“She won’t yell at me for staying up so late?”
“She might, but only a little. Tonight is for celebrating, not scolding.”
Augusta was relieved to hear that, because Ian’s expression was oddly solemn for a man who had much to celebrate.
“Good night, Miss Augusta.” Fee hugged Augusta briefly, treated her uncle to the same affection, and skipped out the door.
“She’s happy,” Ian said, crossing the room to lock the door. “But what about you, Augusta Merrick?”
“All it takes to make Fiona happy is the hope of a pony some day.” Augusta resisted the urge to get to her feet as Ian stalked back across the room. “My needs are a little more complicated. I take it Gil and Genie are betrothed?”
“You know they are.” He glowered down at her, plucked the hairbrush from her hand, and moved to stand behind her. “I’m grateful to you, Augusta, for taking an interest in my family’s welfare, but the baron will get wind of your hand in things.”
“I told him the contracts had been signed. I’m sure he’s figured out I saw it done.”
Ian’s arms folded around her shoulders. “You took a very great risk.”
He sounded… worried, exasperated. He did not sound pleased, and yet the scent of him as he curled against her neck was making it difficult for Augusta to think.
“I could not see any legal risk, Ian. The contracts were written so Gil could sign them.”
“So you divined, but I wrote them, and I did not realize they could be interpreted that way. When Matthew told me he was haring south to procure a special license for Con and Julia, I charged him with getting one for Gil and Genie as well. You trumped my simple schemes beautifully, Augusta.”
“Are you angry with me?”
He straightened, looking very tall in Augusta’s vanity mirror. “I am worried for you, Augusta. The baron will take out his ire on somebody. I’m thinking Hester had best bide with her brother at some length—Altsax could use his youngest in some scheme to torment Genie and Gil.” He started brushing her hair, making long, slow strokes from her crown to her hips. “I enjoyed dancing with you tonight, Augusta Merrick.”
“You made a spectacle of me, opening the dancing that way.” She closed her eyes against a growing lassitude.
“You were cheated out of years of dances, and the MacGregor plaid has never been worn to such graceful advantage.”
She opened her eyes to see he was at least half smiling at her in the mirror. “Flummery, MacGregor. Arrant flummery.”
“Promise me something, Augusta.” He set the brush aside and crouched beside her chair so their eyes met. “Promise me when you go south, you’ll take utmost care. Stay with Gil and Genie in the London townhouse, bide with Con and Julia at her residence in Northumbria. Matthew assures me he has any number of places for you to stay where Altsax won’t be able to find you. Your safety matters to me, my heart.”
Augusta leaned forward to bury her face against his neck. The look in his eye could not have been more concerned. His voice was low, urgent, and sincere, but what he wasn’t saying…
He expected her to go south, to put this summer idyll behind them, and really, why should he expect otherwise? He still needed to marry money, and she was still a poor relation. She’d wanted him free of Altsax’s schemes, and her wish had been granted in that regard. Spectacularly, wonderfully.
Though abruptly, it felt like the wrong wish.
“I’ll be careful, Ian. Matthew has assured me I need not go back to Oxfordshire.”
“That’s… good.” His arms came around her. “I’ll rest easier knowing you’re safe.”
He was silent a long moment, while Augusta was at a loss to know what he waited for.
“I’ll just be going then.” He said the words, but still he did not rise, and Augusta tightened her arms around his shoulders. She shook her head, words clogging in her throat.
“What, my heart? I canna divine your thoughts.”
“Don’t…” She drew in a ragged breath. “Don’t go, Ian.”
“All right then.” His voice was a little unsteady as he stroked his hand over her hair. “I’ll not leave you just yet, and you’ll not leave me.”
***
What did a man say who had nothing to offer the woman who’d risked everything she had to see him and his family happy? What did he say to the woman he loved?
There were no words worthy of the moment, so Ian let his hands speak for him.
“Let me finish with your hair, my heart. You should always wear it down, like the pagan queens of old.” He resumed brushing her hair, though it seemed to him her arms slid from his neck reluctantly.
He made love to her hair, one slow, sweet stroke at a time, until it gleamed in a midnight cascade from her crown to her waist. When she’d said nothing for a long moment, he started braiding it, slowly, carefully. Not too snug, not too loose. If ever there was a perfect braid, Ian created it for Augusta.
“You’re for bed then?” He planted a kiss on that shining crown as he spoke.
“I don’t want you to go.”
The first words she’d spoken in perhaps twenty minutes, and they comforted.
“You want me to stay with you tonight, Augusta? You need your sleep after such a day.”
She rose and faced him, her eyes impossible to read. “I am still indisposed, but yes, I want you to stay with me.”
He searched her face for clues. No woman but Augusta had ever sought his company through the night without a thought for her own pleasure. “I’ll stay.”
Of course he’d stay. If it broke his heart, if it tore his soul to shreds, if it drove him mad, he’d stay with her as long as he could.
She helped him undress, asking him about each piece of his formal Highland attire, examining it closely before hanging it in the wardrobe. The sight of her hands stroking over the wool did things to Ian’s insides. Not even purely erotic things, but tender, personal things.
He washed off by the hearth, while she sat at her escritoire in her night rail and wrapper and watched him. Candlelight made her hair shine with fiery red–and-gold highlights; the shadows and hollows on her features made him think of wanton angels.
When his person was clean—he’d been slow and thorough for her sake—she came to him and put her arms around his waist. “Come to bed, Ian.”
Wifely words, considering they were not to make love. He put that thought aside and let her lead him by the hand to the bed. When they lay down side by side, Ian wondered if that’s all it was to be—a shared bed—when Augusta shifted to lay along his side.
“Hold me.”
“If I could, I’d hold you forever.” Gaelic, to preserve just a little of his dignity, for there was no longer any hope to preserve. The worst of his financial worries were gone, thanks to Julia’s and Genie’s proffered generosity, but Augusta’s cousins would see to her welfare now, and her former suitor would make good on the offer the baron had snatched away. The man’s letter had been a pathetic monument to regret.
And a woman never got over her first lover.
“Ian?”
“Here, love.”
“I wasn’t trying to interfere when I had Gil sign those contracts. I shouldn’t have doubted you, but I couldn’t just… I couldn’t passively accept what fate handed out, not again.”
“You saw the better solution,” Ian said, stroking his hand over her bare arm. “I’m not angry, Augusta. I am in awe.” He kissed her to stop himself from saying anything more, and she kissed him back. They composed a symphony of kisses—warm, tender, intimate, and even playful, but for Ian, every single kiss also bore the taste of good-bye.
***
Augusta awoke alone, which she tried to tell herself was not entirely a
bad thing. She assayed her emotions and found her heart was at once too empty and too full for tears. She had preserved Ian from having to marry Genie, and that had been her goal.
Except he hadn’t needed her help or her interference, though he didn’t seem perturbed with her over it. He’d even been willing to indulge her sentimental request to spend another night with him—a night of kisses, touches, sighs, and warmth, a night of the kindest farewell she would ever know.
Outside her window, in the golden glow of the summer dawn, a rifle shot exploded. A gun large enough to take down a deer.
Somebody was likely sighting in his weapon, using a target to ensure the aim was accurate. Augusta’s father had been an avid hunter, and once told her half the pleasure of sighting in a new weapon lay simply in all the racket it created.
“You’re awake!” Fiona slipped in the door, grinning hugely. “The shoot will start soon, and that means we set up the picnic next. Have you ever eaten dessert in a tree?”
Augusta mustered a smile for the child. “I have not. You will remedy this oversight with me, won’t you?”
“I will, but you have to wear clothes that won’t catch Mama’s eye. The men are in their hunting plaids. I chose a brown smock and a green pinny.”
“Let’s see what I can find for camouflage.”
Fiona chattered on, about the ball, about her cousin Doungal letting her conduct the orchestra someday if she practiced her piano, about her mama not yelling at her because Matthew—“He’s going to be my papa!”—kept kissing Mama’s cheek.
Augusta paused with her hair half-pinned up. “Fiona, may I tell you something?”
“Of course. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“We are, and all I wanted to say is that I’m very, very glad you’re my friend. I hadn’t made any new friends for quite some time before I came on this holiday. It’s wonderful to have you for a friend.”
This smile was bashful, hinting at a mature beauty that would emerge in just a few years.
“I like having a new friend too. That brown dress will do for today. It won’t show the dirt if you sit in the grass for your picnic.”
“Or in a tree,” Augusta replied. She made short work of getting dressed, because Fiona was ricocheting around the room more energetically with each gunshot, darting from the bed to the window and popping in and out of the wardrobe.
“They must be hunting already,” Augusta said.
“Uncle Ian doesn’t use beaters,” Fiona replied from the depths of the wardrobe. “Says the bunnies and such need a sporting chance. Your clothes all smell good, like flowers.”
“Your mama uses flowers to keep your whole house smelling fresh.” Augusta glanced around the room. She’d soon be packing up, should probably start on it immediately so there would be less to do after the wedding.
Weddings.
The thought brought her mind to a stillness, while the recognition of all Augusta would not have—with Ian, at Balfour, in Scotland, with the MacGregor clan sprinkled all over the shire—washed over her, and her door clicked open again.
“You’re awake.”
The last person—the very last person Augusta ever wanted or expected to see in her bedroom was Willard Daniels. He stood just inside her door in tidy hunting attire, but his eyes were bloodshot, his complexion splotchy, and his mouth curved in a cruel smile.
And in his hand was a large, lethal-looking pistol.
“Uncle. I believe the hunt has started. What brings you here?”
And please, Almighty God, she prayed, give Fiona the sense to remain hidden in the wardrobe, because the baron’s purpose had to be evil.
“The hunting is just under way, and you and I have a little excursion to make. You will accompany me right out that door to the terrace, Augusta. So accommodating of you to insist on a bedroom on the ground floor. It has made all manner of schemes possible.”
“I’m going,” Augusta said. “Let me at least fetch a hat to keep the sun off my face.”
“Oh, by all means.” He waved his gun, the peculiar light in his eyes as he continued to smile proof positive the man wasn’t sane. Augusta crossed to the wardrobe and made a show of rummaging among her effects.
“Don’t follow. Stay safe.” She whispered the words to Fiona who was crouched, wide-eyed among Augusta’s boots and shoes. “He has a gun.”
Fiona nodded and shrank into a smaller ball.
Augusta grabbed a bright white, wide-brimmed straw hat, which she hoped would make her conspicuous. She closed the door to the wardrobe except for a small crack and put the hat on her head, jamming a hat pin through the crown.
“I assume we’re taking a walk, Uncle?”
“You do a great deal of assuming, Augusta Merrick, but in this instance you’re correct. We’re taking a little walk in the woods, and you’re finally having the damned accident you were supposed to have much earlier in our visit to this benighted province. I swear you have more lives than that damned cat of yours—though he at least knew enough to succumb to poison. Now march, my girl, and keep your mouth shut.”
He waved the gun again, and even as she vowed to avenge her murdered cat, Augusta noted Altsax had his finger on the trigger. She snatched her ugly old tan shawl from the foot of the bed and slipped out the terrace door, one step ahead of her uncle. As soon as they were outside the house, he manacled one hand on her arm, the loose folds of his shooting jacket hiding the gun.
He steered her toward the path Ian had shown her through the woods soon after her arrival. It started off close to the house, meaning there was little likelihood anybody would see Augusta with her demented escort.
Please God, keep Fiona safe.
The baron hustled Augusta along in silence for some yards, his grip on her arm destroying her balance to the point that she stumbled. From the corner of her eye, she saw Fiona streaking around the corner of the stables, making straight for a woods crammed with hunters who were armed to the teeth and likely shooting at anything that moved.
***
“Your Highness.” Ian bowed to his neighbor. “This is an unexpected pleasure.” A gun went off about fifty yards to their right, while the Prince Consort acknowledged the bow.
“Do you know, Balfour, how the number of children in a household can make the summer months seem particularly riotous? My wife has remarked on this phenomenon herself, but she seems to think it a wonderful thing.”
Albert was tall, good-looking, with a fashionable set of side-whiskers and a kind of bluff, German common sense to him. He was also possessed of sufficient strength of character to husband the lady reigning over the most far-flung empire known to humankind. Ian had liked the man on sight.
The Prince Consort was known to appreciate decent libation too, as well as deer stalking, fishing, and grouse hunting.
“My thanks for that brew you sent over,” Albert continued. “Are we trying to murder every creature in the woods?”
“We’re celebrating,” Ian said. “There were betrothals announced at last night’s ball. Missed you, of course, and your lovely wife.”
Albert frowned as another gun went off at a greater distance. “I sent you regrets, at least for the ball, and a note accepting your invitation today. It was with all that prosing on from the College of Arms.”
Ian passed his companion a flask and settled on a boulder. The hunt would sweep past them, pushing the game toward the edges of the wood. “I didn’t get it.”
“You didn’t get a royal epistle? Time to fire your domestics, Balfour, except I forget: up here, you hire your distant family members so you at least get some work out of all those you support.”
“We hire them,” Ian said quietly, “so they don’t follow all our cousins and leave the realm entirely.”
Albert h
ad the grace to grimace, then took a sip from the flask. “You need to scare up that letter, Balfour. You’re harboring a baroness without portfolio. Her uncle is larking around under some false colors, and my wife is inclined to frown on such behavior among the peerage. Excellent stuff.”
“Keep it.” Highland hospitality—and political common sense—required such generosity. “What baroness am I harboring?”
Albert grinned and pocketed the flask. “Augusta Merrick, of course. Victoria got your epistle a week or more ago, the telegrams and pigeons were sent off, and I sent you the answers. The Gribbony barony is Scottish, while the Altsax title is English. Doesn’t happen very often, unless the titles are quite old.”
“I knew the Gribbony title was Scottish,” Ian said slowly, “but what does that have to do with Augusta?”
A racket started up in the undergrowth to their right, and Albert immediately had an ornately decorated rifle against his shoulder.
“Uncle Ian! Uncle Ian!” Fiona gasped as she emerged at a dead run from the bushes. “Don’t shoot me. He has Augusta, and he has a gun!”
Albert lowered his rifle and shot Ian a quizzical look. “You’ve got trouble, Balfour.”
Fiona pelted into her uncle, tears streaking her face, her breathing harsh. “The baron’s going to kill her, and you have to save her!”
“Fiona, calm down.” Ian propped his rifle against the boulder and scooped his niece up. “Take a breath and let it out slowly. There’s my girl. Again.”
“He’s going to kill her. He came to her room and made her leave with him.”
“Balfour, what’s the signal?” Albert was pointing his gun at the sky as he spoke.
“Three shots,” Ian said. “As close together as you can.” Ian walked off a few paces with Fiona, while the prince gave the signal ending the hunt.
“Which way did he take her, Fee?”
“Up the path behind the stables. He has a big gun, and Augusta is going to die.”
The Bridegroom Wore Plaid Page 29