Page 11 of The MacGregor's Lady
“I am not a piece of masonry, to be hoisted about without my permission.”
“I’m running the warmer over your sheets, Boston. Perhaps you’d rather get into a cold bed in a cold room and try to manage on your own?”
Musthe sound so amused?Musthe be so thoughtful? “The maid can see to my sheets.”
“Now that somebody has considerately rung for a maid.”
He disappeared into the other room and came back with the afghan. The afghan he’d warmed and wrapped around her foot with such care and comfort Hannah had been hard put not to melt. It almost, not quite but almost, had served as consolation for the loss of his warm hands wrapped around that same foot.
“Up you go.” He lifted her again, and she participated to the extent her arms were around his neck. He set her down on the bed and delivered another magnificent scowl.
“You do that so well, sir.”
“Hoist you about?”
That too. “Frown, express displeasure, disapproval.” She shifted on the mattress, because it was cold. Blasted cold.
“I don’t want to leave you until the maid comes along,” he said, hands on hips. “And I don’t think for a minute a nibble of cheese toast was an adequate meal.”
“So I should have supper in bed?”
She was hungry, but God was in charity with her, for her stomach didn’t rumble very loudly.
“You should be spanked soundly,” he said on a sigh.
Step-papa would certainly have agreed.
The maid appeared in the doorway, a hefty young woman with a clean, full-length apron to her credit and her cap neatly tied.
“You’ll get Miss Hannah tucked in, please,” the earl said. “And mind her foot is injured, and her sheets cold. In future, her bedroom fire is to be lit when we get up from table, the same as every other bedroom.”
The maid bobbed a curtsy. “Of course, milord.”
He left on that grouchy little scold, and Hannah felt abruptly both the fatigue of a long day and a mild throbbing in her rightoswhatever.
He’d been right about that too: she’d barely twisted her ankle, but the wrench to her hip and back had been as significant as the injury to her dignity.
“I can stand beside the bed while you use the warmer,” Hannah said. “The room really is a little chilly.”
“It is,” the maid said, “and I do apologize, mum, but your aunt is still in the dining room, enjoying an aperitif, and we typically don’t see to the bedrooms until the ladies have arisen from the table. Saves on coin that way. Shall I braid your hair?”
As the room gradually became more comfortable, they managed Hannah’s hair. The maid was running the warmer over the sheets again when another maid appeared, tray in hand.
“His lordship says you missed supper,” the second maid explained. “He said you wasn’t to get cranky and peckish.”
Hot chocolate sprinkled with cinnamon sat near a pair of rum buns.
If reading Dickens to her hadn’t won a bit of her heart, the offerings on the tray surely did.
Hannah propped up her pillows and lay back on her warmed sheets. She took a nibble of delicious rum bun, wrapped her hands around the mug of hot chocolate, and wondered if all the titled, handsome gentlemen she’d meet here would be possessed of such good manners.
And such warm hands.
Three
“A bloody damned bit of snow isn’t going to keep me from leaving the house.”
Asher directed his foul language at no one in particular, for at this time of the morning the study was empty of living creatures save himself and a large black-and-orange house cat curled up on a hassock near the fire.
