Page 101 of The MacGregor's Lady
“I’m sure. The day before I start my monthly, I get twinges, warning shots, so to speak, and they’ve started. I consider it a kindness that my body alerts me this way to impending inconvenience. We’ll not be tramping up here again tomorrow.”
They wouldn’t be tramping much of anywhere for the next several days, which meant they had likely scaled their last peak together.
“I am sorry, my heart. I am sorry we are not to have a child. I sense, though, that a child would have complicated matters for you, not simplified them.”
He knew her so well. She could not have loved him more, not if they’d had eighty years together on earth. Hannah turned so she could wrap herself against Asher’s body. Their situation was too blessed simple. “Nothing can fix our situation. Nothing.”
Nothing made it easier; nothing made it less painful. They would endure, as Asher had said. Dignity was far less certain.
He kissed her, probably for comfort, but Hannah was incapable of being consoled by a mere brush of lips. What raged through her was as implacable as the high barren hills, as deep and unrelenting as the winter that scoured the summits of their trees.
“Asher, I am uncertain of many things. I am uncertain that my decisions have been wise, uncertain of my reception in Boston, uncertain of… much, but I know I want to make love with you right now, right here.”
He sighed against her mouth, something about a simple exhalation conveying a stubborn intent to apply reason. “Hannah, there is nothing I would deny you, but you might be mistaken in these twinges and warning shots. You’ve never carried a child, never conceived before that you—”
“Damn you, Asher MacGregor. I am not asking for your permission, I am asking for your passion.”
She pushed him by one meaty shoulder onto his back, and he went. When she straddled him—no dignity there—and unfastened his kilt, he sank his fingers into her hair and extracted one pin after another.
His complicity gradually cleared the fog of desperation choking her, until Hannah could sit back and admire the man whose kilt, waistcoat, and shirt she had nearly torn from his body.
Asher brushed her hair back over her shoulder. “Is it my turn, then? Shall I unwrap m’ treasure the way ye’ve unwrapped yours?”
When a man was blessed with a burr, the inflection in his questions lifted not the end of an inquiry, as was common in Boston, but rather, gave the entire question a lilt.
“Yes. Unwrap your treasure.”
He started by framing her jaw in his hands, ensuring that Hannah’s gaze collided with his and stayed trapped in what he promised with his eyes. Slowly, slowly, he worked his way down the buttons of her shirtwaist.
Never had a lady’s attire had so many buttons. Hannah dragged in one breath after another, while beneath her, Asher’s arousal became more and more firm against her sex.
Forthelasttime…
Weeks had gone by while she’d pushed, wrestled, and blasted that sentiment away from her, moment by moment. Through their journey from London, their wandering in Edinburgh, their engagement ball, their travel to Balfour, and every day since.
She let the reality of their parting take over, let the horror and terror of it fill her being, the wrongness of it, the inevitability, and the permanence.
Asher peeled back her blouse but didn’t push it off her arms. “Are you sure, Hannah?”
She was ready to deliver a lecture to him that could be heard from one peak to the next until it occurred to her he wasn’t doubting her desire for him, but rather, her conclusion regarding conception.
“I am sure. There will be no baby for us.” He closed his eyes, as if a great wave of pain had risen up to seize him from within. “I’m sorry, Asher, but there will be no child.”
A man who’d buried his family in the Canadian woods would regard their childless state with particular regret, and also with relief. The relief would be trifling compared to the regret.
The need to comfort him flooded past impending loss and tangled with desire, making it nigh impossible for Hannah to hold still while Asher untied her laces.
He patted her bottom. “Your skirts, too, love.”
Skirts and petticoats, then drawers and stays, were gathered in a growing pile of clothing at the edge of the blankets, until Hannah lay on her back in nothing but her stockings and garters, and Asher wore not one stitch.
“I’m glad we are not in some darkened bedroom,” Hannah said, running a hand down his ribs one by one. “Glad I can see you. See all of you.”
The stroke of his hands, warm against her upraised knees, paused. She should have been mortified, but she liked the look of him kneeling naked and aroused between her legs, silhouetted against the white clouds and blue sky.
“You are so fair, and I am so dark. Not every woman would regard the sight of me with welcome.”
Whatwouldchildrenofsuchaunionlooklike?
