While nobody called her Boston.
Nobody noticed what an ordeal it was to manage Aunt Enid.
Nobody kissed her.
“Half a scone will do for me. What are you reading, sir?”
“It’s a treatise written several years ago, ‘On the Mode of Communication of Cholera.’ Butter or jam?”
“Both, please.” She took the kettle off the hob and set the tea to steeping. “Is this your idea of recreational reading?”
He fetched the cream from the window box and arranged a tray with scones in a basket next to a little tub of butter and a jar of raspberry jam—all very orderly. “This city is ripe for another epidemic, and nobody really knows what causes them.”
“Another epidemic?”
“There was a bad outbreak here of Asian cholera less than twenty years ago. Nearly everybody who contracted the disease died from it. Doctor Snow does not think the thing is conveyed by foul miasmas.”
Cholera was not a cheering topic, but it apparently interested the earl. “What do you think?”
“I think, between the open sewers, the overcrowding, and the poor health of much of the populace, nobody in their right mind would call this place home if they could help it.”
His tone held despair and old misery. He stared at the full tray and ran his hand back through his hair. The light in the kitchen was dim, but Hannah suspected he’d lost weight since they’d come to London.
“Put me on a ship for Boston, Balfour. You can return to your wintry Highlands and brood about foul miasmas to your heart’s content.”
The half smile was back, and it was a relief to see it. “You never give up, do you, Hannah Cooper?”
She perched on a stool and pulled up her nightgown far enough to stick out her right foot. “I do not give up, but sometimes I accede to the dictates of common sense.” She wiggled her toes for good measure.
The half smile on his face blossomed into the genuine article, even reaching his dark eyes. “Maiden’s Blush becomes you. Does the lift make your foot ache?”
Hannah dropped her hem and hoped the shadows were sufficient to conceal her flaming cheeks. “Not my foot, but my hip, so to speak.”
“Your bum. I am—I was—a doctor. I’ve dealt with far less genteel concepts than a lady’s derriere.”
He was still smiling, at her maiden’s blush, no doubt. Hannah checked the tea, and even if it had been nigh transparent, she would have declared it strong enough. “Shall we?” She gestured with her chin toward a small round table by the old-fashioned open hearth.
On the floor above them, some lively, stomping Highland dance came to an end. Augusta, or whoever was at the keyboard, switched to a dreamy triple meter.
“How that infant endures such a racket I do not know,” Hannah said. “He seems to take it all in stride—for a fellow who’s not quite walking.”
A shadow flitted across Balfour’s face as he took the chair beside Hannah’s. “Babies adjust to their surroundings easily enough, as long as their loved ones are close at hand and minding them.”
This was not an entirely medical opinion. “You don’t hold with children being tucked away in the nursery until they can spout Latin verbs and recite Bible passages by the score?”
He crossed his feet at the ankles, which caused the drape of his kilt to shift over his thighs. “I don’t hold with children being expected to labor like adults from their earliest years. I don’t hold with children being turned over to the care of paid strangers, such that their parents are then strangers to them. I don’t hold with letting children starve not ten blocks from some of the wealthiest, most wasteful—”
Hannah patted his hand where it rested near his untouched tea. “I am not the only one who has decided opinions in this kitchen. I think your brother Ian shares your views of child-rearing. He cuddles that baby at every opportunity.”
Balfour blew out a breath. “You want children, Hannah. I’ve watched you with Fiona. She adores you already and is trying to mimic your accent when she’s having tea with her cat.”
And when had his lordship caught his niece entertaining in the nursery?
“We can’t always have what we want. Balfour, are you going to leave me even a smidgen of jam?”
On the next floor up, in the music room, three male voices rose in close harmony, the words indistinguishable, the tone tender and lyrical.
“What I want, Hannah Cooper, is to dance with you. May I have that honor?”
He was in an odd, off mood, with each unlikely topic of conversation bearing a peculiar agitation. Cholera, babies, and now a kitchen waltz.
“Here, in this kitchen, you want to dance?”
“A test of the magic Maiden’s Blush slippers.” He rose and bowed, extending one hand while holding the other behind his back, as if he were in some glittering ballroom, not a deserted, cavernous kitchen.
She had missed him. Hannah put her bare hand in his and let him draw her into waltz position. “Your brothers sing very well.”
“We made a solid quartet, though Connor probably can’t pull off the impressive counter-tenor he sported as a lad.”
Balfour drew Hannah closer while she tried to attune herself to the phrasing of the music. She wore no corset, he was in barely decent attire—no sporran this time—and still, he didn’t move off with her. He enfolded her against his body, swaying slightly with the music.
The last time they’d been this close, they’d both been fully clothed and dressed for the out-of-doors. The difference was… astounding. Asher MacGregor gave off heat, and without a brisk wind, the scent of him was a concentrated pleasure for Hannah’s nose.
Cloves and ginger, maybe a hint of cinnamon, but also… sadness, a soul weariness that made Hannah lean into him for his comfort as well as her own.
“We’ll start slowly,” he murmured right near her ear. He tucked their joined hands close, so Hannah’s knuckles rested over his heart. Her head rested against his shoulder, their posture becoming so sumptuously intimate, Hannah closed her eyes the better to savor it.
When he shifted his feet, Hannah followed him easily. Behind closed eyes, she entrusted him with her entire balance while she floated, safe and warm in his arms. How long they swayed in the shadows she did not know, but when the melody died away above them and the piano fell silent, she made no move to step back.
“Hannah.” He gathered her closer, his cheek resting against her temple. “Boston. This isna wise. You should go, lass.”
Soon enough, she would go. She would leave, cross an ocean, and not come back. Now, she kissed him, raised her face without opening her eyes, used her fingers on his jaw to orient herself, and pressed her lips to his.
He growled and wrapped both arms around her, turning the kiss from a delicate exploration to a passionate onslaught in an instant. Wanting tore through Hannah, for him, for home, for what she could not have. Wanting and relief to have her hands on him again.
“Balfour—”
“Asher, damn it. Ye kiss a man witless, the least ye can do is use his damned name.”
She planted her nose against his open collar and inhaled him. “Asher. I’ve missed you, missed—”
He hoisted her up onto the counter. “Say my name again.”
She was off her feet, nearly at eye level with him. Her fingers went to the buttons of his shirt, her hands hungry for the feel of his skin. “Asher MacGregor. You left me to worry, for days. I lost sleep, fretting that my kisses were lacking, that you had been humoring the clumsy efforts of a Colonial bumpkin. You sit at the head of the table as if you’re an ocean away and barely say a word…”
She was pulling his shirttails from his waistband when he caught her hands in his. “Does this feel like a man who’s humoring ye? Like a man who’s an ocean away?”
Through the soft wool of his kilt, he used her fingers to shape the length of his arousal.
That he could behave so indifferently toward her before others was troubling. That she might not have any
more such private interludes with him was unbearable.
“I want you, Asher MacGregor. Now. I want to touch you.”
She heard him swallow. While her hand traced his flesh through his clothes, he stepped closer. “I don’t mind that ye beggar my reason, Boston—not nearly as much as I should—but I canna allow ye to beggar my honor.”
This was some befuddling male allusion to his duty as her host, or his lordly obligations, or some blighted obstacle Hannah would not tolerate. “I am not a virgin. I am ruined, do you understand me? I have no virginity to protect, and I want you.”
While he went still in that considering, unfathomable way of his, Hannah found the pins holding the kilt closed and withdrew them. The wool slithered to the floor, leaving the earl covered by the long tails of his shirt and the open plackets of his vest.
“I suppose ye want me naked as a newborn?” He didn’t growl the question so much as purr it. Hannah’s insides turned over, then over again.
She nodded. He shrugged out of his clothing with a twitch of broad shoulders, leaving him wearing only firelight, shadows… and a smile.
“Look your fill, Hannah Cooper, because your expression tells me whoever the blessed fool was you bestowed your favors on, he didna pleasure you properly.”
Hannah could not take her eyes off the abundant masculine pulchritude before her. In the course of her travels around London, she had seen the famous statues at the British Museum. They were puny specimens compared to the Earl of Balfour. Puny, cold, and unimpressive, and they were not standing in this kitchen, naked, aroused, and smiling—at her.
Ten
Hannah Cooper had missed him.
The woman had no idea what a weapon she wielded with those words. Nobody missed Asher MacGregor. He’d been declared dead, and after years of silence, even Ian had probably believed it so.
His siblings had picked up their lives and moved on without him, the brother they’d known only lately. The family in Canada who might have missed him was gone, and yet Hannah Cooper, starchy, stubborn, and Boston-bound, announced she’d missed him while sharing his very roof.
Though for a woman who’d missed him, her expression was as wary as it was fascinated.
“Am I to be the only one revealing my treasures, Hannah Cooper?”
She blinked but—may she be blessed for all time—kept her gaze on his erect cock. “Can I—May I touch you?”
A question for a question. He did not believe for a moment she’d parted with her virginity in anything but name, and there would be a limit—an excruciating limit—on the extent to which he indulged her curiosity now.
“You may touch me, and I will touch you.” He used his hands to gently part her knees and stepped between them. “If kisses don’t convince you that you’d enjoy the life of a married woman, perhaps pleasure might.”
Her brows drew down. “It’s not exactly a pleasure to look on you, Asher MacGregor.”
“It’s no’?” Before she could stare a hole in his parts, he took her hand and wrapped her fingers around his shaft. “It’s terrible hard work, is it?”
She shaped him, slipped her palm along his length, and traced the sensitive rim, slowly, as if she were circling the lip of a delicate wineglass. Asher had to strain over the roaring in his ears to hear what the daft woman was saying. “Seeing you like this makes me upset, inside. Anxious and… witless. You make me stupid and… this part of you is very soft.”
Her thumb dallied with the tip. Asher’s hips flexed forward, and God bless her and the entire city of Boston, she did not take her hand away. “Are ye tryin’ to make me spend, woman?”
“I’m trying to learn how you’re put together. Men and women are very different.”
Some ruined woman she was, babbling her ignorance of anatomy in awestruck tones for all the pots and pans to hear. The surge of sheer affection he felt for her blended with raging desire and restored his resolve.
“You need to learn how you’re put together, Hannah. Let me show you.”
He covered her mouth with his, wedging himself as close to her as the bloody counter would allow. She wrapped his cock in a wonderfully tight grip and held him snugly while he teased at her lips with his tongue. “Kiss me, witch.”
For once, Hannah Cooper wasn’t arguing. While her tongue came out to play skittles with his sanity, her hand started a slow, sleeving caress of his cock.
“I like how hot you are,” she whispered, nuzzling his neck. “You’re never cold. Not ever.”
He’d been cold—he’d been frozen stone solid, but she was thawing him like a female bonfire.
Which was not at all the point of the gathering.
Asher slid his hand up the silky firmness of her calf, slowly, slowly. She was sturdy and female, and more significantly, she was allowing him to hike up her nightclothes with nary a peep of protest.
“Balfour, what do you think you’re doing?”
A question, not a protest, and while she did turn loose of his now-throbbing cock, it was only to run her hands through his hair and rest her elbows on his shoulders.
“You’ve touched me, now I’m going to touch you. You’re going to like it, too, Hannah Cooper.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You’re not to remove my clothing.”
The hell he wasn’t. Except her eyes shifted away as she issued that order.
“Hannah?”
“Hmm?”
“I’ve had my hands all over your delectable bum. I’ve handled your hips, and I’ve watched you walk from several interesting angles. With your clothes off, you’ll look very like any other healthy young woman your age.”
She opened her mouth, probably to castigate him for his freely given medical opinion, so he resumed the kissing. This produced a gratifyingly pliant female, one who sighed into his mouth as his thumb brushed over the curls shielding her sex.
The next bit was delicate, so he brought her hand to his engorged cock again. She obliged by stroking him languidly, the sweetest torture a man had ever endured.
“Am I doing it right?”
“Slower,” he managed, gliding his thumb down, down to the… right… there.
“Everlasting powers… Do that again.”
She was slick and hot, but he was determined and had an anatomist’s keen sense of what went where. He circled on the bud of flesh God had bestowed on women to compensate them for some of the burden of putting up with men. “Like that, lass?”
His answer was a sound from the back of her throat, a low, sighing moan against his neck. “Asher… Mac… Gregor. What…?”
Her hand on his cock stopped moving, and not an instant too soon. “Let yourself have this, love. Let me give it to you.”
He cradled her nape in his palm, to steady himself, to keep her from shifting away, to keep the lavender scent of her spiraling through his senses.
Her breathing changed, becoming deeper and harsher, and yet he didn’t shift his attentions. Were they lovers, he’d ease away, get his mouth on her breasts, use the raspberry jam to wonderful advantage on her nipples—“Asher—?”
He could feel the arousal humming through her, gathering momentum. “I’m here, love. Hold me.”
Her hand was fisted in his hair, a little pain that gave him clarity of purpose when his body was clamoring to join with hers. She’d be wet, hot, tight, and willing… Her hips started a minute movement against the stroke of his thumb, a little push and retreat that accentuated the pleasure he was building for her.
She’d be heaven to make love with.
She was heaven, coming apart in his arms with a soft, sobbing exhale while she pushed hungrily into the pressure he held against her sex. He gave her a moment afterward, to settle, to shift from clutching at his hair to stroking her fingers slowly over his nape. While she calmed and went soft against him, he counted the pulse beats in his stones and matched his breathing to hers.
As distractions went, that was wholly ineffective. When he was sure Hannah would not collapse back on
to the counter in a boneless sprawl, he stepped back far enough to get to work on the bows holding her nightclothes closed.
She remained silent as he peeled back soft layers of flannel and silk, his darker fingers moving against her pale flesh.
“Watch me, Hannah. Watch while I find the same pleasure you took from me.”
With one hand, he began to stroke himself, but lightly—it would take nothing, nothing at all to bring him off. With the other, he pushed Hannah’s nightclothes aside, exposing full pale breasts tipped with rosy, puckered nipples. Her chest was still flushed from her orgasm; her eyes bore the sheen of passion; but she did watch him.
And he watched her. Took in the way her breasts gently rose and fell with her breathing, the way her coppery braid moved with them as it cascaded over her right shoulder. He saw her lips part, watched her take visual inventory of him in all his arousal.
He closed his eyes, trying to make the moment last. At the feel of Hannah’s hand brushing over his naked chest—just that, just that soft, wondering stroke of her fingers—he surrendered to a drenching, pulsing pleasure.
When it was over, his forehead was braced against Hannah’s shoulder, his belly was a sticky mess, and he was trying to remain upright without getting that mess on Hannah or her clothing.
And yet for a few moments, he stayed where he was, Hannah’s hand on his neck, her cheek against his temple, the scent of his spent seed wending through the fragrance of her lavender soap and female heat.
With a mighty gathering of resolve and a little push away from the counter, Asher stood upright, then grabbed a napkin from the table and used it to swab at his belly. Hannah shifted on the counter—her bum had to be uncomfortable—and drew her nightclothes around her.
Rather than mourn what had been taken from his sight, Asher snatched up his kilt and got the thing fastened around his waist. The frown Hannah treated him to suggested she might have regretted her hasty covering up when it resulted in him doing the same.
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