A Perilous Perspective (Lady Darby Mystery #10)
Anna Lee Huber
For my Grandma Emma, who at least partially inspired Kiera’s daughter’s name.
Chapter 1
We know what we are, but know not what we may be.
—William Shakespeare
July 1832
Argyll, Scotland
There was nothing quite like the sight of proper, normally reserved ladies and gentlemen flailing and dashing about a moor. Their natural habitats of stately homes and the theaters and clubs of Edinburgh and London offered little opportunity for them to behave in such a carefree manner, and even less for me to enjoy observing it.
We had all gathered at Barbreck Manor along the northern tip of Loch Craignish to celebrate the wedding of my dear friend Charlotte, Lady Stratford, to my cousin Rye Mallery. Charlotte had endured a tumultuous and difficult first marriage to the late Earl of Stratford. One that ended with him trying to frame her for murder and then attempting to kill her—an effort I had helped foil. And I was pleased to see her find happiness again with my strong and steady cousin.
Though matters with her soon-to-be stepchildren seemed to be progressing less smoothly.
Charlotte darted to the side and flung out her racket in a vain attempt to bat the shuttlecock back toward her fellow players, only to watch it fall to the ground, nearly tripping on her skirts in the process. The look on Rye’s daughter’s face clearly communicated her disappointment in Charlotte’s prowess. The fact that her cousin and Aunt Morven demonstrated such skill didn’t help matters.
I empathized with Charlotte, knowing I wouldn’t have shone in comparison with my cousin Morven in this regard either. She had always been lithe and quick, and accomplished at games like battledore and shuttlecock. Though how she managed to move about so effortlessly in her fashionable gowns with their voluminous gigot sleeves, I could not fathom.
I squinted across the windswept field toward where Rye stood with his son, his dark head gleaming in the sunlight as he bent over to help repair something on the kite they clutched, oblivious to his fiancée’s struggle. Not that there was anything he could do about it. In truth, his interference would have made the matter a larger problem than it was.
The crack of a ball hitting a cricket bat drew my gaze toward the far side of the moor, where most of the men were playing with Morven’s two older sons. The day being warm and fine, they had all discarded their coats and hats, and rolled up the sleeves of their shirts. I spied the golden head of my husband, Sebastian Gage, bent over to speak with one of the boys as he demonstrated something with the bat. The sight brought a smile to my lips as I imagined him doing something similar with our own daughter in some years’ time.
For now, Emma, being only three and a half months old, was content to loll about on the blanket beside me, grappling with a ragdoll she drooled and gnawed on. That is, when she was able to successfully get it in her mouth. I retrieved the soggy twist of cloths as it tumbled to her side out of reach and lifted it to her chest, tickling her with it. She squealed and giggled in delight, the sight of her happy grin filling me with joy.
My Aunt Cait gave a warning cry, alerting me to the wildly kicked ball headed toward us. With a deftly placed foot, I stopped it before it reached the blanket, then tossed it back toward Morven’s youngest child, who, at barely two years old, was doing his best to kick it toward the octogenarian Lord Barbreck.
The entire party had joined in the games and antics with the other children. Everyone, that is, except Lady Bearsden, Charlotte’s great-aunt. She was supposed to be keeping me company but instead sat behind me softly snoring. She had nodded off in one of the chairs the footmen had lugged up the hillock so that the two oldest members of our excursion would not have to try to lower themselves to the blankets laid out in the shade of the ruins of an old castle.
Not that I blamed her. I stifled a yawn. Given half a chance, I would have nodded off myself—the warmth of the afternoon and the clean, fresh air lulling me into slumber. When I was lucky, Emma woke me only twice in the middle of the night and went straight back to sleep, but the past week she had demanded more feedings than usual. It was normal, our nanny Mrs. Mackay, had informed me. Merely an indication that Emma was about to outgrow her little gowns.
I attempted to smother another yawn, but not fast enough to hide it from Morven as she sank down on the blanket beside me, settling her goldenrod-patterned skirts.
“Still up at all hours?” Her lips curled upward in commiseration as I nodded. “It won’t be much longer. Before you know it, she’ll be sleeping through the night, and you’ll be the one waking with a start, wondering if she’s taken ill.”
The idea of Emma sleeping through the night sounded heavenly at the moment, but I could also well imagine what Morven was saying. I probably would rush over to Emma’s cradle to make sure she was breathing if she slept longer than four hours at a spell.
Though some members of the nobility hired wet-nurses for their infants, it had become increasingly more popular and acceptable for ladies to nurse their own children. In any case, it was something the women in the Rutherford branch of our family had insisted upon for generations, and frankly I found the prospect of sending my child off with someone else to be fed and cared for horrifying. We had a nurse to help care for Emma, as did all noble families, but she slept in her cradle in my bedchamber or the adjoining nursery every night.