree or a dead horse at least—a casual gesture by the hand of fate to make Hester doubt her determination to scurry north and lick her wounds.

“I miss Uncle.”

“I miss him too.”

“You should have stayed with him, Aunt. He’ll miss you and miss you.”

Oh, cruel child. Hester wanted to clap her hand over Fiona’s mouth.

“The train is moving!” Fiona pressed her nose to the window as the locomotive gave another lurch. “We’re moving backward!”

“We are indeed.” Away from Aberdeen, which was maddening, to say the least. “We’ll probably have to find another train to take us north, Fee. The day is likely to become quite long.”

Fiona said nothing, but stood on the seat to get down the carpetbag and peer inside, as she’d done frequently throughout their journey.

“It doesn’t smell very good in there. Harold is unhappy.”

“Then Harold will be relieved to reach home, as will we.”

“But home’s that way.” Fiona jerked her thumb to the north.

Swear words paraded through Hester’s weary brain—nasty, percussive, satisfying Anglo-Saxon monosyllables that would have sounded like music on Tiberius’s tongue.

“I am damned sick of this day, Niece.”

Fiona’s brows arched with surprise. “That was very good, Aunt. May I try?”

They turned the air of the compartment blue on the twenty-mile trip back down to Edinburgh, and shared not a few laughs, but when Hester was told there was no way to reach Aberdeen by nightfall, she wanted to cry.

“We could hire a carriage,” Fiona offered helpfully as they stood outside the busy station in Edinburgh.

“It would still take us days, Fee. We need to find decent accommodations for young ladies temporarily stranded far from home.”

“And a rabbit.” Fee tucked her hand into Hester’s. “Don’t forget Harold.”

Hester did not wrinkle her nose. “I would never forget dear Harold.”

“Uncle has a house here on Princes Street, and a very nice house in the country too. My grandmamma lives here.”

Hester was reminded of Tiberius tucking a folded piece of paper into her reticule when he’d parted from them on the train. “Princes Street, Fiona?”

A short ride by hack took them to the New Town address Tye had given them, and much to Hester’s relief—and probably Harold’s as well—the lady was home.

And she was breathtakingly beautiful.

Tall, stately, with classic features that would not yield much to age, Lady Quinworth also sported flaming hair going golden at her temples.

“Miss Daniels, I’m afraid you have me at something of a loss, but any friend of Tiberius is a friend of mine.” Her smile would warm a Highland winter and only grew more attractive as she turned it on Fiona. “And I am dying to meet this young lady, who I can only hope has also befriended Spathfoy.”

“He’s not my friend, he’s my uncle.”

The marchioness blinked. “Spathfoy is your uncle?”

Hester felt again the sensation of the train pulling out of the station at Newcastle, gathering momentum, and hurtling her at increasing speed in the wrong direction. “I can explain, my lady.”

“I’m sure you can.” Lady Quinworth turned to a waiting footman. “Take the ladies’ things up to the first guest room, Thomas. We’ll want tea with all the trimmings in the family parlor.”

“What about Harold?” Fiona held up the malodorous carpetbag. “He’s ever so tired of traveling too.” She grinned at the marchioness. “Bloody, damned tired.”

“Fiona!”

But the marchioness only smiled. This smile was different, warmer, with a hint of mischief. This smile reminded Hester painfully of Tiberius in a playful mood, and on the lady, it looked dazzling.

“The child no doubt gets her unfortunate vocabulary from her uncle. Come along, ladies, and bring Harold.”

* * *

Deirdre considered two possibilities. The first was that Tiberius had developed a liaison with a lady fallen on hard times, and the little girl was his love child, which was a fine thing for a mother to be finding out from somebody besides the son responsible.

Except Tiberius would have married the mother; without question he would have.

Which meant this was Gordie’s child. Fiona was old enough, and she had the look of Gordie in her merry eyes and slightly obstinate chin. When the child had been sent off with the housekeeper to enjoy a scented bath, Deirdre considered her remaining guest.

“Now that we are without little ears to mind us, Miss Daniels, I’d like to know how you came to be at Quinworth, and what exactly Spathfoy’s involvement is in that child’s life.”

Miss Daniels—who bore no noticeable resemblance to the child in her care—used the genteel prevarications. She sipped her tea, nibbled a sandwich, then set her tea down. “I believe Fiona is your granddaughter, my lady.”