Page 84 of The Duke's Daring Bride

Olivia’s surprised laughter burst from her lips at Amelia’s nonchalant announcement, just as Hamish half-hopped, half-flew into the room.

“Shite!” he squawked. “Ye’re shite!”

“Hello, Hamish,” crooned Amelia, as she held out her hand to the bird.

The cockatoo hopped up, and when she placed him on the table beside her setting, preened his white feathers proudly. Olivia was still chuckling.

“Hello beautiful,” the bird squawked in return. “Beautiful Hamish.”

“Yes, you are, my dear.” Amelia stroked his head. “You are beautiful.”

“Fooking magnificent. Fooking magnificent.”

Smiling, Olivia realized for the first time in a full day that her heart felt lighter. “He certainly has an impressive vocabulary.”

“Mother says she tried her best to teach him some polite words, but it did not work. Apparently ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are not as pleasant to say, and I quite say I must agree. Now she refuses to allow him out when she has company,” Amanda confessed.

“I like it,” Amelia confessed quietly, still stoking the animal’s crest. “It makes me feel as if Father is still with us.”

And just like that, the lightness left Olivia’s chest. “I am sorry you lost him. You were very young?”

“I do not remember him,” Amelia replied. “Alistair does, but he was older, of course. Eleven, as I recall.”

“And it was…sudden?” She remembered what they’d told her about Alistair—about everyone—being surprised when he inherited the dukedom so young.

Amanda’s brows rose. “Father died in the same carriage accident which crushed Alistair.”

“Crushed?” repeated Olivia, incredulously.

Nodding, Amanda explained, “His legs were mangled, as was his chest. The doctors said his vocal cords were damaged beyond repair, although they did their best to sew him up. Rather like a quilt.”

Olivia remembered the scars she’d seen at the base of Alistair’s throat. Were there more scars along his legs?

Unbidden, her fingers rose to her lips. “How horrible,” she whispered.

Amelia took a deep breath. “I do not remember Father’s voice, nor Alistair’s. But I like to think they would have sounded like Hamish.”

“Fooking right.”

A small smile crossed Amelia’s lips. “Perhaps not exactly like Hamish,” she amended.

“Your father must have been quite interesting.”

“He was!” Amanda agreed. “I was quite young when he died, of course, but I remember him being as dark as Alistair, and taller than the trees in our courtyard in Scotland!”

Olivia’s lips twitched. “Then your brother must take after him.”

“Hello beautiful.”

Amelia chuckled and shook her head. “Hamish, if you want me to scratch behind your ears, you have merely to ask.”

“Birds have ears?”

Amanda shrugged in answer to Olivia’s quiet question. “They must, right? Ear-holes, at least.”

“Of course Hamish has ears,” crooned Amelia as she groomed the cockatoo. “That is how he hears so many words, and remembers them. You are a smart boy, Hamish, are you not?”

“Fooking brilliant,” he agreed, and they all chuckled.

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