The Scottish Bride - Catherine Coulter [117]
She looked like she would rather gut trout.
“Well, we survived,” Meggie said, when, finally, a half hour later they were walking back toward the vicarage. “Well, Papa, did she try to seduce you in the conservatory?”
“No,” Tysen said. “Meggie, curse you, I don’t want you to know about that word and its meanings. ‘Seduce’ isn’t a good word for you. You’re only ten years old. Contrive to forget it.”
“Yes, Papa. What did she want with you?”
“She wanted to upbraid me,” he said. “She was angry that I brought back a wife when she saw herself as waiting to marry me.” He sighed.
“Oh, dear,” Mary Rose said. “There might be problems.”
“Nothing we can’t deal with,” Tysen said. “We have done our duty. You have met nearly everyone except for Mr. Thatcher, who spends a great deal of his time beneath his table, dead drunk. But he is always sober on Sundays, and you will meet him then, Mary Rose.”
It was strange how they responded to Tysen, she thought—both with wonder and, perhaps, with a bit of confusion. It didn’t make much sense to her. Then she realized that she’d been blind—what had concerned everyone was that most people simply didn’t know what to make of her, a foreigner dropped suddenly in their midst. They very likely wondered why he would marry her, of all the possible women available to him.
Mary Rose brooded about it, at least until dinner that evening.
25
Vivere, amare, discere
Living, loving, and learning
OVER A VERY fresh turtle soup at the dinner table, Tysen announced, “The weather is very warm. We’re going to visit Brighton. I asked Mr. Arden—”
“That’s Papa’s solicitor,” Meggie said to Mary Rose.
“Yes, and he immediately found us a house. I didn’t want to tell you until I was certain we could go. We will spend a week there. What do you think?”
His two boys stared at him. Leo said slowly, “Papa, you have never before taken us to Brighton. You have never taken us anywhere except to visit our uncles. You have always believed that doing nothing much of anything at all is a waste of time.”
Had he really believed that?
“We would love to go,” Max said, frowning a bit toward Mary Rose. “Perhaps having her here isn’t such a bad thing.”
“I agree with you, Max. She is nice to have here,” said his father, and thought briefly about kissing her behind her left ear, breathing in her scent, and maybe then sliding his mouth to her—well, no, that would be rushing things a bit. He realized his children were looking at him. He coughed behind his hand and tried to look blank.
“Oh, I see,” said Leo.
“Dolt,” said Meggie.
The regent wasn’t in residence at the Pavilion, and so Brighton was thin of the London society who dutifully followed the prince here during the summer months. It was late in September now, but the weather remained glorious—sunny and mild. They quickly settled into the small rented house on the Steyne.
Mary Rose saw the young man again on their fourth day. She had seen him before, quite a lot, really. She was sitting beneath an umbrella on the beach, watching Leo, Max, and Meggie playing in the sand.
Tysen had gone off to buy some tea cakes for them all when the young man cast a long shadow beside her. “ Excuse me, ma’am, for intruding on your solitude, but I heard from some friends of mine that you are from Scotland. My name is Bernard Sanderford.”
She remembered that Tysen had spoken to him, that she had seen him about a good half-dozen times now, and so she smiled and said easily, “Why, yes, I am Mary Rose Sherbrooke, sir.”
“Ah, yes, the lovely Mrs. Sherbrooke. Your husband is a vastly fortunate gentleman. One has but to look at you to know that.”
Mary Rose thought immediately of Erickson MacPhail. She’d rather hoped that Erickson was one of a kind. Evidently not. She didn’t say anything, just watched Mr. Sanderford. He was as handsome as Erickson. Perhaps that was the key to a rotten character. She wasn’t the least bit afraid of him, not since she’d had a goodly bit of experience with Erickson.
Even when