Читать книгу Unlaced By The Highland Duke - Lara Temple, Lara Temple - Страница 11

‘My pudding box hurts,’ Jamie moaned, shifting on the carriage seat.

‘Close your eyes and try to sleep, Jamie,’ Benneit replied without any real conviction even as he nudged the small basin out from under the carriage seat with his boot in readiness for the inevitable.

He hated leaving Jamie alone in Scotland when he came to London, but the journey itself was purgatorial. After Jamie’s first excitement, bouncing around the carriage and watching the sights of London, he became steadily more ill and miserable, which made Benneit cantankerous and miserable, which made Nurse Moody morose and miserable.

Adding Joane Langdale to the mix had so far not achieved his aunt’s desired effect. The past few miles had passed in silence, Jamie leafing through the little book of maps Benneit had bought him at Hatchard’s, Nurse Moody dozing and snorting occasionally, and Joane Langdale gazing absently out the window. Now that disaster was nigh, Benneit contemplated taking the coward’s way out and switching with Angus who rode a hired hack alongside the carriage.

‘It hurts, Papa...’ Jamie moaned again and Benneit straightened, but before he reached for the basin Joane Langdale took Jamie on to her lap, turning his face towards the window with a light sweep of her hand down his ashen cheek.

‘That’s because you have forgotten to feed it,’ she murmured.

‘I don’t want food,’ Jamie cried.

‘Not food, silly. Stories. Your poor belly knows there are dozens and dozens passing us by outside and you haven’t offered it even one. No wonder it is upset.’

Jamie glanced out the window. They were cresting a rise and overlooking fields and a few houses tucked against a copse of old oaks. There was nothing but bland English countryside and as a distraction it was woefully inadequate. Benneit frowned at Joane, but she either didn’t notice or ignored him.

‘I don’t see any stories.’ Jamie said suspiciously and Joane’s brows rose, making her eyes look even larger.

‘Really? What about Farmer Scrumpett’s performing pig over there?’

Jamie leaned towards the window, his small hand catching the frame.

‘Where?’

‘Well, you just missed it, but there are other stories everywhere. See that little house over there, the white one?’

Jamie leaned his forehead against the window, both hands splayed on the frame now.

‘That one?’

‘Exactly. That is where Mrs Minerva Understone resides with her magical mice. That is why the house is painted white, you see. Because of the cats.’

‘Cats don’t like white?’

‘Oh, no, they love it. It makes them think of milk and they come by the score.’

‘But cats eat mice!’

‘Well, that is true, but not magical mice. You see, cats chase mice because they are each trying to find their one magical mouse and they become very cross when they don’t, which is why they eat them. Did you know that cats and mice were once best of friends? And that mice were once as big as cats and twice as clever? But then an evil sorcerer cast a spell over them and made them small and meek. Well, for one day each year, the spell is lifted and all the cats remember their friends and come to Mrs Minerva Understone’s cottage and they dance and play as they once did before the spell.’

‘I don’t see any cats.’

‘That is because they only come once a year, on Summer’s Solstice.’

Jamie frowned.

‘That is a sad story.’

‘It is both sad and isn’t. It would be sadder still if they did not have that special day when they remembered they liked each other.’

‘But why does this happen at this Minderda’s cottage? Is she a wizard, too?’

‘Oh, yes. A very powerful one. Minerva taught me a spell once, would you like to hear it?’

‘A real spell?’

‘Well, no, it is more a song about a spell. This is how it goes.’ Joane Langdale cleared her throat, lowered her chin. ‘Boil and bubble, toil and trouble, you’d best put on your shoes or I’ll shave all your stubble.’

Jamie burst into laughter.

‘That wasn’t Minerva, that was Auntie Theale!’

‘Goodness, was it? Well, perhaps they’re secret sisters.’

‘Minerva sounds far too benevolent to be related to Lady Theale,’ Benneit interjected and Joane Langdale looked over at him, her eyes warm with his son’s laughter, but Jamie tugged at her sleeve.

‘Tell me more stories, Cousin Joane.’

‘Very well, but you must call me Jo. Cousin Joane doesn’t tell stories, she finds shawls and hems handkerchiefs. It is Jo who tells stories.’

‘Which one are you?’ Jamie asked seriously.

‘Some days I am one and some days I am the other. Just like some days you are an explorer and some days you are Jamie who cannot find his shoes.’

He grinned.

‘I always know where they are, but some days I don’t wish to find them.’

‘Exactly. So today I do not wish to find Cousin Joane and so I am Jo.’

‘Tell me another story, Jo. If you please,’ he amended, and she shifted him on her lap so that he was once again looking out the window.

‘Very well, tell me what you see and I shall tell you a story about it.’

Jamie’s hand traced up and down the window frame as he searched the landscape.

‘That,’ he said finally, his voice hushed. ‘That big tree near the stream.’

‘Oh, that tree. You are a true explorer, Jamie. Not many would have seen how wondrous that tree is...’

Benneit leaned back, half-listening to the story that unfolded, with foxes and rabbits and a goat who sounded amazingly like Godfrey, Bella’s brother, and a weasel who sounded even more impressively like Celia, Bella’s sister. There was also a little girl who had been taken captive by a blind but kindly old mole so she could help him search for a quizzing glass lost in one of a myriad of tunnels. It was both absurd and touching and, most importantly, it held Jamie captive, his eyes searching the landscape for the places she mentioned—a little hut, a grizzled old man walking a pig, a shape in the clouds.

Finally, Jamie’s fascinated questions began to flag. He yawned and leaned back against Mrs Langdale’s shoulder, his eyelids slipping. Her voice continued, sinking into dusk, but it was only when Jamie’s body gave the distinctive little shudder that spoke of deep sleep that she stopped, her breath shifting the dark curls by his temple.

‘Thank you.’ Benneit’s whisper sounded rough even to him, certainly not grateful, but she smiled. Against his son’s dark hair, her profile was a carved cameo, a gentle sweep of a line that accentuated the pucker of her lower lip and the sharp curve of her chin. Stubborn. Joane Langdale might be the Uxmores’ drudge, but Jo was another thing entirely, he thought.

Perhaps it would not be so terrible for her to stay with them until he finalised his affairs with the McCrieffs. He would be busy with his own matters and the preparations for the feud ball and she could make herself useful; anyone who could talk his son out of a bout of illness in a carriage was worth keeping around.