Page 53 of To Wed a Wild Scot
Logan hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath until he saw her reaction, and it left his lungs in a quick burst. “Do you like it?” He could see she did, but he wanted to hear her say it.
“Like it? It’s beautiful.” She gazed up in wonder at the mass of bright yellow flowers dangling in clusters over her head. “My goodness. I’ve never seen anything like it before. What sort of flowers are these?”
“Laburnum. This is the Laburnum Arch. The trees are trained to grow over the arched frame underneath. See?” Logan brushed a few flowers aside to show her. “When the flowers bloom they fall in a cascade, and it creates a tunnel effect.”
She reached up and dragged a finger across one of the lacy golden blooms. “They’re so pretty.”
“They are. You’d never guess they’re poisonous, would you?”
She snatched her hand back. “Poisonous! Are they, indeed?”
“Very, but only if you eat them. Poisonous enough to kill a small child.”
She gasped. “Surely that’s never happened? No child ever died, did they?”
“No, but there was one child foolish enough to defy his father’s orders to never put any part of the tree near his mouth.”
She cast a sidelong glance at him, and a small smile crossed her lips. “Well, he sounds like a very naughty little boy. How old was he at the time?”
“About eight. Old enough to know better.”
“Hmmm. Why do you suppose he’d do something so foolish?”
Logan reached up, plucked one of the clusters of yellow blooms and held it in his palm. “Because he’d been warned against it, of course. He was the sort of stubborn lad who’d do a thing for no other reason than he’d been told not to.”
Her smile faded. “Was he also the sort of child who’drefuseto do a thing, simply because someone asked him to?”
Logan shrugged. “Sometimes, yes.”
“A child as obstinate as that must have grown into an equally obstinate man,” she said, watching him intently.
“Some say so. I thinkyouwould.”
Her face fell, and she looked away from him. “I see. Well, what happened to him after he ate the flowers? Did he become very ill?”
“He spent the next few days frothing at the mouth and casting up his accounts, but that was nothing to the thrashing his father gave him when he recovered at last.”
“Ah. Did he learn his lesson? I hope he wasn’t so foolish again.”
He crushed the flowers in his palm, then tossed them to the ground. “No, he generally stays far away from this tree.”
She titled her head back to gaze at the flowers and let out a little sigh. “Well, aside from the poisoning, I think it must have been wonderful to have been a child here. I suppose there were always a great many of you running about?”
There had been. Logan had never been lonely, despite having grown up without his twin brother, and without any other siblings. The children he’d played with had grown into adults, and now they had children of their own, all of whom romped in this garden just as he had when he was a boy. It was the reason the people of Clan Kinross were so connected to each other, and to this land. They were bound together by generations and centuries of shared history, with the land bred into their very bones.
Whether Fitz could become a part of that shared history remained to be seen. For the clan’s sake Logan prayed he would, because soon he wasn’t going to be here to act as their laird.
He glanced down at Lady Juliana. Her face was turned up to his, her expression oddly wistful. “Yes, there were always children running about. But you look sad,bòcan. Were you a lonely child?”
“Lonely? No. I had my brother Jonathan. I was very fond of him, and of course I also had Fitzwilliam. But mine wasn’t a carefree childhood, either. My father is a stern man, Mr. Blair. A good man, but stern, and conscious of propriety. We weren’t permitted to run free.”
An unfamiliar tightness seized his chest at the forlorn look on her face. Without thinking, he impulsively reached up, plucked another yellow bloom from the tree and offered it to her. “Here. Will you have a taste? It’s never too late to behave like a wicked child, Lady Juliana.”
She accepted the flower from his hand, but she didn’t smile. “No, thank you. I prefer to confine my wickedness to something that won’t poison me.” She twirled the flower between her fingers, staring down at it as if lost in thought. “I do worry about Grace, though,” she murmured after a moment.
Her voice was so soft Logan had to lean closer to hear her. “What do you worry about?”
“That she’ll be lonely. I love Rosemount above all other places, but it’s quiet there. Nothing like Castle Kinross. There aren’t dozens of children running about, and it’s unlikely Grace will ever have a sibling.” A blush rose in her cheeks.
