The church bells tolled in exaltation to celebrate the first announcement of a wedding between His Grace’s son, Lord Graham Hamilton, and Miss Jane Bennet of Hertfordshire. A boisterous congregation spilled into the churchyard for mingling and discussion in groups to dissect the known gossip swirling around the young couple and to add a healthy dose of speculation for good measure. Graham stood speaking with Dr. Simpson and Jane felt lonely to realize she knew no one in the town save Starvet House staff due to her self-imposed exile.

Just as Jane Bennet was about to walk towards the shared carriage with Mr. Hamilton, a bright-faced young woman approached. Jane automatically bowed her head and slightly curtsied to the woman, eliciting a youthful giggle from Emily Stevens.

“Forgive me for being so forward, Miss Bennet, but I felt it my Christian duty to extend to you a friendship. I am Emily Stevens, and I met your sister, Mrs. Darcy, last summer when they came into my sundry shop in the village.”

Jane shyly smiled, but remembered her manners. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Stevens. I’m afraid my sister and her husband are gone home to England. I have perhaps spent far too much time left to my own devices than would be wise.” Jane tittered lightly at her own joke, expecting the woman to join her but she did not. Instead, Jane’s tease fell flat.

With an air of confidence, Emily turned her face towards the small grouping of men congratulating Lord Hamilton. “After the fire at Blaylock, we were under the impression you were not left entirely all alone…”

A gust of wind nearly tore Jane’s bonnet from her head as she hurried to hold her covering with her hand. Miss Steven’s auburn locks blew freely in the wind, as only her top layers of hair were fastened in a tight bun.

“Indeed, I was lucky to have companionship. Lord Hamilton, as a particular friend of my sister’s husband, needed a place to live after the fire. One might call it a Christian duty.” Jane began to enjoy the conversation with the shopkeeping woman less and less as her forward manner was in fact slightly offensive to Jane’s sensibilities.

Emily looked down at the basket in her hands and changed the positioning of the handle to her other arm. “It was a surprise to hear Parson Michaels announce you intend to be married to his Lordship. It is magnanimous of him to help you raise a child of questionable origin –”

“Child of questionable origin?” Jane no longer mildly disliked this woman, but fully disliked the nosy inquiries into her household. Still, part of her mind understood how irresistible gossip became in a small hamlet such as Haddington. Starvet House and Blaylock were the largest estates in the area, save for the ducal seat some dozen miles past the ruins of Blaylock.

The shopkeeper leaned forward to offer Jane a conspiratorial kinship. “Fear not, most of the ladies in town do not know about the babe. My friend, Betty Gillam, is sister to Sarah, the woman you dismissed last year.”

Jane clenched her fists, an extremely unladylike action, then shifted them behind her back so as not to show her anger. “Did that servant girl tell you she practically starved the child I have taken as my ward?”

“Your ward? But I thought –”

“I can appreciate exactly what you thought, Miss Stevens. But I assure you, I arrived in Scotland with the same waistline I hold now.”

“So the child be Lord Hamilton’s bastard . . .” Emily Stevens pronounced her reckoning and looked afar once more at the grouping of men beginning to disperse. Lord Hamilton’s kilt pressed tightly against his strong thighs as he began to walk into the wind towards his Jane. The sight was one easily appreciated by any lady, and thus infuriating to Jane he be exposed in such a manner.

“The child is not Lord Hamilton’s though we do intend to raise him as our own once we are married. As to who the child belongs to, the answer is quite simple and far less interesting than idle gossip. My sister’s husband was a soldier and he unfortunately lost his life shortly after they married. When Mr. Darcy and Mrs. Darcy brought Lydia to Scotland for her laying in, it was the Lord’s will the child survive, but not my sister.” Jane finished her speech, satisfied to see a slackened expression of shame on the woman’s face.

“Miss Stevens, this morning was a hearty message, was it not, about accepting our neighbors?” Lord Hamilton addressed the young woman he had known since childhood, having attended her father’s shop on many occasions with Fitzwilliam when they were lads.

“Yes, milord. A hearty message, indeed.” Miss Stevens curtsied and excused herself from the happy couple as Lord Hamilton escorted Jane towards their carriage.

So angry with the wagging tongues and bold Scottish manners, Jane scarcely made eye contact with Graham as she accepted his hand for assistance into their conveyance. The warm bricks had long since cooled from their departure at Starvet House so instead of sitting across from her, Graham Hamilton took a seat on the same bench as Jane so that his proximity might help keep her from feeling chilled. The Darcy carriage was one of the first to roll away from the small abbey in Haddington proper.

Graham allowed the silence to carry them halfway through the trek back to the great house. Once they turned from the main road to the smaller lane leading only to Darcy’s property, he spoke.

“I suspect you encountered the same astonishment I experienced from old Parson Michaels.” Graham rightly assumed Miss Stevens had put Jane through a similar ordeal as his own. But instead of answering, Jane Bennet continued to stare out the window at the passing landscape, lost in her own thoughts.

Graham tried once more. “You have to understand, a Scotsman be not like an Englishman. A man and woman living as we have are expected to be bound to each other and none other. The tradition of marriage with the sacrament of our Lord is far older on our lands than these buildings of administration and registrars.” Graham again tried to convince Jane, as she was more than a half year’s resident of the country, she may as well accept and abide by the local traditions of matrimony.

Without looking at Graham, because she scarcely trusted herself not to dissemble fully in front of him, Jane sighed before licking her lips to speak. “Miss Stevens apprised me of the intelligence that the entire village knows of Robin and has assumed him to be either my bastard or yours.”

Graham Hamilton shrugged beside Jane, a movement that attracted her attention and sharp jerk of her head in his direction.

“Walking into that church this morning to have the banns read made me a fool in front of the entire village!”

Graham laughed and patted Jane’s gloved hand with his own. “I tried to tell ye, lass. But would ye listen?” Shrugging off hi casual tone, he grew more serious to help drive home his logic. “A dismissed servant spreads the wildest tales when there’s no hope of a letter of recommendation.”