“Shall I return you to your aunt’s lively company, then, Miss Hannah?” He advanced on her, kilt flapping against his knees, the devil in his dark eyes. “Shall I settle you in with yet another novel by old Sir Walter, perhaps inflict yet another round of Tennyson on you? Maybe Dickens is more to your taste?”
“Dickens is mean. Like you.”
That stopped him just as he was nose to nose with Hannah there in the mews for anybody to see. In the frigid air, over the scent of the stables a dozen yards upwind, Hannah caught a whiff of the earl’s fragrance. Clean, spicy, bracing.
“Explain yourself, woman.”
“Dickens holds up his own society in the worst possible light. He ridicules everybody and calls it humor.”
The earl braced his fists on his hips, the ice skates bumping against a chest that might have been made of granite. “God bless us, every one? Tiny Tim getting his operation so he can walk without a crutch? That’s ridicule?”
Without a crutch? “Wretched, vile… Damn you, I cannot go skating.”
He studied her for a long moment, dark eyes speculative, mouth unmoving, a tower of masculine stubbornness in the bitter air. A loose strand of Hannah’s hair whipped against her mouth, but she would not drop his gaze and turn for the wind to loosen it.
Balfour’s bare hand—why had he no gloves on?—brushed at her cheek. “It’s all right to be scared, Boston. You think I’m not dreading the coming ordeal, too? I’m going to land on my backside more often than Dickens could imagine at his most ironic. Come along.”
This time he didn’t lace their arms; he took Hannah’s hand in his.
“What do you mean, you’re dreading the coming ordeal?”
“Not this little outing—I was skating almost before I could walk—but this London Season. I spent much of the winter relearning dances I’d gained only a nodding acquaintance with as a lad. Not the sword dances, not the dances of my mother’s people, but these stilted, measured, one-two-three inanities. I acquainted myself with what wine goes with which dish, with the damned order of precedence. If I’d been smart…”
He was leading Hannah through a series of backyards, gates, and hedges, until they’d come to a small, fenced square.
“If you’d been smart?”
This earl, the one who wore a kilt and knew the way between the marked streets, was an interesting man, a man whom Hannah did not understand exactly, but she couldn’t ascribe meanness to him, either.
He took a key from the pouch that hung from his waist and offered Hannah a crooked smile. “If I had been smart, I would have hired myself what they call a finishing governess here. A gray-haired old field marshal of the ballrooms, a lady who would brook no nonsense and tie me to a posture board for hours.” He unlocked the gate and stuffed the key back in the pouch, then led Hannah into a tree-lined patch of snow-dusted grass. High hedges sheltered the square from any passing viewers, and in the middle of the grass sat a small pond with a bench on its bank.
A small frozen pond.
“Perhaps I’ll watch, Balfour, while you demonstrate your skill.”
“Perhaps I’ll carry you bodily to the center of the pond and leave you there.”
A lick of true unease uncurled in Hannah’s belly. “I’d crawl to the bank.”
“For God’s sake, Boston, can’t you trust me the least little bit? I’ll not let you fall, lass.”
He motioned for her to sit, and with a sense of unreality, Hannah did. When he called her Boston, his voice held a gentleness that caressed and reassured even as it unnerved—and his tone held exasperation too, as endearing as the gentleness.
“I’ve modified the right skate, you see.” He unknotted the ties of the skates as he knelt beside Hannah. “It’s an experiment, a chance for you to get used to the notion of a lift. You won’t have to try walking with it, but you can put weight on that side and test it out.”
He began strapping the skate to Hannah’s half boot. She tucked her skirts away as he did, for it seemed… it appeared…
She was going to go skating, and he’d been right: she was afraid.
The earl finished with Hannah’s skates and shifted to sit beside her while he strapped on his own skates. “These are probably the largest skates in the whole of Victoria’s realm. Shall I test the ice?”
Reprieve. “Yes, please. Test it thoroughly.”
Part of her hoped it would crack and he’d get soaked and they could call off his blighted experiment, but another part of her—the part whom everyone expected to limp through the remaining decades of her life—watched him with interest.
He got to the ice in a few steps and stood in his skates, taller than ever, while the breeze whipped at his kilt. His first circuit of the pond was unremarkable, a wagon-wheel pattern that tested the ice at the perimeter and then in the middle. The way the wind occasionally flapped his plaid back against his thighs tested Hannah’s composure.
Such muscle, such strength, such oblivion to the risk of exposure.
“It’s solid,” he called out, “not a crack to be heard.”
Boston had its share of winter weather, being a northern seaport. It had ponds, and children and even courting couples who skated on the ponds, but never in years and years of observing had Hannah seen anybody perform on skates as the earl could.
He built up speed in circuits of the perimeter, crossing his front foot over the back in an accelerating tempo; then somehow he was spinning rapidly in place, like a human top. He could ease out of his spins into slower loops then take off in the opposite direction. He finished with a small turning leap, landing easily then coming to a scraping stop right before Hannah’s bench.
“It’s solid,” he said again, grinning even as his chest worked to drag in air. “Come out on the ice and see for yourself, Boston.” He extended his long arm, his bare hand reaching for Hannah.
She put her gloved fingers in his, rose, and tottered down the bank.
The ice did not crack, and the earl did not drop her hand.
“Have you skated much, Hannah?”
Good. He would call her Hannah on this outing. She needed him to call her Hannah so she could call him Asher. “As a child, but not since I fell.”
“We all fall, but I’ll not let you fall today—unless it’s to land on a nice, soft earl.”
He would be about as soft as the oak bench Hannah had just left. “How do we do this?”
He moved around, shifting as easily on the ice as if he were barefoot in soft spring grass. “We begin in the traditional English manner, with a promenade.”
“A slow promenade.”
He grinned at her, slipped one arm around her waist, and clasped her left hand in his left. “On three.”
Hannah gave him credit for not moving until the count of three, she gave him credit for sliding along with her at a pace more funereal than decorous, and she gave him credit for being solid and warm and—Some unevenness of the ice, a protruding leaf, some infernal thing had Hannah’s skates shooting in opposite directions. In one moment, she went from being a statue moved by the earl’s impulsion to a panic in progress.
“I’ve got you, Boston. I’ve got you.”
He growled it in her ear, his hold on her implacable. He had her. He would not let her fall.
“Try again,” Hannah said. “I’ll pay more attention.” To her feet rather than her escort.
He organized them again in promenade position and started Hannah on another slow glide. “I caught you admiring my sporran, you know.”
“What’s a sporran?”
“My purse. I made this one when I first got to Scotland, leatherwork being something I’d been learning since infancy. Let’s turn a bit, shall we?”
He moved her in a slow arc, then a wide figure eight. “How’s the lift working?”
“It’s different. I can tell it’s there.” It wasn’t entirely comfortable, either. “I feel taller.” Straighter, but she wasn’t going to admit that.
“You’ll probab
ly ache some from the unaccustomed arrangement of the joints.”
“I ache from the accustomed arrangements. Tell me about your family.”
***
Hannah clung to Asher’s hand, and yet her voice was admirably steady. A man who didn’t have his arm around her waist or his hand laced with hers wouldn’t know she was scared.
Nor would he be able to catch the scent of lavender that clung to her person.
“I have three younger brothers, Ian, Gilgallon, and Connor. Mary Fran is the baby of the family, but call her that, and she’ll skelp your bum but good.”
“Skelp?”
“Paddle, spank. Try moving your right foot, just a wee push…”
She gave the smallest, nearly ineffective push with her skate and Asher let the momentum pick up their pace minutely.
“Do your brothers wish you’d stayed in Canada?”
“I haven’t asked them. They gathered willingly enough to greet me when I returned to Aberdeenshire a few months ago.” With their wives and children, no less, the entire lot of them weeping, even the women who’d never laid eyes on him before. “Part of me expected them to have remained as I left them. I’ve the prettiest niece…”
All red braids and big green eyes. Fiona had been shy and dear, spying on the grown-ups from the balconies and banisters. She told stories to the stable cats and left cheese out for the pantry mice.
“If you were raised in Canada until you turned eleven, and you’ve spent much of your adulthood in Canada, do you even know your brothers?”
She’d abandoned her rigid, eyes-front posture to peer at him as they glided along.
“I know them. I’ll always be grateful to my father for bringing me to Scotland, because I do know my siblings.”
“You had to work to convince yourself of this.”
Much more of her perceptivity and he might have to lose his grip on her—momentarily, of course.
“I’m unsure if they feel likewise. We got on well as youngsters.” They’d been thick as thieves.
“Must we go so quickly?”
He eased their pace back. “We’re positively doddering. I hadn’t realized being two years Ian’s senior made me nigh doddering to him. We were an odd bunch. None of us spoke English as our first language. I taught them some of my tongue, and they soon had me babbling away in Gaelic. Mary Fran seemed to comprehend it all, though she was barely out of leading strings.”
“Children manage to delight in one another’s company with little but imagination and idle time to aid them.”
Her tone held stark wistfulness.
“Have you had enough, Boston? I don’t want to overtax you.”
He’d meant it solicitously—mostly—but her chin came up a half inch. “Just a few more times around. Didn’t your brothers find you very different?”
“They were… fascinated by me, and I by them. I taught them what I knew of tracking—Connor’s a natural at it—and they taught me about family tales and the various clan histories. Ian and I shared a bedroom, and when he saw that I intended to sleep on the floor, he made up his own pallet, as if all boys normally slept on the floor.”
He’d forgotten these memories, lost them beneath other memories not as happy but nearer to the present.
“What about your younger brothers? Did they resent you?”
“You don’t resent family when you live in the Highlands. There’s precious few people of any stripe, much less people you can call your own.”
And for the first time, Asher felt a connection between his two families—the Canadian and the Scottish—that resonated right down to his soul. Whether it was the climate, the infernal superiority of the English, the sheer magnitude of the northern wilderness, or something of all three, both families understood the blood bond and valued it.
As he considered this odd paradox, they glided to a stop.
“Are we done then?” She regarded him out of serious green eyes as they stood on the ice in a near embrace.
“We are. We can come back, if the weather stays cold enough.”
“I’d like that.”
He assisted her up the bank, both of them clumping the few steps to the bench. I’d like that. Her words had been shy, almost bashful. “Your hip has to ache, Hannah. You don’t need to stand on ceremony with me.”
“It usually aches.” She crossed one ankle over the other knee, an unladylike, practical posture that let Asher know he wouldn’t be unfastening her skates for her. He busied himself with his own footwear.
“I forget,” she said, shifting to remove the second skate. “I forget what it’s like to move easily—to move symmetrically. I have strength now, in my crookedness, but it’s a backhanded strength.”
What was she saying? What was she talking about?
“You move as well as most people, Hannah Cooper. A little hitch in the gait is hardly remarkable.”
“Most boys do like to sleep on the floor.” She’d gotten that bashful quality to her expression again. Her gaze was fixed on the laces of her skates as she knotted them together. “Most boys like secret languages, and they want to think they could be self-sufficient in the wilderness.”
She was telling him something, or trying to. “Give me your skates, madam. We should fix ourselves a tot of grog when we’re home, to make sure we don’t catch a chill.”
Hannah passed over her skates, which Asher looped over one shoulder. He extended his hand down to her, vaguely uneasy about what she might say next.
She put a hand in his and rose. “You love them, your siblings, and they love you. That’s why you came home. That’s why I’ll return to my grandmother. You do understand.”
The skates clanked against his chest, rather like his heart hammered against his ribs.
“I came back to Scotland because I owe a duty to a blessed title, and that is a damned sight less pleasant a prospect than your old granny’s loving embrace.”
She said nothing, but walked along beside him, the hitch in her gait making him want to break something and curse at length.
***
Dimly, through something Hannah could only characterize as homesickness, she perceived that the Earl of Balfour was in a sulk—the English would call it a taking, and she had no idea what the Scots would call it.
Her hip did not ache, but her heart did. Something about being able to stand straight, about moving so smoothly over the ice in the near-embrace of a man sturdy enough to keep her balanced, had her longing for Boston, though only in a general sense.
Not for her mother, not for her bedroom in her stepfather’s house, not even for her grandmother, but for the time before she’d fallen, when balance, grace, and the fearlessness that went with them had been hers.
She had been so innocent.
“You’re quiet, Boston. This does not bode well for the peace of the realm.”
He strode along beside her, only the tension in his voice attesting to his impatience with her gait.
“I’m thinking of home.”
He tossed her an unreadable glance and held open a gate that led to his stables—his mews.
“You’re annoyed that I think of my home?” She was not simply willing to pick a fight with him, she was happy to.
“If your grandmother loves you the way you say she does, she could not possibly want you to turn your back on the future you could have here.” He offered this observation with the banked tolerance of a man who knows he’s being logical, reasonable even.
Hannah passed into the alley beside the stables and came to a stop. “If, sir, you refer to my future including a husband and children, we do have single men in Massachusetts—scads of them. They can dance and flirt and spout off about the weather the same as all your London dandies, and they don’t all bother themselves about who is supposed to go in to dinner paired with whom, in what order, like some military parade.”
He crossed his arms and seemed to grow taller. “You’ve run circles around the Colonials, Boston. Left them dazed and pantin
g at the altar, and they don’t deserve you. You need a man who can look after you, who has your measure and won’t try to diminish it. You need a man who can match you, who can call you on your queer starts, and go toe-to-toe with you—”
Hannah stepped right up to the presuming buffoon, almost toe-to-toe, and stuck her face in his—to the extent she could, being so much shorter. “I do not need a man to order me about, steal my money, and expect me to be grateful that he keeps his mistresses in better style than his own family. I do not want a man who—”
She should have taken it as a warning when Balfour uncrossed his arms and leaned down.
“You need a man who can kiss the starch right out of you.”
His mouth came down over hers, not roughly, but decisively. Hannah’s hands settled on his shoulders—for balance, surely just for balance—as the sheer heat of his body enveloped her.
He broke off, his mouth so close to Hannah’s she could feel his breath on her cheek. “You need a man who makes you think of his kisses rather than about getting on that westbound ship.”
And then he was back, not plundering, exactly, but purposefully investigating her mouth without her permission… And without any protest from her, either.
“You taste like rum buns,” she murmured against his mouth.
“Hush, lass. Kiss me.” The burr was more pronounced when he whispered. His voice, his accent, resonated inside Hannah and made her want to kiss him. He sealed his mouth to hers, and his tongue moved gently over Hannah’s lips. She clutched at his wool coat, parting her lips to breathe him in while the skates went clattering off his shoulder and he shifted his sporran to his hip.
Kiss me.
His mouth was a wonder, hot, sweet, gentle, implacable. He explored her with his tongue then left her bereft as he grazed his lips over her eyebrows and chin, her jaw, her eyes. Lest he meander too far afield, Hannah anchored a hand in his thick, dark hair and tried to guide his mouth back to hers.
“Wee, managing baggage,” he muttered, but he was smiling. She could hear it; she could feel it as he brought his mouth back to hers.
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