The Scottish Bride Read Free Page A

inconsequentially, long fingers, graceful. Sinjun’s hands, not her mother’s. “I haven’t seen Aunt Sinjun and Uncle Colin for three years, not since they came to London and we traveled there to visit them.I want to see Phillip and Dahling. I don’t really care about Jocelyn and Fletcher. They’re still just babies.”
    Tysen just shook his head again, seamed his mouth tight so he wouldn’t say something that could hurt her feelings, and made for the door. He said over his shoulder, “Mrs. Priddie will help you and your brothers pack. You will leave in two days. I am leaving tomorrow morning, very early. Obey me, Meggie.”
    He heard some grumbling as he closed the door behind him, but he couldn’t make out the words. Meggie was ten years old, perhaps on the verge of turning thirty. No, older than that. He was thirty-one, and surely she had passed that ripe age. He realized now that his brother Douglas was right. Meggie was just like Sinjun had been at her age—intense and carefree by turns, always smiling, always giving orders to her brothers, wanting to take care of everyone. And stubborn—so stubborn that she made up her mind and simply plowed ahead. And she could be demanding and unreasonable, and if she continued with this, then he would perhaps have to discipline her, but he didn’t want to.
    He’d spanked her just once, last year, something he doubted he would ever forget, but Mrs. Priddie had told him that what Meggie had done deserved for her to be locked in her room on bread and water for a year. He’d been afraid to ask her, but Mrs. Priddie rolled it right out of her mouth without hesitation. “She tied the sexton’s bell rope to Molly the goat, Reverend Sherbrooke. Then she carefully placed half a dozen old boots all around that dratted goat—who wanted all of them, naturally, since she had also poured some porridge in each boot. The bell rang and rang because Molly had to have all that porridge. Oddly enough, it nearly made a melody. Sexton Peters nearly croaked of apoplexy on the spot.” Then Mrs. Priddie had lowered her voice. “I heard him, ReverendSherbrooke. I heard him, and he cursed a blue streak. You must speak to him. It was not at all what a sexton should be saying.”
    But Tysen imagined that his sexton’s ire had reached such heights that the bad words had erupted out of his mouth without his consent. Tysen had spanked his daughter, and she hadn’t cried, not a single tear. However, his guilt, when she had just looked up at him, her blue eyes shining with tears that wouldn’t ever overflow, had made him want to beg her forgiveness. He’d managed to get out of the room before he committed that act of folly, but it had been very close.
    He walked now to his bedchamber and began to methodically pack his clothes in a valise. His valet, Throck-morton, had died the previous winter of just plain old age, a smile on his toothless mouth because the very young and pretty tweeny Marigold was stroking his gnarled old hand. Tysen hadn’t seen fit as yet to hire another man. He was a clergyman. It seemed rather ridiculous for a clergyman to have a valet. Mrs. Priddie did quite well with his clothes.
    He was also a rich clergyman, but he usually didn’t pay much attention to that. Douglas dealt with most of the details, knowing Tysen had no interest in it. Now Tysen was a Scottish baron in addition to being a rich clergyman. He was now Baron Barthwick. It was enough to make him briefly question God’s mysterious ways.
    He ate dinner alone in the small breakfast parlor that evening, spoke to his sexton who had cursed a blue streak, Mr. Peters, spent more hours than he cared to with Mr. Samuel Pritchert, his curate, a man with a long, thin nose and a dour disposition who could have a recluse talking to him within three minutes. It was amazing how people would almost instantly spill their innards to