The MacGregor's Lady (3 page)

He walked slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, as if he hadn’t seen these streets over and over in all seasons.

“You are being patient with me,” Hannah said.

“I am avoiding the mountain of paperwork waiting for me back in the library. It’s a pleasure to share a pint of grog with somebody who hasn’t had the experience—also a bit naughty. Ladies do not usually partake of strong spirits, but cold weather provides the exception to the rule, and we’re not as mindful of strictest propriety here in the North. And truly, our rum buns are not to be missed.”

“A bit naughty” sounded
fun
when rendered in those soft, dark tones, as if the earl were as much in need of a treat as Hannah might be.

Or in need of a friend with whom to enjoy a bite of forbidden bun?

Two

To Hannah’s eye, the posting inn was similar to the posting inns in Boston, except it was three stories of stone, not two, the common was larger, and the stables huge, complete with fenced paddocks and enormous, steaming muck pits in the yard beside the establishment itself.

Once Hannah’s note to Gran had been posted, the earl escorted Hannah to a low-ceilinged, half-timbered establishment midway between the house and the posting inn. The place boasted a few customers; one held up his pipe and nodded to her escort.

“Morning to ye.”

“Will.” The earl nodded but kept Hannah moving toward the rear of the common where high-backed settles faced small tables. Every wood surface in the place was dark with age, from the floors to the timbers to the tables and settles. The room was long and narrow, so the windows at the front afforded scant light, and the few lit sconces added little to it.

“It’s like a cave,” she said, peering around. Though Edinburgh’s New Town boasted hundreds of gas lamps, gas lighting either hadn’t found this enclave or was disdained in favor of ambience.

“So a patron might forget the passage of time,” the earl replied. He lifted Hannah’s cape from her shoulders and hung it on a hook, then hung his own coat on top of hers.

The scent of the place was intriguing—yeasty, like an alehouse might be back home, and with the same cooking odors emanating from the kitchens, but the smell had something woolly about it, too.

“Do you come here often?”

“I do. The town house is too quiet, and they let me sit here as long as I need to. I bring my paperwork, they keep the toddies or teapots coming, and a few rum buns later, I’ve made some progress.”

To Hannah’s surprise, he seated himself directly beside her, but then, there were no chairs facing the settles, so where else would he have sat?

“If you’re not here to find a husband, why am I to haul you to Town for the Season, Miss Cooper?”

“You aren’t going to give this up, are you?”

“I can think of a dozen places I would rather be than London in springtime, mincing around the ballrooms and formal parlors.”

Hannah was heartened at the misery in his tone. “I can think of two-dozen places I’d rather be, and not a one of them would be on your list, I assure you.” For his list would be in Britain, while hers would be an ocean away.

“Where would you be, Hannah Cooper, if you had your choice?”

“Home, with my grandmother.” A pang of something rose up in her middle, not homesickness for the house she lived in, but a wretched, desolate longing for her grandmother’s love.

“It passes.” He patted her hand, his fingers stroking over her knuckles. His hand was warm, and she wished he’d do it again.

That little unexpected caress and thoughts of her grandmother had Hannah speaking aloud sentiments that could not interest the earl. “Gran is very old, and she hasn’t had an easy life. I do not appreciate being made to perform in this husband-hunting farce. She isn’t going to live forever.”

“Is she in good health?”

“She is.”

“She’ll probably live another few months then. Ah, our libation arrives.”

A serving maid unloaded two mugs and a plate of buns from a tray. The scents were heavenly. Rum, butter, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg…

“A toast.” The earl tapped his mug against hers. “To safe journeys and worthy destinations.” His comment about her grandmother had sounded offhand, a little callous, but his toast took the sting from it.

“Safe journeys,” Hannah echoed. “Worthy destinations.”

“Go slowly,” he cautioned, taking a sip of his drink.

Rum was a sailor’s drink, but Hannah was lulled into a false sense of pleasurable anticipation by the lovely bouquet of spicy, buttery scents filling her nose an instant before the spirits hit her tongue.

Those spirits bloomed, they blessed, and they burned all the way down.

She took a slightly larger sip and set the mug on the table.

“You don’t approve of a lady taking spirits?” her companion asked.

Was he
teasing
her? “I shouldn’t, but I approve of the medicinal tot to ward off the chill at least. New England winters are serious weather, and this is a lovely concoction.”

“I’ll make sure you have the recipe to take home with you. Try a bun.”

He talked of his first experience of rum, on his initial crossing. The sailors had gotten him drunk with it and dared him to climb to the crow’s nest. He’d made it, then fallen asleep, which meant he had to be roped down before the captain got wind of the day’s mischief.

“You might have died, trying to get down.”

“I might, but I didn’t, and it makes an adequate tale to share over a toddy, but Miss Hannah?”

“Earl?” She was not going to my-lord him, and a troop of redcoats would likely appear posthaste if she referred to him as Mr. Earl.

“My job this spring is to see to it you snare a husband, will you, nil you.” He took another sip of his drink then set the mug down beside hers.

“And if I don’t want a husband?”

“My uncle Fenimore has set me this task as a sort of penance for spending nearly seven years away from my post in Scotland, or perhaps because he owes your stepfather and hates any sort of indebtedness. And yet, I owe my uncle only so much duty. I’d need a damned good reason to go to all the bother of trotting around the social Season merely for the sake of wasting your papa’s money—pardon my language.”

“My money,” she corrected him, and his language was nothing compared to what Step-papa could unloose. “I’m an heiress, recall. My real father left me quite well off, and if I can manage to stay unwed another two years, the funds all become mine.”

She should not have told a stranger such a thing, but this stranger had understood why she needed to see her letter to Gran mailed herself, and this stranger was likely the only earl in captivity who loathed fashionable ballrooms as much as Hannah did.

“You can’t trust yourself to find a man who’ll take good care of both you and your money?”

His question was reasonable, and yet, Hannah hadn’t heard it before.

“I notice you haven’t any Mrs. Earl.”

“Point for the lady,” he said, lips quirking. “I’m to hunt one up this spring, but alas, I’ve no more heart for the quest than you do.”

“So what’s your damned good reason for braving the ballrooms?” She took another sip of the lovely concoction, though the company was a bit lovely too. “Why squire me about and appear to look over the possibilities when you’re not going to make any offers?”

“Perhaps I’ll be proven wrong. Perhaps some enterprising little filly will snare me and lead me off to be put in double harness.”

“As if you’re a coach horse? Strong, sound of wind and limb, but not elegant enough for a hack or nimble enough for work over fences?”

He ran his finger in a slow circle around the rim of his mug. “An excellent question. Rum tends to bring out the imponderables. No doubt the Greeks invented it, and by rights the drink ought to be dubbed the Progenitor of Philosophy.” He fell silent for a moment, as if considering this profundity. “We seem to be contemplating similar exercises in futility for the coming Season.”

“Your secret is safe with me, sir.”

She reached for another bun just as he did, and their hands bumped.

“After you, miss.”

She took up a bun, broke it in half, and passed him the larger portion. “You’re supposed to say my secret is safe with you.”

“Bun-swearing,” he said, regarding his pastry. “A kind of alimentary fealty my mother’s family would have understood all too well, except you aren’t making any secret of your shameless intentions. You’re going to waste a great deal of good coin on dresses and dancing slippers, spend many nights out until dawn, leading the unsuspecting swains around by their noses, then laugh them to scorn and catch the next ship for Boston. Not very sporting of you.”

And yet, he sounded more impressed than envious.

“Not very sporting of my stepfather to send me away from everything and everyone I love to cross the Atlantic in winter, now was it?”

Hannah wished dear Step-papa might see the scowl her words provoked from the earl. “Not sporting at all, but you’re here. Why not make the best of it?”

“What best is there to make of it?” she said, dipping her bun in her drink. “I cannot marry here, else I’ll have to spend the rest of my days an ocean away from everybody and everything I hold dear.”

“England isn’t such a bad place.” He studied his drink, as if he were repeating a litany that had never been convincing. “England is pretty, in truth, and there’s a lot of variety on one island. I thought I’d go mad missing Canada, but I knew by my first winter in Great Britain there were compensations for leaving Canada. By the second winter, I was mostly complaining about going home to reassure myself I had a home.”

Canada?
What was a Scottish peer doing wandering around Canada, and what had compelled him to return home?

“You’re saying I could learn to like it here.” She could certainly learn to like rum buns dipped in grog, and Scottish earls who commiserated with American heiresses. “Eventually, perhaps I could, but I cannot leave my grandmother to fight all the battles with Step-papa. If he had his way, he’d leave her in the servants’ parlor, swilling tea and knitting.”

“You’re protective of this grandmother, which speaks well of you.” He broke another bun in half, this time giving her the larger share. “Is she growing vague?”

“Hardly.” Hannah nibbled the bun, finding the earl’s approval as sweet as the icing. To air her situation like this was a relief of some sort—one she hoped she would not regret. “Gran is old, and she has no one else. She was my father’s mother, and she’s all I have left of him.”

“That doesn’t rule out finding a husband who would settle with you in Boston.” Balfour spoke gently, as if Hannah might not have reasoned her way to this solution on her own.

“Oh, of course. Some knight twice my age is going to give up all his comforts and honors to brave New England winters and never see his cronies again?”

“It is possible. Many people have found worthy spouses in unlikely locations.” His pronouncement had the ring of a tired admonition, not a declaration of unflagging optimism.

“Eat your bun,” Hannah said, passing him his uneaten sweet. “Anything is possible, sir. You could find the bride of your dreams in an unlikely location as well.”

He said nothing, but gobbled up the rest of his rum bun in about two bites, then rose and held out his hand.

Hannah regarded the large palm, the elegant fingers, the perfectly rounded clean fingernails, the slight callus on the fourth finger from years of holding snaffle reins. Perhaps not strictly gentlemanly hands, but they suited Balfour.

She gave him her hand, and he drew her to her feet.

Still holding her hand, he looked down at her, his expression serious. This close, Hannah caught his contribution to the ambient scents, a clean, bracing male fragrance that put her in mind of spices and sea breezes.

“I will make a promise with you, Hannah Lynn Cooper. I will make a good-faith effort to find a bride, if you will make a good-faith effort to find a husband.”

She considered his hand, wrapped around hers. His skin was darker than hers, as if he had Mediterranean blood.

“I can make that promise.” If good faith was merely the absence of bad faith. “I am not optimistic that I will be successful finding a spouse.”

He brought her fingers to his lips, and brushed her a kiss that was mostly air plus a touch of warmth and gallantry. When he had given her back her hand, he plucked his coat from the hook, then shuffled the wraps so he could settle her cape around her shoulders first. He shrugged into his coat but didn’t button it.

“The rum has warmed me up,” he said, winging an arm. “If I am not mistaken, we’re due for a thaw, and we’ll have nothing but sunshine and mud for the rest of this week, followed of course, by the inevitable blizzard.”

He sounded like a Yankee farmer, daring the weather to try to trick him with its inconveniences.

Hannah needed his arm, between the wet cobblestones, her limp, and the rum. He was utterly solid, his pace was sedate, and given the way his coat had hung over hers, his scent was wafting into her nose. Cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, a little ginger, and a dash of sea travel.

His scent reminded her of the rum buns, but in the privacy of her thoughts, Hannah admitted the earl’s fragrance was the more attractive.

***

Asher had caught the lady, though only barely. That was the good news, but the bad news…

Damn and blast if the old man hadn’t given Asher an impossible task. Bad enough Asher was to go bride hunting, bad enough he had to drag this red-haired American rebel-spinster-heiress around with him, bad enough she would limp onto the dance floor if she could even dance, worse yet he
liked
the infernal woman, but now he’d nearly dropped her on a patch of ice, and her locomotion was further jeopardized.

“She was bobbing along beside me, enjoying the air, and then she hit a patch of wet ice, and down she went,” Asher told the aunt. Miss Hannah had nearly taken him with her, too, so frantically had she struggled to maintain her balance.

The aunt shrugged as she took a sip of her wine. “She falls occasionally. When she was younger, my brother ordered that all of Hannah’s clothes be in plain dark colors so the mud wouldn’t show. Fortunately, she has gained some poise.”