Alasdair saw the winsome pair step outside as he approached his front door. Fleetingly, he hesitated, uncertain whether he ought to draw near, brush past, or simply leave as he had done last time. The decision felt painfully parallel to the choices which wanted making in his life just now; choices which had been weighing heavily on him.
He had begun this awful business by wanting nothing to do with the child. But that had quickly proven impossible. Already he had stopped waiting for Uncle Angus’s letter and had surrendered all hope of escape. And strangely enough, he simply no longer wished to. Sorcha was a taking little thing. Headstrong and given to tantrums, perhaps. But she was
his,
and he was slowly coming to grips with what it meant to be a father.
No, it was not Sorcha who tormented him now. It was her sister. Esmée was not just earthy and beautiful; she was a Scot to her very core. Her voice, her demeanor, even her scent, stirred up old memories and left him oddly longing for something. His lost youth, perhaps. He wanted to lie with her in a field of heather and slowly draw the pins from her hair. He wanted to undress her, slowly and gently, so that he might see her alabaster skin against the greenery, and watch those all-seeing eyes drop slowly shut in surrender.
It was appalling. But apparently uncontrollable. He watched her now as she bent over to neaten Sorcha’s blankets, and realized his mouth had gone dry. What in God’s name had he been thinking to allow her into his home?
At the time, he’d been desperate, uncertain as to what to do and wishing only to cast off the responsibility he’d been saddled with. Esmée had seemed his only hope. Now she seemed his eternal punishment. Even now, he was held in thrall by the sway of her hips and the gentleness in her touch as she lifted Sorcha. The sudden surge of desire he felt for her seemed almost indecent. There was nothing erotic about a woman caring for a child, was there? Stranger still, the woman in question was better than a dozen years younger than he and about as green as a girl could get.
At least Esmée was not a silly female. That he could not have borne. Instead, she was resolute and pragmatic. She understood that life was sometimes hard. That it required one to make sacrifices. Yes, she knew, perhaps far better than he, for he was hard-pressed to think of one true sacrifice life had ever required of him—until now.
But Esmée knew nothing of the world; knew nothing of men like him. Had she a father or brother to defend her honor, Alasdair would have been called to account for his misconduct weeks ago.
Esmée was buttoning Sorcha’s pelisse over her yellow muslin dress. The child sat upright, looking at her sister and prattling happily. In response, Esmée caught the child’s hands in her own and lifted them one by one to her lips. At that simple gesture, something unfamiliar lurched in Alasdair’s hard and selfish heart. He suffered an unexpected tug of yearning, but for what, he did not know. He felt, suddenly, as though he belonged to no one, and no one belonged to him.
He had become like a stray dog who longed for warmth and conviviality; one who peeked longingly through cracked doors and low windows at the outward manifestations of other people’s contentment. The warm hearths. The happy laughter. A family dinner table, soft with candlelight. Things he’d never really believed mattered.
It was almost as if he were looking for a place to call home, which made no sense at all, for he had one. He had not felt such strange, mixed-up emotions since leaving Scotland. In the weeks since Esmée and Sorcha had come into his life, Alasdair had felt, inexplicably, more isolated than ever. Perhaps because he had begun to realize there was something actually worth missing.
On impulse, he removed his hat and approached.
Esmée was tucking a rolled blanket behind Sorcha. “Good afternoon, Miss Hamilton,” he said. “You are off to the park?”
Her head jerked up, her color instantly deepening. “Indeed. We go every day.”
“Yes, I sometimes see you leave.” Thank God she’d no notion how often he stood at his bedchamber window trying to sober himself up and watching as her small, capable hands readied Sorcha for their jaunt. “It
is
raining a bit, you know,” he added.
“Och, a wee mizzle, no more,” she said. “I should hope I’m not so trimel-hearted as to be put off by a few clouds.”
“No, no, I never dreamt that,” he murmured. “Might I join you?”
She hesitated. “I fear you would find it exceedingly dull.”
Alasdair studied her face very carefully. “Esmée, I think you must decide whether you wish me to be a parent or merely an income stream.”
The remark sucked some of the wind from her sails. “’Tis a choice which you must make, I daresay.”
Alasdair covered her hand with his, stilling it on the handle of the buggy. “It is sometimes difficult,” he said. “Especially when I cannot bear to see you uncomfortable in my presence.”
She flicked a dark glance at him.
“Save your daggers for someone else, Esmée,” he said quietly. “I’ll own my mistakes. And I swear that I will never again—”
“Go!” shrieked Sorcha suddenly. She seized the sides of her cart with both hands and gave it a good jerk. “Go! Go park! See ducks!”
Jolted from his abjuration, Alasdair laughed. “Self-centered minx!” he declared. “And irrepressible, too, I fear.”
“Aye, she does try a body’s patience,” muttered Esmée.
Alasdair grinned. “I sometimes doubt a whole battalion of governesses could manage her,” he said. “Did you see the hole she cut in the schoolroom draperies whilst Lydia and I were picking up her toys? The minx snatched up Lydia’s scissors quick as bedamned.”
Esmée did not chide him for the curse. “I have mended it,” she said. “I believe it is not
too
noticeable.”
“I scolded her,” he said.
“As did I,” said Esmée. “For all the good it did.”
Alasdair threw back his head and laughed. “And after all our good intentions are spent, my dear, we are going to end up having to spank her quite mercilessly anyway—and probably for the next fifteen years. You know that, do you not?”
“Oh, aye, I do know it!” Esmée’s gaze felt to the pavement. “But I cannot
do
it!”
Alasdair nodded sagely. “I quite understand,” he said. “So we’re agreed, then.”
“Are we?” Her head jerked up.
“Indeed,” he answered. “Lydia must do it.”
“Oh!” said Esmée on a choke of laughter. “MacLachlan, you are shameless.”
Alasdair smiled crookedly. “Yes, well, I warned you of that, too, didn’t I?”
But Sorcha was tired of the delay. “Go! Go park!”
Alasdair leaned across, and chucked the child beneath what was still a sweetly babyish double chin. “Go
to the
park, impudent child!” he said. “Can you say that? Go
to the
park.”
“Go to park,” she responded. “Go to
now.”
Alasdair slapped his hat back on. “Miss Hamilton, our despot has spoken!”
Esmée found the walk to the park a little shorter, and a good deal more pleasant, than usual. Not far from the foot of Great Queen Street, there was a broad sweep of stairs which constituted a shortcut to the street below, but she was always obliged to go round them. Today, however, MacLachlan simply picked up Sorcha’s perambulator at both ends, and carried her down in his broad, strong arms.
Sorcha screeched happily and clapped her hands. When MacLachlan sat her down again, she held out her chubby arms. “Carry,” she ordered.
MacLachlan surprised her by reaching down to do so. Impulsively, Esmée laid a hand on his shoulder. “You needn’t,” she said. “She will be fine.”
He flashed his crooked smile again and lifted her out anyway. He settled Sorcha on his hip, and she circled one arm round his neck and used the other to point out familiar objects along the way. “Pretty dog,” she said of a pampered-looking terrier they passed along Birdcage Walk. “Horses,” she said of a passing carriage.
“Black
horses,” said MacLachlan. “Four of them.”
“Back horses,” echoed the child. “Four dem.”
“And here come some
white
horses,” he went on. “Can you say
white?”
“White horses,” responded Sorcha, stabbing her fat little finger in their direction. “Pretty.”
Thus it went until they reached the center of St. James’s Park. “Have you taken her to Hyde Park yet?” asked MacLachlan. “It is but a little farther on, and there will be some very fine horses along the bridle path.”
“But have they any ducks?” asked Esmée with mock condescension. “Our despot must have her ducks.”
“Oh, yes. And swans, too, usually.”
“Sorcha calls them all ducks.”
MacLachlan looked down at her and laughed, the lines about his gold eyes crinkling. “And so they must be, then.”
Esmée was suddenly struck with how perfectly natural it felt to be walking by his side. Perhaps she oughtn’t be doing so, but who was to see her? Who would care? Here in England, she was no one. Indeed, she
had
no one. Well, save Sorcha—and oddly, MacLachlan himself.
Perhaps it was just a foolish obsession which drove her, but she could not get him out of her mind. No matter how angry he made her, she could not stop thinking of him; him, as he was now, or as he had been that afternoon in the schoolroom with Sorcha. Nor could she forget the strange, wonderful sensations which went swirling through her each time their lips touched.
And sometimes—no,
often
—she dreamt of him. She would awake in a feverish heat, wishing desperately he would hold her again, their bodies pressed hard against one another. But that way lay madness—not to mention ruin and grief. There was another far wiser and far more legitimate reason to allow him to accompany them today, just as he had pointed out. He was Sorcha’s father. He was
trying.
She cut another sidelong glance at his well-chiseled profile and realized, suddenly and inexplicably, that in this moment, she was almost happy. It was a startling and somewhat disconcerting realization.
They soon reached Hyde Park, which Esmée had thus far viewed only from its southeast corner. MacLachlan pointed out the Duke of Wellington’s grand house. “He claims to have spent sixty thousand pounds on its renovation,” he said as they passed by. “And loves to complain of it to anyone who will listen.”
“Aye, and a dreadful waste, it is, too,” said Esmée. “Just think what such a sum would draw in the five-percents!”
“Ah, spoken like a true daughter of Caledonia,” MacLachlan said, as they headed into the park’s green expanse. He chose a bench situated above its curving pond, which he called the Serpentine.
Esmée tossed out a blanket to protect Sorcha from the damp. She refused it, of course, and instead toddled back and forth in the lush autumn grass, picking dandelions and bits of clover and placing them in untidy piles on the blanket. The sun was peeping through the clouds now. Already settled on the bench beside her, MacLachlan looked up at it, narrowing his eyes.
“I said the other day that I owed you an apology, Miss Hamilton,” he said quietly. “I want to have done with it now. My behavior toward you on two occasions has been appalling. I have no explanation, nor any excuse that will suffice, but it shan’t happen again.”
Esmée had sensed his regret even as she had stalked out of his study that day. Nonetheless, she was surprised to hear him couch it now in terms of an apology. “You have not been alone in your bad judgment,” she finally said. “I have made matters worse.”
“I wish to God I’d never let you stay!” he said, his voice suddenly low and dark. “But I’m damned, Esmée, if I know what’s to be done about it now.”
“I wanted to be with Sorcha.” Her voice quavered unexpectedly. “You gave me that choice.”
“And you do not regret it?” he asked. “You do not wish me to the devil?”
She was fidgeting with her pearl necklace again. Abruptly, she jerked her fingers away and clasped her hands together in her lap. “Perhaps I am not as innocent as you wish to believe,” she whispered.
Perhaps I am just like my mother. Foolish. Romantic. A magnet for handsome rogues…
Abruptly, he turned toward her on the bench. “Esmée, it is not too late for you,” he said. “My grandmother is in Argyllshire and far removed from society, but I have friends who are well placed.”
Esmée was confused. “What are you saying?”
“That you deserve something more than a life of drudgery.”
“Caring for Sorcha is not drudgery,” she said. “If you think me inadequate to the task, then speak it plain, MacLachlan.”
Swiftly, he covered her hand where it rested on the bench and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I meant only that you deserve a life of your own,” he pressed. “Perhaps there is someone who might sponsor you. Perhaps Devellyn’s mother, the Duchess of Gravenel? There must be
someone.”
She looked at him incredulously. “Aye, to do what?” she asked. “Truss me up in white satin and present me at court? Bring me ‘out’ and take me to Almack’s?”
He shrugged. “Do you not want those things?”
“Oh, aye, once upon a time,” she said mordantly.
Indeed, just a few months earlier, she would have jumped at such an opportunity. Then everything changed. It wasn’t just her mother’s death. It wasn’t just Sorcha. It was everything. It was
him.
And he wished to be rid of her, while she was no longer so eager to go. The realization shook her.
“You are young, Esmée,” he said—pointlessly, it seemed. What did her age matter to him? She watched the muscles of his throat work up and down. “You’ve no business living under the same roof with a bounder like me, let alone…let alone anything else.”
Just then, Sorcha came up and opened her fist on MacLachlan’s thigh, depositing a mangled bit of clover. “See?” she said. “Pretty, see?”
He seemed grateful for the distraction. “Oh, I see the prettiest blossom of all!” he cried, snatching her up and lifting her high. “And I have plucked her from the grass!”
Sorcha shrieked with laughter and allowed herself to be settled on his knee. Together, they observed the horses which came trotting past. “Back horse,” said Sorcha.