Page 16 of The MacGregor's Lady
“This is awful,” Aunt pronounced. “Just awful, Hannah. If only we hadn’t arrived in the depths of winter.”
“We’ve arrived to take advantage of the social Season, Aunt, but had Step-papa considered our welfare, he might have bought us passage to London itself and allowed us a departure when spring was advanced.”
For once, Aunt had no reproof to make.
“Ladies?” Balfour, up on his enormous horse, spoke near the window. “We’re going to have to get you out of there now. The wheelers won’t be content to hold the thing when the leaders are gone, and it will be dark sooner than is convenient.”
“Gone?” Aunt Enid seized on the word. “Where are they going? Where are we going?”
“The coach can’t go anywhere,” Balfour said. “But we’re only about five miles from the last coaching inn. I propose to send the coachy back with the leaders for another conveyance. One of you can ride the second leader, and the groom will take the wheelers.”
“You go, Aunt.”
“We have four horses, though,” Aunt Enid said. “Five, if you count your mount, my lord. Why not put Hannah on one of the wheelers, or take her up with you?”
“The wheelers are green,” Balfour said. “In this footing, they aren’t safe for a lady to ride bareback astride, nor is it safe to ask a horse to carry a double burden.”
Aunt’s eyebrows rose. “Astride?” And then those same brows came crashing down. “That will leave you and Hannah…” Her voice trailed off, and Hannah saw the befuddled workings of her Aunt’s mind follow the situation to its conclusion. “It will be for only an hour or two, won’t it, dear? You’ll be all right?”
Somuchfortheselflessdevotionofadotingaunt.“I’ve dressed very warmly,” Hannah said. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
The coachy came up astride one of the sturdy beasts who normally pulled the carriage, the groom behind him on one curvetting wheeler while the other danced nervously on the end of its reins.
“We’ll have somebody back here for you before dark,” the coachman said. “Moonrise at the latest.”
Except a lowering layer of clouds would obscure any moonrise.
“We’ll manage,” Balfour said, glancing at the sky. “Best hurry. There’s snow waiting to come down.”
“Aye.” The coachy moved the horse along. Getting Aunt Enid situated aboard the second leader took a preventive tot of her nerve tonic and a great deal of patience on the part of both men and beasts. The coachman took the lead, letting both wheelers come behind him, with Aunt Enid bringing up the rear on the second leader.
“Isn’t it a shame the roads are so miserably inadequate to the challenge of keeping travelers from the ditch?” Enid’s voice trailed away in the bitter breeze as the horses trudged off in the direction of the last coaching inn.
“‘Isn’t It A Shame’ is her second-favorite game,” Hannah said. “Right after ‘If Only.’”
“If only I hadn’t forced you out of Edinburgh so early in the season?” Balfour asked. He sounded genuinely displeased with himself.
“She’s happy, Lord Balfour. Not a solid week on British soil and already I’m compromised.”
“Compro—” His dark eyebrows nearly met, so thunderous was his scowl. “They should be back in less than two hours. You’re not compromised.”
“If Aunt loses track of her discretion in some remedy-induced fog, I am compromised, and so are you.”
His gaze went to the horses making slow progress toward the horizon. “Then you’d best make sure she understands that I am a gentleman and you are a lady. We behave as such under all circumstances.”
“If you say so.” The landscape was bleak, the prospect of relying on Aunt’s discretion bleaker. “Is it too much to hope we could build a fire while we’re behaving so prettily?”
“Not a bad idea,” Balfour conceded. “I don’t like the look of that sky.”
He did more than build a fire. He used the lap robes and horse blankets to fashion a sort of lean-to over cut saplings—aspen poles, he’d called them, with an oilskin for their roof anchored by a thatch of Scots pine—while he set Hannah to collecting rocks from the wagon ruts to line a fire pit. He put the fire at the edge of their lean-to, and made them a floor layered with an oilskin, followed by more wool lap robes and horse blankets.
“By now, you’re probably longing for the necessary,” he said, kneeling in the snow to survey the little fire.
“Blunt speech, my lord.”
“I do believe that’s the first time you’ve my-lorded me.”
“The topic seemed to call for it. What next?” She was hungry and thirsty both, but despite the lowering sky, their isolation, and the occasional flurry, not the least bit afraid.
