Page 24 of The MacGregor's Lady
“If we break camp quickly, we can credibly claim we spent the night there, but not if it looks like we stayed here for any length of time.”
“I… see.”
Her thoughtful expression said she saw what his lies would gain her, and she assented. She rose from the fire, which was blazing merrily, and began to kick snow into it without another word.
And a faint, lingering, what-if in Asher’s mind was snuffed out as effectively as the fire, leaving him in an unaccountably surly mood. They folded blankets with equal dispatch and stuffed them back into the boot of the coach. Asher tossed the saplings into the ditch, and except for the way the snow had been trampled all around, there was shortly no evidence of any overnight camping.
Nor of any near-compromises, nor any ill-advised proposals of marriage that might have followed.
They were lucky. They were sitting around a cozy kitchen table, swilling tea and munching on brown bread and butter when a sleigh pulled up in the barnyard, Asher’s coachy at the reins. A short while later, Asher handed Miss Cooper into the sleigh, tied Dusty behind, and climbed in after her.
He was all the way back to the village before he swiped a glove over his mouth and found a memory swamping him in the frigid air.
Hannah Cooper had slept soundly, but not soundlessly. She had stirred shortly after dropping off, making the kind of noises that signaled a troubling dream. Half-asleep himself, Asher had kissed her hair, the way he’d once kissed any random, available part of Monique when she’d had the same sorts of dreams—her hair, her ear, her shoulder, it mattered not which part. Not the kiss of a lover, but the kiss of a husband and protector, for comfort—his and hers.
He begrudged Hannah Cooper that kiss, half-stolen as it was from his past. And yet, what he’d felt when Hannah had kicked the snow over the fire was not relief that she’d accommodate a handy subterfuge, but rather, anger that she should so easily reject him as a potential mate, without question, without pause, without thanks, without anything—when in the care of any other man, she might well have perished from the cold.
Five
“Well, if you are sure you were not compromised…?” Aunt Enid sighed gustily, her tweezered eyebrows raised in hope. Hannah kept silent, though this was not the first portentous pause in the conversation. “Then we must consider your misadventure merely that. Lord Balfour holds an earldom, though, my dear, and in case I didn’t mention it, earls fall only below marquesses and dukes in the order of precedence.”
“You did mention that, Aunt.”
Hannah tried to focus on her embroidery—her borrowed novels were still in the coach—but making a tidy series of satin stitches was difficult when her mind kept wandering to the bone-deep warmth she’d enjoyed cuddled up with Lord Balfour. The whiskey had something to do with it, but whiskey alone didn’t explain the sense of safety, the comfort she’d felt in Balfour’s arms.
“What do you suppose Lord Balfour is about?” Enid asked, eyeing her own hoop of fabric.
“I expect he’s seeing to the repair of the coach wheel.”
“One would think the household of an earl would at least boast safe conveyances.”
“The moors boast rocks,” Hannah said, stabbing her needle up through the middle of a French knot.
Enid put down her hoop and studied Hannah by the meager light of the fire burning in the raised hearth of their little parlor.
“If you had been compromised… I’m not saying you were, butifyou had been, you’d be a countess and wealthy. Your step-papa told me in no uncertain terms we were to be escorted about London by an eligible fellow with a substantial fortune. Some old cousin of a cousin owed him a favor, Hannah. My brother does not squander the favors he’s owed.”
He squandered the happiness of all in his ambit instead.
“I’m wealthy now, Aunt, and a titled husband will take over my fortune every bit as readily as a plain mister.”
Though for all her wealth, Hannah had felt a greater sense of well-being out on the moors with Balfour than she’d ever felt in Boston’s finest neighborhood. Did the man have to be so clever at avoiding social ruin?
Not that Hannah would have married him, of course.
Enid put aside her hoop, her expression as animated as if a new patent remedy were under discussion. “My dear, you forget your pin money. The pin money will be spelled out in the settlements, all completely legal, and your pin money will be yours to spend as you wish.”
They’d had this discussion on board ship at least a dozen times.
“I believe I’ll step out for a bit of air.”
Before Enid could flutter in protest or assign Hannah a half-dozen errands to tend to first, Hannah was out of the parlor and on her way upstairs to their rooms. Thank a merciful God, the inn was as Lord Balfour had suggested, commodious and clean. Hannah shared a small suite with Enid; Balfour’s room was across the hall.
The day had become brilliantly sunny, and the eaves were again dripping. By night, all would freeze, which meant moving around in the milder air held even greater appeal.
The village of Steeth was an old market town, complete with a common, a church, and the usual variety of shops. Hannah walked a shoveled path encircling the common, and as she came back toward the inn, saw their traveling coach in the yard on the same side as a smithy’s shop.
Men loitered about, two holding horses, while boys scampered around underfoot. A wainwright inspected the coach wheels, peering into the undercarriage and trading insults with the blacksmith.
