Page 10 of The MacGregor's Lady
She hadn’t any misshapen limbs that he could see. He shifted his grip on her foot. “You are too cold.”
He hadn’t meant the comment to refer to anything other than her foot, but she drew in a swift breath, as if he might have intentionally offended with the deeper meaning. Whatever else was true, Boston society had not been entirely kind to Miss Cooper—or to Asher, at first.
“You’ve built up the fire,” she said. “Thank you.”
He set her foot back down on its pillow, her gratitude as chilly as her injured appendage. He reached past her, which had the bothersome result of her flinching away from him, and took a folded afghan from behind her head.
He stood to drape the blanket over one side of the hearth screen. “Shall I send your aunt to you?”
“Why would you do that?”
She was rattled. Direct she might be, but Hannah Cooper wouldn’t offer such a graceless retort unless she were unnerved. “To play cards with you? To talk? To read to you?”
“Recall, please, that I just spent weeks in close quarters with my aunt.”
Tonight, she had an answer for everything, did Boston. A prickly, off-putting, almost rude answer. Had Asher never felt out of place himself, never struggled with homesickness or a weariness of spirit as wide as an entire ocean, never longed for one place on earth where he could feel safe and included, he might have obliged the woman with the solitude she thought she wanted.
But the terrain Miss Hannah Cooper traversed was all too familiar to him, so Asher took the warmed afghan from the hearth screen, tucked it gently around the lady’s foot, then picked up her book from its place at her side, passed her the peacock feather, and began to read from the top of the page.
***
Everything about the blasted man was beautiful.
Blasted. Less than a week in Scotland, and Hannah was appropriating the local vocabulary, and with just provocation.
Balfour’s features were beautiful, far more dramatically so than the typical blond, bland exponent of English aristocracy. His brows were definite, dark, and a trifle swooped at the edges, but they also had a mink-soft look to them, as if a lady might enjoy tracing her finger along their arch. Repeatedly. Both at the same time, and the pads of her thumbs, too.
Hannah was fascinated with his nose, as well, by the nobility of it, the way it finished off a face that belonged on some Highland leader of old.
His hands had been gentle and warm on her foot. His touch had held no presumption, only comfort and strength. And what strength he had, lifting her against his chest as if she weighed nothing. He’d gotten them back to the house at a far more brisk pace than he’d set with Hannah gawking and tottering at his side. She’d been reluctant to lift her nose from his collar, so lovely was the spicy scent of him up close.
His voice was every bit as enticing and dark as the rest of him, and Hannah was tempted to close her eyes and let that voice seduce her to sleep. It could, his words were that powerful, that beautiful in the ear.
The only saving mercy from Hannah’s perspective was that if she worked at it diligently, she might resent the man in possession of all these lovely attributes. He gave orders, and worse, he apparentlytookorders that included herding her through the ordeal of a social Season. She gained some consolation from the idea that he was herding himself right along with her, though of course he would be snatched up in the first week.
And Aunt wasn’t going to interfere, which was a relief. Worse than Hannah’s limp would be the immediate perception that her only relation was dependent on tinctures and medicinal tots from day to day.
“You’re falling asleep.”
Hannah opened her eyes slowly. “I’m enjoying the story, thank you. If you’d like to leave, I’m sure a maid will be along shortly.”
“Of course.” He put the book aside and tugged on the bellpull. “Nowa maid will be along shortly. Let’s get you to bed, shall we?”
Before Hannah could protest, he’d scooped her up against his chest. Without winter clothes between them, the embrace was more intimate than it had been earlier in the day.
“Arms around my neck, Boston. We can’t court further mishap with you already injured.”
She complied, feeling the heat of him and that wonderfully spicy scent wrapping around her.
“I can’t believe you agreed to my request without making some tart protest,” he said as he crossed the room with her. “I’m heartened is what I am. Cheered even.”
“Cheeky is what you are, isn’t that the English word?” she said as they moved into the bedroom.
“For God’s sake, why wasn’t the fire lit?”
He lowered her to the bed and saw to the oversight, pumping the daylights out of a set of bellows to get a roaring blaze going.
“Here.” He lifted her up and sat her in a rocking chair near the fire.
