The MacGregor's Lady (11 page)

Malcolm paced around the study, which was heated to stifling—appropriately enough—and rife with the smell of camphor and decrepitude. He paused before an arrangement of decanters on the sideboard and began lifting the stoppers, sniffing them one by one to chase the scent of decline from his nose. “Your remittance was late last quarter, my lord. Time to get a solicitor whose education started before the turn of the century.”

They were cousins at two removes, but for all the affection between them, it might have been twenty.

“Perhaps the remittance was late because you’ve been tarrying on English soil too long. The likes of you belong in the sewers of Paris. In my day, your kind were hung by the neck as a public spectacle.”

Where Malcolm belonged was Greece, Denmark, or somewhere a fellow wasn’t defined solely by the nature of the orifices he’d penetrated with his erect cock as a schoolboy.

“I like Asher. What has he done to deserve marriage to a Colonial who likely squints and trots around with a pet squirrel on her shoulder?”

The old man had to work to suppress a smile at that description. “He has deserted his responsibility for years on end, left his family to weather the results of the famine without his title to aid them, allowed his only niece to be all but snatched into the hands of the Marquess of Quinworth, and reduced his brother Ian to assuming the title and taking in paying guests—for the love of God—before Ian would apply for funds from the earldom’s trusts.”

Malcolm chose a gentle whiskey, one aged in barrels that hadn’t been very heavily treated with peat smoke, or perhaps not peated at all. Even in their distilling, the MacGregors took odd starts as often as hares on the heath changed direction.

“You’re saying Asher has been independent and proud. Terrible shortcomings in a Scottish laird.” Malcolm saluted Fenimore with his drink to add a further dash of sand in the old man’s gears.

“He’s neglected every one of his duties, and by God, he will not neglect them any longer. The American will understand a heathen like Balfour. She’ll put up with his uncouth manners and bring a sizable dowry to the bargain. She’s used goods, and a title, even a Scottish title, is far more than she ought to expect. The two of them deserve each other.”

Trust the old man to know everybody’s business, even as he was being measured for his shroud, and trust him too, to judge all in his ambit and pass sentence on them as well.

Malcolm wanted no part of Fenimore’s game, and yet… a man had to eat. Even frittering his life away in Paris, a man had to eat, and so did his dependents.

“If I’m to do the pretty on the London social stage this spring, I will need a house, a wardrobe, a coach-and-pair as well as a riding horse. I might very well have to pursue the lovebirds to the house parties and perhaps even into the fall Season. The paltry sum you send to ensure I remain at a safe distance from home is not adequate for the scheme you set me to now, Fenimore.”

The baron twitched the afghan over his knees—the MacGregor plaid, though the MacGregors wanted no part of him—licked old, colorless lips, and stared at the fire. “You are unnatural in so many ways.”

The accusation hardly qualified as an insult, except for the quiet despair with which Fenimore spoke. Malcolm took a sip of lovely libation and struggled against something close to pity—guilt, perhaps? Not for seizing an advantage with the old man, but for taking advantage of Asher MacGregor’s bad fortune.

“I am the only family you have left who doesn’t curse your very name,” Malcolm said. “Babies are being born up at Balfour, you know. Ian, Connor, Gilgallon, and Mary Fran are all happily married and having fat, healthy Scottish babies, given wonderfully Scottish names, swaddled in clan plaids and sent to sleep with the old songs. My cousins don’t invite you up there, don’t mention you might like to bide with them while the Queen is larking about Deeside with her royal consort.”

“That is none of your affair. How much, Malcolm?”

Bless the old boy’s fixity of purpose. “I want more than a season of finery in which to advance your schemes. I want security in my old age, something you’ve enjoyed for an obscenely long time.”

Fenimore couldn’t help how old he’d become, but he definitely deserved to be twitted for living off his deceased wife’s wealth in such a miserly fashion.

Malcolm compared the overstuffed elegance of the Fenimore study with his garret in Paris, a cramped, noisome space alternately freezing and sweltering by seasons, a place holding few meaningful memories and too many bottles of wine when a man needed decent whiskey in his veins.

The baron batted a gnarled hand in the direction of the bellpull. “Ring for Draper. He’s not yet departed for points south.”

Malcolm obliged. Yes, it was a petty command, and yes, the baron could easily have reached the bellpull in a few steps, but Draper’s presence would signify an intent to be bound by any terms struck.

Then too, as Malcolm studied Fenimore’s increasingly frail form he had to allow that maybe the baron wasn’t
unwilling
to get up and ring for his man of business, perhaps he was
unable
.

***

The trip to the Royal Menagerie shifted something in Asher’s regard for Miss Hannah. The first time he’d seen the Menagerie, he’d been an adolescent. He’d pleaded a sudden, pressing need for the jakes, and as soon as he’d had some privacy, he’d given in to tears. He’d never quite known why, and it hardly mattered now. Taking Miss Cooper to see the lions hadn’t been the least bit gracious on his part; it had been… a test.

Rude, presuming, and not at all kind.

Maybe she’d sensed that, and maybe she’d wanted to cry a little too, for the lions, which was to say, she’d passed the test. He didn’t know whether to be pleased or disappointed, for himself, for her… none of it made much sense.

In any case, the tenor of his sightseeing trips with Miss Hannah moderated, and the weather followed suit, shifting from bitter to brisk, however temporarily.

She liked the parks most of all, and was content to stroll the walks on his arm, saying nothing for long stretches as she bobbed along beside him. She also liked to browse the shops, though not for herself. She was forever sending little gifts—ribbons, trinkets, scented gloves, sketches—home to her grandmother, and she’d occasionally ask him questions about this birdsong or that flower.

“Do all Englishmen know their flora and fauna as well as you do?”

“I can’t answer for them one way or another. I haven’t a drop of English blood in my veins.”

She referred to him as English to tease him, or to ensure he paid attention.

Paying attention to Hannah Cooper was becoming all too easy, even when she merely occupied the place beside him on a quiet bench. Hyde Park was never entirely deserted, but in late morning, the nannies had taken their charges back to the nurseries, the shop girls weren’t yet taking their nooning, and the fashionable crowd was still abed.

“Is that why you don’t sound English?”

“I sound English compared to you.” When he was sober and could ape the accents he’d heard at university, he sounded much more English than she. Ian, next in line of Asher’s siblings, had found that university accent uproarious until he’d acquired one of his own.

Miss Cooper scuffed a half boot over the dirt beneath their bench and tried unsuccessfully to hide a smile. She liked being from Boston, however many and varied her other dislikes might be. “You don’t sound American, Asher MacGregor, but then one hardly knows what an American accent might be. We’re so lately full of Irish and Scots. Before that it was French, Dutch, and English. We’ve many Africans as well.”

“Slaves.” He didn’t miss that aspect of the New World at all.

“Not in Boston.” Her spine straightened, and lest he be treated to an abolitionist homily, Asher gestured to a bed of tulips several yards up the walk. A few early stalwarts suggested the entire bed would be a bright, bobbing yellow in a few weeks’ time.

“I am hopelessly in love.”

She left off scuffing her boot. “I
beg
your pardon?”

He was bad to tease her like that, though she was a woman much in need of teasing. “That’s what an English gentleman would know about yellow tulips, that they stand for the sentiment ‘I am hopelessly in love.’”

“I’ve heard of this symbolic bouquet nonsense, though if you ask me, a yellow tulip ought to be simply a yellow tulip.”

That was her common sense talking, trying to deliver a little homily of its own. Asher leaned a touch closer, so he could catch a whiff of her scent. She used lavender soap, as most of his household did, but twining through that came a hint of something sweet and clovery.

“I declare my love for you.”

“Sir, you will not… Oh.”

He’d done something no English and few Scots would have dared attempt in Hyde Park in broad daylight: he’d plucked the first red tulip to bloom from a tightly planted drift.

And his crime—surely the English would have made appropriating a single, temporary bloom a crime—was worth the risk, because for the first time in his experience, Miss Hannah Lynn Cooper, late of Boston and points north, was blushing and
bashful
.

She didn’t turn as red as the tulip, but she colored up nicely and ducked her face to stick her nose in the flower. This was foolishness—tulips bore hardly any scent—and it resulted in a smudge of orange-yellow powder on the end of Miss Hannah’s nose.

“A proper Englishman would be glancing nervously about at the trees right now.” Asher withdrew his handkerchief. “He might be twitching his nose, making discreet signals that you’ve become unpresentable.”

“Unpresent—” She didn’t rear back when Asher dusted off her nose. She frowned though. “Am I presentable now?”

“We’re working on it. A few more trips to the modiste, several more to the milliner, and my hopes might be rewarded.”

Abruptly the frown became a scowl. “And here you were doing so well, Balfour. But no, you must ruin a perfectly lovely spring day with talk of the coming debacle.”

Her nose, once again free of unintended cosmetics, was aimed toward the sky. He liked that nose. In its angle and dimensions, that nose spoke of confidence and honesty. A nose such as hers might be coaxed to do some nuzzling in the right company on a cold night—provided such company did not start prosing on about marriage and dowries first.

“A suitable engagement would hardly be a debacle, Miss Hannah. You have an unnatural aversion to marriage and family if you believe that. It can be wonderful, to have a family.”

He hadn’t meant to say the last part, and she was regarding him again in that studying way of hers, suggesting she knew he’d revealed more than he’d planned to. “You have a family, I take it,” she said. “Where are they if they’re so wonderful?”

The pain of her question was spectacular, all the more so for being unexpected. The ache hit Asher bodily, constricted his airways and coiled in his gut, and then ricocheted around in his mind, leaving a trail of guilt, loss, and rage.

“I’ve sent for some of them. By the time the Season starts, I expect two or three of my siblings will come down from Aberdeenshire for the express purpose of helping me fire you off.”

He didn’t deserve their aid—Ian in particular had already served well above and beyond the call of duty—and neither did Hannah deserve his foul mood, but of all the things he might have been prepared for her to ask, the whereabouts of his family was not among them.

“I have half brothers,” she said as she twirled the red tulip between gloved fingers. “They are spoiled rotten, and I love them. I want a home of my own and babies as much as the next woman, but I already have a family. Tossing aside the family I have for the family I dream of having hardly washes.”

She was in spectacular form today, casually pummeling every bruise on Asher’s soul, and without even knowing the havoc she wrought.

He forced himself to focus on the plain sense of her words. “You refer to your not-quite-sainted grandmother, whom you must protect at all costs. An Englishman might not bow as easily to your stepfather’s schemes, or the right Englishman would have wealth of his own.” So would a Scotsman, for that matter, but Ian, Gilgallon, and Connor were happily married.

Miss Hannah sat forward and braced herself on the bench with both hands, hunching her shoulders in an unladylike attitude. “My grandmother depends on me, and I owe her. When Papa died, Mama would have let all the help go, taken to her bed, and remained there all her days. Grandmother stepped in and maintained order, even though my mother treated her miserably. When Mama married my stepfather, it was my grandmother who alerted Papa’s lawyers to the need to see to my fortune.”

“She sounds very devoted.” Also meddlesome, and not even an impoverished Englishman wanted to marry into meddlesome female relations.

“She is mine to love now, so this foolishness of a marriage in England will not do.”

Hannah Cooper was living up to her nose, demonstrating a determination that boded ill for the coming social Season, and she intended to have her debacle on Asher’s watch. Because that would not do either—for his sake as well as hers—Asher tried for some honesty.

“If you do not take, if you are shunned or ridiculed because you engage in outlandish behavior, word will reach my uncle and very likely your parents as well.”

“My stepfather is not my parent.”

“Nonetheless, he’s in a position to make you miserable.” Just as old Uncle Fen would make Asher miserable.

She said nothing for a time, confirming Asher’s sense the damned stepfather had made Hannah miserable already.

“Shall we go, sir? Aunt will be rising from her nap, and it looks to be threatening snow or sleet.”

She didn’t get to her feet. Already, she’d absorbed enough English etiquette to resort to the weather for a change of subject and to wait for his assistance before she rose—or maybe her hip was paining her from all their tramping around.

“Your aunt will likely sleep through dinner again.” Enid slept most of the time, in fact, which was the reason—
most
of the reason—Asher had sent for reinforcements. A chaperone asleep at the switch was no sort of chaperone at all, and servants would hardly keep such a development to themselves.