He untangled himself from Hannah’s arm and bowed over the marchioness’s hand. “I’m afraid your ladyship has mistaken the—”
Hannah spoke right over him. “We’re not engaged.”
The lady’s smile, full of teeth and conviction, was aimed at Hannah. “My dear, I’m very certain—very, very certain—that you and his lordship are quite engaged after all. Not another word now. We’ll discuss it later. Come along, breakfast en famille is not to be missed.”
She swanned off so quickly, Fiona barely had time to snatch up her yowling cat before being towed away toward the waiting coach.
***
“Spathfoy’s mama is a Scotswoman and a damned English marchioness, Boston. You’ll not gainsay her in public if you value your life, my life, either of our reputations, or the standing of any of my siblings. The cat alone is safe from her reach, only because he belongs to Fiona.”
Hannah was nearly running to keep up with him, and Asher might have slowed down except he was nearly running to keep up with the damned marchioness. When a lady of wealth and title roused herself before dawn, tricked herself out in glorious finery, and met a train in her full regalia, mischief had to be brewing.
Some more mischief, in addition to what he and Hannah had already brewed up.
“Are we engaged, Asher? You said the license was just a piece of paper.”
Hannah sounded more bewildered than furious, fortunately. “Her ladyship won’t say another word until we’re assured of privacy. That was the intent of her ambush, to make sure we couldn’t misstep before strangers. Something’s afoot.”
“Something’s amiss. Who is she?”
“Fiona’s paternal grandmother—another interfering granny. She’s Spathfoy’s mama, which explains much about them both.”
Though as grannies went, Deirdre Flynn, Marchioness of Quinworth, was a force of nature. She looked appreciably younger than her nearly fifty years and wore boldness like an exotic perfume blended exclusively for her.
Asher liked her, though he didn’t turn his back on her if he could avoid it. He’d noted that Spathfoy and her husband, the marquess, adopted the same policy while the woman’s three daughters emulated her in every particular.
“Into the coach, my dears.” Her ladyship’s smile still had that compelling quality, like a drill sergeant smiling at newly uniformed recruits before their first forced march. “Fee, you and the beast will join us at the town house. I’ll want to hear all about your adventures in London, and so will your grandpapa.”
More fussing and organizing took place while ladies were handed into coaches, and Hannah said nothing. At some point, Asher had linked his fingers with hers to make sure she didn’t hare off to the docks.
Or perhaps to comfort her.
When Hannah and Lady Quinworth were settled on the forward-facing seat and Asher on the bench across from them, Lady Quinworth gave the roof a smart rap with the handle of her parasol and produced a flask.
“It’s the custom in the Western Isles to start the day off with a wee nip. They’re hardy people out west.”
Hannah accepted the flask and tipped it to her lips. “Thank you, your ladyship. Do I offer it to—?”
“You do not.” Her ladyship collected the flask in a purple-gloved hand. “Balfour has his own. Now, imagine my pleasure at being disturbed at my slumbers late last night by a telegram from my darling son. Not a word of greeting, no felicitations—the boy takes after his father—but all dire warnings and bad news. I suspect his dear little wife put him up to it—she’s sensible, is our Hester.”
Asher did not take out his flask, though the temptation was great. “And the nature of those warnings, my lady?”
The coach lurched off in the direction of the New Town. Hannah wasn’t even pretending an interest in the passing sights.
“Forgive me, Miss Cooper, for being blunt. We have little time, because the announcement of your impending nuptials will be in the paper this very morning. I shall be inundated with callers, and we must fashion a proper story, mustn’t we?”
Hannah did not answer, but she’d gone pale enough that from across the coach Asher could count the freckles dusting the bridge of her nose.
Asher asked the obvious question, lest Hannah get to contradicting the marchioness again. “Who would announce our engagement, my lady? Miss Cooper and I have not, that I know of, plighted our troth.”
Lady Quinworth sniffed. “You’ve spent the night out on the moors without shelter or chaperone, which comes close enough to a declaration for anybody. That old fool Fenimore has ferreted out the details. Spathfoy says the baron’s man stumbled into their parlor after you’d departed for points north. Quite a tale came spilling forth over tea and crumpets—the entirety of which was dispatched to Fenimore by wire and letter before Draper had even reached London. I can hardly credit it, myself.” She shot an appraising look at Asher. “The moors in winter are no place to be caught without food and shelter.”
Much less a chaperone.
Hannah raised unhappy eyes to his. “There’s to be an announcement?”
Fenimore’s doing, no doubt, the rotten, old, conniving sod. “An announcement doesn’t make us engaged, Hannah.”
“Don’t listen to him, Miss Cooper. It’s one thing to break an engagement—that merely ruins you. It’s quite another to make a fool of Fenimore and Balfour both while you do. Balfour is toothsome, well-heeled, and reasonable—as men go—but he has an unfortunate past. I suggest you accommodate the notion that you are to be his countess, lest you create all manner of awkwardness for him and his family.”
Hannah looked inclined to argue. She looked, in fact, inclined to toss all twelve stone of the marchioness out of the coach.
“Hannah.” He spoke quietly, willing her to understand that they’d talk later, not caring at all that Lady Quinworth had noted his informal address. “We’re tired, hungry, and the announcement is apparently already in print. Even an engagement need not necessarily end in marriage.”
She sat back, glancing out the window for the first time since they’d crammed themselves into the coach. “Later then, when we are assured of some privacy.”
That last was a snub, a blatant, uncompromising snub of the marchioness, whose efforts had been directed at preserving them both from walking straight into complete, unsalvageable folly.
“Of course you’ll have some privacy,” the marchioness said pleasantly. “Engaged couples are always afforded a great deal of latitude that unattached couples would never be permitted.”
Hannah stared resolutely out the window, while Asher fished through his pockets for his flask.
***
“What would be so awful about being Asher MacGregor’s wife?”
Augusta posed the question in the most pleasant tones from her perch on Hannah’s settee, while Hannah grabbed for her patience. This was the opening salvo in what would be four weeks of relentless, well-meant cross-examination.
“My brothers have years to go before they reach their majorities,” Hannah replied, taking the first pair of slippers—Spanish Bullets, or something metallic—from a trunk and setting them in an enormous wardrobe. “My grandmother, for all her great age, should also have years left, and my mother…”
She trailed off. Mama’s circumstances were in some ways the most precarious. No less authority than the Bible, backed up by the law and the good fellows of the American legal system, dictated that Mama remain entirely under her husband’s control. In the name of marital discipline, a man could beat his wife, exercise his marital privileges against her will, starve her, and clothe her in rags, and the wife would have no recourse.
“What about your mother?”
“I am all she has, and there’s little enough I can do. Sometimes, though, a person will moderate his behavior simply from the knowledge that it is witnessed by others.” Hannah paused, her Maiden’s Blush dancing slippers in her hands, the right now sporting a discreet lift to the heel. “My stepfather is quite
sensitive to public opinion, which is probably why Grandmama continues to live with us.”
Augusta fingered the tassel of a bright blue pillow trimmed in gold. “Asher has many business associates on the American seaboard. He could keep an eye on matters in Boston easily enough.”
Not only the pink pair, but every pair of Hannah’s slippers, shoes, and boots sported a small lift on the heel. When had Asher done this?
Because he’d done it himself. Hannah knew that from the way the edge of each heel had been sanded smooth, the wood matched so the lifts would not be obvious.
“Asher cannot have somebody present at every meal to ensure my mother is permitted to eat. He cannot ensure correspondence is delivered unopened to the intended recipient—or delivered at all. He cannot examine my brothers, mother, or grandmother for bruises in unlikely places. He cannot post a guard who will hear every time somebody in the house is in distress.”
Not that her mother screamed. She’d once told Hannah that any show of resistance only made matters worse.
Augusta set the pillow aside, rose, and wandered to a trunk as yet unopened. “Asher can, however, be sure something nasty is slipped into your stepfather’s drink when the dratted man is whiling away an evening at his club. I expect a physician has more than a passing acquaintance with poisons.”
Hannah started hanging stockings, of which she had acquired an abundance. That such a genteel lady as Augusta MacGregor would leap to ideas Hannah had taken years to approach was reassuring.
“Then I would be as bad as my stepfather, wouldn’t I? Worse, in fact, because he only slaps and bullies, while I contemplate murder.”
And then Augusta was there, right beside her, without having made a sound. “You have contemplated murder, though, haven’t you? Things are that bad.”
Such a wealth of compassion communicated itself from Augusta’s violet-blue eyes. Hannah tossed the last of the stockings toward a hook. “One grows desperate, and weary, which is why I cannot…”
Augusta was a good six inches taller than Hannah, and she was a mother. When she slipped her arms around Hannah’s waist, tears welled from the bottom of Hannah’s heart. She leaned into Augusta’s support when the weight of impending regrets would have brought her to her knees.
“My youngest brother, we call him Bertie—” Unless the boy’s father was in the room, and then, by God, Hannah addressed him as Albert.
“What about him?”
“He was helping me pack, or bothering me while I packed, the night before I took ship. He asked me why I never considered dying my hair. The question struck me as peculiar coming from a schoolboy.”
“Boys are odd creatures.”
“He said—” Hannah could not explain the dread or the pain of the memory. “He said red hair is wicked, and women with red hair have ungovernable tempers. Just like that. He doesn’t even know what ‘ungovernable’ means, and it came out of his mouth, full of righteousness despite the uncertainty in his eyes.”
“He was mimicking his father. Boys do this, and then they rebel, if all goes according to plan.”
Augusta was the mother of a son, but that son was still very young. Hannah slipped away and opened the second trunk. “He comes out with pronouncements like that more and more, understanding clearly they are the way to win his papa’s approval. I cannot abide the thought that Bertie will end up hating his own sister because she has red hair, feeling superior to her, thinking that if she’s beaten frequently enough, the man doing the beating might redress what the Creator Himself put wrong.”
The discussion was difficult, but putting Hannah’s thoughts into words also helped clarify the answer to Augusta’s initial question.
Hannah could find not one thing wrong with being the wife of Asher MacGregor, except that such an honor would require that she abdicate her every responsibility as a daughter, granddaughter, and sister.
And yet, Augusta did not give in. “Asher could—”
Hannah tossed another pair of gossamer stockings toward a hook and missed. “Asher could do nothing. Children are their father’s chattel, wives are chattel, and Boston is an ocean away. I will not ask a man I esteem greatly to commit murder for my convenience. Not when I can go home, endure the next little while there, and soon establish my own household.”
This earned Hannah a silence while Augusta paced to the window, arms crossed, expression resolute. “How common is it in Boston for a young lady to establish her own household?”
“My grandmother would join me. For a spinster and an elderly relation to live together would not be unusual.”
Augusta drew the sash down with a solid thunk! and yanked the curtain closed. “And when, as could happen at any moment, your grandmother passes on? Then there you are, twenty-some years old, without male protection, still attempting to battle a man more than twice your age for the safety of people whom you legally cannot touch?”
Hannah picked up the copy of Waverley she’d purchased from the inn in Steeth. The book bore a slight lavender fragrance from its prolonged confinement in the trunk, and the peacock feather marking Hannah’s place had somehow been lost.
“Augusta, I have to try. I cannot turn my back on my family. Asher understands this.”
“And he cannot turn his back on his family. The pair of you will drive me to Bedlam.”
Augusta whipped away from the window, swooped down to administer one more tight, fleeting hug, and then left Hannah alone amid clothes and mementos that would be packed up again all too soon.
***
They were down to twenty-three days, five already having been spent accepting good wishes from a parade of strangers and acquaintances at Lady Quinworth’s town house. At some point, Hannah had been whisked away for fittings, though Asher wondered why she allowed such an outing when she never intended to wear the dress.
And now he was supposed to make polite conversation with her, when what he wanted to do…
“How do you like being engaged to an earl, Hannah?”
The weather being fine, they were enjoying the walk up to Arthur’s Seat. Or making the walk, regardless. Two footmen struggled along yards behind them, the picnic hamper carried between them.
“You shouldn’t joke about such a thing.”
He took her hand, ostensibly to assist her up the incline. “I like being engaged to you. I no longer have to guard my besotted gazes, no longer have to hold back every fatuous word that springs to mind.”
Though he did. In defense of his heart and hers both, he kept many of the fatuous words behind his teeth.
She smiled. A restrained species of her usual display, but a start. “I have not noticed much in the way of fatuous words from you, Asher MacGregor. Mostly when I see you, you are murmuring civilities at Lady Quinworth’s friends, or muttering curse words in Gaelic.”
“They sound better in Gaelic. Allow me to demonstrate my most fatuous look.” He drew her to a halt on their climb and set both hands on her shoulders. “Look at me, Hannah.”
Her smile died. What he saw in her eyes tore at his heart. She was worried, weary, and dreading the next twenty-three days. “I wish I could hold you, right this moment, I wish I could put my arms around you.”
She scooted out from under his hands and resumed walking. “If wishes were horses…”
“There wouldn’t be a blade of grass left, and we’d have to watch where we stepped much more closely.” He took her hand again, feeling the welling helplessness of a man who did not know how to turn love into appropriate action. The feeling was old and immensely frustrating. “My name is being put forth for the Scottish delegation to Parliament.”
“That’s an honor, isn’t it?”
“It… is. I supposedly have a well-rounded view on relations with Canada and the United States. In truth, somebody is thinking I won’t know enough of British politics to cause much trouble, possibly Spathfoy’s dear papa, the very English Marquess of Quinworth.”
They would soon gain the summit, sprea
d their picnic, and have what privacy Asher could manage atop one of the most popular walking destinations in the realm.
“This a positive sign, though, isn’t it?” Hannah’s gaze flicked over him. “An acknowledgement of your worldly sophistication compared to the insular lords and squires responsible for managing the empire.”
“Possibly. More likely it’s Victoria meddling in the neighbors’ business. The Lords does little anymore but debate and bluster and rattle sabers.”
And yet, Hannah had a point too. Victoria, for reasons of her own, had taken more than a passing interest in the MacGregor family situation. She was also quite fond of Mary Fran’s husband, Matthew, though nobody could explain that either. To refuse the opportunity to serve in the parliamentary delegation would not be… prudent.
“You should accept this,” Hannah said, pausing as they rounded the bend onto the top of the hill. “You should wade in among the blustering fools and speak your truth, not because you understand the New World better than any of your peers, though you do, but because you understand it might be important that epidemics do not come from foul miasmas.”
The view was magnificent, and Asher knew it well. Edinburgh and the sea lay stretched out in one direction; the interior of Scotland lay in the other. Both had beauty and heart, though the fairer view lay to the west.
And yet, what Asher saw was not sweeping vistas and dramatic Scottish skies, but the woman who understood him, who recognized what motivated him, and what would sustain him when parliamentary rules of order were threatening his sanity.
He saw the only woman he would ever propose to. “Let’s choose our spot.”
She smiled again, the curving of her lips a little softer this time. “You don’t want to dwell on the parliamentary honor, but you’ll go back and read your monographs, then consider your obligation to your queen with all her little princes and princesses. You’ll mention this to your brothers. Then you’ll think of little John, thriving in his parents’ care now, but so small and helpless, and the decision will already be made.”
Yes. Unbidden, the sensation of John, a wee scrap of a lad bundled against Asher’s chest, hit him like the slap of the heather-scented wind whipping across the summit.
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