Grace Burrowes - [MacGregor 02]

by Once Upon a Tartan

  He was wearing spectacles, gold-rimmed reading spectacles that made him look more scholarly, more like a husband or a father, but no less like a lover.

  “Hester.” He rose and approached her, his expression guarded. “If you’re having trouble sleeping, I can have the kitchen—”

  She was plastered to his chest before he could finish speaking. “I’ll leave tomorrow. I’ll take Fee home, tomorrow, Tiberius, I promise, I just can’t— You might have been killed, worse than killed, and all because I didn’t keep an adequate eye on Fee, and then your father, with the gun—”

  “Hush, Hester, calm yourself.” His arms came around her slowly but securely, which only made the ache in her chest worse. “I’ve told him he’ll not have the raising of her, not if he can’t keep her safe. I’ll take you to the train station myself, just please, don’t cry.”

  She breathed in the clean scent of him, wallowed in the strength and warmth of his embrace. “Did you bathe, Tiberius? Did you scrub your hands? The fox was likely rabid. His lordship was right, I know he was.”

  “Hush. I am unharmed, and believe me, I inspected and bathed my person thoroughly, several times.”

  She wanted to inspect his person, and medical reasons were the least of her motivations. The need arose abruptly, barreling through all her other upsets with the raging clarity of hopeless desire.

  “Tiberius, I want—” She worked the knot of his dressing gown open, leaving him standing there, his robe gaping. Her brain registered that he was not stopping her and he was not arguing with her.

  Not reasoning with her. She slid her hands around his waist and leaned her forehead on his chest. “Please, Tiberius.”

  “The train leaves at eleven in the morning, Hester.” He spoke gently, his words conveying compassion but not compromise. “I want you and the child gone from here before Quinworth can rally his defenses. It’s important to me that—”

  She sank to her knees and pressed her face to his thigh. “Please.”

  A quiet moment went by while she remained in the posture of a supplicant, then his hand stroked over her hair, a soft caress that granted her permission to take what she would of him before they parted. The frantic haste beating at her from within subsided. She took a slow, deep breath, exhaled, and put her mouth to the length of his cock.

  He was not aroused, or not very aroused, which meant she participated orally in the building of his desire. By degrees, as she kissed, nuzzled, stroked, and suckled, his passion rose, until he stepped back.

  “Hester, shall I take you to bed?”

  “Yes. We shall take each other to bed.” She paused only to remove every stitch of her nightclothes while he shrugged out of his robe. In a state of complete undress, he crossed the room to lock the door.

  Hester sat on the bed and continued to drink in the sight of him as he used his tooth powder at the washbasin. “You aren’t telling me this is misguided, Tiberius.”

  “I don’t need to tell you that, Hester. If you truly think this is misguided, you’ll cross the hallway to your own room.” His observation held logic, not arrogance; if anything, he was smiling slightly at the basin. “Is Fiona managing?”

  “She was exhausted. She did not and does not comprehend the danger she was in.”

  “She’ll be a mother someday.” He glanced at her over his shoulder as he dragged a brush through his hair. “Or an aunt. She’ll understand then. I’ve had wires sent to Balfour.”

  He would think of that. And then he was stalking over to the bed, looking not competent and practical, but gorgeous, aroused, and heartrendingly dear. “I do not guarantee that I can protect you from conception tonight, Hester Daniels.”

  “It doesn’t signify.”

  Now he looked like he wanted to argue, so she rose up on her knees and kissed him where he stood by the bed. “It does not signify. I will be gone in the morning, Tiberius. I understand that. I understand much that was not clear to me until today. For tonight, please just love me.”

  He muttered something, which in Gaelic would have sounded very much like “I do,” but words were not of any interest to Hester when his mouth finally settled on hers. No matter he was not renewing his proposals, no matter she might never see him again; he was kissing her as if she were life and breath and sun all wrapped into one, as if his soul required it of him.

  As if there were no tomorrow, which for them—as far as Hester was concerned—was the sad and unavoidable truth.

  ***

  Hester was upset, seeking reassurances, and making a very great mistake. Tye’s duty was to kiss her forehead and steer her right out into the corridor, then shut and lock his door behind her.

  This was the honorable course. His brain knew it, and even admonished him to follow such a course. His body was ignoring such pleas, and his heart had clapped its hands over its figurative ears.

  She would not thank him in the morning for following the honorable course; she would look at him with big, bruised eyes and silently reproach him from memory for the rest of his blighted days. And if she wasn’t yet carrying his child, Tye could hope to effect such a miracle on what might otherwise be their last night together.

  Duty and honor be damned, this was the woman he loved, the woman he was meant to go through life with, though she’d denied his every proposal.

  Tye’s self-restraint in the past was nothing compared to the discipline he applied now. He laid Hester down on the enormous four-poster where he’d tossed and turned away the past week of nights, and came down over her. When he’d feasted for a time on her kisses, he worked his way south, treasuring her breasts, her soft, feminine belly, her sex.

  She denied him nothing, not her kisses, not her sighs, not the sweet, secret female parts of her body. When he tucked her legs over his shoulders, he knew a passing regret that he hadn’t put a pair of his socks on her feet, the better to stroke his back with.

  But only a passing regret. He deluged her with pleasure, showered her with it until he was certain she’d be sore for a week. And when at last he joined his body to hers, he vowed he’d wreak yet more pleasure upon her, so much pleasure that she would recall this night of loving for all her days.

  He kept that vow, but when her body was convulsing around him, wringing the last drop of passion from their joining, Tye’s self-restraint collapsed, his good intentions disappeared, and he followed Hester into a pleasure as intense and as soul deep as it was bittersweet.

  ***

  “This is my mother’s direction in Edinburgh. You should not need it, but I don’t like sending you off without even a maid.”

  Hester’s lover from the previous night was nowhere to be found, except perhaps lurking in the green eyes of this serious, handsome man. “We’ll be fine, Tiberius. I’ve gotten quite used to traveling about by train.”

  Fiona swung Hester’s hand. “I’ll be fine too. Will you say good-bye to Albert for me?”

  “Of course, and let me stow this fellow for you.” Tye held up the carpetbag housing the rabbit. “You’ll have to watch that he isn’t nibbling through the fabric, Niece. A rabbit loose on Her Majesty’s rails will not do.” He stuffed the bag on the overhead rack, and the train whistle sounded a warning blast.

  “I wish you were coming with us, Uncle, and Flying Rowan too.”

  “I’ll write to you, Fiona, and I don’t want to hear about any cheating at cards either.” In the cramped confines of the compartment, he went down on his haunches and hugged the child tightly. “You are my favorite niece. Never forget it.”

  “I’m your only niece.”

  And again, for the hundredth time in twenty-four hours, Hester’s heart broke, this time simply from seeing Fiona share her favorite-niece joke with Tiberius, proof positive the man was secure in the child’s love and affection.

  “Aunt.” Fiona tugged on Hester’s skirts, forcing her down into what was n
early a huddle with the child and the earl. “You must tell Uncle you love him and you will miss him.”

  She’d spoken in Gaelic. With childish good intentions, she’d driven spikes into Hester’s composure and into her heart. Hester managed an answer only haltingly, and not because she stumbled over the Gaelic.

  “I will miss him badly, but it’s like with the fox, Fiona. Spathfoy needs to be with his family, and they need him. They need him desperately.”

  “We’re his family.”

  Hester could only nod and rise to her feet, feeling older than Aunt Ree on a wet, chilly night. Spathfoy took her hand in his without even sparing a glance at the passage beyond the open door.

  “You will write to me if there’s need?”

  Another nod, while a lump as wide as the Highlands formed in her throat. The damned man kissed her forehead, and when he would have stepped back, Hester held on to him. “Tiberius, I am sorry.”

  The train whistle blasted twice, and the look he gave her was torn. “I cannot fathom what you’d be apologizing for. Please get word to me when you’ve arrived safely in Ballater. I want a wire, Hester, not some damnable polite letter arriving after Michaelmas.”

  “Uncle said a bad word.”

  He tweaked Fiona’s braid. “I’m expressing strong feelings, probably not for the last time.” Then he swung his gaze back to Hester. “My dear, I must leave you now. There are things I must resolve with my father and my sisters before I am otherwise free. You will send word?”

  He was harping on this. Hester finally realized he was concerned that she was with child. “I will send word if there’s need. Good-bye, Tiberius. Read your brother’s will.” The words had slipped out. She might send a wire, a few sentences of platitudes, but this admonition she’d give him in person.

  The train whistle sounded three times, and on the platform, the conductor was bellowing the “all aboard.”

  “Good-bye, Uncle. I won’t cheat. I love you!”

  “I love you too, Fiona. Safe journey.”

  A swift, hard kiss to Hester’s lips, and then he was gone. Hester took the backward-facing seat as the train began to move, the better to stare at Tiberius’s tall, still figure growing smaller and smaller, until a bend in the tracks took him entirely from her sight.

  ***

  “But when are we going to get there?” Fiona’s question had long since taken on the singsong quality of a child determined to pluck the last adult nerve within hearing and pluck it hard.

  They’d made the transfer smoothly enough in Edinburgh, but now, not twenty miles north of the city, the train had stopped dead on the tracks.

  And not moved for an hour.

  “I do not know when we’ll make Aberdeen, Fiona. Would you like to play another game of matches?”

  “No. It’s too hard to spread out all the cards in this stupid train.”

  “Shall we walk beside the tracks for a moment?”

  “It’s going to rain, and then I shall get wet and stay wet until we get home. Why isn’t the train moving?”

  “There’s an obstruction on the tracks.”

  “What kind of obstruction?”

  “I do not know.” Just as Hester hadn’t known five minutes earlier, and ten minutes, and twenty. Hester suspected it was not a trivial obstruction—a downed tree or a dead horse at least—a casual gesture by the hand of fate to make Hester doubt her determination to scurry north and lick her wounds.

  “I miss Uncle.”

  “I miss him too.”

  “You should have stayed with him, Aunt. He’ll miss you and miss you.”

  Oh, cruel child. Hester wanted to clap her hand over Fiona’s mouth.

  “The train is moving!” Fiona pressed her nose to the window as the locomotive gave another lurch. “We’re moving backward!”

  “We are indeed.” Away from Aberdeen, which was maddening, to say the least. “We’ll probably have to find another train to take us north, Fee. The day is likely to become quite long.”

  Fiona said nothing, but stood on the seat to get down the carpetbag and peer inside, as she’d done frequently throughout their journey.

  “It doesn’t smell very good in there. Harold is unhappy.”

  “Then Harold will be relieved to reach home, as will we.”

  “But home’s that way.” Fiona jerked her thumb to the north.

  Swear words paraded through Hester’s weary brain—nasty, percussive, satisfying Anglo-Saxon monosyllables that would have sounded like music on Tiberius’s tongue.

  “I am damned sick of this day, Niece.”

  Fiona’s brows arched with surprise. “That was very good, Aunt. May I try?”

  They turned the air of the compartment blue on the twenty-mile trip back down to Edinburgh, and shared not a few laughs, but when Hester was told there was no way to reach Aberdeen by nightfall, she wanted to cry.

  “We could hire a carriage,” Fiona offered helpfully as they stood outside the busy station in Edinburgh.

  “It would still take us days, Fee. We need to find decent accommodations for young ladies temporarily stranded far from home.”

  “And a rabbit.” Fee tucked her hand into Hester’s. “Don’t forget Harold.”

  Hester did not wrinkle her nose. “I would never forget dear Harold.”

  “Uncle has a house here on Princes Street, and a very nice house in the country too. My grandmamma lives here.”

  Hester was reminded of Tiberius tucking a folded piece of paper into her reticule when he’d parted from them on the train. “Princes Street, Fiona?”

  A short ride by hack took them to the New Town address Tye had given them, and much to Hester’s relief—and probably Harold’s as well—the lady was home.

  And she was breathtakingly beautiful.

  Tall, stately, with classic features that would not yield much to age, Lady Quinworth also sported flaming hair going golden at her temples.

  “Miss Daniels, I’m afraid you have me at something of a loss, but any friend of Tiberius is a friend of mine.” Her smile would warm a Highland winter and only grew more attractive as she turned it on Fiona. “And I am dying to meet this young lady, who I can only hope has also befriended Spathfoy.”

  “He’s not my friend, he’s my uncle.”

  The marchioness blinked. “Spathfoy is your uncle?”

  Hester felt again the sensation of the train pulling out of the station at Newcastle, gathering momentum, and hurtling her at increasing speed in the wrong direction. “I can explain, my lady.”

  “I’m sure you can.” Lady Quinworth turned to a waiting footman. “Take the ladies’ things up to the first guest room, Thomas. We’ll want tea with all the trimmings in the family parlor.”

  “What about Harold?” Fiona held up the malodorous carpetbag. “He’s ever so tired of traveling too.” She grinned at the marchioness. “Bloody, damned tired.”

  “Fiona!”

  But the marchioness only smiled. This smile was different, warmer, with a hint of mischief. This smile reminded Hester painfully of Tiberius in a playful mood, and on the lady, it looked dazzling.

  “The child no doubt gets her unfortunate vocabulary from her uncle. Come along, ladies, and bring Harold.”

  ***

  Deirdre considered two possibilities. The first was that Tiberius had developed a liaison with a lady fallen on hard times, and the little girl was his love child, which was a fine thing for a mother to be finding out from somebody besides the son responsible.

  Except Tiberius would have married the mother; without question he would have.

  Which meant this was Gordie’s child. Fiona was old enough, and she had the look of Gordie in her merry eyes and slightly obstinate chin. When the child had been sent off with the housekeeper to enjoy a scented bath, Deirdre considered her remaining guest.
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  “Now that we are without little ears to mind us, Miss Daniels, I’d like to know how you came to be at Quinworth, and what exactly Spathfoy’s involvement is in that child’s life.”

  Miss Daniels—who bore no noticeable resemblance to the child in her care—used the genteel prevarications. She sipped her tea, nibbled a sandwich, then set her tea down. “I believe Fiona is your granddaughter, my lady.”

  “Are you her mother?”

  “I am not. My brother Matthew is married to Fiona’s mother, Mary Frances MacGregor Daniels, or I suppose she’s Lady Altsax now, though they don’t use the title.”

  “You’re that Miss Daniels?”

  She showed no sign of being discommoded by the question, except for a slight tipping up of her chin. “I am the Miss Daniels who cried off her engagement to Jasper Merriman.”

  “Have some more tea.” Deirdre decided the immediate liking she’d felt for the girl had been grounded in solid maternal instinct. “I received the most peculiar epistle from Spathfoy not a week past. I am to ruin young Mr. Merriman socially, to hint he has a dread disease that renders him unacceptable as a marriage prospect for any decent young lady.”

  Miss Daniels’s smile was radiant. “That is diabolically clever. You must thank Tiberius for me when you see him next.”

  Tiberius? “You won’t be seeing him yourself?”

  The smile died. It did not fade, it died. “I do not think so. I rejected his proposal too, you see.”

  “We will discuss that in due course. First, tell me how Fiona came to be in her uncle’s care.”

  This necessitated a darting glance at the fat white rabbit reclining like a drunken burgher against the fireplace fender. “Quinworth demanded that Tye bring Fiona to him, though I did not learn this from Tiberius. Lady Joan explained it to me. She said Tye—Spathfoy agreed to retrieve Fiona in exchange for Quinworth’s willingness to allow her to live in Paris for a year, and to allow all three of your daughters to marry where they chose.”

  “Quinworth devised this bargain?”