The MacGregor's Lady (12 page)

He rose and extended a hand down to her. “Come, it does look like the weather might turn nasty.”

As they made their way back toward Park Lane, Asher casually noted each species of bird, tree, and flower around them. In the Canadian wilderness, such knowledge could spell the difference between a full belly and an empty one, between life and death.

And yet, here he was, far from the wilderness, in a land where a man learned of flowers only so he might speak symbolically through them in courtship, and the women—the
ladies
—understood such sentiments easily.

***

Ian MacGregor, heir to the Earl of Balfour, loved his brothers and loved them dearly. This was likely why he also wanted to bash their idiot heads together regularly.

“Asher is laird, head of this family, and holds the title—if he summons us, we go.” At Ian’s opening salvo, Connor and Gilgallon exchanged younger-brother looks that presaged mutiny, or at least a long, tiresome spate of arguing.

“I agree with Ian.” Their sister, Mary Fran, spoke up from the love seat she shared with her husband, Matthew. They held hands, their laced fingers resting on Matthew’s thigh, Mary Fran’s lap being rather less in evidence than it had been several months ago. “I’d quite honestly like to spend time around our brother,” Mary Fran said. “He holed up at Balfour for most of the winter, like some sort of monk. If we avoid him, he might as well still be trapping bears or whatever he was so happy doing in Canada.”

He hadn’t been trapping bears—or not merely trapping bears. Ian knew that much.

“I’ll pour.” Ian’s wife, Augusta, left his side to tend to the hospitality, though adding whiskey to his brothers’ tempers wasn’t necessarily wise.

Gilgallon, the most charming but also the most hotheaded, led the charge. “Asher disappears for so long he’s declared legally dead, then pops up last autumn with almost no warning. Royal decrees are issued, he snatches the earldom back from you, and then at the first sign of spring, he’s off to frolic in London?”

Augusta served the first drink to Gilgallon’s blond, English wife, Genie, the second to Con’s beloved, petite Julia. Genie passed the drink to Gil without taking a sip, which was interesting—and might explain why Gil would rather linger in the North, glued to Genie’s side, even with spring approaching.

“A London Season is hardly a frolic,” Genie said, English refinement echoing in every syllable. “A newly minted earl with a mysterious past will be mobbed, and he won’t know what’s about to hit him.”

Connor, the most quiet and blunt of the siblings, spoke as Julia took a delicate sip of her drink. “Asher is no stranger to a dangerous wilderness. I’m saying he might not want us Trooping the Colours in full regalia. He wired Ian. Let Ian scout the situation. The rest of us can get down there on a week’s notice or so.”

“Spathfoy and Hester have been biding in the South since autumn,” Ian said, because the family now included Augusta’s cousin Hester and her English earl. “Asher’s invitation was to his entire family, and I agree with him. We haven’t all been under the same roof since Grandfather’s funeral.”

A man who’d impersonated the head of the family for a few years could pull rank like that. Mention of their departed grandfather had Gil downing his whiskey and Connor reaching for Julia’s hand.

“If Asher has been racketing about the Canadian mountains these past years, then he’s going to be a curiosity among the English,” Mary Fran said. “We can’t leave him on his own any longer, not if he’s asking for our help.”

Another silence descended, this one thoughtful.

“We needed his help,” Gil said, his tone more bewildered than angry. “For years, we needed his help, and he let us think he was dead.”

“The family has his help now,” Ian said. “His shipping venture is thriving, and I get the sense that’s not his only commercial success. Every MacGregor on two continents can apply to Asher for assistance now.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing Town in spring,” Julia volunteered. “Winter takes so long to give up its grip this far north. Then too, some shopping might be in order…”

She let the suggestion hang, but Ian felt the other women catching the notion like hounds grabbing the scent of the fox.

“I’ll no be squirin’ ye around the damned shops,” Connor muttered.

Julia patted his hand and kissed his cheek. “I do so love to show you off in your kilt, Husband.”

Connor’s mouth, usually so grim and unsmiling, turned up in an indulgent grin.

And that settled it. Without shouting, without breaking furniture, without negotiating, they were all going south—and without forcing Ian to reveal confidences he’d promised Asher never to divulge.

***

Whenever Balfour came upon Hannah, her emotions went in two directions: first, she resented his intrusion, and it
always
felt like an intrusion. She’d look up to find him lounging in a doorway, his expression impassive, arms crossed while he studied her in handsome and inscrutable silence.

She never knew how long he’d been lurking, poaching on her privacy while he quietly regarded her.

After she wrestled that resentment under control, she’d then have to tuck Grandmother’s letter away—she read it very frequently—which created a second resentment, like an echo. The letter was her only link with home, her only link with what mattered most to her in life, though that was not Balfour’s fault.

And pulling against those resentments, like some great beast of burden, came the memories of feeling safe and warm in Balfour’s embrace, of accepting a single flower from him as he teased her in the park, of his resolutely downward gaze as they discussed caged lions.

“You are hell-bent on ruining your eyes, Miss Hannah.” Balfour ambled into the parlor and turned up the lamp. “Are you ready to go in to dinner?”

He didn’t ask about Aunt Enid, which was considerate of him. “I am.”

She folded the letter, rose, and crossed to the rack of cue sticks on the opposite wall. When Balfour extended a hand down to her, she took it, noting as she always did the slight rasp of his calluses against her fingers and palm.

Progress down the stairs was slow.

“Your hip is paining you. It hurts worse on the days when we walk in the park, doesn’t it?”

Her hip was killing her. “Or perhaps on the days when it snows, or the days when I get out of bed.” Or the days when she contemplated what would happen when she arrived back in Boston without a husband.

He tucked her hand over his arm. “Would you rather take a tray in your room?” Dark eyes regarded her not with impatience, which would have been welcome, but with honest concern.

“I am being difficult. I do apologize.”

“Your grandmother has written only the once. You miss her, and you worry for her.”

This was Balfour’s attempt at consideration, cataloging the aches and pains about which Hannah could do nothing, and yet, his honesty was a comfort too.

“Grandmama can only print—her eyesight is very poor—and she doesn’t want to spend postage on an exchange of gossip.”

Balfour paused with her while a footman opened the dining-room door. “Is that an exact quote from her letter?”

“Close enough.”

“Elders seem to share a number of characteristics, regardless of culture. I can recall being told in the longhouse that talk would not see the firewood gathered.”

The comment was an extraordinary observation in any context, also the most personal disclosure he’d offered her.

“The longhouse?” She expected his expression to shutter as it so often did, or a humorous light to come into his dark eyes while he deftly turned the subject back onto her. Instead he ushered her through to the dining room, a warm, candlelit space fragrant with the scent of beef roasted to a turn.

“I have boyhood recollections, the same as any other man, though mine are of the Canadian wilderness. It’s beautiful there, but… absolutely uncompromising. Maybe a little like you.”

An attempt to tease, but as with so many of Balfour’s sallies, a compliment lurked at the edge of the observation. “How old were you when you left?”

“Eleven summers.” He paused by Hannah’s chair, set to the right of his. “Eleven years old.”

He seated her without saying more, but then he surprised her. “Your turn to say the blessing, Miss Hannah.”

Her turn? He’d said a perfunctory word or two over the food at every evening meal, and she’d seen him close his eyes for a moment before tucking into his food on other occasions. Unlike many men of Hannah’s acquaintance, he wasn’t heedless of his spirituality.

Neither was she. Hannah spread her napkin on her lap and cast around for inspiration. None arrived, the habit in Boston being for Step-papa to blather on until the soup was cold. Hannah bowed her head and thought of bread and butter consumed under a lean-to.

“For what we are about to receive, for safe havens, and for loved ones even when we can’t be with them, we are grateful. Amen.”

He quietly echoed her amen, and the ordeal of yet another meal in the Earl of Balfour’s handsome, charming, and all too perceptive company began.

Seven

Asher had the knack of putting his guest off merely by drawing breath, which was fortunate.

He was coming to like looking at Hannah Lynn Cooper too much, to enjoy watching the way lamplight played with the red-and-gold highlights in her hair. He liked to feel her hand slipping into his, liked to think she appreciated that he would not let her fall.

He liked to ponder the quality of her silences as she ambled through the park with him, liked to provoke her into smiling despite herself.

“Might I have the butter, Miss Hannah?”

She put the little silver dish by his elbow. “You always start your meal with buttered bread.”

He hadn’t realized that about himself. “A man can do without some thin soup, while bread and butter will sustain life. Wine, Miss Hannah?”

“Please.”

“You’re learning to drink it, I gather.”

“I’m learning that water in London is not like water at home. I can see why tea is the mandatory beverage here.”

Ale was probably consumed in greater quantity than tea. He didn’t point that out because she was about to make another blunt pronouncement. “And why is tea mandatory?”

“Because the water in London is undrinkable in its plain state.”

True enough. “You must not say as much in public.”

She sat back and remained silent while the soup course was removed. Asher waved the footmen off, as he usually did. The meal was sitting on the table in plain sight in chafing dishes, and he and his guest were more than capable of feeding themselves.

“I will not embarrass you, sir.” Her admission was grudging, offered more in hope than confidence, though her manners were impeccable.

“You will not cause embarrassment purposely, and yet I suspect you will not take, though it won’t be entirely your doing, and I doubt it will matter to you. I like this about you, Hannah Cooper, even as I wish you might accept the smoother path of compromise and accommodation. I’m hoping I don’t embarrass you either.”

Because compromise and accommodation also weren’t in his nature.

She stopped mid-reach toward her wine. “Does this have to do with that comment about the longhouse?”

Upon consideration, he found that yes, it did. “I am not the ideal escort for a young lady seeking to make a fine impression on Polite Society. I suspect my uncle offered my services as a way to punish me more than a way to see you effectively introduced.”

“I’m a punishment?”

“Don’t sound so pleased.”

She smiled, a gorgeous, mischievous grin that suggested if she’d wanted to, if she’d had the least inclination, she’d do well enough among the London bachelors. “Tell me about the longhouse and why you are such a sorry excuse for an escort.”

“I wouldn’t go quite that far. I am an earl, I’ll have you know.” Though this was the first instance he could recall having a use for the title.

“Where I come from, your title is not considered an attribute you’ve earned, and you view it in the very same light. Now,
tell
me
about
the
longhouse.
”

Much to his surprise, over the rest of the meal, he told her. He told her about interminable bitter winters spent in snug proximity to people who’d known him since birth. He talked about the beauty of the wilderness, the scope of the knowledge a fellow needed to survive there, and the curiosity and dread he’d felt entering the trading post as a boy of eight.

What surprised him was how easily the happy memories came, how easily and how plentifully. He did not speak about the coughing, about the remorselessness of disease under such circumstances—especially not about that—about the starvation in early spring.

Not even Ian had asked him for this recitation; nor would Asher have welcomed his brother’s inquiries.

Hannah Cooper listened, asking questions when he occasionally fell silent.

What tribe were his mother’s people from?

How long had he lived with his grandparents after her death?

How long had he lived at the trading post after his grandmother’s death?

What was it like crossing the Atlantic at the age of eleven?

How did a boy of eight reconcile a life in the wilds with life among his father’s people?

“Not well, not easily. The minister who took me in was kind, but at the trading post, they wore too many clothes in summer, they used too many utensils to consume their food, they tried to go about in winter as if it weren’t murderously cold, when what was wanted were long, long stories told by the fire. My mother’s tribe included people who could recite our entire history from memory, an undertaking that goes on for
nine
days
, and yet it wasn’t until I got to Scotland that I heard some decent tales told in English.”

“From?”

“My father’s father. My father died immediately after learning of my existence and sending for me.”

She patted his hand. Not a surreptitious little gesture, but a firm squeeze of his hand followed by a soft, warm pass of her fingers over his knuckles.