A Perilous Perspective (Lady Darby Mystery #10)(2)
Charlotte knelt on the blanket a short distance away, her gaze directed over her shoulder toward where the two young cousins now batted the shuttlecock back and forth. Her brow was marked with worry lines.
“Don’t take it to heart,” Morven murmured, reaching a hand toward her along the blanket to draw her attention. “Children can be brutal at Jane’s age. They don’t yet understand how to politely mask their reactions, or fully grasp the concept of empathy.” She chuckled. “Especially for the fallibility of adults.” Her gaze dropped to Emma, who offered her a drooly grin. “The important thing is to keep trying,” she cooed as if she was speaking to the baby, even though she was still addressing Charlotte. She tapped Emma on the nose before straightening and continuing in a normal voice. “It might not seem like it, but children value most the time you spend with them, regardless of the activity you might be pursuing. It’s how they know that you care.”
I tipped my head, contemplating this advice, which seemed remarkably sound.
Charlotte reached up to smooth back the loose wisps of pale blond hair that had escaped their pins and offered her a smile of gratitude. “I fear I’m rather green at all of this and hopelessly out of my depth.”
That she had admitted such a thing told me how vulnerable she must feel. The forlorn look in her soft gray eyes tugged at my heart.
“I think you’re doing splendidly,” I told her.
“You are. You truly are,” Morven echoed in encouragement.
“After all, children don’t exactly come with instructions.” I glanced down at Emma. “A mother isn’t instantly blessed with the knowledge and insight about how to best care for her child the moment he or she is born. There are bound to be a few stumbles, a few mistakes.” I realized my tone had turned pensive, revealing a bit of my own insecurities in being a new mother, and shrugged a shoulder in commiseration with Charlotte.
“Well, I think you’re both doing marvelous,” Morven declared, squeezing my upper arm. “Now . . .” She flicked her dark curled tresses off her shoulder and turned to survey the remnants of our picnic scattered across the blanket. “Where is the lemonade? I’m positively parched, and it’s only a matter of time before we’re descended upon by sweaty boys and men, who will undoubtedly finish it off.”
“I believe it’s in the basket beside Lady Bearsden,” I said as Morven began rising to her feet, having already spied her quarry.
Charlotte fondly shook her head at her great-aunt. “When did Auntie doze off?”
“Not long after everyone abandoned the blankets.”
“And abandoned you.”
I smiled softly. “I don’t mind.” I gestured toward the panorama before us. “Not with a view like this one.”
I had never traveled to Argyll, which perched along the western edge of the Scottish mainland, but it was beautiful. A multitude of rivers, lochs, and inlets divided the coast into peninsulas, and at the farthest edge were the Inner Hebridean isles. Much of the landscape reminded me of my brother-in-law’s castle on the shores of Loch Ewe in the northern Highlands—its colors in undulating greens, browns, amber, and even red ochre; its terrain of deep forests, boggy moors, and windswept rocky crags. Loch Craignish also happened to be a sea loch, opening into the Atlantic Ocean at its southern end. Situated at the northern tip as we were and raised on a hillock overlooking the steel blue water, we could gaze down the length of the loch for some distance.
I tipped my head back and breathed deeply of the Highland air thick with the scent of pine trees and the salty brine of the loch, as well as the faint aroma of old stone. The castle ruins providing us shade were little more than two stubby walls of a former tower while a number of larger stones straggled across the hillock. Lord Barbreck had explained that the rest of the rocks had long been carted away, most of them being utilized to help build the new castle in the early seventeenth century near the spot where the manor now stood. That building had been burned to the ground by Hanoverian troops following the Jacobite rising of 1745, but if I looked to the northeast over the treetops, I could just spy the decorative chimneys and crenellations of the Georgian manor which had been built to replace it some fifty years ago.
At the sound of the loud snuffle behind me, I looked over my shoulder to find Lady Bearsden blinking up at Morven.
“Rise and shine, sleepy-head,” my cousin teased as she poured herself some lemonade from the pitcher she’d located.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” she countered, pushing herself upright, then patting her snow-white hair to be certain it was in place. “Merely resting my eyes.”
Morven nodded toward her chin. “Then I suppose you’ll blame that bit of drool on little Emma?”
Lady Bearsden swiped at her face but, upon seeing the smirk Morven had failed to hide behind her glass, narrowed her eyes. Morven bent forward to return the pitcher to the basket, but the older lady halted her with a thump of her gold figure-headed cane, narrowly missing my cousin’s foot. “Aren’t you going to offer to pour some for me? My, but isn’t it warm today.” She fanned her face with her hand. “And you ladies dashing about in this heat.”
“I suppose you and Kiera had the right idea,” Morven replied good-naturedly, handing her the glass of lemonade she’d demanded in retaliation for Morven’s impertinence.