***
Con paused in his mucking to eye his older brother. “What’s that?”
“What does it look like? A dead cat.” Ian laid the animal on a bench then hung his jacket on a bridle hook. “Miss Augusta’s old beast, by whom she set a great deal of store.”
“And the fresh Scottish air did him in?”
“He was old.”
Con considered his brother, who’d buried his share of pets and people. They both had. “Shall I get a shovel?”
“Nah…” Ian eyed the cat. “Well, yes. It will go more quickly with the two of us planting him, and Augusta asked that we mark the spot with a bit of heather.”
“You mean, go pick some heather to lay on the grave?” Their estate boasted showy, expensive gardens full of flowers more impressive than simple, unassuming heather.
“Dig up some heather to plant along with the old bugger.” Ian disappeared into the saddle room and emerged carrying two shovels. “Where did you and the pretty widow get off to this morning, little brother? We had some excitement when Miss Genie wrenched her ankle.”
Con’s brows rose as he realized he’d not gotten his story properly rehearsed in his head before he was supposed to recite his lines. And what popped out of his ignorant gob?
“We got lost.”
Ian passed him the pair of shovels, grinning like an older brother ready to have some fun at a younger sibling’s expense. “You got lost. You, who’ve rambled and roamed every acre of the shire and every inch of this estate. You got lost.”
As they ambled down the barn aisle, Con carrying two shovels, Ian carrying the cat, Ian went on. “Did you have to look for the way home under the widow’s skirts, Connor?”
“It wasn’t like that.” Though perhaps it might have been, if Con hadn’t gotten so damned angry. Despite her demure and unassuming femininity, Julia Redmond was not a shy woman.
“So she’s making you work for it?” Ian cuffed him good-naturedly on the shoulder. “That’s only fair. They’ve been here all of two days, and ladies like determination in their followers.”
“Would ye shut up?”
“I’ll shut up until we see Gilgallon. He’ll be concerned that a fellow who can track deer through a dense Highland fog can’t find his way home in his own backyard.”
As they crossed to the woods behind the stables, Connor had the sense Ian was just getting started.
“All right,” Con said, eyes resolutely on the woods ahead. “We argued.”
Ian paused, his expression incredulous. “You don’t argue with the guests, me dear. You are Connor MacDean MacGregor, the brooding youngest son. You barely give the ladies the time of day, no matter how fetching they are. Addles them, it does. Your melancholy, hard-to-get posturing drives them to distraction until Gil can step in and apprise them of the alternatives.”
“Gil doesn’t dally with guests either, though thank God the man’s an accomplished flirt.”
“What did you argue about?”
“Argue?” Con blinked. “Argue, yes. About.”
“Connor MacGregor, have you been overimbibing?”
“If the whisky’s decent, there’s no such thing. We argued about money. About how to make money.”
And that gave his grinning, teasing older brother pause. “That’s probably not gentlemanly, Con, though precious little that’s any fun is gentlemanly. This will do.”
Ian had led them to the place they’d reserved as boys for the interment of beloved pets. “This is the family plot, Ian, more or less. You sure Miss Merrick’s old mouser deserves such an honor?”
Ian laid the cat gently on the earth. “I’m not sure he ever exerted himself to catch a mouse, not when he could swill cream and eat cakes with his lady. He caught her heart, though, so yes, he deserves the honor. Find the old boy a healthy bush of heather, why don’t you?”
Connor stalked off, intending to take a good long while to find the perfect bush. Digging a grave for a cat in the high summer was no great exertion, but if Con lingered in Ian’s vicinity, he was certain his brother would start in interrogating him again, and eventually, Connor might be tempted to spill the real reason he’d argued with Mrs. Redmond.
Money, indeed.
***
“I’d say this visit is going fairly well.”
Ian accepted a serving of tea from Mary Fran as he offered that observation, then passed the cup and saucer along to Gil—without taking a sip, for once. Gil concluded his older brother was as distracted as his younger brother, as distracted as Mary Fran.
Hell, they were all distracted.
“What makes you say that, Ian?” In the spirit of the general deception, Gil posed the question as casually as he could.
“I think I made a bit of progress with my intended this morning while we walked in the woods.”
To hide his consternation, Gil took a bracing sip of strong, hot tea.
“That was the purpose of the outing,” Mary Fran said. She held her teacup before her, then lifted it to her nose. “I do so enjoy it when we don’t have to reuse the tea leaves above stairs.”
Con declined a serving of tea and turned to scowl at the cold hearth. “There’s never enough whisky or wool to sell, never enough weeks of summer to sell, never enough of anything to sell.”
“Connor?” Ian regarded Con with an arched brow Gil had long ago learned presaged an interrogation. “I was under the impression we were making slow, steady progress toward better financial health. Is there something you haven’t been telling us?”
Con scrubbed a hand over his face then turned and sat on the raised hearth. “No.”
Mary Fran set her teacup down. “I saw you, Connor MacGregor.”
“Saw me?”
“I thought we didn’t dally with the guests.” Mary Fran let the fuse on that bomb burn down for a few silent moments, while Gil watched Con and Ian clear their throats and look nowhere in particular.
Gil stepped into the breach, feeling a stab of pity for Con. “She’s a widow, Mary Fran.”
“So you saw them too?”
“I did not.” No, Gil had been too busy fending off an attack from a different and unexpected quarter.
“Connor?” Ian’s voice was very soft. “Has the widow put you in difficulties by requesting hospitality you’re uncomfortable showing her?”
The relief on Con’s face was pathetic, but insight struck Gil at the question. Leave it to Ian to sort through all the innuendo and misapprehension to the truth.
“I’m not in difficulties,” Con said. “Not yet. She just… She caught me off guard. They aren’t like the ladies we’ve had up here before. At least, Mrs. Redmond isn’t.”
“You’ll tell us if you need reinforcements,” Ian said after a considering pause. “We need to stick together if we’re to weather this summer successfully, because you’re right: This bunch is different. It isn’t enough to let them catch a glimpse of Mrs. Peason, so they think they’ve seen the Queen. They’re going to be family, God willing, and they’ll solve a lot of problems for a lot of MacGregors. We’d best watch each other’s backs.”
Gil could not have agreed more.
***
Hester slipped her arm through Augusta’s as the ladies dispersed after their last cup of tea for the evening. “I need to talk to you, Cousin.”
Augusta nodded, for Hester was nothing if not tenacious, and avoiding the girl to go mope over a departed cat—or a few harmless kisses—was hardly doing the job Augusta had been brought along to do.
“Let’s fetch shawls and walk in the garden,” Augusta suggested. “The evening light lasts forever here, and the flowers are lovely.”
“Gil says that’s because the days are so long. The flowers explode during
the few months of pleasant weather because they have such a long winter to lie dormant.”
Dormant. The word landed in Augusta’s ear with particular resonance. Tending her garden down in Oxfordshire, she herself had gone dormant in some way she couldn’t quite articulate. She puzzled on this until Hester tugged her arm free.
“Aren’t we going to get shawls, Cousin?”
“We can manage without. The evening is quite mild.” The thought of the dratted tan-and-black shawl was more than Augusta could bear, especially when she beheld the beauty of the gardens in the fading light.
“Genie is going daft.” Hester at least waited until they’d cleared the terrace to announce this.
“Genie is in a delicate situation,” Augusta replied. “For some reason, she has a horror of marriage, and yet the earl would make a very suitable husband.” Wonderfully suitable, and for some reason this rankled. Augusta set this realization aside to consider in private.
“The earl’s title would make Genie a countess. That’s what’s suitable.”
As they strolled along, side by side, Augusta detected no rancor in Hester’s tone. “Are we out here to discuss your sister, Hester, or something else entirely?”
“Two things. Julia attacked Connor in the woods today.”
Augusta managed to keep her expression blank. “Attacked?”
“Pushed him right up against a tree, plastered herself to him from knees to neck—except he’s so much taller than she is, so it was more like breasts to belly—and started right in kissing him. They were not chaste kisses.” Hester’s recitation was remarkably factual, not a hint of glee or consternation about it. “Then she took his hand and… well. When he wasn’t having any of that, she put her hand in a location a lady isn’t supposed to even know how to mention, but I’ve heard the lads call it their—”
Augusta put a hand over Hester’s mouth. “Hush, child.”
Hester turned her head with Augusta’s hand still over her mouth. When Augusta dropped her hand, Hester’s expression remained serious. “My widowed chaperone is wandering in the woods, accosting gentlemen she’s known less than a week, and you call me a child?”
“Valid point.” Augusta linked their arms and resumed their progress.
“You aren’t outraged, Gussie?”
“Are you?”
Hester’s expression became perplexed. “I’m surprised, mostly. Aunt is such a nice woman. I never thought…”
“You never thought nice women dealt with the need for closeness and affection?”
Well, neither did I. But then a certain kind-hearted Scotsman had found her crying over her cat.
“I don’t think Aunt was looking for simple affection.”
“Do you judge her, Hester?”
Augusta waited, because Hester was family, and for some reason the girl’s assessment of the situation mattered. Augusta thought there’d be no answer when Hester dropped Augusta’s arm and strode forward to appropriate a bench near a border of low, pinkish-purple heather.
“I had a Season,” Hester said, arranging her skirts.
“And you were a great success.” Augusta took the place beside her cousin. “I think your success rattled Genie.”
“She’s a favorite. I was a deb. She should not have been rattled.” Hester spent another few minutes arranging her skirts just so. “I like kissing.”
Ah. Of course. “So do I, with the right gentleman.”
Hester’s head came up. The surprise in her eyes would have been comical, except it hurt a little to see it.
“So did I,” Augusta corrected herself. “Stealing a few kisses among the roses and shadows is one of the privileges of being out.”
Also one of the privileges of being an invisible chaperone.
Hester’s brows knit, and Augusta could see the wheels in her cousin’s mind turning.
“You’re still pretty, you know, Gussie. You could be wrestling men up against trees if you miss the kissing all that much.”
Assuredly not. She’d spent much of the day reminding herself that a whiff of that kind of behavior, and Uncle would send her home in disgrace. He’d been very blunt on that point. Very blunt.
Augusta brought her attention back to the matter at hand.
“You’re disappointed in your elders, Hester. That’s to be expected, but you must forgive us our flaws if you’re ever to accept the same peccadilloes in yourself.”
“So it’s all right to steal a kiss?”
What to say? This was ground Julia ought to be covering, a challenge a widow was far better equipped to handle.
“You don’t steal the kisses. They are stolen from you, but you must use great caution.”
“I know.” Hester hunched forward, elbows on her spread knees in a pose no lady ever assumed in company. “If anybody sees, if the gentleman can’t keep his mouth shut, if word should ever get out, I’m ruined.”
“The gentlemen generally keep such things to themselves, because the behavior reflects badly upon them, at least in Polite Society. I have my suspicions about what’s said among the men when the port is served.”
Hester gave a philosophical little shrug. “We gossip over tea; they gossip over port, brandy, or whisky.”
“There is danger in kisses, though, Hester.”
Hester turned her head to frown at Augusta over her shoulder. “Danger?”
Oh, for pity’s sake… “Men become impassioned, and their manners desert them.”
They took to begging and promising and begging harder, and a lady could lose her virtue in the time it took to brew a pot of tea. A furtive, slightly uncomfortable and very awkward end to years of proper behavior and careful upbringing, and a lady needn’t part with a stitch of her clothing to see it done.
But Augusta couldn’t put it like that to Hester.
“Maybe Aunt became impassioned.” Hester was frowning in thought. “Her manners were certainly nowhere in evidence.”
“Nor her dignity, I daresay.” But what would it be like, to be so carried away with passion that manners and dignity mattered naught? Connor was a very handsome man, almost as handsome as the earl.
Hester harrumphed out a sigh. “It’s silly, to be so hungry for kisses you take to accosting men in the woods.”
“Yes. I’m glad you can see that.” And what Augusta never wanted her cousin to see was that such behavior was the result of loneliness overcoming good sense, breeding, manners, and even sanity. Loneliness coupled with a sort of desperate courage and irresistible opportunity.
“This brings me to my second concern,” Hester said, sitting up.
“Have we resolved Julia’s situation to your satisfaction?”
“You’ll say something to her? I wouldn’t want her to get in trouble.”
“I’ll say something to her, but my guess is Connor is in the best position to say what needs to be said, and perhaps he already has.”
Hester’s face creased into a grin. “Suppose you’re right, and he’s plenty big enough to take care of himself. What I really need to discuss with you is this notion Genie has taken into her head to get herself ruined.”
“Ruined?” Augusta barely got the word out, so disconcerting was the very idea. “She can’t be ruined. Uncle will be wroth with me and Julia both if that should happen.”
“I overheard her discussing this with Gilgallon when he came by her sitting room to see about her ankle. She wants him to ruin her so she can’t marry respectably. She was begging him, in fact. I don’t think he was very taken with the notion.”
***
The baron had spent his morning in the library, some damned book about fowling pieces open before him as he’d waited for a shrieking chambermaid to rouse the alarm.
He�
��d been certain the English spinster would be found dead in her bedroom, or at the very least, quite, quite ill. Either outcome would do, because it would be little trouble to press a pillow over the face of a badly debilitated woman and finish the job in the dead of night.
The rest of the morning had passed, and no alarm had been raised.
When Augusta had sent word she’d take a tray in her room rather than join the family for luncheon, the baron had been encouraged. She was a damnably stubborn woman; likely even poison would have trouble overcoming such a constitution. The thought of laying flowers at her grave cheered him through the afternoon, flowers to celebrate a family fortune finally made secure.
Then she had appeared at dinner, pale and retiring as usual, her only comment that her cat appeared to have run off to go courting in the stables.
Well. So be it. Calibrating a dose of poison was tricky, a calculated risk. At least she’d be leaving her French doors unlocked as long as she fretted over her cat’s whereabouts. A man of parts who could think up one sound plan could easily think up two, or even three.
The baron excused himself from the dinner table and sat smoking cheroots on a bench in the garden. When he spied a certain plump scullery maid scurrying out into the gloaming with the slop pail for the hogs, he rose from his bench, pasted a smile on his face, adjusted himself in his trousers, and set a course to intercept his prey.
***
Augusta rolled over for the twentieth time in as many minutes and sat up.
She wasn’t going to fall asleep, and she wasn’t going to bother the kitchen at this hour to make her some warm milk—which, had she requested it, and had the kitchen provided it, she would have been sharing with her cat, had he still lived.
She sighed with the futility of that thought and grabbed her wrapper from the foot of the bed. The moon had risen and was spilling in through her French doors, which remained open despite the cat’s demise.
The air here was so fresh, so bracingly sweet and cool, Augusta let herself keep the doors cracked as a simple indulgence. Acting on impulse, she tossed the afghan—green-and-white plaid, of course—from her fainting couch over her shoulders and made her way to the terrace.
The Bridegroom Wore Plaid Page 8