Page 16 of Her Magnificent Mistake
Bull muttered a curse. “Itdoesmake yer eyes sparkle, Marsh,” he announced, snatching it from her hold. “Better than brown, anyway.”
Before Marcia could object, her brother had clasped the chain around her neck. She murmured her thanks, already fingering the smooth glass. It felt…right.
“There, is that not beautiful?” asked Lady Mistree. “See how perfect my choices are, Bull?”
“I hope ye ken what ye’re doing,” he muttered, throwing himself down atop the sofa once more. “Heirs.”
“Surprisedheirs,” she corrected with a snicker. “Oh good, here is the tea.”
CHAPTER 3
Was there anything more beautiful than Cowal in the summer?
Hawk tipped his head back to allow the sunshine to warm his face, and decidednay, there wasnae.
It was just as perfect as he’d remembered it.
As a lad, Grandda had shown him how to fall in love with the beauty of nature. He’d happily trotted after the older man, learning how to care for the tenants and farmers, seeing the projects others might call frivolous, but in actuality provided important work for the local stone masons and laborers.
Aye, Hawk had learned much from his grandfather about caring for the land and the people…and now he had to actuallyimplementthose learnings right where he had learned them.
With a cluck of his tongue, he nudged his horse back into motion.
Enough pleasure-rambling. There’s work to be done.
In the fortnight since his return, he’d been settling into the estate—and was pleasantly surprised at how many of the staff remembered him as a lad—so today’s plan was to gather up the accounts and ledgers and settle into Grandda’s study. Hell’s bells:hisstudy. He suspected the taxes and tariffs had fallen into disarray in the last year, with all the…well, disruption and confusion.
Aye, four Baron Tostinhams in a little over a year meant that none of them had truly handled the books.
So it was up to Hawk to ameliorate that.
But he could admit thatpaperworkhad always been his least-favorite task of running a business, and couldn’t imagine it would be easier for an estate. All those little numbers and fiddly columns that he could never seem to make line up…Marcia had been the first one to point out it was as if his attention just refused to cooperate when it came to paperwork.
He winced.
It had been ten years since she’d rejected him and he’d walked away…and in ten years, his memories hadn’t faded. But like grief, the guilt made him ache a little less with each passing month.
Then Lady Mistree’s ball, and that dance. That dance when he’d held her, tasted her scent on his tongue, remembered her laughter and daring…
Fooking hell. Focus on the paperwork.
Aye. Paperwork would be easier than the stab of pain in his chest, the scab being ripped from the wound of guilt…
He wasn’t looking forward to sitting in the study all afternoon, in a seat which still felt like another’s in a room he had always had to ask permission to enter.Perhaps I could read in the garden?
A rueful grin tugged at his lips as he considered Artrip’s reaction to such a request. The staid, starched old man would likely have a conniption at the suggestion…which was rather a mark in the idea’s favor.
But Allie would approve, and Hawk was coming to realize that he’d move heaven and earth to win his niece’s approval. In the weeks since their return to Tostinham, the two had become closer. He’d come to value her wit and irreverence, and she turned to him with questions about life and suggestions on how to handle the estate.
Aye, she was a bright lassie, and he was grateful to have her in his life.
And damned guilty for not fetching her sooner. Aye, her father—his older brother—had been a cold and distant ass, but Hawk had loved Allison from the moment he’d met her as a wee bairn. When Stephen had died, sheshouldhave come to live with him…
Ye lived in a tent at the logging camps. That was nae place for her.
Perhaps he could have made a place for them both.
Because the better he got to know her, the more she made him laugh and gape in amazement at her encyclopedic knowledge of so many topics…the more he understood what a disservice he’d done to both of them.
