The Scottish Bride (24 page)

Mary Rose very nearly burst into laughter, but held herself together in time. What had she expected? Little boys who would take one look at her and vow to love her to distraction?

She blinked at her husband, a child on either side of him now, facing her, and she was standing there, alone, beside the vicarage that was now where she would live forever.

“Papa's different,” Leo said slowly, eyeing him again.
“He's funny and he hasn't stopped smiling. He didn't even say anything when I talked about the three shilling wager with Max.”

“Papa's just the same,” Meggie said. “Just shut up, Leo.” She frowned at her brother until she was sure he would remain quiet. Then she did a little skip over to Mary Rose, hugged her, and said, “What do you think of your new home? Isn't it lovely? All this peach brick and the ivy, so much ivy. Papa's said he fears the ivy will creep into his bed and wrap him up and then Monroe and Ellis won't be able to knead him. But it's pretty inside, and large enough for all of us, you'll see, Mary Rose. Well, to be honest, the drawing room is very dark, but I expect that you can order all the draperies burned.”

“There is a lot of ivy,” Mary Rose said. “It is lovely. Should I really burn the draperies?”

“Actually, yes,” Tysen said. “I've just never thought to do it.”

“That's because you're a gentleman, Papa, and gentlemen aren't capable of seeing things in their homes that need to be done.”

Tysen grinned down at his daughter. “I swear to you, Meggie, I will look at things differently now that Mary Rose is here. Let's go inside,” he added to Mary Rose, taking her hand. “You need to meet Mrs. Priddie, she's our cook and housekeeper. We have two maids who come in daily, Belinda and Tootsie, and Marigold, the tweeny. There is Malcolm who sees to the stables, you already met him.” He paused a moment, then said on a smile, “I trust you will find Mrs. Priddie more acceptable than Mrs. MacFardle.”

“Oh, there's also Monroe and Ellis,” Meggie said. “They love Papa. And since you sleep with Papa so you can talk all night, Monroe and Ellis will probably be right there too, climbing all over you and purring.”

“Ellis just spit up a big fur ball,” Leo said. “Mrs. Priddie yelled at him and tried to whack him with the broom, but he was too fast for her.”

“Ellis,” Tysen said, and he smiled at her, thinking that smiling was something very natural now, “undoubtedly has racing blood. He's long and lean and so fast he's sometimes a blur.”

“But he's lazy most of the time,” Leo said. “I try to get him to play with a ball and he puts up his tail and walks away. Papa, you're still smiling.”

“Leave Papa alone, Leo,” Meggie said. “Now, the reason Ellis leaves is because you're boring. Accustom yourself to it.”

“Well, at least I wasn't walking around with my drawers showing and—”

“Do you want me to kill you again, you little crab-head?”

“You'll never catch me!”

And they were off, Meggie chasing Leo, out of sight into the vicarage garden. Tysen just shook his head. “She won't hurt him badly,” he said, and realized he was still grinning widely. It felt very good.

After meeting Tootsie, Belinda, and Marigold who giggled and gaped at her, and Mrs. Priddie, who was full of stiff civility, Mary Rose briefly toured all the downstairs vicarage rooms. Thirty minutes later, Tysen was trapped by a Mrs. Flavobonne, who insisted only the vicar would do, and Mary Rose went upstairs with Mrs. Priddie. When Mary Rose was finally standing in the middle of her new bedchamber with its adjoining door to Tysen's room, she heard Meggie outside her window, in the vicarage gardens below. Mrs. Priddie excused herself, said she had to rescue Reverend Sherbrooke from that oily Mrs. Flavobonne, and left her alone. Mary Rose walked closer to the window and looked down.

“You just batten down your hatch, Leo,” Meggie said, and then she poked her finger against his chest, hard, and pushed him back into a mess of the infamous ivy.

“But he just found her in Scotland, Meggie. We don't need another mother. Everything is just fine the way it is. I don't want her here. She doesn't belong here. She's a foreigner and a girl. Why do you?”

“I'm a girl, goat face, and I belong here. Half the people around are girls. Get used to it.” Meggie poked him hard again, and he landed on his bottom in a rosebush. He hol-lered and jumped up. “A thorn got me in my left cheek. Just because I don't like her, you don't have to kill me, Meggie. You just got home. You should be happy to see me.”

“Not if you're still a moron,” Meggie said, then frowned. “You've grown. It's been only a month and you've gotten bigger than I've gotten. But I can still break your legs, so don't you forget it.”

Leo said, “I'm going to be as big as Papa. Maybe by next month. By Christmas, for sure. You won't be able to beat me up for much longer.”

“I will always be able to beat you up,” Meggie said, hands on her hips, “because I'm going to be bigger than even Papa. Now, don't you dare say anything bad about Mary Rose to Max when he gets back from Mr. Pritchert's house, do you hear me?”

“Mary Rose—that's a silly name. It sounds all spongy and soft, like she doesn't have a backbone. Why did Papa marry her? He didn't do it to get us a mother, because we don't need or want one. It's not like we've asked him to get us one. Why?”

“Papa married Mary Rose because there was this awful man who tried to steal her away to make her marry him, and she didn't want to.”

“Oh,” Leo said, rubbing his bottom where the thorn had stuck into him. “Well, all right then, I can understand that.
He married her because he's so bloody honorable and he felt sorry for her. It's a good thing a man can only have one wife, otherwise Papa would have married a good dozen ladies by now, all because he felt sorry for them and rescued them from something or other. But you know, Meggie, he's laughing. He's saying funny things. It sounds very strange. What happened?”

“He's happy. Perhaps he has changed a bit. Hmmm. Well, he does laugh a lot now. I like it.”

“Yes, I suppose I do too,” Leo said.

“Oh, dear.” Mary Rose backed away from the window. “Oh, dear,” she said again to the empty bedchamber that was horrible. Well, she'd eavesdropped. What did Leo mean that Tysen had changed? Of course he laughed and grinned and said funny things. It was the way he was.

She walked to the middle of the room and just stood there for a moment. She'd deserved what she'd heard. Leo was a little boy. It would take a while for him to get used to her. She looked around her then. She didn't want to spend another minute in this dismal place. It had been Melinda Beatrice's bedchamber Mrs. Priddie had told her. It hadn't been touched since the mistress had passed on some six years before. Didn't Mrs. Sherbrooke think it simply lovely?

Mary Rose wanted to puke, a word she'd never really even thought before, but it fit this particular circumstance. She would end up on her knees over the chamber pot if she had to stay in here. It was perfectly dreadful, not that it was ugly or anything like that, it was the feel of it, the way the air smelled, the way it was creeping in on her, closing her in. She was an idiot. This was ridiculous. It was just, simply, that the room wasn't hers.

She was standing in the center of the room, not moving, wondering what to do when the door opened and Tysen came in. He didn't even ask her what the matter was, just
said without hesitation, “I don't wish you to be in here. I have never cared for this room. My bedchamber is quite large enough for both of us. Why don't we have this room redone into a sitting room? If that doesn't work, we can lock the boys in here for punishment?”

She ran to him and threw her arms around his back. Mrs. Priddie harrumphed behind Tysen. She said quite clearly, “You dealt with Mrs. Flavobonne very quickly, Reverend Sherbrooke, perhaps too quickly. This is the home of a man of God. It is a vicarage. If you were yourself, Reverend Sherbrooke, there would be no matters of the flesh. You would be above that. This isn't what I'm used to, sir.”

“But I'm no longer just myself, Mrs. Priddie. I'm now married.” And, he thought, a smile blazing, he wasn't above much of anything, particularly when it came to Mary Rose and where he touched her. Tysen very slowly dropped his arms. He turned to Mrs. Priddie. “Let's show Mary Rose her new bedchamber.”

Mrs. Priddie harrumphed again. Both cats—Ellis, so long and skinny that he seemed to be wrapped around fat Monroe, with his yellow eyes and fur blacker than a sinner's dreams—were on top of Tysen's bed. Ellis cracked an eye open, saw Tysen, and yowled once, then twice, unwound himself from Monroe and leapt. Tysen, used to this, caught the cat in mid-flight and simply brought him to his shoulder. “Have you been a saintly cat, Ellis?”

The cat was purring so loudly that Mary Rose, who had never before heard the like, just stood there staring at him.

“He stole a pork chop right off the kitchen table, Reverend Sherbrooke.”

“Well yes, Mrs. Priddie, he is fast, isn't he?” He rubbed the cat's stomach, hugged him, then finally set him back down beside Monroe, who was just looking at everyone, not even twitching a whisker.

“Monroe doesn't do much,” Tysen said, and petted the cat in long strokes down its back. The cat stretched out, and Tysen continued to pat him until Ellis, jealous, swatted at Tysen's hand.

“Just wait until we're in bed with them,” he said to Mary Rose, and Mrs. Priddie harrumphed yet again.

“I can't wait,” Mary Rose said, and Ellis looked at her, then stretched his neck toward her. She gave him a light pat. Ellis jumped back onto Tysen's shoulder.

 

Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.

In the good old days, children like you were left to perish on windswept crags.

 
 

M
AX
S
HERBROOKE
,
STANDING
straight and tall, his shoulders back, said firmly, “Girls do not speak Latin.”

“This girl does,” Mary Rose said easily.

“Even if a girl were able to repeat the words, she would have no comprehension of what she was saying.”

Mary Rose raised an eyebrow at that pompous pronouncement from a boy who had blue eyes—Sherbrooke blue eyes—just like his father's and Sinjun's and Leo's and Meggie's, and a very stubborn chin. The boy would break hearts when he grew into manhood. She stroked her fingers over her chin. “Hmmm. Do I perhaps hear the antiquated Mr. Harbottle speaking?”

“Certainly not,” Max said, frowning just a bit, “ although he does not hesitate, even on good days, to point out the weakness of the female sex.”

“Why do you have such a low opinion of the female brain, Max?”

“Yes,” Tysen said pleasantly, coming into the very dark drawing room with its soon-to-be burned draperies, “tell us where you got this asinine notion.”

“You said—” Max, pinned by his father's stare, managed to squirm just a bit. “Well, perhaps it isn't precisely what you said, sir, but I've never believed that you thought any girl, with the exception of Meggie, of course—”

“Of course.”

“Well, that any girl could do much of anything except have babies and—”

“Yes, you're quite right, Max. I've never said anything so absurd, or believed such a thing either. Now, you'd best just stop right where you are. If you were to continue, I fear that your new mother would shoot you.”

Max was staring hard at his father. “Leo said something about how you were different, but I thought he'd just been standing on his head too long. I don't know, Papa, but—” Max stopped talking, stared at that smile on his father's face.

Max continued to stare at his father. Mary Rose knew she wasn't their mother, and she wished Tysen wouldn't call her that, particularly now, particularly when they looked at her and wished her back in Scotland. But she managed to laugh, fanning her hands in front of her. “Max, please, none of this is important. Here we are arguing about Latin and which sex can or cannot speak it—a very dead language that is excessively common, after all, and a language that is very likely not nearly as interesting as the Egyptian hieroglyphics, don't you think?”

“Don't tell me you can speak hieroglyphics,” Max said, raising an eyebrow identical to his father's.

“Er, no. Not really. Actually, you don't speak them,
you read them, but no one can just yet. I've been reading about the studies done on the Rosetta stone. That perhaps it holds the key to translating the hieroglyphs. A Mr. Young is currently working on deciphering them.”

Max moved a step closer to her, a heartening sign. “I have heard that the symbols are simply pictures, that there is no alphabet. Mr. Harbottle believes it is all heathen in any case, and therefore who cares?”

Tysen decided at that moment that Mr. Ellias Harbottle would not ever again open his mouth around Max. To think he was paying the man for lessons. Why hadn't he ever realized before that Harbottle was indoctrinating his son with such rubbish? Actually, maybe he should turn Meggie loose on Mr. Harbottle.

“No one is certain yet,” Mary Rose said mildly. “Not about them being heathen, but about the hieroglyphs being an alphabet and an actual language or just pictures. Since your father knows most of the scholars at Oxford, however, when something definitive is discovered, he will find out about it very quickly. Then he will tell us.”

“Yes,” Max said slowly, staring at his father. “You will know, won't you, sir? It's a serious sort of thing, very scholarly. Perhaps there are even some religious aspects to it, so it should be of interest to you.”

“Do you possibly believe it could be more interesting than you are, Max?” Tysen said, and his son blinked at him.

“I'm not at all sure, Papa,” Max said, giving his father a confused look. Then he did a little skip, his Sherbrooke blue eyes alight with excitement. “Just imagine looking at all those symbols and drawings and actually reading them! I believe I will go to see Mr. Harbottle and tell him it's important that we know about everything, heathen or not.”

And Max left the room, humming softly, a sign, Tysen
knew, that he was deep in thought. He had to find another tutor for his son, but able scholars were scarce.

Tysen said to Mary Rose, “You at least deflected him, Mary Rose. Well done. I don't think Mr. Harbottle is a particularly positive influence on my sons. I hadn't realized.” He frowned a moment, then replaced it with a smile, cocking his head to the side.

“Oh, goodness, Meggie does it just the same way,” Mary Rose said, charmed.

“What?”

“The way you just tilted your head.”

“Yes, but now I have something important to say. I had never realized that your name sounds all soft and spongy. Isn't that what Leo said? Not that you were eavesdropping, of course.”

She sighed. “I shouldn't have listened, I know, but I just couldn't help myself. And no, I hadn't thought either that I sounded soft and spongy.”

“I know this is only your first day here,” he said, coming to catch her hands up in his, “actually, only your fourth hour here, but it appears that everyone in Glenclose-on-Rowan knows that the vicar has taken a new wife. Mrs. Flavobonne probably told Mrs. Padworthy, and even though she's probably older than those stones on the Salisbury Plain, she can get around. The good Lord knows what else is being said. Mrs. Priddie just informed me that many of the ladies are on their way here, bringing cakes and biscuits and scones, since you're Scottish. I can't imagine that their husbands are pleased with their sudden defection at what is almost dinnertime.”

“Oh, dear,” Mary Rose said. “How much time do I have?”

“About five minutes.”

The vicar met the dozen ladies who streamed through the vicarage front door and congregated in the entrance
hall, clutching their plates and dishes to their respective bosoms.

When they were all assembled, finally, in the drawing room, and Mrs. Priddie had relieved them of their offerings, Tysen said, “Ladies, please let me present to you my wife, Mary Rose Sherbrooke.”

Mary Rose stepped into the drawing room. Meggie slithered in behind her, staying behind the ladies' backs. She sent Mary Rose a little wave, then leaned against the window.

“I am delighted to meet you,” Mary Rose said, and gave what she hoped was an enthusiastic smile. “It is so kind of you to come so quickly to welcome me. All the food you have brought smells delightful. Please sit down. I should like to meet each of you.”

Tysen left some ten minutes later, having downed a bite of scone that left the taste of flour heavy in his mouth, and certain that everything would be all right. Some of the ladies he didn't trust an inch, but they seemed to be behaving themselves. It was Miss Glenda Strapthorpe, though, who worried him. Perhaps he should have mentioned her to Mary Rose. He was aware that the ladies were eyeing him a bit strangely by the time he quit the drawing room. Well, he supposed he had laughed, perhaps even grinned a bit. Several of the ladies had looked at him as if he'd grown another ear. He hadn't changed that much, had he?

He hadn't allowed himself to worry about how Mary Rose would deal with the members of the town and his congregation. Actually, truth be told, he hadn't thought about much of anything since he'd made love to his bride on their wedding night. That was about all he could think of. His own pleasure at seeing that wonderful look of astonishment in her beautiful eyes when she yelled that first time, still had him feeling like the most accomplished
lover in all of England, perhaps even as excellent as his brothers. He hadn't been able to have her since they'd left Sinjun and Colin's house in Edinburgh, for Meggie had slept in their bedchamber every night on the way back home. It had been difficult, lying there, Mary Rose not three inches from him, and not being able to do a thing because Meggie was on a cot two feet away from their bed. He'd wanted to weep by the third night. He had the feeling that his new wife wanted to weep too. That was a wonderful thing.

Now they were home, and he could have her this very night. Maybe he could have her twice this very night. Surely God wouldn't think that too self-indulgent. He looked around his study, stuffed to the ceiling with more books than he could read in two lifetimes, most of them so hideously boring that it would be better to have a dead brain in order to get through them. But this was his home, this was where he wrote the words he spoke to his congregation each Sunday, words of God's expectations of his noble creation, God's punishments meted out fairly but harshly, and God's continual demands of His disciples.

He sat at his desk. There was not a speck of dust. It was as if he'd never been gone. Except for the large pile of correspondence, neatly stacked. He began reading.

Thirty minutes later, Meggie, panting, her face pale, stuck her head into Tysen's study. “Papa, it's Mrs. Bittley. She's being so mushy nice, you know how she can be. I'm afraid she's just preparing herself to take Mary Rose apart.”

Tysen was at the drawing room door in under thirty seconds. He paused a moment next to the partially open door, listening.

Mrs. Bittley, Squire Bittley's shrew of a wife who'd been a fixture for as many years as Tysen had been on
this earth, was standing in the middle of the drawing room, her bosom overpowering in deep purple, a purple feather sticking out of the sausage curls behind her ears, and she was facing Mary Rose, a muffin in one hand. “How delightful for you, a foreigner just to our north, to be married to our own dear vicar, an Englishman to his bones.”

“Yes, very delightful for me, Mrs. Bittley. Thank you for remarking on it. Mrs. Markham, would you like another cup of tea?”

“No, Mrs. Sherbrooke—how difficult it is to say that name when you—a perfect stranger—and not even a perfect
English
stranger—are very suddenly and so very unexpectedly wearing it.”

Mary Rose just smiled at the very thin woman who was so fair her hair looked nearly white in the dim afternoon light. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow there would be light in this room. She would have it painted a pale yellow, perhaps. She stopped herself. She had to remember that this was just barely her home. She turned her attention to Mrs. Markham and said easily, “I suspect you were a bit surprised for a while to hear yourself called Mrs. Markham when you first married your husband, were you not?”

“That is neither here nor there,” said Mrs. Bittley. “You have admitted that you are Scottish, have admitted that you are a foreigner.”

“It is not something one can readily hide, don't you think?”

Mrs. Padworthy, an ancient old woman, tiny and stooped, waved a veined hand. “Now, Mrs. Bittley, haven't I told you that I have always liked the Scottish people? They bring such exotic music to the world with that wheezing bagpipe, a strange-looking thing that sounds like a gutted cow, don't you think? And all those
quaint combinations of colors in their endlessly clever plaids, so popular amongst them—at least they did until they went against God's rightful king and we had to plant our boots on their necks. Wasn't the last time in 1745?”

“Ah, ladies, I trust you are enjoying your visit with my wife. Mrs. Bittley, won't you be seated? Mrs. Padworthy, how is your dear husband? Well, I trust?”

The thin mouth thinned even more. “He is nearly dead, Vicar. I expect him to be breathing his last by the time I arrive home. You did not ask about him before.”

“We will pray that he lasts a while longer,” Tysen said. “Ah, yes, Mrs. Bittley, I see a chair just over there. Meggie was just telling me that I should disclose to you, since you are all my very good friends and have only my best interests at heart, exactly how I went to Scotland and came home with a bride.”