The MacGregor's Lady (20 page)

She’d smoothed her thumbs over his eyebrows too, which curious caress Asher was coming to crave.

Ian dumped his drink in a potted palm. “You own some of the fastest goddamned ships ever to carry freight. Why can’t she nip over to Boston every summer and check in on the granny, if the woman’s too frail to brave an ocean crossing?”

Yes, why couldn’t she?

Why
wouldn’t
she?

“My charms are apparently not sufficient to convince Hannah such an arrangement would serve, any more than I could manage the earldom by popping in for a few weeks every summer.”

“Get some more charms, then.”

Miss Hannah Cooper had fully inspected all but a few of Asher’s limited charms, though Ian hardly needed to be apprised of that. “Ian, Hannah may have the right of it. I do need to be in Scotland, and her grandmother may well need the protection Hannah can offer her.”

“Elders don’t live forever.”

Ian had an answer for everything, but his expression had taken on the same resigned exasperation Asher had felt since leaving Hannah in the kitchen three nights past. “Not forever, but how old is Fenimore?”

The soft swearing that ensued was virtuosic, encompassing English, Gaelic, and even a touch of French. Across the room, Cousin Malcolm had found some bloody polite pretext for kissing Hannah’s gloved fingers, while Asher occupied himself with calculating the earliest date he might have more answers to the questions he’d sent to his office in Boston.

Eleven

Malcolm Macallan was a flirt and a comfort.

The comfort came from his smile, which was sympathetic, conveying to Hannah that with Malcolm, she would never have to use her knee to good advantage in some dark corner. His height was reassuring too—just an inch over six feet, which made him merely tall—as were his sandy hair and blue eyes. Nothing about Malcolm held the sense of banked power and emotion common to his MacGregor relations.

Malcolm’s friendly smile was at variance with Asher’s version of the same expression, which had had a lot of teeth and more than a little challenge to it.
That
smile had gotten Hannah through the ordeal of her first public waltz.

“Thank you.” She accepted a glass of some reddish drink from Malcolm. “I don’t know how these ladies dance, their frames are that delicate.”

The waistlines in evidence were so tiny as to strike Hannah as… deformed, as discordant as the cheerful greetings offered by one young lady after another, completely contradicting the calculation in their eyes.

“They haven’t your presence, Miss Hannah. You must pity them.”

They hadn’t her fortune was what he meant, but a little dissembling in the name of manners had to be permitted.

“Tell me about Paris. I’ve wondered if it’s as beautiful as one hears.”

He obliged her with small talk while they strolled the gallery that ran along one side of the ballroom and opened onto a large brick terrace. The breeze from the out-of-doors was heavenly, a siren call to obscure shadows and fresh air.

“Would you like to sit for a moment, Miss Hannah? Dancing slippers have been known to pinch as the night progresses.”

Malcolm offered the same friendly smile, making Hannah realize she’d become overly sensitive. He wasn’t alluding to her limp, and he could not possibly know about the lift on her right heel.

“Might we take some air, Mr. Macallan?” The question was half-sincere, manners being even more strict here than in the stuffiest reaches of Boston’s version of Polite Society.

“Of course. The terrace will be nearly as crowded as the dance floor.”

Another not-quite-truth, because save for two couples conversing at the balustrade, the terrace was blessedly peaceful and quiet. Hannah settled herself on a bench and took the opportunity to taste the libation in her glass.

Gracious heavens, the drink was more honey than anything else. She set the glass aside, vowing to follow the example of the MacGregor ladies and tuck a wee flask into her pocket on the next outing.

Malcolm came down beside her on a whiff of gardenia. The scent was soothing, if a trifle odd on a man. “What would you like to know, Hannah Cooper?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“About my cousins, or third cousins, whatever. In Scotland, anybody with a drop of consanguinity qualifies as family, particularly with the Highland clans.”

Rather like Boston. “Why is that?”

He let out a sigh, and with it, a bit of his genial persona slipped away into the shadows. “Because there are so damned few of us left. It’s the fault of the sheep, you see.”

“Sheep here devour Highlanders?”

This was contrary to the tales Hannah’s idiot half brothers told regarding sheep and rural populations, though she knew better than to offer that comment.

“Sheep are profitable. They’ve been bred to thrive even where winters are harsh and fodder hard to come by. For generations, the landlords have been smitten with the idea that more sheep and fewer crofters means better income. The land can’t support both the tenants and the flocks. Ergo, the tenants have been burned out.”

Malcolm’s tone had lost all bantering and taken on an edge of lament—not anger, but sorrow.

“Surely in these modern times, such a barbarity—”

He shook his head. “In these modern times, there are hardly any crofters to burn out and chase down to the docks of Aberdeen and Edinburgh, there to take ship for the New World—any new world—before they starve trying to live on seaweed and mackerel. And what the Clearances didn’t accomplish, the famines did.”

“I thought the famine was in Ireland.” And she’d thought the terrace would be a pleasant respite, not a place to tell tales of ghosts and feudal destruction.

Malcolm glanced over at her, as if trying to gauge how much honesty she might endure without a fit of the vapors. “There is good land in Scotland, but not enough of it. The potato is a humble crop, needing neither rich land nor much tending. It’s the only crop suitable for difficult conditions that produces enough yield per acre to support the most impoverished. Then too, it’s a simple crop to plant and harvest—children wielding a shovel can see it done. We grew enough potatoes up north to feel the blight keenly.”

We.
In this he was like the MacGregors.
We
referred to the family, the clan, the nation.

When was the last time Hannah had used the word in any of those senses?

Malcolm squeezed her gloved hand. “I’ve lectured you to silence. You must retaliate by interrogating me. Did you know Ian used to be the earl?”

A cheerier topic by far, though Hannah had been apprised of this bit of MacGregor history by Augusta herself.

“While Asher was thought dead,” she replied. “I haven’t quite figured out what Asher was doing larking around in the north woods in the first place, and one can’t exactly quiz him on it, can one?” Though one wanted to. Badly.

“One can quiz me. Asher went back to Canada to keep an eye on Mary Fran’s English husband, or so we were told. I suspect he went to ensure his maternal antecedents were faring adequately, given that most of them were incapable of writing, and word of his relations was scarce indeed. Then too, he was a physician, and perhaps wanted to hone his practice in foreign climes.”

Hannah was going to pry. She was going to ring a peal over Malcolm’s head if he so much as intimated Asher’s mother was deserving of anything less than complete respect, but first she was going to pry. “His maternal relations?”

“His mother was of native extraction.” The words were offered with studied neutrality, which was fortunate for Malcolm. “I gather you didn’t know, though it’s not exactly a secret. Asher’s father was off seeking his fortune in trade as a younger son will do, and took a wife in the wilderness, which I understand was not unusual for the times.”

Hannah knew enough of the trapping culture herself to understand that many of the men deriving their livelihoods from such trade had
two
families—one in the interior, and one at the trading post, with the twain never intended or likely to meet.

In the New World, Asher’s father had had one family, and only one.

“And then he became heir to the earldom?”

Malcolm sat forward, his evening coat pulling across shoulders that sported a complement of muscle. He was an attractive, fit man, and why he wasn’t twirling some other lady down the room at that moment was a small puzzle.

“Asher’s father married his native wife, and was careful to do so in a manner that would leave no doubt about the legitimacy of their progeny.”

Puzzle pieces started to line up, to form edges to Hannah’s image of the present earl. “The marriage took place before Asher’s father was in line for the title, and then an older sibling or uncle or cousin died, and the union took on a different and far less convenient significance.”

“We can’t know that. He returned to Scotland, and she did not. He observed every formality in solemnizing their vows. That is what we know. Lady Mary Fran’s first husband parted from her because his regiment posted to Canada, and yet nobody accuses him of deserting his wife.”

Malcolm’s words defended Asher’s father, and yet his tone cast doubt on the man’s intentions. But then, in this society thirty years ago, what would have been the requirement of honor for a man in line for an earldom and married to a woman whom most would regard as a savage?

If he cared for the woman, would he have tried to make her over into a countess?

If she cared for him, would she have tried to deny him his earldom? Despite Malcolm’s invitation to answer Hannah’s questions, she posed the next query reluctantly. “How did it come about that Asher was declared dead?”

Malcolm sat back, as if getting comfortable because this question had been anticipated. “Simply the passage of time, I suppose. I’m told entire settlements disappear on the frontier routinely, and the North American wilderness makes the New Forest look like Green Park.”

A tame analogy, at best. “Why are you telling me this, Malcolm? Many would say this history does not flatter the MacGregor family.”

Most would. Not Hannah.

“I want you to hear the truth, Hannah Cooper. The fair maids of London Society have no interest in seeing an attachment form between you and the present earl. Their version of the story will flatter no one and nothing, except their own chances to marry Asher MacGregor. I hope this is not news to you.”

“It is not, not entirely.”

“You can see how, presented in the wrong light, doubt might be cast on Asher’s claim to the title, on the family’s fitness to belong among the peerage. If there’s one thing lower than a dirty Scot, it’s a dirty mongrel Scot.”

Or a dirty Irishman, or a dirty Chinaman, or a dirty Red Indian… Here at the throbbing epicenter of civilization, the list of humans populating the bottom of Polite Society’s scale of worthiness was long, diverse, and included members of Hannah’s own antecedents, if not Hannah herself.

“You assured me Asher is legitimate.”

Hannah realized she’d used the earl’s given name only when Malcolm’s gaze narrowed. His scrutiny was fleeting, but hinted for the first time that he, too, could be formidable when crossed.

“The documents were examined by the College of Arms, Miss Cooper. There is no higher authority excepting Almighty God. Victoria herself has taken a hand in the matter. Your host is legitimate and legitimately an earl.”

An earl who felt it necessary to attend church each Sunday, when his titled neighbors all over Mayfair couldn’t be troubled to stir from their beds. An earl who had called upon each and every duke and marquess to be found within two weeks of returning to London. An earl who… had offered to marry a tarnished American heiress, when he clearly had alternatives better situated to improving his address.

Hannah pushed that realization aside and rose, the twinge in her hip negligible compared to what she might have expected even weeks ago. “I appreciate the family background, Mr. Macallan, but this is a social occasion, and we’ve had our breath of air.”

He was on his feet in an instant, his understanding smile in place, his arm winged at her with friendly courtesy. “I want you to like my cousins as much as I do. I also want you to like me—I hope I haven’t offended?”

“Not in the least. Family stories are always fascinating, often more interesting than novels. I do like your cousins.”

“And the earl?”

Behind his approachability and good manners, Malcolm Macallan was watching her closely. Her answer mattered to him, and for that, Hannah liked him a little more.

“I respect him,
and
I like him.”

This honest if inconvenient reply was apparently the right answer, because Malcolm’s smile became a tad roguish. “I’m glad. Now, if I wheedle very prettily, will you give me your supper waltz? You made quite the fetching picture gliding around the dance floor with my lucky cousin. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the waltz had been invented in America, you dance it so beautifully.”

She gave him her supper waltz, though his importuning left her puzzled. Malcolm Macallan had dissembled a bit regarding her wealth, he’d not quite told the truth regarding how deserted the terrace would be, and now he was engaged in outright mendacity, for Hannah had stumbled twice during her waltz with Asher, and both times, her partner had smoothed her through it without a single comment.

And yet, for all his dissembling, misrepresenting, and lying, Hannah had to like Malcolm Macallan because he’d also armed her with the information she needed to protect Asher’s interests among the ladies vying for his hand.

***

Because a fresh breeze stirred from the west and not from the direction of the Thames, and because a storm had come through the previous evening, watching Hannah pen her biweekly epistles to Boston wasn’t a torment to Asher’s olfactory senses, only to his heart.

He sat in the shade of a lilac bush coming into its glory thirty feet downwind from the scribe in the gazebo. Alas for him, this put him in full view of any relatives intent on disturbing his reverie.

“Gentlemen usually reserve their doting smiles for when the ladies can see them.”