Page 75 of It Happened in the Highlands
Cuffe smiled. “That will be easy.”
“Good, becauseImight have a difficult time convincing the viscount to accept me as his new brother.”
* * *
Entering Baronsford’s downstairs library, Jo was taken aback to find her father, the Earl of Aytoun, loudly chastising her younger sister Phoebe. It had been some time since she’d seen the two of them so agitated with one another.
“This is too much, young lady. This bruise on your face,” he roared. “If you were a man, I’d say someone punched you in the eye.”
“I’ve told you time and time again. I ran into a door, Father. A door.” Phoebe threw up her hands in obvious frustration. “Why don’t you believe me when I tell you I have my life under control?”
Of all the five children Lyon and Millicent raised, Phoebe was the one most like their father in temperament. “Explosive” was the way Jo’s mother put it.
“Under control?” The earl kept up his harangue. “You come and go as you please. You ignore family obligations. Your mother and I have no idea where you are, who you keep company with—”
“I’m here for my sister’s wedding, aren’t I? Days before the event.” Seeing Jo, she turned to her. “Save me from him. Will you, my love?”
Jo cringed at the bluish-black mark beneath the young woman’s eye. Phoebe crossed the room and gave her a warm hug, whispering in her ear, “I need to steal Anna for an hour. There’s no one better for hiding ghastly bruises.”
Before Jo could start her own interrogation, Phoebe ran from the room.
“I’ve already told Millicent,” the earl said, stretching a hand toward Jo to come and sit by him. “We are hiring a Bow Street Runner to follow her. Your sister is up to mischief again. I know it.”
She didn’t doubt it. Phoebe was the writer, the adventurer. Growing up, they’d always thought her head was in the clouds, that she was safe in her imaginative world. But lately, Jo had begun to find subtle clues that hinted of a hidden life. Men’s clothing stuffed into a corner of her sister’s wardrobe. Copied ships’ manifests on scraps of paper in a desk drawer. The hilt of a dagger with only an inch of broken blade. And now this black eye today. When confronted, Phoebe simply laughed off Jo’s concerns, telling her they were props for dramatic presentations of her plays at an upcoming house party. And Phoebe’s confidante, their youngest sister, Millie, stayed silent and tight-lipped in the face of all Jo’s questions.
“A Runner might be a good thing,” Jo said, taking a seat next to him on the sofa. “But she’ll be angry if she finds out.”
“I can live with her being angry, as long as she’s safe. Each of you is too precious to us.”
Each of you.The stress he put on the words, the way he looked at her as he said them, wasn’t lost on Jo. The Penningtons knew about the family connections Jo had found in the Highlands. The earl also knew that Charles Barton had walked her to the church to marry Wynne at Rayneford.
“I know. And I hope you know you’re still my father. The father who raised me, prized me, appreciated me, and made certain I’ve wanted for nothing my whole life. The father who taught me the values I have today,” she said, taking his hand and bringing it to her lips. “I’ll adore you and love you and cherish you to the day I die.”
“I needed to hear that,” he said, drawing her into a bear hug. “I was ready to call out Charles Barton and duel with him over you. After all, I’ve loved you longest and by far the most deeply.”
She smiled and stabbed away a runaway tear as Jo’s mother hurried into the room.
“What are you doing, making my daughter cry?” Millicent scolded her husband.
Without waiting for a response, she crossed to the windows and peered out into the gardens.
“I can’t see them, but it’s taking far too long. They didn’t take their pistols out there, did they?”
* * *
As Lord Justice, Hugh Pennington used his study at Baronsford as his local seat of power. In no way was Wynne planning on groveling before the man, and he demurred at the suggestion of meeting in a room where he would be at a disadvantage.
The viscount’s peculiar suggestion of taking a balloon ride while they resolved their past was out of the question too. He didn’t trust the man not to throw him out of the basket. And if events turned out otherwise, Wynne wouldn’t know how to land the contraption himself.
He had no desire to fly to the moon before this wedding took place.
Walking with Hugh in the gardens was not exactly the manly setting he envisioned for this conversation, but it was the only option acceptable to both Jo and Grace. Neither woman trusted them out of sight of the rest of the family. Both men, smart enough to recognize the value of listening to their wives, accepted the suggestion.
The speech Wynne delivered was the same that he’d given to the Earl and Countess Aytoun.
The viscount listened to the words like a judge hearing final arguments before handing down a sentence.
“Today is exactly ten days before the wedding,” he said finally, facing Wynne. “We can still meet at dawn. Say . . . the glen down by the lake?”
