“Balfour is not a curmudgeon.” It was half an answer. An intriguing half. “But what of you, Gus? Did you come on this outing expecting to enjoy yourself?”
Matthew had never been stupid. Augusta wondered what conclusions he’d drawn about her dealings with Ian, what he’d overheard, what he’d seen.
“I came expecting to provide some reinforcement to Julia as she tried to chaperone two girls in a strange household. I was not opposed to the idea of enjoying myself.”
He shook his head, pausing before a smaller work depicting three children playing with a brown-and-white spaniel. “When Altsax told me you’d decided to retire to the country rather than resume the social whirl, I was concerned for you. I didn’t think your parents would want you to make a shrine to their memories. I should have insisted you make at least one more try at finding your own spouse.”
“One more try?” What on earth had Uncle told him?
“After Post-Williams went to Altsax and said he’d accept a quiet wedding out of respect for your loss, the baron explained to him you weren’t willing to be rushed. And thus the man left the field, concluding you were trying to tell him you didn’t suit. It fell to me to listen to Henry’s drunken ramblings on the matter. He truly was fond of you, but I didn’t see as he had much choice. I gather you regard the matter differently?”
Somehow, she manufactured a reply. “I don’t hold it against him.” But what on earth was Matthew saying?
“He read me a letter he intended to send you. Pathetic, the things a man will say when he fancies his heart’s broken and there’s decent libation on hand. So why did you drag me up here?”
She could barely comprehend Matthew’s question, so thoroughly had his recitation disconcerted her. She cast back over her last discussion with Henry Post-Williams… He’d muttered things about having to speak with Uncle, their situation being very different from what he’d anticipated, and then he’d been gone, leaving it to Uncle and Aunt to explain his continued absence.
“Gus? Woolgathering?” Matthew was looking down at her, concern in his blue eyes.
“Your version of my distant past does not comport at all with my own recollections.”
“It wasn’t that long ago.” His frown deepened, which meant he was applying his mind to the situation. Matthew had a formidable mind, so Augusta seized on a formidable distraction.
“Why are you hovering around Mary Fran?”
His eyebrows rose then crashed down. “I am not hovering around her so much as hovering in the vicinity of my father.”
“Uncle?”
“He made an inappropriate advance toward her earlier in our stay. She did not inform her brothers, or Genie’s chances at the earl would have been thoroughly queered by now.”
“And Uncle quite possibly called to task for his misstep.”
Just then, Augusta would not have minded seeing her uncle brought up short. What could he possibly have been about, to chase Henry off under false pretenses when the love and consideration of a devoted husband would have been such a comfort to her? She’d written Henry no letters—a proper young lady would not have corresponded with a young man not of her family. So what if they’d had to live humbly? She was living humbly and virtually alone in Oxford—alone with a pesky lot of chickens.
“Insulting your hostess, and an earl’s daughter at that is not a misstep, Gus. It comes closer to being a fatal error.”
“Nobody duels anymore. Her Majesty frowns on it.”
“This is Scotland, not the civilized confines of Kent. Nobody thinks it’s his right to prey on any female he sees, and yet Altsax easily could.”
There was a curious bitterness beneath Matthew’s observation.
“Why not let your father deal with the consequences of his actions and be on your merry way? You’ve seen that Balfour will not force Genie to the altar.”
Balfour would force himself to the altar though, and he’d woo Genie’s consent once he realized Genie’s life would be hell if she failed to marry the earl.
Matthew sighed and walked off a few paces to study a portrait of some fellow in bright blue-and-red tartan regalia. The figure in the portrait looked a little like Ian, but this older Scot’s fierceness was almost decorative compared to Ian’s. Ian’s ferociousness was kept leashed, kept buried only to surface in his devotion to his family—and in his kisses.
“I do not want any titles, Gus. I never have. The title was the stated reason I was jerked away from my regiment at a time when intelligent leadership would have made a difference in the fighting. The needless, lunatic bloodshed—”
He stopped and closed his eyes, then joined his hands behind his back and clasped them tightly.
“Matthew?”
“I digress.” He let out a pent-up breath and turned to face her. “I do not care for any titles, Gus. The Lords is mostly a waste of time. The common man is running this country more each day, the monarchy is becoming an anachronism, and the peerage with it.”
She stared at him, wondering at the man he’d become. “Why, Matthew. I do believe you are a radical. This is so… unexpected. And so heartening.”
“Heartening? I’m afraid Altsax wouldn’t agree with you. He scoffs at my interest in trade and considers agricultural science a contradiction in terms.”
“Uncle is old school. But, Matthew?”
“Cousin?”
“Why did you never come visit me in Oxford?”
Before this surprising exchange with him, she hadn’t realized it mattered, though it did. It mattered, and it hurt that her remaining family had shunned her, hurt in the way of a familiar ache for which no treatment had been availing.
He cocked his head in puzzlement. “You wanted your privacy. Mama and Altsax insisted I respect that. You never answered my letters or Genie’s. After a couple of years, we just gave up.”
She’d never received any letters, except a few from Hester, who would have been off at school. “I gave up too.”
Unease coiled low in her belly. It was one thing to conclude she’d had no understanding of her parents’ complicated financial estates, but Matthew’s words suggested her correspondence and her marital prospects had been tampered with as well.
And her uncle—Matthew’s own father—would have been in a position to do that tampering, but why would he have done such a thing?
Matthew considered her from closer range. “There’s more you’re not telling me. With Genie and Hester, I can winkle their confessions out of them, though Hester’s getting more stubborn. With you, I could never tell what you were thinking.”
“Sometimes, I hardly know what to think.”
“Are you trying to find a way to warn me off Lady Mary Fran? I won’t be offended if you are, but I’ll be disappointed.”
“Warn you off?” For pity’s sake, she’d been so absorbed in her own situation she’d hardly considered… “She’s a wonderful woman, Matthew. Don’t let anybody or anything warn you off, least of all Uncle’s fuming and carrying on.”
“We are agreed on that.”
The relief in his eyes was touching. Such a soldier he’d become, but he remained her cousin too. Still, it was with Ian she wanted to discuss these revelations, not with her own family.
Matthew went back to studying the Highlander. “I haven’t said anything to anybody yet about my interest in Mary Fran. I don’t intend to either, not until the lady gives me some encouragement.”
Ah. A proud soldier, the best and most determined kind. “Perhaps, Cousin, I can aid your cause.”
He shot a look over his shoulder that would have been hopeful had it not been so hesitant. “I am not in the habit of refusing aid, not in something that counts for so very much.”
“Then leave me the occasional moment alone with
Mary Fran. She and I have things to discuss.”
And he was a prudent soldier too. He escorted Augusta back to the library and retreated without asking even one more question.
***
“No. Try again.” Mary Fran sat across Ian’s desk from Augusta, speaking very slowly and clearly in Gaelic. “Beloved of my heart.”
Augusta mimicked her, and Mary Fran grinned. “You’re getting there. It isn’t a prissy language, it’s a passionate language. You can’t be standing guard over every vowel and consonant. You must go by ear and by feeling. What’s next?”
For a spinster, Miss Augusta’s choice of vocabulary was odd: Please. Thank you. Thank you most graciously. I love you. All very prosaic, but then: I desire you. I need you. Love me—in the second person singular emphatic command form.
Shocking, really, but the woman had saved Fee’s life, and when asked for a few lessons in Gaelic, Mary Fran had hardly been in a position to refuse.
“You have to do me a small kindness,” Mary Fran said when Augusta had mastered her phrases for the day.
“Of course. Name it.” Augusta smiled as she spoke, making it hard to recall the woman was English. She didn’t look English, not with that lustrous black hair and those odd violet eyes. She didn’t smile English either.
“I like to make sure my guests are accommodated in all ways possible.” Mary Fran tidied up Ian’s stack of correspondence to give her hands something to do. “I was curious about some of Mr. Daniels’s preferences.”
Mary Fran felt her face heating while Augusta’s smile became a grin.
“I’ve known Matthew all my life. Ask away.”
“What is his favorite dessert?”
Miss Augusta was so generous with her replies, so detailed and thorough, that an hour later, Mary Fran was still taking notes.
***
After a morning of struggling for conversation with his intended, Ian was hardly inclined to humor her glowering older brother. What Ian wanted—what his soul shrieked at him to do—was to find Augusta and kiss the daylights out of her. And if he couldn’t do that, then he wanted simply to behold her. To feast his eyes on her female shape, to catch a hint of the lilac-and-meadow scent of her to hoard up in his memory against all the years they’d be apart.
He did not want to exchange pleasantries with Young Daniels or hear a lecture from the man about an earl’s responsibility to curb his widowed sister’s rapacious tendencies with the fellows.
“A word with you, my lord?”
“This way.” Ian gestured toward the gardens and purposely did not turn behind the privet hedge. “I trust you’re enjoying your stay?”
Best give the man a broad opening and get it over with.
“Immensely. Your hospitality is superb and your family a delight.”
Ian glanced over sharply. Englishmen stole and cheated as if the world was owed to them in its entirety. They could lie too, but they didn’t lie well. They’d never had to learn the knack, when they could just pillage and plunder under legal decrees instead. Young Daniels was smiling a soft, genuine, introspective smile. He wasn’t even trying to lie.
Mary Fran hadn’t run him through yet, poor bastard.
“I’m pleased to hear you’re having a fine time. So how may I be of service to you?” Please God, don’t let the damned man be asking to court Mary Fran. Daniels was English, and she’d show him not one shred of mercy.
“As a man considering offering for my sister, you are in a position to make certain inquiries.”
“I am.” After tossing and turning half the night, Ian had gotten up at dawn and started drafting those inquiries. He wasn’t nearly finished.
“I trust you will find all in order with respect to the barony’s finances, my lord, but I have occasion to feel some concern regarding my cousin’s situation.”
“Your… cousin?” Ian’s irritation vanished, replaced with a taut focus. “Miss Augusta?”
Daniels nodded, his expression hard to read. “Shall we sit?”
Damned English and their infernal good manners. “Of course.”
Ian’s guest sauntered over to the nearest bench, which was at least in shade and not visible from the house. He flipped out his tails, shot his cuffs, and generally tormented Ian with his fussing.
“What I’m going to relate to you is a family matter, one that has troubled me for some time. You’re courting my sister, or working up to it. Years ago there was another man, Henry Post-Williams, in a similar posture regarding my cousin. I think you’d be well within your rights to make some inquiries, because the situation was all but solemnized, and he withdrew his suit. My hands are tied, you understand.”
Ian nodded once to show he did understand. Altsax would not countenance his heir asking difficult questions. Young Daniels frowned as if gathering his thoughts for a moment then went on.
“Post-Williams was a decent fellow of modest means, but he was smitten, and I thought Gus was too… Truly smitten.”
Ian listened. He didn’t listen like a suitor intent on finding leverage before undertaking settlement negotiations—though he could smell leverage playing right into his hands. He listened like a lawyer, sifting facts and details, putting things in sequence and measuring cause and effect. He asked a few questions and listened some more.
When Daniels had thoroughly unburdened himself, Ian had to concede the Englishmen had been right to be troubled.
Bloody damned troubled.
And to hell with polite epistles to various solicitors and connections of his aunt’s in the South. Ian dashed those off—going into battle against an unscrupulous enemy a man needed every weapon he could find—but when the letters were posted, Ian also sent off a note to his neighbors.
***
“This is preposterous! Pre-posterous!” The baron slammed his glass down on the sideboard for emphasis. “The negotiations have opened, Balfour. You can’t tell me now you need time for further inquiries.”
“I only just met the young lady, Baron.” Balfour might be a barbarian in kilted evening attire, but he could affect a convincing lordly drawl. “Of course I have additional inquiries. Then too, I’ve only just met you.”
Damn the man! He put a world of innuendo into his tone and took a leisurely sip of his drink. The baron made a show of pacing to the window, where the interminable Scottish evening was coming to a close, the fading light showing the grounds to spectacular advantage.
Altsax had chosen so carefully. Chosen a man whose holdings were distant from Kent and London, a man who spent very little time anywhere but on his own property. He’d chosen from the Scottish peerage—a minor aristocracy if ever there was one—but grabbed for the highest title he could find. And the whole point of that careful sifting and sorting had been to ensure there would be no questions.
Balfour was supposed to be pathetically grateful for his good fortune, ask no questions, and cheerfully bestow his damned title on an obedient and unprotesting new wife.
The baron turned back to his host. They’d see who could condescend to whom. “You’re looking for a way to cry off. Not well done of you, Balfour.”
“I can hardly cry off when there’s no betrothal yet, can I? More brandy?” Balfour lifted an elaborately cut crystal decanter in one hand, the one he’d referred to as distinctive.
“Just a bit.”
Altsax let a silence stretch while he watched Balfour pour the amber liquid into his glass. Rather than bring him his drink, though, Balfour put the stopper in the decanter and left the baron’s serving sitting on the sideboard.
“I’ve directed my solicitors into the usual areas of interest,” Balfour said. “Finances, social standing, voting record in Parliament.”
“Voting record? A man votes his conscience and his duty, Balfo
ur. My voting record can be of no interest to you.” Not that the baron troubled himself to vote unless the issue affected his own pocketbook.
“One wouldn’t want to publicly oppose one’s father-in-law on the important issues, would one?” Balfour frowned at his drink. “That’s assuming I ever join the Scottish delegation to the Lords and find the strength to tear myself away from my doting wife, hmm?”
Instincts served a man of sophistication and parts as well as education and shrewd observation, and the baron’s instincts were telling him something in the wind had shifted. Genie was spending most of her Scottish holiday in her damned room, not in flirtation with Balfour.
And earlier this week, Balfour had taken most of a morning to march around the hills with an opinionated spinster of limited means—and even more limited life expectancy.
Starting a rockslide that might have ended the earl’s life along with Augusta’s hadn’t been the most prudent course. Altsax could admit that in hindsight, but this dithering and questioning…
An idea bloomed in the baron’s awareness, a connection between seemingly unrelated events. If Augusta were to die in the near future, Genie would be cast into mourning. The wedding would have to be immediate and very quiet—very inexpensive—or the earl would have to wait at least a year for his money.
One didn’t generally mourn a cousin for a year, but one could. If one were very devoted to that cousin, one certainly could.
Altsax crossed the room to pick up his drink and salute Balfour graciously. “Make your inquiries, Balfour. Take all the time you need. When we’re enjoying your hospitality so thoroughly, what’s the rush?”
Though Genie was going to have done with cowering in her room. Rebellious females weren’t attractive to anybody.
***
Ian had thought meals were the worst. The long, leisurely suppers where the best of the estate’s produce was put before strangers to be consumed without thought on their part, and a parody of gracious company was manufactured for hours on end.
Augusta shot him curious looks, not hurt, not angry, but… considering. He tried not to look at her at all, but failed miserably. His body seemed know where she was even when his gaze was resolutely turned elsewhere.
The Bridegroom Wore Plaid Page 18