Page 5 of The Butterfly
Leaning forward, he pressed his lips against the place she’d touched and closed his eyes. It was something he’d done for her several times before, an almost childlike belief that his kiss could banish her pain, her fear. It had worked, once, when he’d been a boy, and she only a girl. Now, he would give anything to be able to put his lips upon her and make it all go away.
Edinburgh, 1804
15 years earlier …
Niall backpedaled away from the épée thrusting toward his face, lifting his own weapon in defense. Metal clashed against metal, and he chuckled to know he was besting the boy attacking him with renewed purpose. A pair of hazel eyes—a flashing mixture of brown and green—twinkled with mirth, an overgrowth of dark brown hair surrounding a face split by a wide smile.
The master’s son stood as tall as Niall and was nearly as big, his frame comparable to a man several years his senior. One of the few people in the world who did not make him feel like an ungainly giant. Adam, the son of the earl, had been taught to fence by a grand master—some man with a list of qualifications who had come to Dunvar House three days a week for two years to instruct him.
In contrast, Niall had learned in this little paddock, using a secondhand épée given to him by the lad who would someday become his master, but for now was his very best friend. He and Adam had begun playing together years ago, one sneaking off after finishing his duties, the other dodging his nurse after leaving his governess. They’d spend hours romping the house grounds, Adam even going so far as to sneak him inside when no one was looking, taking him into the nursery and sharing his toys.
Those exploits had turned into this—Adam coming to find him after his lessons and dragging him to this paddock to pass down his fencing knowledge. In the past year, Niall had become nearly as good as his friend, and without the benefit of an expensive tutor.
“Niall! You can do it, Niall! Beat him!”
He grinned at the sound of the little voice calling out to him from across the paddock. Olivia sat perched on the wooden railing of the enclosure, legs swinging beneath her fluffy skirts as she observed their bout. Adam often brought her along when seeking him out, and because the little porcelain doll in human form fascinated him to no end, Niall did not mind. Such a sunny little thing, smiling and giggling as she ran about in their shadows, always close, reveling in the attention of the two boys who were big and strong enough to protect her from anything.
“Two great knights with swords,” she would often say as they walked to the paddock for practice. “Just like in the stories Nanny reads me!”
For some reason, being a knight in her mind filled him with pride and a sense of purpose. When he mucked out stalls and groomed horses, he was nothing, no one … a piece of flesh for his father to beat and hurl epithets at. But when he was with Adam, he became the brother the young lord had never had. When Olivia looked up at him with those round, awe-filled eyes, he became a knight. It was the most a lowborn servant was ever like to have, so he clung to those two parts of his identity, finding succor from the drudgery of his everyday life.
When he went to bed each night, his hand under the pillow clutching that broken bit of porcelain, he could pretend it would never end—that he would not leave the stable one morning to discover Adam had left him to go off to university, or that Livvie had been sent away to marry. Just now, at the age of twelve, he had nothing to worry over. He had years before either of them would set out into the world, leaving him behind. He would not allow himself to dwell on the possibility.
His mind had wandered for a moment, allowing Adam to strike his thigh with the épée. Muttering a curse under his breath, he recovered, launching an aggressive attack and pushing Adam back. The two battled for what felt like ages, trading blows and taunting one another as Olivia cheered for him from her place on the fence. So intent were they on their bout that at first, they didn’t realize Olivia had toppled from her place on the fence. It was not until they heard her sharp wail that he and Adam both halted, épées dropping to the ground at once, startled gazes meeting for a fraction of a second before they both went running to her.
“Livvie!” Adam called out, skidding to a halt and dropping to his knees beside where she lay, flailing and crying on the ground. “Livvie, what happened?”
Niall crouched on her other side, heart in his throat as she began to cry, the high-pitched sobs tearing at him like the sharpest of blades. The fall would not have seemed like much to anyone else, but at only eight years of age, she had only grown so much, barely larger than she’d been on the day he’d come across her in the corridor. The height would have been high to her, the fall knocking the wind from her before she’d been able to cry out.
“Are you hurt?” Adam urged, raising his voice to be heard over her cries. “Show me where!”
She continued to scream, writhing on the ground, her face reddened from the force of her sobs. Unable to take it any longer, Niall pushed Adam aside and leaned over her, bracing both hands on either side of her body so that he loomed in her line of sight, blotting out everything else.
“Livvie, look at me,” he said, his voice firm but gentle—much the way he calmed skittish horses for grooming. “We cannae help if we dinnae know where ye’re hurt. Can ye sit up?”
Her sobs calmed to whimpers and sniffles, her chin trembling as she allowed him to help her sit upright. He gave her an encouraging smile, and that stopped the trembling.
“There now,” he crooned, using his own hand to swipe her tears away, then pluck bits of grass from her hair. “I think the fall scared ye more than anything. Show me where it hurts.”
Bending her arm, she lifted it, displaying the place where the sleeve of her gown had torn, revealing her scraped elbow. The wound looked as if it stung like the devil, but he judged it to be minor. She didn’t seem to have hit her head or injured her neck, which had been his fear upon seeing that she had fallen.
“Do ye know what my maw always does when I hurt m’self?” he asked, gingerly lifting her arm and examining the scrape.
Sniffling again, Olivia blinked, her tears seeming to have abated for now. “What?”
He smiled at her again, before dipping his head and pressing his lips ever so lightly against her marred flesh. “There. All better, eh?”
When he glanced up again, she was watching him, open-mouthed. It was true, his mother had done the same for him when he’d been a small lad. He was far too old to believe a kiss could heal a wound now, but being the one doing the kissing just then, he could see why such a tactic had worked. It was the seeming faith of his maw that a kiss could heal and soothe. It had been her confidence when she’d kissed his scrapes and murmured ‘all better.’ She had made him believe it.
Now, it seemed Olivia believed, as well, the expression of pain upon her face melting into one of awe.
“Yes,” she said breathlessly. “Yes, it is all better now.”
“Good,” he said. “Can ye stand? Or would ye rather I carry ye back to the house on my shoulders?”
Her eyes lit up at his suggestion, and she silently reached up, allowing him to lift her off the ground. Adam laughed, standing back as Niall swung her up onto his shoulders, holding tight to her little legs. His friend did not seem to suffer from any sort of envy or scorn at seeing his sister respond more readily to Niall than him. Perhaps that was because Adam never seemed to want anything more than for Olivia to be happy and safe. With two of them to see to that, instead of just one, her moments of sadness or pain were few and far between.
As they made their way back to the house, Olivia clinging to his hair and giggling when he broke into a run over the grass, he felt deep in his heart that he would do anything for the little doll sitting on his shoulders. If he had any say, she’d never fall, never break. She seemed confident in his unspoken promise, arms raised and head tilted back as she embraced the sun.
