6“There must have been an accident? Niall is three days overdue,” the Duchess said for the thousandth time.
“His Lordship may have been held up by floods or by a bridge having been washed away,” Iona replied.
She had made the suggestion before, in fact in the past three days she had put forward every possible explanation of Lord Niall’s absence in her efforts to soothe the anxiety of his stepmother.
“If the Duke had any natural feeling in him,” the Duchess said, disregarding Iona’s remark, “he would send a groom to Inverness to discover if there is any news of his brother.”
The Duchess had made the same request of His Grace at dinner the previous night, but the Duke had merely replied that Niall was old enough to look after himself and he would not thank his relatives for being over an
