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food kept hot on the table in chafing dishes. This was how the household always dined, but Hester felt a pang not to have Fee chattering away on one side, and Aunt chirping along on the other. They were her family now, and she had quickly grown to love them.
    His lordship was regarding her curiously, and Hester realized she’d let the conversation lapse.
    “If you would do the honors, my lord. I am very partial to my vegetables. Have your things arrived from the inn at Ballater?”
    “They did. I must say I was impressed with the quality of the accommodations. I take it Her Majesty’s interest in the surrounds has done good things for the local economy.”
    He passed her a plate full of steaming food, but the portions were such as a large man might consume after a busy day in the fields—an interesting miscalculation from somebody Hester took to be very calculating indeed.
    “If I eat this much, my lord, I’ll not be able to rise at the end of the meal.” She set the plate down in front of him and started serving herself. “And as for the local economy, the royal family is here but a few months a year, and that only in recent years. Deeside owes more to the fish than we do to the Crown.”
    “Fish?” He watched her serve herself and frowned at the portions she put on her plate. “Miss Daniels, you cannot thrive on such meager fare.”
    “There’s trifle for dessert, my lord. Will you say the blessing?” An inspiration, to stick him with something as mundane as blessing the meal.
    Her cleverness backfired. He was sitting where Fee usually sat, and out of habit, Hester reached out her hand when it was time to say the blessing. When her fingers closed around Spathfoy’s, she was too dumbstruck at her blunder to withdraw her hand.

Two
    “I’d be happy to say the blessing.”
    While Spathfoy sat there holding Hester’s bare hand in his, his gaze moved around the table, over the covered dishes, to the huge bouquet of roses starting to wilt on the sideboard, and to the window, where the long hours of gloaming were casting soft shadows. “For journeys safely concluded, for good food, for the company of family and friends, we are grateful. Amen.”
    He kept his hand around hers for an instant more, long enough for Hester to register several impressions: his grip was dry, warm, firm, and unhesitating. He wasn’t cursed with bodily shyness, for all his other faults.
    And it felt good—far, far too good—to join hands again with an adult male, to feel the latent strength in the clasp of his hand, to revel in simple human contact.
    Hester reached for her water goblet at the same time Spathfoy reached for his wine, and their hands brushed again.
    “I beg your pardon, Miss Daniels. You were saying something about fish?” He took a sip of his wine, not by word or gesture suggesting a little collision of hands might unnerve him the way it unnerved her.
    “The River Dee is among the finest salmon streams in the world, my lord. Throughout Deeside, there are excellent inns and hostelries to accommodate the fishermen who come here for sport. His Highness is a great sportsman, and that doesn’t hurt either.”
    “But the royal family is not now in residence at Balmoral, are they?” He ate almost daintily, and yet the food was disappearing from his plate at a great rate.
    “Her Majesty usually removes here closer to August. We get quite the influx of English then, all mad for a walk in the Highlands in hopes they’ll encounter the royal family on a ramble.”
    “You say this with some aspersion.”
    His lovely voice held not so much censure as curiosity. Hester collected her thoughts while she took a sip of her wine, though the truth came out anyway.
    “I came to Scotland to be with family, my lord. To escape the social confines of London, and the expectations incumbent on the daughter of a titled man when she emerges from mourning that man’s death. I do not relish the idea of coming across in the woods the very