Page 3 of A Dash of Scot
“You don’t have to be sorry.”
He shook his head. And in a move so deft it was as if he’d practiced it a thousand times, he stood with her in his arms and stepped away.
“I shouldna have done that. Ye…we…” He ran his hands through his hair, and she felt uneasy.
The heat centered in her belly turned as cold as ice. Was he…rejecting her?
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “A moment ago…”
But she didn’t want to give voice to the fun they’d had as they ran through the maze, the fantasy of his kiss dissolving as if a dream she had awoken from as he turned his back and walked—nay, ran—away from her.
Mortification took hold, and all Poppy could do was stare dumbfounded at the man—her dream, her future—as he disappeared from view and her life.
1
Edinburgh, one year later…
Sitting on the stiff and scratchy cushion of the window seat, Poppy stared out the paned glass at the dismal, foggy morning.
The last of their stuffed trunks had been brought inside her half-brother’s house in Edinburgh, where she, her mother and her sister had begged for the charity of a roof over their heads. Quite unfair, it all was. Less than a month before, she’d never wanted for a thing, and now, they were practically paupers.
Edward did not share the same father as Poppy and her sister Anise, their mother having remarried after losing her first husband—Edward’s father, Lord Leven. And now their mother had been made a widow again, and Poppy and Anise mourned greatly the loss of their gentle father.
The situation had become quite bleak when their father fell ill suddenly and relayed the succession of his house and wealth. The majority of which did not fall to them at all. Even their mother seemed surprised by this. Their house, the great and beautiful Featherstone Park, had been entailed to a male heir, which didn’t fall to Edward’s shoulders given he was no blood relation to George Featherstone, Baron Cullen. A meager one hundred pounds a year split between the three of them would mean remaining frugal and relying on the charity of others, not something Poppy was certain her sister would be able to accomplish, as Anise loved shopping for new linens and fabrics and already had a wardrobe fit for a princess.
Their father had ensured that their dowries would remain in trust until they married—but that money would transfer to a husband and did nothing to help with their current living situation.
For a week, they’d tried to live with their cousin, but the circumstances had been abysmal, and he’d treated them more like servants than anything else.
They hardly knew their cousin, Thomas, who’d come from somewhere north, the exact location never mentioned, and then completely overtaken the house. His wife had treated them like the staff, going so far as to pawn off their five insufferable children onto Poppy and Anise’s shoulders, encouraging Mother to get her hands deep into the kitchen pots, and complaining about everything in the household that their mother had worked hard to create.
After a week of Thomas’s family making them miserable, her mother had arranged for them to leave the only home that Poppy had ever known to live with Edward in the city.
But the situation at Edward’s was, perhaps not surprisingly, very different. His wife resented their presence and wasn’t very good at hiding the fact. Poppy believed she actually practiced the cruel jibes before letting them out as they were so…exacting in their precision to cut through one’s emotions and bury themselves in the heart.
“What are you doing perched there? You’re going to ruin your dress.” As if on cue, her sister-in-law marched into the drawing room with her nasal, whiney voice, in a dress far too ostentatious in its frills and flounces for daywear and pointed a long finger at Poppy.
If Poppy squinted her eyes just so, that long, accusing finger grew blurry and took on the crooked, wretched look of a witch’s talon.
Poppy pressed her lips together, her fingers splayed on the cover of a book she’d yet had the energy to open—so unlike her—and tried to find a suitable response. She didn’t exactly care about her dress as she wasn’t expecting company and thought merely to wallow in self-pity today.
“Did you hear me?”
Poppy would have liked to continue pretending that she did not hear her sister-in-law because that would have made her feel better, but the rising pitch of Mary’s voice was such that if she didn’t respond soon, she was sure to hear it from Edward later, who would end his tirade with “Why can’t you be more like Mary?”
If Poppy had to hear that one more time, she might lose her mind and be sent off to Bedlam, at which point her sister and mother would truly be in a pile of it then, given Poppy seemed to be the most rational of the three.
They’d not even had a night here, and Edward had said it once already. Every time she came to visit, he made the remark, which she found odd, considering Mary was the one harping on everyone while Poppy hardly said a thing.
After having her coming out season the year before being relegated to the life of a guest in someone else’s house and essentially labeled a pauper, not that anyone would say such to her face—except Mary—was the embarrassment of Poppy’s life. And it was accompanied by the grief of her life too.
She missed her father something awful.
Which meant she merely wanted to curl up into a ball and pretend she was anyone other than Miss Poppy Featherstone.
Mary had yet to lose either parent. Not that she struck Poppy as the type to be empathetic even if she had experienced such devastation. More like she’d dust her hands as soon as the coffin lid closed.
“Good morning, Mary.” Poppy kept her tone as sweet as syrup and smiled in the same manner, hoping to ease her sister-in-law’s ire. If only she could find the pin stuck under her skin and pluck it out. Mary seemed to be one constantly suffering.
