The Scottish Bride - Catherine Coulter [67]
“I would be interested in knowing if you spoke Latin better than Max.”
“Yes, I probably do. I probably read Latin better also.”
“Who instructed you? I cannot see Donnatella enjoying Latin lessons.”
“The very old Presbyterian minister who died some three years ago. He was pensioned off when I was very young. He was lonely.” She shrugged. “He taught me many things. He, like everyone else, deplored my antecedents, but he taught me nonetheless. He also preached to me, but I think it was more to keep in practice than to save my soul.” Then she actually smiled at the memories.
“We have to get back on track here, Mary Rose. Do you find me that distasteful? You believe me no better than Erickson MacPhail?”
Mary Rose threw back the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed. His nightshirt had come up to her knees, and now he looked at those knees he’d thought were the prettiest knees he’d ever imagined when he was wiping her down with the wet, cold cloth. She was standing now, his nightshirt dragging on the floor, the sleeves a good six inches beyond the ends of her fingers. She walked right up to him and stood there, not a foot from him, and poked her finger in his chest. “I have to face you. I cannot remain lying there, a pathetic victim with a black eye, a woman you must see as nauseatingly pitiable. You will not tell me what to do. You feel guilty and responsible. That is nonsense. I will not marry you. I will not serve you such a turn, Tysen. I will go to Vere Castle with Sinjun. I will learn. I will become a proper nanny. I will speak Latin to everyone.”
“No,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked thoughtful for a moment. She decided he was finally coming to his senses. She’d been noble. She would deal later with the vast wasteland deep inside her.
He said, “We will have to post bans. I suppose things are the same here as they are in England?”
The wasteland disappeared, but she knew it made no difference. She grabbed his arms and tried to shake him, but she couldn’t even begin to budge him. “You will make yourself sick again,” he said, not allowing himself to touch her. That wouldn’t do at all. He held firm. “Get back into bed, Mary Rose.”
Then she smiled, a sudden, quite lovely smile. “Tysen, you are a very good man. You have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. And your mouth—no, I shouldn’t have said that. Listen, I have no intention of making you regret your inheritance. I will not drag you down and bring you disgrace. I am a bastard. There is nothing to be done about it. When will you accept that as an unchangeable fact?”
“Yes, I know that you are a bastard.” He shrugged. “Who cares?”
“Everyone I have ever known cares a great deal,” she said honestly. “When I was a little girl, Donnatella would call me a bastard and laugh and laugh. I didn’t think it could be all that bad because Donnatella was, after all, much younger than I. But I finally asked my uncle Lyon. He told me that I didn’t have a father. From that day onward, everything changed. I knew then that I didn’t belong, I realized then that everyone—the servants, my aunt, my uncle—treated me differently. I realized I was at Vallance Manor only because my mother was the sister of the mistress of the house.”
“That could not have been pleasant, but it is past now, Mary Rose. I am sorry that it happened, but it is over and done with. I will say it again. Who cares?”
“Don’t you understand? You belong to a noble English family. I could never belong.”
“Are you quite through yet?”
“You are sounding like a long-suffering man faced with a hysterical female.”
“You, hysterical? You assured Erickson that you weren’t. But it doesn’t matter, as it happens. As a vicar, I deal quite well with hysterical females. In truth, however I do not wish to be married to one. My first wife perhaps tended toward hysteria—no, forget that. You have struck me as very commonsensical, Mary Rose. Also you have a beautiful name. I think your eyes are far more beautiful than mine, although the Sherbrooke blue eyes are touted throughout southern