Such musings were enough to inspire a man to drain the remaining whisky from the decanter.
To be drunk at dinner would be the height of bad form the first night under the earl’s roof, but then, dinner wasn’t going to be for at least an hour. Willard reached for the decanter and offered a private though quite sincere toast to the success of his own schemes.
***
One of the blessings of entertaining wealthy English aristocracy for weeks on end was that Ian could feed his own household well. For a few months of summer and early fall, there were frequent servings of good Aberdeen Angus beef, the occasional lamb, roasted cuts of pork, chicken too young to be anything but tender, and—reason enough to thank God—not a hint of mutton.
Though there had been many times in Ian’s life when even a thin mutton stew would have been a fair trade for his soul.
Perhaps it had been a fair trade, which was why he was rubbing elbows in evening finery—the kilted version, and bedamned to English fashion—with the half-drunk baron, his tight-lipped son, and his determinedly cheerful womenfolk.
Save the spinster. She at least had the sense to keep to her rooms, where she no doubt was feeding portions of beef to her cat.
The baron rose to his feet a little unsteadily and directed a questioning glance to Ian. “The ladies having departed for their tea and gossip, shall we to the decanter?”
“Of course.” But Ian saw Connor eyeing the food uneaten on the Baron’s plate. More for the kirk in town, though if they knew it was food served to an Englishman, likely even the wretched poor of Aberdeenshire would turn their noses up at it.
“This is first-rate drink,” Matthew Daniels said when all five men were lounging around the library. “Have you ever considered exporting it?”
“Now that’s an interesting proposition,” Connor replied, sparing Ian the trouble. “There is a market for decent whisky, but there’s also a heavy tax imposed, usually at both ends…”
Daniels the Younger launched into a surprisingly intelligent debate with Con and Gil about the risks and rewards of exporting whisky, while the Baron—drink in hand—sidled over to where Ian stood by the window.
“That boy.” The baron expelled a heavily fumed breath. “Talking trade after dinner with the locals. I wash my hands of him.” He turned a long-suffering gaze on his drink, drained the contents, then set the empty glass on the windowsill with a little bang.
“Shall I refresh your drink, Baron?”
“Yes, b’gad. Traveling leaves a man parched, particularly with all them damned, plaguey females. Speaking of which?”
Ian glanced at his guest while he poured a half tumbler of whisky for the baron. He’d chosen the decanter kept farther back along the sideboard, the one reserved for sots who would not be offended by a younger brew. The container itself was fancy and kept just as meticulously dusted as its confreres, but Ian would not have served the contents to Mary Fran’s prize sows.
“This is a special batch,” Ian said, which was true. “Not for everyday consumption. I’d go slowly.”
“Must say”—the baron took a hefty swallow—“for a Scot, you know how to treat your custom.”
“My guests,” Ian corrected gently.
The baron lifted his glass for another sip then turned to face the window. “As I was saying, about the ladies.”
Was business to be broached this soon? A part of Ian was relieved to think the Misses Daniels’s father was so determined to see them settled; another part of him was appalled at the man’s lack of couth. Not under Ian’s roof twelve hours, and already, before it was even apparent Ian would suit his daughter, Altsax was opening negotiations.
“About the ladies?” Ian drawled, joining the baron at the window. Behind them, the younger men had escalated the discussion of whisky exportation into a round of “You damned English/You bloody Scots,” which was great good fun, provided nobody started pounding on anybody indoors.
Mary Fran frowned mightily on broken furniture.
Ian watched as, out on the terrace, Mary Fran started laughing at something Mrs. Redmond had said.
The baron leaned closer, his breath enough to knock a grown man on his arse.
“Just how widowed is your sister, Balfour? She’s a toothsome wench, if a man isn’t put off by all that red hair. And widows tend to be grateful and enthusiastic, y’know what I mean?”
And by greatest bad luck, the baron had spoken in the overloud confidences of a drunk, his comment falling into one of those peculiar lulls in the other conversation that ensured even the footman at the library door had heard him.
Ian glanced over at his brothers, seeing Con’s lips thinning and Gil’s hand already on Con’s arm.
The insult to Mary Fran had been plain enough that Matthew Daniels’s expression had gone from almost genial to the blank, offended mask at which the English excelled, and everybody in the room was looking at Ian.
The baron wiggled his eyebrows and elbowed Ian in the ribs. “Well?”
***
Morning came blessedly, beautifully early during a Scottish summer, just as sunset came only gradually and late.
This allowed a man playing host to a group of silly English to get in a few hours of meaningful work before appearing in his finery at breakfast. It also allowed him to stay up late tending to correspondence, and to grab what sleep he needed during the brief darkness.
And it permitted him a solitary ride just as the sun was cresting the horizon, a little time to enjoy the natural beauty of dawn in one of the prettiest places on earth, when he’d otherwise brood about the need to ignore slights to his sister from half-inebriated guests.
Ian had scrabbled for some patience and signaled Daniels to get his dear papa up to bed, though the thought of the Baron as a father-in-law was nauseating.
Each year it felt a little more like this was what Ian’s life would be: scrabbling for patience, scrabbling to keep up appearances, scrabbling to make ends meet, scrabbling to keep what was left of his branch of the clan together, scrabbling to come up with yet another scheme to wrest coin from some new source for the upkeep of the hall and its inhabitants, scrabbling to hold onto hope that Asher would come home.
He should be introduced as the Earl of Scrabbling.
Soon, in support of these burdens, he’d acquire a countess. Even as the Balfour spare, Ian had accepted he’d eventually marry, and marriage to a practical Scotswoman willing to shoulder some of Ian’s burden would have been lovely. Women like Mary Fran understood hard work, sacrifice, and by God, they understood loyalty.
Even that comfort was to be denied him. Eugenia Daniels was pretty enough, but only in a pale, blond, English way. A night in Ian’s bed would likely break her in two and leave her crying for her mother—assuming he could muster any enthusiasm for her intimate company.
Ian’s morose thoughts were interrupted by a lone figure emerging from the shadows at the back of the house. A woman…
He watched the figure striding confidently along the path into the gardens. She was tall, with a long, glossy black braid hanging down the middle of her back. The end of the plait danced in counterpoint to her walk, swinging up rhythmically with each footfall.
Bloody damn. He recognized the beige shawl with the black fringe and nudged Hannibal into a trot.
“Good morning, Miss Merrick.”
She stopped abruptly, her back to him, while Ian dismounted and stuffed his riding gloves into his pockets. He tied up his reins and gave Hannibal a gentle slap on the quarters.
“He won’t wander off?” She’d turned, the shawl clutched around her shoulders.
“He’s Scottish bred. He’ll wander directly to the nearest ration of oats.” Ian offered a smile because the lady looked flustered. “Come, Miss Merrick, and we’ll walk.
The gardens show to advantage in morning light.”
Her eyes flicked to the back of the house, and Ian felt a sinking sensation in his chest, which by now he should be adept at ignoring. It was one thing to stumble across him in a back corridor, but she didn’t want to be seen walking with him so early in the day, perhaps not at any point in the day.
He took pity on her—she was a lady and not responsible for the prejudices of her sheltered upbringing. “If we take this path to the left, we will not be seen.”
Her chin came up, those disconcerting gentian eyes meeting his gaze. “It isn’t what you think, my lord.”
It never was with proper English ladies.
“What do I think?” He took her hand—devoid of gloves—and placed it on his arm, feeling a spark of—something, something that wasn’t entirely gentlemanly—in doing so.
“You think I am reluctant to be seen in company with a single gentleman at an improper hour out-of-doors.”
Only the English could make a gorgeous, rural dawn improper. “Early morning is the best part of the day,” he said. “It’s the only part of the day we haven’t already mucked up with our fretting and strutting and carrying on.”
“Yes.” She stopped and peered up at him, an odd moment. She looked so long and so thoroughly, it took Ian a moment to realize, without her spectacles, she might have difficulty seeing. “That’s why I was out, because it’s too pretty to stay shut up in that room with Ulysses. But what you think…”
It was his turn to peer at her, until manners saved him and he turned her by the arm to begin their walk. He got her behind the tall privet hedge, where they’d have some privacy, and felt her relax marginally beside him.
“I have a certain place in the family,” she said, slipping her arm free of his to take a seat on a wooden bench. “Won’t you sit for a minute?”
Now that they were private, she wanted to sit with him?
But she clearly did. Her expression was so earnest, her violet eyes solemnly entreating him to spend a little time with her, probably to assuage her lady’s conscience.
Ian sat a proper distance away from her, despite the devilish temptation to rattle her by sitting too close.
“Thank you.” She let the shawl drape down to her elbows. “I am mindful, Lord Balfour, that you are considering a match with my cousin.”
“I am expected to marry,” he said carefully, because the mind of woman was a labyrinthine mystery, and this woman could queer his only shot at the Daniels’s dowry.
She nodded once. “Of course you must take a wife, but Eugenia is hesitant to marry anybody. She’s had three Seasons and any number of offers, but her mama is determined she should have a title.”
Ian knew this much, so he kept his silence.
“Genie is young and has odd, modern notions that marriage ought not to serve material purposes. Either that, or her parents’ example has disheartened her regard for marriage generally.” Miss Merrick’s cheeks colored slightly at these admissions.
“May I be blunt?” Because he did not have all morning to exchange civilities with this woman, even if it did appear the Lord had given her a wealth of shining dark hair to go with her pretty, solemn eyes.
“Please. Most people are blunt with me, and I’m not as easy to shock as you might think.”
Oh, right. Of course not.
“Is it marriage your cousin objects to, or the intimacies expected of a wife?”
Her eyebrows rose, but only that. Ian waited on her answer, because a marriage in name only would be a relief of a sort—also a bitter curse.
“Now that you raise the possibility,” the lady said slowly, “I suspect there is aversion to the… intimacies, though both Julia and I have tried to reassure Genie that her fears are groundless.”
“I gather, then, that you do not oppose the match?” And what would a spinster know of those intimacies?
“I cannot oppose a good match for my cousin. You see, your lordship, I am living the alternative to a congenial marriage. I have given Genie my word I will not maneuver her into a situation where her choices are taken from her, but if you and she were respectfully disposed toward each other, in my heart I would have to support the match. You would be kind to her?”
Kindness? What place had kindness in a discussion of money and security for his family and their kin? But looking into a pair of earnest violet eyes, Ian realized he had something in common with this woman.
She was lonely and alone even among her family. She was more alone with family around her, in fact. He reached over and lifted her shawl around her shoulders.
“You’ll take cold in the morning damp.”
Still, she watched him, waiting on his answer.
“I know little of kindness, Miss Merrick, but I understand honor, and I understand that a smile and an encouraging word can foster good relations when silence and criticism do not. Women are deserving of every consideration. I would show my wife nothing less than perfect courtesy.”
She shuddered, likely not at the brisk morning air. “Courtesy can be the unkindest cut, you know. My uncle excels at such courtesy, my aunt as well.”
So he had this in common with her too—a distaste for Willard Daniels.
“Marriage would spare you their dubious courtesy, so why aren’t you married, then?” Without her hair scraped into a bun or that pinchy expression to her mouth, without her glasses, she wasn’t at all bad looking, nor was she as old as Ian had first thought. And those eyes…
“I had a Season.” She said this the way an old soldier might talk about besting a worthy enemy on a faraway battlefield, her eyes going soft and distant. “I had my come-out, I had a Season like every girl dreams of, but then my parents died, Papa then Mama, and the mourning took two years. By the time I was ready to resume my place in Society, my situation had changed.”
He let a silence stretch—not uncomfortable, with her sitting beside him—and moved puzzle pieces around in his mind.
Her situation had changed because when her mourning was over, her cousin Genie had been preparing to emerge from the schoolroom, and it was Genie’s papa, not Miss Merrick’s grandfather, who would control the purse strings, and both English and Scottish baronial titles.
“Your uncle refused to dower you.”
She looked down at her hands where they rested in her lap, her shawl again slipping to her elbows. “Perhaps.”
Ian followed the line of her gaze, noting that from beneath the damp hem of her nondescript walking dress, he could see the first two naked toes of her right foot.
A lady of hidden daring, then. He stifled a smile and brought his attention back to the conversation. “Miss Merrick. I have a sister, I have a young niece, and more cousins than you can count. I understand that family can be a trial.”
She nodded, eyes still downcast. “Uncle explained he would have the support of me for all my years, and then he did the math. Several Seasons plus a dowry would be a much greater burden on the barony than were I to accept the alternative, and he did give me the option of marriage to my cousin Matthew.”
Interesting tactic on the baron’s part. Ian stored that insight away for further consideration.
“You were not inclined, Miss Merrick? Her Majesty married a cousin, and the union appears to be prospering.”
“She married a cousin she’d never met until courting was in the air. Matthew was like a brother to me growing up, and I could not do that to him, not even for the promise of children and the eventual title of baroness. So I am a poor relation, and larking about half clad in the morning dew does not comport with my role.”
A minor puzzle formed in Ian’s mind: children and a title were probably the greatest inducements that could have been dangled before her, a gently bred English lady—and she’d turned t
hem down.
“I understand costumes and roles.” He reached over to pull her shawl up around her shoulders yet again, as she seemed determined to let the thing fall where it may. “I’m disguised as an earl, for example, one who’s pleased to open his home to guests each summer when Her Majesty is in residence next door.”
It was an admission. Not one he’d planned to make, but her smile told him she was pleased to accept it.
“You should not judge yourself for taking Uncle’s coin. He’s a trial on a good day, and he’ll dine out on his summer with the Queen for years.”
“And I’m not really an earl, not yet.” He glanced over to make sure she was paying attention, because this truth was one he did not want hidden. “My half brother, Asher, holds the title, but he’s been missing for almost seven years. We’ve started the proceedings for having him declared legally dead, though at the last moment, I expect him to come strolling off a boat, thanking me for my impersonation of him.”
“Uncle knows this. He’s been spying on you for a bit.”
A confidence for a confidence. Miss Merrick rose a notch in Ian’s estimation.
“Has he now? I suppose that’s to be expected.” And Miss Merrick no doubt feared such an uncle would also spy on his niece. “Come with me, and I’ll show you where you can pick up a trail in the woods that will allow you all the solitude you want, most of it within shouting distance of the house and stables.”
“Another time perhaps.” She rose, her expression genuinely rueful. “If I’m seen gadding about with my hair in disarray and my hems getting soaked, there will be questions at breakfast. You won’t tattle?”
This was important to her, her eyes suggesting it was tantamount to a matter of safety and peace of mind.
He got to his feet. “A gentleman would never reveal a lady’s confidences, Miss Merrick. Never.”
The Bridegroom Wore Plaid Page 3