‘You have pretty hair,’ Jamie said, his voice dreamy.
She almost dropped him, but his legs tightened around her waist.
‘I do?’
‘It is like the colour of the desert in my new book. Papa bought it in the great big book store and it is my favourite book and Papa reads it to me, but I can find words, too. I will explore the desert when I am big. There are camels! Do you know what a camel is?’
‘Tell me.’
‘It is like a horse because you ride it, but it has a hill on its back and it has a sad face like Flops. Flops is my dog.’
‘I like his name.’
‘His real name is Molach, which means hairy, but I call him Flops because he does—he comes into a room and flops. Like a rug. A hairy rug.’
‘This I must see.’ She laughed.
‘Apparently, you shall,’ a much deeper voice said behind them.
Jo stiffened, but did not let go of Jamie as she turned to face the Duke.
He stood in the doorway and there was such animosity in his eyes she had to resist hugging Jamie’s body to her like a shield. The moment he entered the drawing room she noted how much he had changed in the years since she had last seen him, but the difference between this man, with the grey beginning to show at his temples, with his jaw tense and unshaven and his eyes narrowed with resentment, and the younger man she remembered was even more pronounced, as if he had aged again in the short moments that passed. He looked like the Duke of Lochmore might have looked two hundred years ago as he prepared to enter battle to defend his domain. Which was perhaps an accurate depiction of the state of affairs as he saw it.
She lowered Jamie.
‘Am I? I admit to being surprised. I wagered my aunt you would dismiss her offer.’
‘Had it been an offer, believe me, I would have dismissed it. Jamie, come here.’
‘Are you angry, Papa?’
She met the Duke’s dark green eyes, watching as fury was called back like troops from a failed attack. This expression of cold blankness was also new to her. She thought she had taken Lochmore’s measure six years ago in London when he had fallen under Bella’s prodigious spell, but perhaps not.
‘Yes, Jamie. But not with you,’ he answered, smiling at his son. There was nothing feigned about the smile and it surprised her. It was also new to her, despite having seen him smile often at Bella.
‘With Auntie Theale? Or Cousin Joane?’ Jamie asked, half-anxious, half-curious.
‘Mostly with myself, Jamie. Never mind. Come say your goodbyes to Lady Theale.’
‘But Auntie Theale does not like feet, Papa. Shall I fetch my shoes first?’
Lochmore inspected Jamie’s stockinged feet before looking at Jo, his long eyelashes only half-veiling the mocking challenge in his eyes.
‘No. I think not.’
‘My pudding box hurts,’ Jamie moaned, shifting on the carriage seat.
‘Close your eyes and try to sleep, Jamie,’ Benneit replied without any real conviction even as he nudged the small basin out from under the carriage seat with his boot in readiness for the inevitable.
He hated leaving Jamie alone in Scotland when he came to London, but the journey itself was purgatorial. After Jamie’s first excitement, bouncing around the carriage and watching the sights of London, he became steadily more ill and miserable, which made Benneit cantankerous and miserable, which made Nurse Moody morose and miserable.
Adding Joane Langdale to the mix had so far not achieved his aunt’s desired effect. The past few miles had passed in silence, Jamie leafing through the little book of maps Benneit had bought him at Hatchard’s, Nurse Moody dozing and snorting occasionally, and Joane Langdale gazing absently out the window. Now that disaster was nigh, Benneit contemplated taking the coward’s way out and switching with Angus who rode a hired hack alongside the carriage.
‘It hurts, Papa...’ Jamie moaned again and Benneit straightened, but before he reached for the basin Joane Langdale took Jamie on to her lap, turning his face towards the window with a light sweep of her hand down his ashen cheek.
‘That’s because you have forgotten to feed it,’ she murmured.
‘I don’t want food,’ Jamie cried.
‘Not food, silly. Stories. Your poor belly knows there are dozens and dozens passing us by outside and you haven’t offered it even one. No wonder it is upset.’
Jamie glanced out the window. They were cresting a rise and overlooking fields and a few houses tucked against a copse of old oaks. There was nothing but bland English countryside and as a distraction it was woefully inadequate. Benneit frowned at Joane, but she either didn’t notice or ignored him.
‘I don’t see any stories.’ Jamie said suspiciously and Joane’s brows rose, making her eyes look even larger.
‘Really? What about Farmer Scrumpett’s performing pig over there?’
Jamie leaned towards the window, his small hand catching the frame.
‘Where?’
‘Well, you just missed it, but there are other stories everywhere. See that little house over there, the white one?’
Jamie leaned his forehead against the window, both hands splayed on the frame now.
‘That one?’
‘Exactly. That is where Mrs Minerva Understone resides with her magical mice. That is why the house is painted white, you see. Because of the cats.’
‘Cats don’t like white?’
‘Oh, no, they love it. It makes them think of milk and they come by the score.’
‘But cats eat mice!’
‘Well, that is true, but not magical mice. You see, cats chase mice because they are each trying to find their one magical mouse and they become very cross when they don’t, which is why they eat them. Did you know that cats and mice were once best of friends? And that mice were once as big as cats and twice as clever? But then an evil sorcerer cast a spell over them and made them small and meek. Well, for one day each year, the spell is lifted and all the cats remember their friends and come to Mrs Minerva Understone’s cottage and they dance and play as they once did before the spell.’
‘I don’t see any cats.’
‘That is because they only come once a year, on Summer’s Solstice.’
Jamie frowned.
‘That is a sad story.’
‘It is both sad and isn’t. It would be sadder still if they did not have that special day when they remembered they liked each other.’
‘But why does this happen at this Minderda’s cottage? Is she a wizard, too?’
‘Oh, yes. A very powerful one. Minerva taught me a spell once, would you like to hear it?’
‘A