Page 19 of The MacGregor's Lady
“If you say so.” She untied a cloak and passed it over to him. “Both of them?”
“Please. We’ll be warmer this way.” He unbuttoned his coat as her second cloak landed in his lap.
“Now what?” Her teeth were chattering.
“Under the blankets,” he said, holding up the top several. “You’ll be between two lap robes and have several thicknesses above and below you.”
“How c-c-cozy.”
She curled up on her side in a ball. Asher arranged himself behind her, so she was between him and the fire, then spread their respective outer garments on top of the blankets.
“Asher?”
He scooted down into the blankets and drew them up over her shoulders, spooning his body around hers.
“Mister Balfour Asher Lordship MacGregor? What are you doing?”
“Keeping us both warm.” He tucked her close under the blankets, wrapping an arm around her waist and threading another under her neck so she could use his biceps as a pillow. “Now go to sleep. It’s the best way to get through a truly miserable winter, endorsed by no less beast than the great white bears of the North. I should know.”
After a few minutes, her teeth stopped chattering, while Asher thought back to all the nights he’d spent in the longhouses, shivering his way to sleep to the sound of incessant coughing and the thick scent of bitter smoke.
Nobody in the longhouses had ever smelled quite this good, though, or cuddled this agreeably. Canadian winters might have worn an entirely different face if they had.
He woke several times in the night, cozy and warm, the fragrance of Miss Hannah Cooper’s hair tickling his nose. She smelled incongruously of flowers and lavender.
Were their situation not so dire, his unruly body would no doubt be gettingideas. To Asher’s relief, cuddling, while comfortable and even comforting, did not engender overwhelming sexual cravings.
Evidence that even his long-deprived intimate parts comprehended the folly of entertaining notions about a woman determined to return to her side of the ocean without a husband, fiancé, or similar inconvenience.
***
“Beastly damned weather, Laird.”
Maxwell Lockhart Fenimore was laird of nothing more than a constant bellyache, sore joints, and a lot of bleating sheep, but Evan Draper was a loyal retainer and of mature years himself—also stubborn as hell.
“It’s merely cold and snow, Draper. This is Scotland, and we excel at cold and snow. Did Balfour get under way, or is he still fussing about in Edinburgh?” Though thank God the boy was fussing about on Scottish soil at long last.
“They left the town house for the train station early this morning,” Draper reported. “Shall I build up the fire, sir?”
Fenimore’s study was a veritable camphor-scented inferno, and yet, the ache in his joints was unrelenting. “You’ll provoke my cough if you add coal to that fire. Tell me about the Americans.”
“Perhaps your cough might benefit from a wee dram, Laird.” Meaning Draper was in want of a wee dram or three, but then, the man had spent much of his day braving the elements, and everybody benefited from an occasional tot.
“Help yourself to the decanters, you reiving ingrate.” Had Fenimore been a few years younger, he would have risen to pour the man a drink himself. Instead he twitched at the tartan over his knees and silently cursed old age.
“Don’t mind if I do. The American girl limps. The aunt tipples or uses the poppy. I chatted up the maids, and they don’t have much good to say about the aunt.” Draper tossed back a shot of whiskey and patted the decanter as if it were a pretty girl’s bum.
“Draper, have you gone daft?”
“Oh, aye, years ago. It’s that cold, too, and the drink is that good. Balfour’s being a conscientious host.”
“He’d better be.”
Without permission, Draper poured himself a second drink and ambled over to the hearth with it. He turned his backside to the fire, not out of any manners, of course, but because a roaring blaze felt ever so good toasting that part of a fellow’s anatomy. “The American girl sasses Balfour, according to the maids. He seems to like it.”
This was good news. “You call that a report?”
“She slipped on the ice, and he carried her nigh five blocks in his arms, all romantic-like. The maids were fair swoonin’ over it.”
