Once Upon a Tartan by Grace Burrowes

Author:Grace Burrowes [Burrowes, Grace]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance, love_history
ISBN: 9781402268694
Google: vfVbAQAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1402268696
Goodreads: 15713729
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Published: 2013-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Six

“I wish you had let me go with you.”

Fiona was frowning at Tye as if considering scolding him further. He hoped she would—he hoped the hand of God Himself would reach out of the clouds and scold the hell out of him for last night’s mischief with Hester Daniels, if not for the whole misguided undertaking that was this journey to Scotland.

“It’s pouring rain, child, and riding is a tricky proposition when the ground is wet. I went straight to the posting inn at Ballater and came straight back, risking my saddle and my horse in the process.”

“Are you going to catch your death?” She sounded ghoulishly pleased with the possibility.

“I could not possibly be that lucky. What are you reading?”

After he’d changed out of his sodden riding clothes, Tye had come into the library to hide, of course, and to read the letter he’d retrieved from the inn at Ballater. One letter, in his father’s inimitable black scrawl. Tye supposed that at least meant his sisters were staying out of trouble.

Which was more than he could say for himself.

“Do you want to read with me? I’m reading old Aesop.” Fiona’s voice was heartrendingly hopeful. She patted the place beside her on the couch. “It’s nice and cozy here in the library, and there’s nobody to make you do lessons or tell you not to get in the way.”

He knew this trap. He’d laid it for his own mother at bedtime as a boy. He’d been ensnared in it by his younger sisters on many a stormy night.

“One story only, and I get to read.”

She bounced over a few inches on the couch and passed him the book when he sat beside her. “You get to read, but I get to pick.”

“We’ll negotiate, because you’ll just pick the longest one in the book.” He leafed through the pages and looked for one with a picture, because his sisters had always preferred the ones with the pictures. He paused at an illustration of a Greek boy holding the paw of a huge, fanged lion. The beast’s face was contorted into a grimace, and a horrific splinter, roughly half the size of a railroad tie, protruded from the animal’s paw.

“This was your father’s favorite.”

“Read that one.” She budged up so tightly to his side, she was all but sitting in his lap. “I don’t read it often because it’s toward the back and I can’t say the name.”

“Androcles.” Tye launched into the tale of a boy who’d come upon a fierce lion in the woods, the lion’s stated agenda being to make a snack of the boy. Androcles offered instead to remove the awful splinter from the animal’s paw in hopes of improving the lion’s disposition. The lion granted the boy a favor as a result, to be called in at the time and place of the boy’s choosing.

Tye turned a page slowly, while Fiona fidgeted beside him. “How did they make friends if the lion couldn’t talk?”

“This is a fable, child. Make believe.

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