The Scottish Bride - Catherine Coulter [106]
“You just batten down your hatch, Leo,” Meggie said, and then she poked her finger against his chest, hard, and pushed him back into a mess of the infamous ivy.
“But he just found her in Scotland, Meggie. We don’t need another mother. Everything is just fine the way it is. I don’t want her here. She doesn’t belong here. She’s a foreigner and a girl. Why do you?”
“I’m a girl, goat face, and I belong here. Half the people around are girls. Get used to it.” Meggie poked him hard again, and he landed on his bottom in a rosebush. He hol-lered and jumped up. “A thorn got me in my left cheek. Just because I don’t like her, you don’t have to kill me, Meggie. You just got home. You should be happy to see me.”
“Not if you’re still a moron,” Meggie said, then frowned. “You’ve grown. It’s been only a month and you’ve gotten bigger than I’ve gotten. But I can still break your legs, so don’t you forget it.”
Leo said, “I’m going to be as big as Papa. Maybe by next month. By Christmas, for sure. You won’t be able to beat me up for much longer.”
“I will always be able to beat you up,” Meggie said, hands on her hips, “because I’m going to be bigger than even Papa. Now, don’t you dare say anything bad about Mary Rose to Max when he gets back from Mr. Pritchert’s house, do you hear me?”
“Mary Rose—that’s a silly name. It sounds all spongy and soft, like she doesn’t have a backbone. Why did Papa marry her? He didn’t do it to get us a mother, because we don’t need or want one. It’s not like we’ve asked him to get us one. Why?”
“Papa married Mary Rose because there was this awful man who tried to steal her away to make her marry him, and she didn’t want to.”
“Oh,” Leo said, rubbing his bottom where the thorn had stuck into him. “Well, all right then, I can understand that. He married her because he’s so bloody honorable and he felt sorry for her. It’s a good thing a man can only have one wife, otherwise Papa would have married a good dozen ladies by now, all because he felt sorry for them and rescued them from something or other. But you know, Meggie, he’s laughing. He’s saying funny things. It sounds very strange. What happened?”
“He’s happy. Perhaps he has changed a bit. Hmmm. Well, he does laugh a lot now. I like it.”
“Yes, I suppose I do too,” Leo said.
“Oh, dear.” Mary Rose backed away from the window. “Oh, dear,” she said again to the empty bedchamber that was horrible. Well, she’d eavesdropped. What did Leo mean that Tysen had changed? Of course he laughed and grinned and said funny things. It was the way he was.
She walked to the middle of the room and just stood there for a moment. She’d deserved what she’d heard. Leo was a little boy. It would take a while for him to get used to her. She looked around her then. She didn’t want to spend another minute in this dismal place. It had been Melinda Beatrice’s bedchamber Mrs. Priddie had told her. It hadn’t been touched since the mistress had passed on some six years before. Didn’t Mrs. Sherbrooke think it simply lovely?
Mary Rose wanted to puke, a word she’d never really even thought before, but it fit this particular circumstance. She would end up on her knees over the chamber pot if she had to stay in here. It was perfectly dreadful, not that it was ugly or anything like that, it was the feel of it, the way the air smelled, the way it was creeping in on her, closing her in. She was an idiot. This was ridiculous. It was just, simply, that the room wasn’t hers.
She was