The Scottish Bride - Catherine Coulter [28]
Donnatella laughed. “Don’t concern yourself, my lord, truly, she will do just as she pleases without a by-your-leave. For the most part, she is harmless.”
“And for all the other parts?”
“Whatever is involved, I doubt you will like it. She will boss everyone about. You will see that she and Mrs. MacFardle are quite the bosom bows—like to like, as my mother says. Also, Mrs. Griffin is quite rich, for Mr. Griffin owns a huge iron foundry outside of Edinburgh.”
And so Tysen elected not to concern himself, at least not until he returned from his tour.
Donnatella took him all over the countryside. They visited Stonehaven, not at all changed from his boy’s memory, all the houses still dark and dreary, hunkered down between a low, meandering cliff and the sea.
Tysen was beginning to believe that he had ridden by every single hillock, seen every tree, remarked upon every crofter’s cottage by the time she stopped at a jagged outcropping of a cliff that hung dramatically over the sea about two miles northeast of Vallance Manor. She dismounted, walked to the edge, and stared down. She looked over her shoulder and called out, “Come, my lord. This is where Ian fell to his death. He broke his neck when he hit the rocks below. See there, since it is nearing high tide, you can barely see the tops of them sticking out of the water. There are no paths leading down to the water here. It was very difficult to bring Ian back up to bury him. Old Tyronne supervised the entire venture.”
Tysen walked slowly toward her. He remembered Ian so clearly in that moment—so very young and strong, his white teeth gleaming when he smiled. He’d smiled so much as a boy, and he was filled with mischief. And then he had died before he reached his thirtieth year. The last heir. He’d been old Tyronne’s last hope, his last grandson. Mr. and Mrs. Griffin’s last hope as well, Tysen supposed.
As far as Tysen could tell, Donnatella Vallance hadn’t flirted with him at all, thankfully. She’d just tried to ride him into the ground. Big Fellow was snorting, tossing his head. He was tired.
Tysen said, looking at those sharp black rocks with the frothy white waves whipping around them, “Donald MacCray, the solicitor in Edinburgh, wrote that Ian was drunk when he fell.”
“That is what was said,” Donnatella said, then shrugged. “Do you remember him from your only visit here? He was younger than you, wasn’t he? Perhaps about two years younger?”
“Yes, I was ten at the time, and I believe Ian was around eight. I liked him. It is a pity that it happened.”
Donnatella’s chin went into the air, she drew in a deep breath of salty sea air and said, “He changed. At one time he was my hero—when he was twenty and I was only nine. I would have done anything for him. But then he changed, became sullen and withdrawn. I remember hearing of wickedness, of too much wildness in bad places in Edinburgh. Then, last year, when I decided to marry him, he was perhaps happy for a while, but evidently he drank too much one night and stumbled over this cliff. I doubt I will ever forgive him for that.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Vallance. I did not know that you were his fiancée at the time of his death.”
She turned and smiled at him, shrugged. “My father and mother wished me to be mistress of Kildrummy Castle. I did not love him, but I finally agreed to marry him.” She paused then and gave him a sloe-eyed smile designed to make a man’s knees go weak, a smile so beguiling it was superior even to those embarrassingly intimate smiles that Mrs. Delaney, the widow of a local draper, frequently sent his way. She was an extraordinarily confident lady who had made it her goal last year to get him into her bed. He would never forget what she’d whispered in his ear one evening after a town meeting regarding the bridge to be built over the river Rowen: “I want to bed you, Vicar, not wed you. Can you begin to imagine how I will make