Page 84 of The Scottish Duke
“You were always one of my favorites, Your Grace.”
Unspoken were the words: as long as she didn’t allow the duke to keep her as his mistress. Just like that, the interlude when she’d lived at the cottage was to be forgotten and never mentioned again.
Of course, there wasn’t a problem with Nan being released from her duties to be her lady’s maid. Mrs.McDermott had even offered to train Nan.
Lorna had wanted to ask: who would train her to be a duchess? Evidently, she wasn’t to be a wife, because her husband had left the day after their marriage.
“The only good thing about Alex being in Edinburgh,” she said, “is that Matthews isn’t here.”
Louise smiled and nodded. “People who look at our lives from the outside think that it must be wonderful to have servants at our beck and call. What they don’t know is that we’re at the mercy of those same servants, and some of them can make life miserable.”
“I hope I never did.”
“Present company excluded, my dear. You were always a bright spot in my day. And still are.”
Robbie took that opportunity to make a crowing sound, his legs and arms kicking out. They both laughed.
“Alex doesn’t love easily. I think that’s a lesson life itself has taught him. Don’t trust, don’t reveal your emotions, because you’ll either lose those you love or they’ll disappoint you. He wears an armor around himself.”
Looking up, she smiled at Lorna. “When people disappoint him, as they invariably do, he feels justified in his distrust. When they don’t, like you, I believe it makes him acutely uncomfortable.”
“And you think that’s why he’s staying away, because I make him uncomfortable?”
“Oh, yes, and he’s probably miserable.”
Should Louise sound so amused?
Robbie fussed and her mother-in-law crooned softly to him, putting him on her shoulder. Lorna noticed that she’d taken the precaution of removing her earrings. As Robbie batted at her hair, she glanced over at Lorna.
“Alex tries to measure life, Lorna, and there’s no way it can be. If he hadn’t been so fascinated with fingerprints, he would have found some other similar avocation. He wants everything in order. Life is messy.”
Robbie’s fists suddenly flailed in the air, summoning Louise’s smile. She patted his back with the skill of a longtime mother.
“You’ve upset him from the beginning. You weren’t what he expected.”
“I’ve just been myself,” she said in her own defense.
“Of course you have, and I wouldn’t change you in any way.”
Lorna didn’t know what to say to her mother-in-law. A good thing Louise didn’t appear to expect an answer. In the last year she’d bedded a duke, become pregnant, become a duchess, and given birth. Yes, life was messy.
Would life get any easier when Alex returned?
Alex had spent six weeks in Inverness, rationalizing that he needed the time to take more specimens. At the end of the six weeks, he moved on to Edinburgh, one of his favorite places in Scotland. The time was spent in laborious pursuits, cataloging all the prints they’d amassed in Inverness plus taking new prints in the markets and the stalls of Edinburgh.
He was a bit of a celebrity, one of dubious fame. Word had spread of the duke wanting to coat your fingertips with soot. He didn’t have to pay anyone to let him do it after he explained his project. He wasn’t intent on taking all the fingerprints of every soul in Scotland, just a representative amount of people from various occupations.
“My mother has sat for her prints,” he said. “As well as other members of my family. There’s a record of them now, and there will be one of you.”
“And what would you be wanting them for?” one man asked.
He didn’t tell the man that he hoped to turn over his collection to the authorities one day. That was for years down the road.
“I study them,” he said. “So far I’ve never found a similarity between one individual and the next. I’d like to see if twins are identical. Or if people from the same area have features that are the same.”
The man had wandered off after his prints were done. No doubt he’d headed for the nearest tavern to tell his tale about the odd duke.
Jason was an ideal assistant, one with a thirst for knowledge and a yen for travel. Edinburgh was fascinating to him, from the castle on the rock to the tales of the underground city. When he could, he gave Jason a few hours to explore on his own, only for the young man to return filled with some new tale of the city he’d learned or something wonderful he’d seen.
