And what would such a lovely young lady, the world at her feet after three very successful Seasons, have to despair over?
“You aren’t the one being paraded before every title with pockets to let, Cousin.” Genie turned her head to look out the other window. “I appreciate that you’ve abandoned your rose gardens to chaperone Hester and me, but is the duty really so onerous when all you’ll be doing is walking in Lord Balfour’s woods and dancing with his brothers?”
“Not… onerous, though you know I do not dance.”
“You did.” That from Julia, the traitor. “When you came out you danced quite often, Gussie.”
“Nearly a decade ago, when there was no choice but to dance.”
A little silence fell, while Augusta felt a despair of her own. This was her lot in life now, to kill confidences from her younger cousins, to leave little clouds of awkwardness and disapproval in her conversational wake. But really, for Julia to bring up Augusta’s come-out…
“Did you fancy Lord Balfour, Genie?” Hester put the question quietly. Because Augusta was sitting beside Genie, she saw the girl’s mouth tighten.
“Cousin Augusta doesn’t dance,” Genie said. “I do not seek marriage to a stranger sporting a title. I’m sure Lord Balfour is a very amiable gentleman, but I’m not here to become his countess.”
Her tone consigned all amiable gentlemen to the jungles of darkest Peru.
“Papa mightn’t agree with you.” Hester’s tone bore no malice. “We’re both for titles, Genie. You’ve heard him lecturing Mama about it incessantly.”
“Then you marry the Scottish earl.”
Hester, with characteristic good cheer, appeared to consider the notion. “He’s handsome, if tall.”
“And substantial,” Julia added. “Don’t forget that. I like his eyes.”
“Maybe you should marry him, Aunt,” Hester suggested, lips curving. “I hadn’t noticed his eyes.”
“They’re kind,” Julia said. “I find that very attractive on a man.”
Oh, for pity’s sake. The man’s eyes were green. A startling, emerald green, probably made more striking by his somewhat dark complexion and the thick fringe of dark lashes around them. They were also tired, those eyes. They had a weariness that contrasted subtly with his flashing white teeth, easy grin, and comfortable manners.
“The one with brown hair struck me as serious,” Julia said, egging on her charges. “Maybe he’d be a better match for you, Genie. If he’s the spare, he’ll at least have a courtesy title.”
“Connor has the brown hair,” Hester supplied. “He has the best nose. Gilgallon looks like he laughs more, and I like his blond hair, but his mouth is stubborn. I’d put my money on him as the spare.”
Lord Balfour’s mouth wasn’t stubborn. Augusta frowned, picturing him grinning as he’d swung up on his horse and patted the beast soundly on the neck. His mouth was wide, the lips a trifle full, and on the left side, he had a dimple that flashed when he smiled. With thick, dark hair ruffled by the breeze, he made an attractive picture.
Julia untied her bonnet and set it in her lap. “What constitutes a good nose, Hester?”
“Proud,” Hester said. “Connor has a proud nose, a conqueror’s nose. Not a narrow little whining thing like Richard Comstock-Simms has.”
“My sister has taken up reading noses,” Genie said, her smile back in place now that impending marriage was no longer the subject. “You can make pots of money predicting men’s futures by assessing their noses.”
“We already have pots of money,” Hester retorted. “Which is why Lord Balfour will offer for you. I wouldn’t mind having a Scottish brother-in-law, Genie.”
“Why not a Scottish husband?” Julia asked, deflecting the temper flaring in Genie’s eyes.
“Because Mama will not allow me to marry until Genie is at least engaged. Besides, Genie has had three Seasons, and I’ve had only one.”
Augusta let their combination of banter and bickering wash over her, while she considered Ian MacGregor’s nose.
There was nothing subtle about his nose. Proud applied, but also, perhaps, aristocratic. His nose occupied the middle of his face as a nose ought, but was a little more grand than the standard nose, having the slightest tendency to hook toward the bottom. She knew this because she’d studied the man in profile when he’d offered his arm the second time.
He’d smiled down at her, offering a polite, even friendly smile to a woman whom he could safely dismiss as a nonentity, which was exactly how Augusta intended he view her. Why his willingness to do so should leave her disgruntled, she did not know, nor was she going to waste time pondering it.
The coach rattled along roads likely improved in honor of Her Majesty’s decision to make her private residence at nearby Balmoral. Lord Balfour’s proximity to the royal household had figured prominently in the Daniels’s campaign to have the girls spend much of their summer here in Aberdeenshire.
As if Queen Victoria would pop out from behind a tree and declare herself thrilled to be making the acquaintance of Hester and Eugenia Daniels.
Julia put her bonnet back on twenty minutes later and tied the ribbons beneath her chin. “At long last, our destination. What a lovely, lovely facade.”
Pale gray stone caught bright summer sun, ivy blanketed the northern face, and topiary dragons frolicked along the wings spreading from either side of the main entrance. The house looked comfortable in its setting, secure, affluent, and pretty without being pretentious.
Julia was first to leave the coach, owing to her senior status, but then Augusta motioned for her cousins to leave next. Those oversized, smiling Scotsmen were out there, offering their arms, exuding charm, and generally creating the sort of impression intended to make the ladies forget they were paying a great deal for the privilege of being Lord Balfour’s “guests.”
“Madam?”
She had expected her uncle or perhaps her cousin Matthew to be the last available escort, but Lord Balfour himself loomed in the coach doorway, his hand extended to offer her assistance.
His bare hand. He’d taken off his riding gloves, allowing Augusta to notice that even the backs of his hands were of a darker complexion than an Englishman would feel comfortable exposing socially.
She placed her gloved fingertips on his palm and suffered him to assist her from the coach. All went well as she stepped down, but as luck would have it, her foot landed on a pebble that rolled beneath her weight as she descended.
Leaving her careening into Lord Balfour.
“Steady there.”
She’d pitched ignominiously against his chest, finding him as immovable as a slab of rock.
He smelled better than a rock, though. Leaning against him, Augusta took one half breath to find her balance, enough for her nose to gather the scents of soap, lavender, and something fresh and spicy—heather?—underlain with a hint of horse.
Good smells, clean and bracing. She straightened lest he think her daft. “My thanks, your lordship.”
“Surely Balfour will do? It’s summertime, and we’re far, far from London, Miss Merrick.”
She nodded noncommittally. Calling the man by his title little more than an hour after meeting him was not something Miss Augusta Merrick should be comfortable doing, regardless of the season. She had to like him for offering, though. It suggested some of the warmth in those smiles he tossed around so carelessly might be real.
He put her hand on his arm and patted her knuckles. “I’ll have my sister, Mary Frances, show you to your rooms. We keep a country schedule unless our guests request otherwise. It leaves hours of the gloaming to relax and enjoy ourselves.”
Gloaming. A soft, northern word. He caressed it a little with the burr in his voice.
“I shall retire early a
nd take a tray in my room,” Augusta said. “Train travel does not agree with me.” Let his lordship turn that charm on Genie, where all and sundry knew it was intended to focus.
“We’ll miss your company at table.” He bowed as they gained the front terrace. “And here is Mary Fran, who will be wroth with you if you do not allow her to see to your every comfort.”
Mary Fran, more properly Lady Mary Frances—she was an earl’s daughter, for pity’s sake—was an imposing redhead with the same facile smile as her oldest brother. She collected the ladies with an air of brisk friendliness, and soon had them bustled into their rooms, maids clucking and fussing with an informality that would not have passed muster at all back in the South.
Augusta’s room was done in the current Highland vogue—curtains, bed hangings, carpet, and even wallpaper sported either a green, black, and white plaid, or echoed the hues of the plaid. As a whole, the room was a little dizzying.
“Is all the staff so… familiar?” Augusta asked her maid.
“Familiar, mum?”
“Friendly?”
The girl’s freckled face split into a wide grin. “We’re to treat you like family, laird’s rules. Is there anything else I can do for ye?”
Augusta shook her head and waited while the girl bobbed a curtsy then stopped by the door to check the level of the water in a bouquet of red roses.
And then Augusta was blessedly, finally, at long last, completely alone.
***
Wherever Ian looked for Mary Fran—the kitchen, the formal dining room, the pantries, the larder—the servants reported she’d just gone off to some other location, they knew not exactly where.
And though Ian paid them some of the best wages in the shire, he did not fool himself: if the staff was intent on abetting Mary Fran, then she’d elude capture easily, despite her laird, earl, and brother’s pressing need to speak with her.
A flash of red braids and quick, light tread on the footmen’s stairs suggested possible hope. Ian lit up the stairs, two at a time.
“Fiona!” A door banged on the next flight up. “Fiona Ursula MacGregor!”
Silence, meaning the child—who generally knew exactly where her mother had gotten off to—was intent on disregard for authority as well. Ian could expect as much—she was Scottish, a MacGregor, and Mary Fran’s own daughter.
He burst through the door on the upper landing, lungs heaving, ready to bellow the rafters down in search of the child, only to stop short.
“Your lordship.”
As Ian mentally fumbled about trying to locate the good manners of a charming host, his brain produced the thought: The lady with the anxious, pretty eyes.
“Miss Merrick.” Though not the Miss Merrick he’d met at the train station, or even the Miss Merrick he’d escorted from the coach. This Miss Merrick was clothed in a robe the exact shade between red and purple, a regal, substantial hue that flattered her black hair and perfect skin. She looked curiously luscious, with her hair piled on her head in a soft topknot, and her spectacles perched on her nose.
“I confess, my lord, to having lost my way.” Her smile was more self-conscious than worried. “I was looking for the bathing chamber.”
And while another woman might have been mortified to be caught wandering the hall in a robe, Ian suspected Miss Merrick was more troubled by the loss of her bearings.
He offered her his arm—she was clothed from neck to ankles, for God’s sake, and the house was swarming with people. “It’s easy to get turned about in this house. When I was a boy visiting my grandfather, I delighted in discovering new rooms and hidden stairways.”
And now he was hard put not to resent the entire property.
“Did you also delight in your first experience with train travel? Boys do, I’m told.”
Boys were likely a species of noisy, dirty savage to her. “I take it train travel does not appeal to you?”
When he expected her to rap out some sniffy answer, she looked thoughtful. “I enjoy the sense of mobility, of being able to flee my surrounds for a bit of coin. Having come hundreds of miles though, I find I want nothing so much as the solitude, stillness, and fragrance of a hot bath.”
Interesting, that she did not profess a desire for her home. “You’re in luck then, because we’ve a monstrous roof cistern, and the old chimneys, stairwells, and priest holes were such that installing some water closets wasn’t too much work.”
Though it had been expensive. Holy God, had it been expensive. Only Mary Fran’s threat to lead a mutiny—from laundry, to kitchens, to gardens—had seen the renovations done.
“Who is this? He looks like a younger version of you.”
She’d paused before another extravagance, though this one, Ian was dearly glad for. “That fellow is my older brother, Asher, just before he took ship for Canada.”
“A solemn young man, though quite comely.”
Solemn? They’d been reeling from the effects of the potato blight, reeling from Mary Fran’s scandal with the wretched Captain His Bloody English Lordship Flynn, and reeling from Grandfather’s inchoate decline.
“He had much to be solemn about.” And the New World had given him only more to be solemn about. “The bathing chamber is this way.”
She did not immediately move away from the painting, but stood for another moment, studying a portrait of a young man in Highland attire—not the full regalia; Asher had balked at that notion. Asher had been gaunt, serious to a fault, and proud. Ian hoped the pride at least remained to his brother.
“You have much to be solemn about too,” she remarked when she at last deigned to continue their progress.
Ian mustered a smile. “I have much to take pleasure in as well. I’ve acquired neighbors most fortuitously, we own one of the prettiest patches of ground in God’s creation, and my family enjoys good health.”
“You own it.”
Shrewd and noticing—not an endearing combination in a female.
“I am Scottish, Miss Merrick. Everything I do, I do in the name of my family.” Even finding lost spinsters and guiding them on their way. “Your bathing chamber.”
Ian peeked in and saw that soap, towels, and all the other expensive items Mary Fran claimed were necessary for a lady’s bath had been laid out. “Has anyone shown you how to work the taps?”
“No.”
And from the look on her face, she would perish of excessive train travel before she’d ask.
“It’s not complicated.” Ian moved into the marble temple to cleanliness and refined English sensibilities and felt Miss Merrick mincing along behind him. “The one on the right is the cold, the one on the left, hot. You start with cold because the boiler can be cranky, and…”
He trailed off, turning both taps only to find someone hadn’t opened the upper valves. In the small confines of the water closet, he had to reach over Miss Merrick’s head—her hair bore the scent of lemon verbena and coal smoke—to open the feeder taps.
The next few moments happened in a series of impressions.
First came the sensation of the door thwacking into Ian from behind. A stout blow more unexpected than painful, but enough to make him stumble forward.
Then, Fiona’s voice, muttering the Gaelic equivalent of “Beg pardon!” followed by a patter of retreating footsteps.
And then, in Ian’s male brain, the woman with the pretty, anxious eyes became the woman who was soft, lush, and still beneath Ian’s much greater weight.
She didn’t push him away. She didn’t even touch him. The sole indication that his weight was any imposition as he flattened her to the wall, that the impropriety of the moment was any imposition, was her closed eyes.
The final impression threatened to part Ian from his reason: her breasts, heaving against
his chest. In preparation for her bath, she’d left off her stays, and the feminine abundance pressed against Ian ambushed his wits.
Shrewd, noticing, and astoundingly well endowed.
When he wanted to press closer, Ian pushed himself away with one hand on the wall and made sure both feeder taps were open. “I do beg your pardon, Miss Merrick.”
“A mishap only. I stumbled upon leaving the coach.”
She would recall that, while Ian had thought nothing of it. His damned male parts were thinking at a great rate now, and all because…
He wasn’t sure why, though lengthy deprivation might have something to do with his reaction—and pretty eyes.
“The valves are open, but mind the hot water.”
She nodded, and Ian got the hell out of there before he said something even more stupid.
Two
Willard Daniels watched his firstborn son and heir put an empty glass back on the tray where the decanter—now considerably less full than it had been an hour ago—sat winking in the early evening sunshine.
The boy had graceful hands, which was no compliment. Soldiering was supposed to knock the fancy out of a man, but five years in the light cavalry hadn’t quite gotten rid of a certain elegance—fussiness, more like—in the next Baron of Altsax… and Gribbony.
Which was why the summer’s real objective was something Willard would keep to himself. Matthew had an inconveniently generous dollop of scruples rattling around with all the logic and military strategy in his handsome head. It ruined him, like the red highlights in his blond hair, the slight air of diffidence in his mannerisms, the tendency to silence and distance when a peer of the realm sought and was entitled to hearty assurances from his own son.
Disappointment, Altsax had long ago learned to live with, but failure was out of the question. Before Genie or Hester married that buffoon of an earl, before they married anybody, the problem of their aging and awkward cousin was going to be resolved—permanently—lest the Daniels’s family finances and social standing continue to be threatened by Augusta Merrick’s very existence. She’d turned down the only other possible solution—marriage to Matthew, offered half in jest—though seeing how the pair of them had matured, Altsax had to be grateful. Even his brooding disappointment of a son deserved better than that wretched woman, cousin or not.
The Bridegroom Wore Plaid Page 2