Page 37 of The Lyon and the Unicorn
“Last autumn I came here after an argument with Corn.”
“Why did ye argue?”
“Because he was being an arse.”
He stifled a laugh.
“I forgot the time,” she continued, “and it was dark when I returned, just before supper. Mama Betty was furious, saying she was worried. I never knew people could get angry when they were worried—I thought they only got angry when I’d been bad and deserved a beating. When Mama sent me to Papa Harcourt’s study to tell him what I’d done, I thought he was going to beat me.”
“Did he?” Murdo asked, struggling to imagine the dignified older man taking his hand to anyone.
She shook her head. “Papa Harcourt never shouts when he’s angry. He asked what I’d been doing, then said nobody could have supper until I told him.”
“Did ye tell him the truth?”
Her eyes flared with indignation. “Ialwaystell the truth. I told him I’d found a secret cave in the wall and stayed there all day, and what was the harm in that?”
“The harm was that nobody knew where ye were,” Murdo said. “What if ye had an accident and couldn’t call for help?”
“I know thatnow,” she huffed. “It’s just…before I came here, nobody seemed to bother where I was, as long as I wasn’t getting in the way.”
“But now ye have people who love ye, and care whether ye come to harm.”
She wiped her eyes and nodded. “My stepfather said the same thing—that my mother hadn’t sacrificed herself for me so that I could be careless with my own life.”
“Somewhat harsh,” Murdo said.
“But true. Mamadidsacrifice herself for me, even if I didn’t know it then.”
She paused, and he waited for her to elaborate.
“Did yer stepfather punish you?” he asked.
“He made me light the fire in my bedchamber myself, every night for a week,” she said. “The first night he sent one of the footmen to show me—but I already knew, because…”
Her voice trailed off, and she picked up the pie plate and held it out. Murdo took a slice and bit into it.
“The next time I came here, I found these.” She gestured toward the corner.
“The logs?”
“And that crate—it contains kindling and a tinderbox.”
“And it mysteriously appeared, shortly after yer stepfather insisted you learn how to light a fire?”
She nodded. “When the pile gets too low, it’s replenished.”
“By whom?”
“I saw our gardener carrying a basket of logs across the moors once,” she said, “but when I asked him about it, he said it wasn’t his place to tell me what his master’s orders were.”
“Let me guess, when ye next came here the pile had been replenished?”
She grinned. “It’s a mystery, isn’t it?”
It was no mystery how much the duke loved his stepdaughter—the untamed creature whose defiant nature and brutal honesty would have disrupted his dignified aristocratic life. But love entered a man’s heart when he least expected it.
As Murdo was beginning to realize.
