The MacGregor's Lady (16 page)

Hannah passed over her skates, which Asher looped over one shoulder. He extended his hand down to her, vaguely uneasy about what she might say next.

She put a hand in his and rose. “You love them, your siblings, and they love you. That’s why you came home. That’s why I’ll return to my grandmother. You do understand.”

The skates clanked against his chest, rather like his heart hammered against his ribs.

“I came back to Scotland because I owe a duty to a blessed title, and that is a damned sight less pleasant a prospect than your old granny’s loving embrace.”

She said nothing, but walked along beside him, the hitch in her gait making him want to break something and curse at length.

***

Dimly, through something Hannah could only characterize as homesickness, she perceived that the Earl of Balfour was in a sulk—the English would call it a taking, and she had no idea what the Scots would call it.

Her hip did not ache, but her heart did. Something about being able to stand straight, about moving so smoothly over the ice in the near-embrace of a man sturdy enough to keep her balanced, had her longing for Boston, though only in a general sense.

Not for her mother, not for her bedroom in her stepfather’s house, not even for her grandmother, but for the time before she’d fallen, when balance, grace, and the fearlessness that went with them had been hers.

She had been so innocent.

“You’re quiet, Boston. This does not bode well for the peace of the realm.”

He strode along beside her, only the tension in his voice attesting to his impatience with her gait.

“I’m thinking of home.”

He tossed her an unreadable glance and held open a gate that led to his stables—his mews.

“You’re annoyed that I think of my home?” She was not simply willing to pick a fight with him, she was
happy
to.

“If your grandmother loves you the way you say she does, she could not possibly want you to turn your back on the future you could have here.” He offered this observation with the banked tolerance of a man who knows he’s being logical, reasonable even.

Hannah passed into the alley beside the stables and came to a stop. “If, sir, you refer to my future including a husband and children, we do have single men in Massachusetts—scads of them. They can dance and flirt and spout off about the weather the same as all your London dandies, and they don’t all bother themselves about who is supposed to go in to dinner paired with whom, in what order, like some military parade.”

He crossed his arms and seemed to grow taller. “You’ve run circles around the Colonials, Boston. Left them dazed and panting at the altar, and they don’t deserve you. You need a man who can look after you, who has your measure and won’t try to diminish it. You need a man who can match you, who can call you on your queer starts, and go toe-to-toe with you—”

Hannah stepped right up to the presuming buffoon, almost toe-to-toe, and stuck her face in his—to the extent she could, being so much shorter. “I do not need a man to order me about, steal my money, and expect me to be grateful that he keeps his mistresses in better style than his own family. I do not want a man who—”

She should have taken it as a warning when Balfour uncrossed his arms and leaned down.

“You need a man who can kiss the starch right out of you.”

His mouth came down over hers, not roughly, but decisively. Hannah’s hands settled on his shoulders—for balance, surely just for balance—as the sheer heat of his body enveloped her.

He broke off, his mouth so close to Hannah’s she could feel his breath on her cheek. “You need a man who makes you think of his kisses rather than about getting on that westbound ship.”

And then he was back, not plundering, exactly, but purposefully investigating her mouth without her permission… And without any protest from her, either.

“You taste like rum buns,” she murmured against his mouth.

“Hush, lass. Kiss me.” The burr was more pronounced when he whispered. His voice, his accent, resonated inside Hannah and made her
want
to kiss him. He sealed his mouth to hers, and his tongue moved gently over Hannah’s lips. She clutched at his wool coat, parting her lips to breathe him in while the skates went clattering off his shoulder and he shifted his sporran to his hip.

Kiss
me.

His mouth was a wonder, hot, sweet, gentle, implacable. He explored her with his tongue then left her bereft as he grazed his lips over her eyebrows and chin, her jaw, her eyes. Lest he meander too far afield, Hannah anchored a hand in his thick, dark hair and tried to guide his mouth back to hers.

“Wee, managing baggage,” he muttered, but he was smiling. She could hear it; she could feel it as he brought his mouth back to hers.

But the damned man was possessed of
strategy
, for just as Hannah gathered up her courage to trace Balfour’s lips with her tongue, his hands landed on her shoulders, and then… moved. He began by massaging her shoulders gently, little squeezes with his big fingers that urged Hannah closer to the heat of his body. When she was plastered against him, his hands went questing down her back, slow, easy sweeps of his palms making her want to—She
did
groan, softly, right into his mouth. He hitched her closer by virtue of widening his stance and gripping her derriere in a firm, ye-aren’t-going-anywhere hold that felt so blessed good Hannah sighed with her whole body.

When she touched her tongue to the soft, damp recess between his lips and teeth, he went still. She did it again, a little sweep of a hidden part of him, and his stillness became something more, something considering.

“Don’t stop now, lass.”

She let him support her while she focused on learning more of his hidden places, his hidden tastes. Up close, she could smell not only the wool of his clothing, but also the scent of a clean male still warm from his exertions. His mouth savored of cinnamon and nutmeg, a pleasant exotic taste, while against her belly, Hannah felt the solid, unmistakable evidence of his arousal.

He
wanted
her to feel it, too. Made no move to put a polite distance between them, didn’t try to furtively adjust himself in his clothing, didn’t shift off to the side in embarrassment.

She paused in her invasion of his mouth to focus more clearly on the feel of him, big, hard, and unapologetically aroused simply from kissing
her
.

“It happens when a man kisses a pretty woman—a woman he could bed.” Balfour’s chin came to rest on her crown. “This does not disgust you?”

Disgust? Oh, it was wicked of her and shameless, but disgust was the farthest thing from Hannah’s mind. Rather than confess that she wanted to see him, to touch him—she barely
knew
Balfour, for pity’s sake—she shook her head and rested her forehead against his chest.

He held her for a long moment, a moment during which Hannah expected him to step back, grin at her, and resume his lecture about her needing a man to kiss her out of her foolish loyalty to her grandmother. A moment when she should have been stepping back, informing him that a single kiss proved nothing, and a westbound ship was infinitely preferable to being slobbered over in a London back alley.

Balfour’s hand stroked over Hannah’s hair, a slow, soft, soothing caress—maybe an apologetic caress—while his arousal became less evident against her belly.

And still, Hannah didn’t step back.

Nine

Hannah Cooper was breathing hard simply as a result of kissing
him…
or maybe as a result of being kissed by him.

Asher stole another whiff of the sweet lavender scent of her hair and tried to locate enough sense to make his feet move. Hannah threw her whole self into her kisses. She devoured him with her mouth, took him captive with her questing hands, and used her body to obliterate his reason.

And such a body… She did not indulge in the idiot fashion of cinching her waist to sixteen inches to enhance the appearance of her bust. She didn’t need to. Her curves were natural and generous, and she used them to strategic advantage when she undertook her kissing.

Great God in heaven…

“Love, we ought not to linger here.” The endearment slipped out, a common form of address between common strangers here in England, but not the speech of a belted earl to a female guest under his protection.

She rubbed her nose against the wool of his jacket. “I did not mean to kiss you, but if you expect me to apologize, you’re going to have a long wait, Asher MacGregor.”

She also, apparently, did not intend to turn loose of her prisoner.

His lips wandered to her temple, all without him planning it, stirring memories and heartache. “And if I apologized to you, Hannah?”

“I should have to be offended. My kissing needs work, I’ll grant you, but in Boston, the gentlemen don’t take liberties that often. My opportunities to practice have been limited.”

He gave up trying to follow her logic. That would require ratiocination, of which he was not capable with her plastered so warmly against him.

“I’ll not apologize then.”

“Thank you.”

He
had
to turn loose of her. By now every stable hand in the entire block had probably seen the Earl of Balfour taking liberties with his guest, and had seen that guest returning the favor. The chambermaids were likely gawking from the middens, and the nannies in their nursery aeries were dragging their fascinated young charges away from the windows.

And yet… how long had it been since a woman had remained in his embrace like this? The convenient liaisons he’d allowed himself in the past few years had not been intended to foster tenderness or cuddling. A welling of bodily loneliness obliterated the last of Asher’s arousal and made him long for the moors outside Steeth.

“You can let me go, Balfour.”

“Of course.” He shifted his hold to pick up the discarded skates and lace his arm with Hannah’s, pausing only to tuck his sporran around front, where it could prevent gross immodesties from befalling him.

“Am I presentable?”

His Boston, ferocious kisser of presuming earls, sounded shy, while her expression was so resolute it made him want to…

“Ye look damnably composed, Boston. I suppose you’ve made a squirrel’s nest of my hair?” This was intended to force her to look at him. She obligingly eyed him up and down and then went up her on toes.

“You look a fright. The squirrels in Canada must be the size of moose,” she said, smoothing her hand over his hair and her thumb over his bedamned
eyebrows
, while treating Asher to a maddening hint of lavender.

“It’s more a matter of the squirrels in London being the size of American heiresses.”

She dropped back to her heels and took his arm, when he’d been half hoping she’d stomp off in a female taking—for reasons not clear to any man Asher knew, only a female could get into a taking.

“You look presentable now, and I think you’re safe from squirrels for the remainder of my stay here in England. Come along, Balfour. The temperature’s dropping, and you promised me a tot of grog.”

They started back in the direction of the house, arm in arm, though Asher was not sure whose arm was steadying whom.

“Balfour!”

Asher stopped. Beside him, Hannah shook loose of his arm and pivoted to face the stables. An instant of concern for her went through him, lest she lose her balance.

A large kilted fellow was striding from the direction of the stables. “By God, man, it’s supposed to be spring this far south, and I’m about to freeze my ba—boots off. Perhaps you’ll introduce me to the lady?”

Ian MacGregor stood in the middle of the alley in all his dark-haired, green-eyed glory, grinning like a handsome idiot—grinning like a younger brother who had seen far too much in the past few minutes, and who would remain silent about far too little of it.

***

The men in Scotland must all be the size of trees. Based on the dimensions of Balfour’s siblings and their wives, the women weren’t much smaller.

First Ian MacGregor had come laughing and shouting out of the stables, the man nearly as tall as his brother, and while he’d treated Balfour to a back-pounding male embrace, he’d bowed properly over Hannah’s hand and subjected her to a smile that would have parted any sighted female from her sanity.

Then the others had arrived in two enormous coaches commandeered at the new King’s Cross train station. Gilgallon MacGregor and his wife, Genie; Connor MacGregor and Julia; Matthew Daniels and Mary Fran MacGregor Daniels; and Mary Fran’s daughter, a delightful sprite by the name of Fiona. Julia, Genie, and Matthew were of English extraction, but their hearts had clearly been claimed by their Scottish spouses.

“You can relax,” Genie said as the men departed for “a wee dram” in the library, and the ladies repaired to the family parlor. “Asher’s brothers are here at his invitation, and they’ll behave, more or less.”

Genie was an English beauty, tall, slim, blond, and reserved, while the brown-haired Julia was shorter, rounder, and a few years Genie’s senior. Mary Fran, by contrast, was a red-haired Valkyrie whose voice carried a lilting burr not unlike Asher’s.

“You’ll scare the girl,” Mary Fran said, showing a toothy grin. “The menfolk will all be on their good behavior, at least once Ian has Augusta’s assurances the baby is settled in.” With a confidence Hannah envied, Mary Fran gave orders to the household staff to produce “decent sustenance and some toddies.”

“Ian and Augusta seem like devoted parents,” Hannah observed, though the word that first came to mind was
besotted
. As Augusta MacGregor had emerged from the coach, she’d handed her baby off to Ian, and the baby had remained in his father’s arms until the infant had been pried loose by the mother for transport to the nursery.

“They are ridiculous,” Julia said, flopping onto the settee. “I hope Connor is every bit as bad.”

She exchanged a look with Mary Fran, and then with Genie, and abruptly, Hannah became aware that all three of these women were likely in expectation of blessed events. Mary Fran’s blessed event looked to be making an appearance sooner rather than later.