“I beg your pardon.”
The object of Ian’s frustration—and his preoccupation and his delight—stopped just inside the library door, limned in the soft light of early afternoon. “My lord, I wasn’t aware you were still working in here. Shall I leave?”
Yes.
“Come in. I’ve just finished my correspondence for the day.” He rose and came around the desk, lest she see the piles of paper putting the lie to his words. “Can I help you find a book?”
So polite they were, but she seemed amused by it. “Or answer a question.”
He did not allow himself to speculate what manner of question she might ask him. “There’s a tea tray on the sideboard. Mary Fran sends them in when I forget to appear for luncheon. I’d be obliged if you’d share it with me lest my sister get to fretting.”
“If you like.” She took a seat on the sofa while Ian brought the tray over. If he were smart, he’d toss a cushion on the raised hearth and keep the table between them.
If he were smart, he’d be howling with the Canadian wolves alongside Asher.
He ensconced himself directly beside Augusta on the sofa.
“We’re an imposition, aren’t we?” Augusta asked. She poured for them both, the epitome of the graceful lady. “Guests show up at a time when you need to be tending to the crops and the weeding, not wasting entire mornings wandering up into the hills.”
He took a teacup from her, letting their fingers brush because he was an idiot. “Are you fishing for reassurances, Augusta?”
“No.” She smiled at her teacup as if she’d just found a pot of gold. “I think you dispensed those rather convincingly last night.”
Was that what he’d been doing? “What was it you wanted to ask me?”
She passed him a sandwich. White bread piled with thin slices of roasted beef, a thick slab of local cheddar, a dollop of tangy mustard, and a generous helping of butter. He set the plate aside untouched, though it bore a feast by the standards of years past.
“I’m enjoying your sister’s company tremendously,” Augusta said. “I’ve wanted to ask her about handfasting, but didn’t want to give offense. What is it, exactly?”
Ah, a legal question. He seized on it.
“It’s not what most people think it is. Old Sir Walter put it about we handfast by marrying for a year and a day, and then merrily discard our partners for another temporary union if the first doesn’t suit. That might have been the custom long ago, and perhaps it still is in some places, but the legal concept is different.”
“Tell me about it.”
It was an excuse to look competent and knowledgeable in her eyes, an excuse to share a meal with her.
“A handfasting is a legal marriage, recognized by both church and civil authorities. It consists of an exchange of future vows to wed, followed by either a formal wedding ceremony or consummation of the engagement. It is held in contempt by the same authorities who recognize its validity.”
“Why?”
She would ask that, even as she placidly sipped her tea.
“It’s said to promote licentious behavior.”
Her brows drew down in puzzlement. “It starts with an engagement, the same as most other unions require. How can that promote licentious behavior?”
“Because, lass, it provides a frisky couple the option of claiming—when they’re caught in flagrante delicto—that they’d previously exchanged those vows to wed. Upon being discovered at their mischief, they become wed by act of law. It gives them a way to save face they would not have otherwise had.”
“I… see.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Mary Fran has made occasional reference to her late spouse as being a sly, handfasting, er, rascal. I did not understand…”
“You still don’t.” He rose and crossed to the window, his gaze on the back gardens that kept so many of his cousins and relations employed—for a few months each year, but only a few months. And they were grateful for what little he paid them.
“Ian?” She’d followed him, had crept right up beside him without making a sound. “I don’t mean to pry.”
“It’s a predictable tale.” He could not put an arm around her waist—they were standing by a window, for God’s sake—so he clasped his hands behind his back. “Mary Fran chafed badly under Grandfather’s idea of how a proper earl’s granddaughter ought to conduct herself. The more stern his discipline, the wilder she became. The business with Gordie… It was supposed to be a minor rebellion, wild oats, a statement of her independence—she was all of eighteen, quite grown-up in her own eyes—and at the regimental ball, her little scheme misfired.”
“Misfired?”
“As soon as Mary Fran realized Grandfather wasn’t going to have an apoplexy over her peccadilloes with Gordie, it became apparent Fiona was on the way, and that was that. A handfast marriage was produced from thin air, complete with legal documents and sworn witness testimony, despite the fact that Mary Fran’s taste for English mischief had since abated. Fee is legitimate, but barely.”
“And Gordie?”
“He was off to Canada with his regiment before Fee was born and did not survive his first winter. I send his family regular reports about Fee’s progress, which are works of creative fiction. They’ve never mentioned sending coin to assist with her upbringing, which is all to the good. If they had, I’d have cause to be nervous.”
“Why should it make you nervous?”
“Englishmen bearing gifts make most of the world, civilized and otherwise, nervous. They come either to collect specimens for their infernal museums or to make peace in the name of my lovely, conquering royal neighbor.”
Augusta turned to regard him then crossed the room to retrieve his sandwich plate. “You should eat.”
“So should you.” He held out the sandwich to her, and damned if the woman didn’t bite off a piece. She watched him as she did then chewed slowly.
“It’s good, Ian. You finish it.”
He was doomed. He stuffed a bite of sandwich in his mouth and returned to the sofa. In a bit of divine mercy, she took the hearth opposite, resting her chin on her updrawn knees.
“What’s the hardest thing, Ian?”
She would use his name. “About?”
“About being you? About all this?” She waved a hand around the library and sat back. “I’ve been thinking about that lately: What’s the hardest thing about my life in Oxfordshire? It’s a peaceful little life, I want for nothing material, and my neighbors are good, kind people.”
“But?” He gestured with the second half of the sandwich, and she shook her head.
“But it’s hard too.” She gave him a sunny smile, one that belied the truth of her words. He got an abrupt image of her moving briskly around her little holding, the hems of her nondescript dresses muddy in the chicken yard, her ugly shawls growing more deplorable by the year…
If I could afford a mistress, even… But he could not.
“It’s not so difficult, being the laird.” He tried on the falsehood he told himself several times daily. Spoken aloud, it sounded hollow. “Or it wouldn’t be, if I’d been raised to it. Missing my brother, not knowing what happened to him, that’s hard.”
She looked at him steadily, and his mouth kept forming words. “It’s hard being the one to keep hope alive for the others. Hope that those who’ve emigrated are faring well in foreign lands, hope that this year’s crop will be better than last, this year’s prices at the yearling sale, this year’s receipts. We live very much in the future, and yet we dwell in the past too. That’s difficult as hell when you’ve a past like ours.”
She wasn’t even touching him, but he could feel her as a soothing presence in his mind.
“I hate it, the hoping
.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “When things go well, I hate it even more, because it’s all going to come crashing down around us—it always does. We were just getting on our feet when the damned potato blight came through. Potatoes have never been our crop of choice, but they kept the least among us with the poorest soil and the fewest hands fed and able to procure a few necessities. We’re getting on our feet again, barely, and I dread finding out what hardship the Almighty has in store for us next.”
“Because it’s increasingly difficult to rise to the challenge.” She finished the thought for him, her tone neither judgmental nor bleak, merely stating a fact.
He patted the place beside him, wishing he could take this whining, useless little digression back and stuff it in that place in his mind where the worst of the despair dwelled. “I will make you melancholy with this lament.”
She shifted so she sat beside him. “More tea?”
It was an English response to just about every dislocation in life, because the English could afford to use a fresh helping of stout black tea for every pot. He did not want to be any more rude and presuming than he already had been, so he nodded.
Sitting right there beside him, she prepared them each a second cup. She passed him his, took a sip of her own, then set it aside.
While Ian stared at his tea and wondered why in God’s name he had waxed so philosophical with her in the middle of the day—so petulant and needy—she shifted just a little, so her head rested on his shoulder.
A big sigh went out of him. This was what he wanted. This was what would make all the hoping easier to bear—some honest companionship, some comfort, somebody at his side when the hoping got too hard.
He tilted his head a shade too, so his jaw rested along her crown. They could have this much, for a few minutes anyway. Her breathing soon became regular, and still Ian didn’t move. She was a warm, sleepy weight against his side when it occurred to him he hadn’t asked her: What was hardest about her solitary, bucolic existence in Oxfordshire?
***
“Answer a question for me, Connor MacGregor, and no lies, please.”
Julia had caught him in the billiards room, which doubled as the armory for the house, with everything from claymores to ceremonial dirks displayed on the walls, and large gun cabinets standing in two corners.
“Mrs. Redmond, a pleasure.” Con focused on the fowling piece he’d broken down for cleaning, but his heart picked up a few beats as she advanced into the room. They hadn’t spoken more than civilities since he’d let himself into her room the previous week, and he’d been unable to decipher her odd glances and considering looks.
“Are we married, Mr. MacGregor?”
“What! Sweet suffering Jesus in a kilt…” He set the gun barrel aside and crossed the room to close the door. “That’s your question?”
She nodded, perfectly, ominously serious.
“Mrs. Redmond, you are English. I am Scottish. Scot-tish. Why would we marry except under duress?”
Duress. An odd feeling came over him—part despair, part protectiveness—toward her. He came to stand beside her, close enough to see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes. “Julia, are you carrying some other fellow’s bairn? Is that what drives you? A need to look out for your child?”
“Am I carrying…? You think I’d lie about that? For God’s sake, Connor, I know how to deal with a child.”
Which wasn’t a no.
“How would you deal with a child?” He’d tried to keep his tone neutral, but the emphasis on the words deal with had been marked by disdain. A growing fashion in the South encouraged women to deal with a lapse of virtue by jumping into the Thames as the tide went out.
“If the herbalist can’t help, then a lady goes for an extended trip to the Continent, or even the Americas. She can have the child adopted in a foreign land—the Papists are very good about such things—or she can claim it’s her cousin’s child and so forth.”
“And you’d do that to your own child?” God help the woman if Mary Fran heard such a recitation.
“No, I would not. Not ever, though I don’t expect you to believe me. I’m English. En-glish. In your eyes, incapable of a selfless, moral deed even toward my own child—which I am not carrying.”
He looked her up and down, saw the hurt in her eyes—hurt he’d put there. “You’re capable of being very generous and trusting,” he said carefully, because he’d no wish to insult her. He turned from her when she didn’t react to his words. “What was your question?”
“Are we married?”
He ambled over to the table where the gun lay in parts and shot her a sardonic smile over his shoulder. “If we were married, Julia, I’d sure as hell not be wasting a pretty day by me lonesome, cleaning me weapons, now would I?”
“Might you please be serious?” Her hands were fisted and her teeth were clenched as she stalked around the table. “Mary Fran was talking about handfasting with Matthew, and she kept lapsing into Gaelic terms and law Norman, and I don’t know what all. Something to do with promises and intimacies, and I propositioned you, and then we were intimate. Are we married?”
“Would you mind so very much if we were?” The question slipped out not as a taunt, but as a genuine expression of curiosity. It stopped her midpace. She drew back, two fingers going to her lips.
He watched a progression of emotions chase across her face: surprise, intrigue, bewilderment, and something else, something… more innocent than calculation. Wistfulness, maybe? Something that came under the surprising heading of: If Only…
“Would it be so bad, being married to me, Julia?” He prowled up to her and set his hands on her hips, not examining his own motives too closely. Step by step, he backed her up to the billiards table. “Did you mind my attention very much the other night? You’ve never told me if you liked it.” He didn’t let her answer. He kissed her instead, kissed her the way he’d been dreaming about kissing her for the past week.
She did not even try to prevaricate. There was no stiff English upper lip, no protest for form’s sake. Just his name, “Connor…” on a soft sigh as her arms went around his neck. He hiked her up onto the table without breaking the kiss and made a place for himself between her legs.
From somewhere in the back of his mind, his conscience was starting up an unholy din of recriminations and warnings. Oh, he’d stop before the consequences were unbearable, he was almost sure of it.
But he’d wondered: Had she been repulsed by his attentions? Satisfied beyond the physical, left wondering—as he’d been—if there could be something besides the physical? Had she been haunted by the sweetness of what they’d done until it hung in her mind, beclouding all the moments since with a haze of longing and wonder?
Her hands were tugging his shirt free of his waistband, then coursing over the bare skin of his back and chest as if she were parched for the sensation of his flesh under her palms. “Missed you, Scot.”
He ran his finger over the swell of her breasts above her stays, hating the fabric that kept him from her skin. “Missed you too, English.”
He started frothing up her skirts around her waist, hoping, hoping, and when his hands found her bare legs, he wanted to dance the fling.
“God bless a woman who forgets her drawers.”
She covered his mouth with her own. “The Scottish air makes me frisky—or perhaps the Scottish company. Make me forget my own name.”
Conscience and common sense gave up on a whimper. Before Con and Julia were done, both were incapable of speech, much less of recalling something as trivial as a name or a nationality, though Con was careful—when he’d restored her clothing and his, and had assured himself she wasn’t going to dissolve into the vapors and neither was he—to reassure her they still weren’t married.
***
“We have to talk.” Gil appeared before Ian’s desk, looking like a specter in the candlelight.
“So talk.” Ian switched to Gaelic, the language of their childhood, the language of their family. A much better language for confession and strategy than English.
Gil glanced at the door, which he’d closed behind him. “You’ll want to hit me, and maybe you’d better.”
Ian tossed his pen on the desk and tried to keep himself from smiling. Gil liked nothing better than a good brawl, a short, emphatic physical expression of emotion that saved thousands of words and a great deal of awkwardness. It also restored fine fellow feeling over the shared medicinal dram that usually followed, and the shared scolding from Mary Fran following after that.
“You’re the one who forgot to latch Romeo’s gate?” Ian watched Gil’s features and saw he’d guessed wrong. “What is it, then?”
“I assaulted a guest.”
Ian came around to the front of his desk, unwilling to sit like some headmaster grilling an unruly first former. “Did Matthew make the mistake of engaging you on the matter of the Clearances?”
Gil shook his head.
“Famine aid?” Of which there had been precious next-to-none for Scotland.
“No… it’s…” He threw himself onto the sofa. “I pitched Altsax against the wall and threatened to do worse.”
Gil was quick with his fists—and very good with his fists—but he’d long since outgrown a young man’s rages. Ian leaned back against his desk and crossed his arms.
“What did he do, Gilgallon? I’ll not believe you just took a casual notion to end our trade, destroy our reputation, and lay yourself open to charges.”
Gil winced, and by the light of the nearby hearth his features were looking too sharp.
“He slapped Genie.” Gil sat forward, running both hands through his hair and then bracing his elbows on his thighs. “He called her into the corridor under the pretense of bidding her good night, made sure I was paying attention, then belted the hell out of her for not being more diligent in her pursuit of you. Very pleasant about the whole thing too. Very calculating.”
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