Bridegroom Wore Plaid (33 page)

“I’m sorry.” She jerked back long before Ian could steel himself to join their mouths. “I am so sorry, but just as you have promised not to raise your hand to me, I have promised myself I would marry only for love.” She turned away, though Ian kept one hand on her arm.

“Genie, lass, I’m sorry too, but surely you see now we’re going to have to come up with something if we’re not to be a great deal sorrier here directly.”

She nodded, her gaze on the dirt floor. “Papa wants to make an announcement at the ball this weekend.”

This was news—bad news. “I haven’t signed the documents.”

“He’ll make the announcement anyway to force your hand.”

“And if I gainsay him?”

Her hand went to her cheek—probably the very cheek her father had struck while Gil looked on helplessly—and she shook her head. “You think I’m the one Papa can coerce, my lord, but if you back out now, he’ll have it all over Town the hospitality at Balfour was abysmal, the sheets damp, the food poor, and the company mere peasantry. He can ruin you with a word. He’s done the same to many and enjoyed doing it.”

Insight struck with a strange sense of liberation: if Ian coerced Genie to the altar, he’d be no better than Altsax.

“I can’t marry a woman who’s being forced to say her vows, much less a woman who detests my touch, Genie. I won’t do it to you, or to myself.”

Her expression became impatient. “Yes, you can and you will. The alternative is to jeopardize your family’s standing and security—which you might be willing to do—but you won’t leave me to my father’s machinations. He might not have chosen you for your honor, but it’s the reason he’ll get you to say vows you abhor.”

She wasn’t stupid. Too late, Ian realized his intended was a very perceptive woman. Also very frightened, and the prospect of spending years married to her…

He asked a question he hoped was theoretical. “Did you want a white marriage, then?” Images of Augusta popped into his mind, her hair cascading around her naked breasts, her smile wicked in the moonlight…

Bloody
damn.

“I do not seek a white marriage,” Genie said. “One hears talk such unions can be annulled, and your brothers aren’t married. If you are to have heirs, they need to be of my body.”

The idea made her as sick as it did him. He could see that by the careful lack of expression on her face. “Genie Daniels, I cannot—I
will
not
—marry, much less consummate a marriage with a woman who’s being forced. We’re at an impasse, and until we resolve it, I’ll not sign anything, regardless of what your papa announces.”

A calico kitten came stotting out of the saddle room, followed by a second, a marmalade tabby. “Lass, I am so sorry.”

She kept her gaze toward the kittens rolling and playing on the ground, each arching its back and hissing and spitting before leaping merrily on the other. “I’m sorry too,” she said, turning and leaving. Ian swore viciously for long minutes then grabbed a muck fork and started stabbing at the horseshit that seemed to be accumulating all around him.

***

Con had taken to watching for Julia without even realizing it himself, and it wasn’t hard to find her, because she was almost always in Genie’s vicinity. He wasn’t surprised then, to find the lady who had most recently graced his dreams sitting on a bench outside the foals’ paddock, a book of poetry facedown in her lap.

“Mrs. Redmond, good day.”

She smiled up at him. “Connor. Good day to you too.”

His chest expanded to behold that smile. She’d fallen asleep on his shoulder in the billiards room, then awoken blushing and stammering. As soon as he’d set her hair to rights, she’d scampered off, and he’d been left wondering ever since.

Wondering and aching.

“I don’t find you in solitude very often,” he said, taking the place beside her.

“I have been remiss in my duties as chaperone.” She set the book aside. “Genie is visiting the horses on her intended’s arm, though, so I have a few minutes to spend with Mr. Burns.”

“I’ll read to you if you like.” Because he was that far gone, he’d read her smarmy old Robbie Burns. To have her drowsing in his arms again, he’d read her
English
poetry naked on the front drive. “Genie has already gone up to the house.”

“I hardly see how your brother is going to bring the girl around if they don’t spend more than five minutes together at a time.” She started to rise, but Con caught her by the wrist.

“We need to talk about that.”

She sank slowly to the bench and made no move to retrieve her hand, so Con linked their fingers where their hands rested between them. “We need to have a private discussion, in fact. Are you all right, Julia?”

She closed her eyes and let out a sigh. “When you pitch your voice like that, Connor, so low and intimately, I am not all right in the least. My innards get to fluttering and my brain stalls and all I can think about…”

He rubbed his thumb over the soft skin of her wrist. “All you can think about…?”

“All I can think about is having a billiards room built into all my residences.”

“Interesting idea. Have you missed me then, Julia?”

She didn’t hesitate. She nodded, cheeks flaming. “You destroy a lady’s sense of decorum, Connor MacGregor. I see you in my dreams. All the hours I spend trailing Genie around the gardens, sipping tea with her, and reading novels to her in the library, I am watching for you.”

Con kept his eyes on the stables, lest he allow her to see what this confession was doing to his… composure. “We have a problem, my dear.”

She glanced over at him, her scrutiny guarded. “I’m not expecting, if that’s what you’re hinting at.”

“Would you like to be carrying my bairn, Julia?”

He’d put the question to her to knock her off her pins, to get the dreamy look out of her pretty brown eyes, but the smile curving her mouth—full, soft, sweet, and sincere—had him feeling poleaxed where he sat.

“Don’t answer that question if you value my dignity, Julia Redmond. We truly do have a problem. I happened to be up in the hayloft, catching forty winks, when Ian and Genie came strolling by to visit the horses. Were you aware your niece has a specific aversion to an arranged match with a title?”

Julia’s head slewed around, and the dreamy expression was nowhere to be found. “A specific aversion?”

“Said the precedents didn’t bode well, and she’s promised herself to marry only for love. Ian kissed her cheek—mostly to make a point, I’m guessing—and it was painful to watch. Seems the baron’s brand of domestic discipline has put the fear of arranged marriages in his daughter.”

“You saw…?” Julia fell silent, worrying her bottom lip. “Augusta and I have suspected Altsax’s example has put Genie off an arranged match, but Genie wouldn’t divulge any particulars.”

“It gets worse.” Con leaned across her to retrieve the book, also to feel her breast pressing against his arm. “Genie has decided to put her trust in a man, but not her intended.”

“Gilgallon.” Julia loaded a wealth of despair into the name. “I saw them after Altsax walloped Genie, and I’d say they’re equally smitten.”

“So what are we to do? Ian will end up marrying the girl just to keep her safe from her own father.”

“I don’t know what to do.” Julia looked around them and gave his hand a surreptitious squeeze. “Maybe we could discuss it further over a game of billiards?”

***

“It’s stinking worse the more I stir it.” Ian tossed the latest missive down on his desk and accepted the drink Mary Fran passed him. “I can find out all I want about a wee piece of Kent that serves as the Altsax seat, but the Gribbony barony and its Scottish holdings are a confounded mystery.”

“What does Daniels have to say about it?” Con posed the question quite, quite casually, but Ian saw Mary Fran brace herself.

“Young Daniels has departed for the South. He said he’d be back by week’s end. He took a proper leave of me as his host, so I can’t think it was anything more than business, just as the man said.”

Mary Fran looked grateful for Ian’s observation. Gil looked thoughtful. “Genie says her brother has been kept out of the business of the barony, says Altsax won’t allow his son the least involvement with the estates, or with Trevisham, either.”

“Trevisham?” The name was familiar.

“The place Altsax acquired from the Merrick family,” Gil clarified. “Until Genie’s come-out, it was where they lived part of the year. She says it’s a lovely estate, and the baron has boasted that it’s quite profitable.”

“I’m looking into that.”

Mary Fran regarded him from where she stood by the hearth. “You don’t sound very pleased with matters, Ian.”

“I am not pleased at all. Genie has made it clear she’s marrying under duress, the baron will take it out on our social standing if the wedding doesn’t take place, and every instinct I have says there’s something underhand in Altsax’s finances.”

“I am against this wedding.” Connor spoke quietly then glanced around at his siblings. “Ian is being put in the position of having to force a woman to the altar. It isn’t honorable. We don’t need the coin, we just want it. Compromising honor for discretionary coin makes us whores.”

Ian wanted to lift a toast in agreement with Con’s summary of the situation, wanted to take his siblings into his confidence. And yet, if Ian’s plan, shaky as it was, didn’t come to fruition, then his confidences would have been for naught.

Gil pushed away from the windowsill where he’d been lounging. “If Ian
doesn’t
marry the woman, can you imagine her fate at Altsax’s hands?”

“That is her brother’s concern,” Mary Fran said. “I’m confident Matthew can keep his sister safe if the situation is explained to him clearly enough.”

“Matthew,” Gil spat, “who isn’t here.”

“This gets us nowhere,” Ian said. “I haven’t signed anything, nor will I until I understand Altsax’s source of wealth. I’ll speak to Daniels when he returns, and we will comport ourselves graciously to our guests until he does. Mary Fran, are we in readiness for the weekend’s festivities?”

Ian saw his siblings exchange fulminating glances. Yes, he’d just pulled rank, and yes, Connor’s position was the one supported by honor and integrity. Yes, Matthew Daniels’s disappearance was very untimely—as far as Ian’s siblings knew—and yes again, the Baron Altsax was a viper under their roof.

And notwithstanding any of that, notwithstanding all plans and wishes to the contrary, come Friday night, Ian might very possibly have to permit the baron to make Genie’s betrothal announcement before every titled guest in the shire.

Thirteen

“Explain something to me.” Ian’s weight dipped the mattress as he sat on Augusta’s bed. “How is it your uncle claimed Trevisham was deep in debt eight years ago, but Genie says it’s the most profitable of his holdings now?”

“Ian?”

“Don’t shoo me away, Augusta Merrick. You avoided me for most of the day. I have questions for you.”

Augusta struggled to a sitting position, only to see Ian shucking his clothing where he stood beside the bed. “Is it necessary that you be naked to interview me, Ian?”

“No.” His hands stilled at his waistband, his expression shuttered. “But I would dearly like to be.”

“This is not wise.” It was the best she could do, a little remonstrance. A sop to common sense at complete variance with what her body—and her heart—desperately wanted.

“I do not see a wise course before me, Augusta. Not in the direction of your cousin, not in the direction of your bed, not in the direction of the docks where I am very tempted to take ship as my older brother and so many of my clan have before me.”

“Then why are you here?”

Because
I
cannot
remain
away
from
your
side.

Augusta was slow to translate his Gaelic. Slow and unsure.

“I’m here because something greater than wisdom compels me to be here, Augusta. I’ll leave if you like, and I won’t come back, but as early as this weekend Altsax might attempt to announce a betrothal and then…”

“Then, no more heeding things greater than wisdom.”

“I fear not.” He rolled his head on his neck. “I
vow
not. You have my word on that. Regardless of the outcome of Altsax’s schemes, I will do nothing to jeopardize your standing in the eyes of your family.”

So their time was running out, as they’d both known it would. “Come to bed.” She patted the place beside her. “What do you want to know about Trevisham?”

He did indeed interview her, though Augusta almost didn’t realize what he was about. He started by asking her to recount her memories of the place, to describe its metes and bounds, the size of its herds and the reckonings of its various harvests. She was surprised at how much detail she recalled.

“And what of Altsax?”