Page 95 of All Scot and Bothered
“What ye Brits call a lake, we Scots call a loch,” he clarified.
Her eyes widened. “Why?”
“Because that is our language.”
She made a sound of wonderment. “You have your own language?”
“Aye.”
“Will you teach it to me?”
“Nay.”
“Why?” She pouted.
“Because I’m stained with blood and offal and I need to go bathe.”
“That’s all right, you can teach me along the way, andI’ll play in the shallow pool by the rocks whilst you bathe in the deep end.”
He began to shake his head. “I doona think—”
“What do you call that rock?” She pointed to what was once a stepping-stone.
“Clach,” he answered absently. “But ye should stay here—”
“And this?” She pulled the dilapidated fence open, sweeping her hand most gallantly for him to pass.
“Tha thu nad pian ann an asail,” he muttered.
Her forehead wrinkled. “All that for a gate?”
“Nay, it means…”You are a pain in my ass, he didn’t say. “It means… go tell Jean-Yves ye’re going to the loch.”
She sprinted inside with an exuberance Ramsay, even as a vital man, couldn’t remember ever possessing.
He chuckled, waiting on the outside of the hip-high gate.
Ramsay often lost patience quickly with children, but oddly enough he found Phoebe’s precocious curiosity easier to bear. He could identify with her relentless need to understand things. To bend the world to her will. And her constant well-meaning nature was endlessly lovely.
When she emerged only three breaths later, she’d already shucked her pinafore and nabbed a towel of her own.
“I decided you can teach me how to swim, too,” she panted, grabbing his hand and tugging him toward the forest. “Do let’s hurry. How do you say tree in Scottish? Scots?”
“Gaelic,” he corrected, sauntering after her. “And it’scraobh. Also, English lasses canna swim in Scottish lochs, you’ll freeze yer wee noggin off.”
She pitted her entire strength against his arm, urginghim to hurry. If he let her go, she’d fall flat on her little nose. “If you can do it, I can,” she declared.
“Is that so, now?”
“I’m not afraid of the cold.” She stopped tugging and changed tactics, turning to face him. “Please, Lord Ramsay.Please?” Her eyes must have taken up half of her face as she laced her fingers and pleaded as though she were at church praying for relief. “When will I ever again be allowed to swim in the wilds of Scotland?”
“With Cecelia as yer guardian, I imagine ye’ll have the chance to do all sorts of things,” he said, wondering if she realized how lucky she was.
A little anxiety peeked through her pluck. “I’ll have to go back to London when this is over. And Cecelia said I must be educated, that she’ll tutor me, or send me to school if I like.”
He nodded approvingly as he struck out again through the meadow at a much more meandering pace. Earth crunched beneath their boots, and a summer breeze ruffled their hair with the sweet smell of blossoms and loamy earth. The moment was a gentle one, a simple one, and Ramsay found himself enjoying the company of the tiny chatterbox. “Ye should go to school,” he urged. “Ye must learn to be a lady, I suppose.”
She screwed up her face, another uncannily familiar expression. “I think I’d rather be a doctor than a lady.”
