Bridegroom Wore Plaid (7 page)

“She’s the wealthy sort,” Con said. “Or was when she married into the Daniels family.”

“I’ve never held wealth against a woman.”

Con shook his head, so Gil resigned himself to patience. Con and Mary Fran were close, just as Ian and Asher had been close. Between those pairs of siblings, there had always been unspoken communication, while Gil struggled along parsing meaning as best he could and resorting to blunt inquiry more often than not.

“She said she does not want her niece to be married just for her wealth.” Con stretched up in his stirrups then settled back into the saddle. “Said that befell her, and she wouldn’t wish it on anybody. I told her I was sorry she’d been treated that way, which is hypocritical when my own brother intends the same thing toward her niece.”

Connor would
loathe
feeling hypocritical even more than he loathed running a glorified guesthouse for wealthy English pains in the arse. And of course he would apologize for a marriage Julia Redmond probably hadn’t even found truly bothersome.

“She wasn’t scolding you, Connor. She was making a chaperone’s version of small talk.”

Con indulged in one of his infernal silences, which might presage a silent exit, a grunted curse, or a startling profundity.

“She was confiding in me, or something.”

Gil knew himself to be handsome, knew Ian was handsomer, and knew Connor was… Connor was the braw fellow who ought to be watched and never was. His gruff ways, his indifference to refined dress and manners, and his rare, bold smile earned him all manner of female attention.

But confidences?

Gil ordered himself back to the topic at hand: “Ian isn’t an unfeeling brute. He’ll make Miss Daniels a passable husband.”

But as he spoke, Gil recalled the pathetic relief in Genie Daniels’s eyes that morning at breakfast when this outing—
sans
Ian—had been suggested. She’d had the trapped-prey air Gil felt every time he donned evening attire or stood up with a proper young lady at the local assemblies.

A look of such hopelessness, Gil had to wonder at it. “Let’s catch up to them.” He nudged his mount stoutly with his heels. “You can smooth the pretty widow’s feathers, while I flirt with the sisters.”

Connor said nothing, urging his horse to a canter and then falling in beside Mrs. Redmond, whose mare was winded enough that walking the rest of the way to the barn would be a kindness to the horse, if not exactly a kindness to her escort.

“Come, ladies, I can show you a path that will let us canter through the woods.” Gil offered them the smile useful for getting him his ale before any other patron, but only Hester returned it.

“I’m not in shape for any canters through the woods,” she said. “Particularly not after sitting on that train for an eternity. You and Genie go, and I’ll keep Aunt company.”

“Miss Genie? It cuts through the woods, where Her Majesty sometimes likes to walk and His Highness has been known to ride.”

Shameless of him to use such bait, but effective.

“We’ll take a groom, of course?” She glanced back at her aunt, whose horse was toddling along beside Con’s at the most sedate walk.

“We will,” Gil assured her. “Lavelle! You’re with us.”

The red-haired Lavelle, mounted on a sturdy cob, looked mightily relieved at the prospect of a meander through the woods. He fell in fifty paces back like the good but lazy lad he was. Gil well knew the last man back to the stables had fewer horses to put up.

Genie’s mare had to be as fatigued as the other mounts, so Gil kept them to an easy trot until they approached the woods, then slowed to a walk.

He waited for his companion to catch up before speaking. “Our woods abut those of Balmoral, though elsewhere, there are smallholdings between the two properties.”

“Have you met Her Majesty?”

“I have.” Victoria was downright neighborly at times, for a queen. Just another clucking, fussing, well-to-do mother with a large brood to keep track of and a doting husband at her side. “I’ve hunted and fished with Albert as well, and met such of the children as are old enough to be out and about.”

“The royal couple must be very much in love.” Her voice was so wistful, Gil glanced over at her. Her expression matched her melancholy tone, at variance with the sunny, breezy day.

“They’re up to at least a half-dozen children, and chronic rumors of more on the way,” Gil said. “If they’re not in love, they’re certainly making the best of their situation.” He tried his signature smile on her again, but she just looked… sad.

“Do I offend, Miss Daniels?”

She shook her head. “Marriage is such a daunting prospect, and to be married and the monarch…”

Marriage was daunting, or marriage to his brother? Or marriage to any Scottish title? “What about it daunts you?”

She swallowed. “There’s no hiding anything in a marriage, not if your husband doesn’t want to leave you any privacy. There’s no freedom, no hope. You can risk your life giving the man babies, and then he can take them from you and you’ll never see them again. You’re trapped, a slave with no hope of manumission save his death—or your own.”

Gil’s brows rose as she spoke. These were desperate words from a woman who’d had her pick of the swains from three London Seasons. “What is your mother doing right this minute, Miss Daniels?”

She turned a puzzled expression on him. “I don’t know.”

“I’d hazard your father doesn’t know, either. For all the weeks he’s up here with you, for all the weeks he’ll be shooting grouse in Northumbria, your mother will have complete independence from her entire family.”

The lady fiddled with the reins. “She will not. Papa has the servants in his pocket, and they’ll tattle on her in an instant. He believes a man’s home is his castle and his word is law within his own walls.”

She turned her face straight up into the sunlight pouring through the pines above them, as if she’d entreat heaven itself for agreement, while Gil struggled for something to say. Things went from bad to worse when she started to cry, which was no damned help at all.

“For God’s sake.” He caught Lavelle’s vacant gaze and nodded in the direction of the stables. The groom obligingly turned back the way they’d come, while Gil reached over and pulled Miss Daniels’s horse up. “Madam, this will not do.”

He swung off and came around to lift her from the saddle. She was boneless with her upset, sliding down his length like an exhausted child, then leaning on him, weeping softly.

“I can’t do this.” Her voice was low, miserable, and heartfelt. “I can’t impose on your family’s hospitality and let my father spend his precious coin when I have no intention of considering your brother’s suit. It isn’t… sporting.”

Sporting? What an odd notion in the politics of mutually advantageous matrimony between English and Scot.

“Come sit.” He took off his riding gloves and pulled her by the hand to a nicely situated boulder. When she was seated beside him, a shaft of sunlight gilding her hair, he fished out his handkerchief. “What is this really about?”

“I don’t know you, Mr. MacGregor, nor would I burden you with confidences even if I did.” She took his handkerchief and daintily blotted her eyes. “I apologize for this unseemly display. I simply do not want to marry like this, not your brother, not any titled man my parents might put up to the task.”

More tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, and Gil wished he might in that moment follow Asher into the wilds of Canada. “Ian will treat you with utmost civility.”

Except when he was swiving the woman witless in service to the damned title. There probably wasn’t a civil way to conceive heirs, not for a Scotsman and his wife.

“He will marry me.” This last was said so miserably Gil sensed his companion was holding on to her limited store of composure by a slender, taut thread. He settled his hand on her nape, rubbing his thumb gently over the bone that bumped at the top of her spine, much as he might seek to calm a nervous hound by touch.

“You assume because he must marry lucratively Ian will resent his wife or neglect her. This is not so.” She remained silent, but he thought some of her anxiety might be easing. “Ian and I have the same mother, as do Con and Mary Fran, but none of us had our mothers for long, or even our grandmothers. We adore mothers, do you hear me? We adore Mary Fran because she’s Fiona’s mother; we adore wee Fiona because someday she might be a mother too.”

Genie opened her eyes and turned her head to peer at him. The sight hit Gil with a visceral punch, sucked the air right out of his lungs. Her lashes were spiky with tears, her blue eyes luminous, and the sadness he saw there…

He drew back, lest he comfort her in ways guaranteed to get his face slapped, and then his lights put out by an irate brother with not even a prospective bride to woo.

“You must discuss this with Ian.” He patted her hand, resenting her riding gloves because they prevented him from enjoying the feel of her silky skin beneath his fingers.

“I could not.”

She swayed toward him and he was not strong enough to stand up, get on his horse, and leave the lady to dry her own tears. He tucked his arm around her waist as her head came to rest on his shoulder.

“Ian is a good man, Miss Daniels. The best. You think the title is what you’ll get out of the marriage, but that’s not the half of it. He’s loyal as hell, hardworking, fair, honest. God knows he’s patient and generous with his family…” Gil trailed off, because she’d let out a sigh, and the hair on the crown of her head was tickling his cheek, bringing the scent of rose water and warm, clean female to his nose.

“I can’t discuss this with him,” she said. “I did discuss it with a solicitor, though. Once a woman is married, she is more or less her husband’s chattel, even if the contracts try to put limitations on his conduct. And there are far worse cruelties than raising your hand to someone. Trust me, Mr. MacGregor, your brother and I would make each other miserable.”

Gil fell silent, willing to steal a few minutes with a pretty woman plastered to him in the privacy of the woods. It should have been toweringly awkward, though she was making no move to leave his side.

“Being the spare can feel a little like being slave,” he said after a moment, trailing his hand over her back. “You can’t strike out on your own, and you can’t quite get out from under the title, though you dare not long for it, either. You sometimes think you’ll do anything to see your brothers wed and starting nice big families of healthy boys.”

He could not see her mouth, but he could feel her smile.

“I thought Scottish titles could often pass through the female line.”

“They can, many of them, and even be held by females. Ours has never been held by a female, though it originated like several dukedoms, when a young married lady caught the eye of Charles II.” He kept his arm around her for a few more moments while he wondered at his own motives.

“You are a very good brother,” she said at length. She sat up, taking away the warmth of her body along Gil’s side. “And I am sorry to be so dramatic. Papa has his heart set on this match, and I… I have my reasons, Mr. MacGregor, but I am averse to the kind of marriage my parents have chosen for me.”

There was a puzzle here, though Gil thanked God it wasn’t his puzzle to unlock. “Are you averse to marrying anybody with a title, or are your reasons specific to Ian?”

“Anybody whom I do not…
anybody
seeking to trade a title for my wealth.”

She sounded very sure of herself, which left Gil both relieved and oddly disappointed. Though whether he was disappointed for her, for Ian, or—God help him—for himself, he could not have said.

And it hardly mattered, regardless.

“You must explain your situation to Ian,” Gil said, rising from their boulder. “He’s a canny man, and you wouldn’t want for a better friend in a pinch. If anybody can aid you, Miss Daniels, he can.”

“He can’t help me.”

“Not even with a long engagement from which he allows you to cry off and keep much of your settlements?”

She was in the process of shaking out the skirts of her habit as he spoke, but she paused to meet his eyes. “Such arrangements are possible?”

He winged his arm at her, having no idea whatsoever what was possible once lawyers got hold of marriage contracts. His brother, however, he both knew and trusted.

“Ian isn’t a good negotiator, he’s a
great
negotiator. Our neighbors have been known to solicit Ian’s input on sticky foreign policy matters, and in dealing with their various local retainers. He studied law for years, and he can sort out most any situation and draft language to address it.”

“Then it’s possible? To write a contract such that some of the money will stay with the jilted groom even after a long engagement?”

Why in God’s name did she sound so intrigued? Even he knew a woman who jilted her fiancé was effectively ruined. “It may be possible, though Ian has made no secret we need coin sooner rather than later. Still, I suggest you bring up with him whatever is troubling you and solicit his aid. As a gentleman, he’s honor bound to help you.”

She let Gil assist her into the saddle but said little all the way back to the stables. Gil was going to have to tell Ian something of what had transpired in the woods—that the woman was reluctant, of course. That she’d taken arranged marriage as an institution into dislike for a certainty.