Bridegroom Wore Plaid (6 page)

Julia appeared to consider this offer as she peered at her tea. “It has been ages since I’ve ridden. Augusta, will you join us so I won’t be the only one left to amble along on an aged pony?”

Augusta was tempted. Oh, how she was tempted. But for her to be riding about with the young ladies when Julia was on hand to do so might be getting above her station.

“I’ll leave the girls to your watchful eye,” Augusta said. “Perhaps I’ll ride some other day.”

Three seats up, the Baron folded down his newspaper and frowned at the sugar bowl. “We’re to tour the estate? Can’t say as I approve of riding after a full meal. You girls mind your aunt, and when you’re done, be sure to send along notes to your mama, else she’ll be pestering me to death for word of your doings. Pass the teapot, Gussie.”

Augusta did as bid. She always did as her uncle bid her, but she also noticed the earl was not making noises to join the riding expedition.

Prudent of him, to only advance his cause so far then leave Genie some time to regain her balance. It wasn’t as if his own brothers were going to undermine his prospects with Genie, were they?

Three

Ian counted breakfast a limited success, in part because Gil had been canny enough to suggest an outing for the ladies that Ian could easily decline.

Always
leave
your
opponent
a
graceful
out.
Grandfather’s words echoed in Ian’s mind, though Ian wondered how a battle-hardened soldier had applied those words in a life-or-death struggle. They had merit in a wooing, or whatever Ian was engaged in with Miss Daniels.

Miss Genie. Who’d looked only relieved when Miss Merrick had requested Ian’s company on a tour of the library.

“Have you many novels in your library?”

Miss Merrick voiced her question tentatively, as if novels were some kind of pornography. Perhaps in her lexicon they were.

“Mary Fran claims we’re to stock them for guests. Connor says any Scots household worth its salt has to have a full complement of old Sir Walter. Gil’s excuse is that we keep them on hand for Mary Fran, while I admit to reading occasionally purely for recreation.”

As she walked beside him along the rows of shelves, her eyes grew wide. “You admit such a thing?”

“There are advantages to being head of the household.” He refrained from giving her a conspiratorial wink lest the poor thing expire from an excess of innuendo, but there was pleasure in showing her what remained of the family library. She ran a single, tentative finger down the spine of each volume he pointed out, her touch slow and reverent, a kind of literary caress.

“Books were my salvation,” she said as they paused by the old atlas spread on a gate-legged table. “When Papa died and then Mother died so soon after, I was quite alone. Proper mourning leaves one nothing to do
but
mourn, and I’ve concluded this isn’t a good thing. Grief crowds in closely enough without the rest of life being shoved aside to make way for it. Am I scandalizing you?”

She peeked over at him, and Ian smiled at her. The library door was wide open, a footman posted directly outside. They were discussing novels, or possibly mourning, and she was concerned she might be shocking him.

Ian bent a bit closer and kept his voice down, as if they were exchanging confidences. “I found a great deal more solace in taking care of my father’s legacy and brawling with my brothers than I did sitting behind draped windows and reading scripture.”

Or
getting
drunk.
He shook off that thought.

“Have you read this one?” He reached over her shoulder and pulled down a book. “It’s credited with sparking the revival of Scottish national pride, indirectly.”

“
Waverley?
This is by your Sir Walter.”

“It was so popular it gained him a dinner with George IV, and put Sir Walter in the position of managing the King’s visit here in ’22. I’m told I was brought to Edinburgh as an infant to see George sporting about in royal Stuart finery, but I have no recollection of it.”

She frowned at the book in her hand. “George’s advisors wanted him away from the Continent at that time, as I recall. He gained a great following here, though, didn’t he?”

“Temporarily, at least. In my grandfather’s time, we were still forbidden to wear the tartan and play our pipes. That George’s visit celebrated the very things long denied us was likely the source of that popularity.” But what sort of bluestocking was she, that she’d have a grasp of political history thirty years distant?

He was going to ask her, but she’d opened the book. Her frown became an expression of concentration as she stood right there and began to read. The only sound was the library clock ticking quietly on the wall, and still she remained absorbed in the book.

Ian realized how closely they were standing when he caught a whiff of lilacs from her person, a soft, pleasing scent that went with her retiring demeanor much better than the tart lemon had. She’d caught her hair back in a neat chignon, which left him with a curious desire to see her glossy black braid swinging over her hips again.

Maybe even a desire to have another of those chaste, maidenly little pecks to his cheek?

“I meant to thank you,” he said, the words surprising him.
Step
back, you idiot.

She glanced up at him, her expression questioning.

“At breakfast,” he clarified. “I presumed to use informal address with your cousin. You aided me in this regard.”

She blinked and closed the book with a snap. “I aided the cause of our digestion. I was not raised to stand particularly on ceremony, your lordship. My grandfather was merely a baron, or a… what is the Scottish equivalent?”

“A lord of parliament, or lord baron. I hope you enjoy the novel, Miss Merrick.”

He turned to go. There was work to be done, and she was regarding him with a peculiar light in her strange eyes.

“My lord?”

He stopped in midstride and turned to face her from a small distance. “Madam?”

From this angle, he could see that a curl had managed to escape from the black netting gathered over her nape. It was provoking, that curl. Lying against her neck, it disturbed the picture of order and calm she presented otherwise.

“I had thought…” She dropped her gaze from him to the book in her hands. “I don’t mean to presume, but if you were so inclined…”

Ian liked women. He enjoyed their company in bed and out, and he treasured the grace and sweetness they added to an otherwise difficult and burdensome existence. Still, something warned him to resist any queer starts on the part of this shy spinster who wandered barefoot in the dew and dispensed kisses at dawn.

He took one step closer. “You are a guest under my roof. You have only to ask, and any aid I can offer, any courtesy, is yours, Miss Merrick.” She was also his only ally in his efforts to wed the Daniels fortune, which fact excused his tarrying with her between the bookshelves.

She mumbled something, so he took one more step closer, and now he could see her cheeks were flaming.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Merrick?”

“Augusta.” She raised her gaze to his, her eyes lit with determination. “It might make your informality with Genie less difficult for her if you adopt the same address with Hester and myself. Just don’t…”

This was costing her, this declaration. For it was a declaration of some sort—maybe of support for his goal, or maybe of something else entirely.

“Just don’t?” he prodded. He put his hands behind his back lest he tuck that curl up into its rightful place.

“Don’t call me Miss Gussie, or Gus, or Miss Auggie, or—”

She could not have blushed any more brightly red, and abruptly, he did not want to look on her distress. Did not want to cause it.

“I’m Ian.” He interrupted her to say this. “I didn’t think your cousin would remain at table if I suggested we use first names only, though you may call me Ian if you like, and I shall call you Miss Augusta. My brothers will not refer to me by the title unless they are wroth with me, and it grows… awkward, to be Ian to this person, Balfour to that, my lord to the other.”

Her blush was fading, though this left a nice color in her usually pale cheeks.

“My grandfather said the same thing, said titles were confusing at best, and a damned lot of nonsense generally.” He thought she’d cause herself to blush again, but instead she gave him another of those shy, mischievous smiles. “A lady oughtn’t to use such language.”

She glanced around, as if someone might censure her for using “such language.”

“A guest in my home, particularly in my library, can use any damned language necessary to express herself. I hope you enjoy the book,
Miss
Augusta
.”

And then he did something impulsive—something a little brave, a little selfish, and more than a little stupid. He gave her a peck on the lips.

A bit more than a peck, really. Enough of a kiss to learn that she had soft, sweet lips and she hadn’t been kissed worth a damn in recent memory. Her hand brushed down his chest, a fleeting caress to him, no doubt a simple bid for balance to her.

When he straightened, her hand stayed on the wool of his morning coat for one moment, while both of them stood there, staring at her elegant, bare fingers smoothing down his lapel.

Temptation barreled out of the depths of Ian’s male imagination, ambushing common sense with ideas Ian had no business thinking.

He would love to teach her to kiss.

He would love to take down all that black, shining hair and bury his face in it.

He would love to walk barefoot with her in the morning dew and lay her down in the cool summer grass…

While the sheer, beaming innocence of her smile said Augusta Merrick had no clue what he was thinking, no clue about any of it.

“I bid you a good morning, Miss Augusta.” She looked so pleased at the simple use of her name Ian would have turned from the sight even if there were not hours of work awaiting him elsewhere, and even if he had not flirted with lunacy by kissing her.

Not that anybody would mind if he dallied with her—she was a poor relation, and marriage was a calculating, unromantic business among the titled English… and lately the titled Scots, apparently.

He
would mind if he dallied with her, and what a damned inconvenience that was.

As he made his way to the stables, Ian acknowledged he and Miss Merrick—Miss Augusta—had something else unexpected in common.

When he and his family had made the decision earlier in the year to file to have Asher declared dead, Mary Fran had insisted it was time for Ian to start using the title. He’d had a courtesy title—Viscount Deesely—but he’d never used it much. With the stroke of a pen on some arcane court pleadings, he’d become not Ian, but—presumptively and presumptuously—my lord, Balfour, Lord Balfour.
The
earl
, but for the remaining legalities.

He could go entire weeks without hearing his own name, unless he was in company with his siblings. Inside, inside his very sense of himself, he felt the impending loss of some part of his identity with each use of more formal address. He couldn’t reverse this sense of loss; he relied on his family to do it for him by frequent use of his given name.

And now he knew he was not alone in his sense of isolation. Even proper little spinsters from the backwaters of Oxfordshire could suffer the same gnawing fear that if nobody ever called them by name, a part of them would eventually cease to be.

***

“They ride well for a trio of proper ladies.” Gil made the observation grudgingly, because women who rode well were women who’d had the luxury of spare time to learn, indulgent male relations to teach them, and good horses to learn on.

“Mary Fran could have come along if she’d wanted to,” Connor replied. “She’d rather terrorize the staff and concoct spells and incantations to shrivel the baron’s pizzle.”

“Hush, you.” Gil nudged his horse forward to keep in step with Connor’s younger mount. “Mary Fran hates that sort of talk.”

“Then she shouldn’t go dancing naked under the Beltane moon, should she?”

Gil did not ask whether Con was speaking figuratively or if he’d really seen their sister comporting herself without clothing by moonlight. God knew, Mary Fran was entitled to a little eccentricity, but Ian would be beside himself if she’d gone that far.

“The widow…” Con hesitated, his gaze on Mrs. Redmond, Miss Genie, and Miss Hester riding up ahead. They made a pretty picture even on the less-than-elegant mounts available from the Balfour stables.

“She seems the friendly sort,” Gil said, hoping to inspire Con to speak whatever piece he’d intended to speak. Miss Genie was petting her horse, stroking a gloved hand over the mare’s crest with a slow, easy rhythm that had the muscles over Gil’s shoulder blades relaxing.