Page 29 of The MacGregor's Lady
“You will see Balfour compromised with the Cooper girl if it’s the last useful thing you do.”
Despite the conviction in his words, old Fenimore was ill. Malcolm Macallan could smell it on him, the way a child called down from the schoolroom could smell an upcoming beating on the fumes of his father’s breath. “Why would I treat family so shabbily, Uncle?”
“I am not your uncle, and you will do as I say or the sum advanced to you each quarter will disappear like that.” Fenimore snapped bony, liver-spotted fingers, his signet ring loose above swollen joints.
Malcolm paced around the study, which was heated to stifling—appropriately enough—and rife with the smell of camphor and decrepitude. He paused before an arrangement of decanters on the sideboard and began lifting the stoppers, sniffing them one by one to chase the scent of decline from his nose. “Your remittance was late last quarter, my lord. Time to get a solicitor whose education started before the turn of the century.”
They were cousins at two removes, but for all the affection between them, it might have been twenty.
“Perhaps the remittance was late because you’ve been tarrying on English soil too long. The likes of you belong in the sewers of Paris. In my day, your kind were hung by the neck as a public spectacle.”
Where Malcolm belonged was Greece, Denmark, or somewhere a fellow wasn’t defined solely by the nature of the orifices he’d penetrated with his erect cock as a schoolboy.
“I like Asher. What has he done to deserve marriage to a Colonial who likely squints and trots around with a pet squirrel on her shoulder?”
The old man had to work to suppress a smile at that description. “He has deserted his responsibility for years on end, left his family to weather the results of the famine without his title to aid them, allowed his only niece to be all but snatched into the hands of the Marquess of Quinworth, and reduced his brother Ian to assuming the title and taking in paying guests—for the love of God—before Ian would apply for funds from the earldom’s trusts.”
Malcolm chose a gentle whiskey, one aged in barrels that hadn’t been very heavily treated with peat smoke, or perhaps not peated at all. Even in their distilling, the MacGregors took odd starts as often as hares on the heath changed direction.
“You’re saying Asher has been independent and proud. Terrible shortcomings in a Scottish laird.” Malcolm saluted Fenimore with his drink to add a further dash of sand in the old man’s gears.
“He’s neglected every one of his duties, and by God, he will not neglect them any longer. The American will understand a heathen like Balfour. She’ll put up with his uncouth manners and bring a sizable dowry to the bargain. She’s used goods, and a title, even a Scottish title, is far more than she ought to expect. The two of them deserve each other.”
Trust the old man to know everybody’s business, even as he was being measured for his shroud, and trust him too, to judge all in his ambit and pass sentence on them as well.
Malcolm wanted no part of Fenimore’s game, and yet… a man had to eat. Even frittering his life away in Paris, a man had to eat, and so did his dependents.
“If I’m to do the pretty on the London social stage this spring, I will need a house, a wardrobe, a coach-and-pair as well as a riding horse. I might very well have to pursue the lovebirds to the house parties and perhaps even into the fall Season. The paltry sum you send to ensure I remain at a safe distance from home is not adequate for the scheme you set me to now, Fenimore.”
The baron twitched the afghan over his knees—the MacGregor plaid, though the MacGregors wanted no part of him—licked old, colorless lips, and stared at the fire. “You are unnatural in so many ways.”
The accusation hardly qualified as an insult, except for the quiet despair with which Fenimore spoke. Malcolm took a sip of lovely libation and struggled against something close to pity—guilt, perhaps? Not for seizing an advantage with the old man, but for taking advantage of Asher MacGregor’s bad fortune.
“I am the only family you have left who doesn’t curse your very name,” Malcolm said. “Babies are being born up at Balfour, you know. Ian, Connor, Gilgallon, and Mary Fran are all happily married and having fat, healthy Scottish babies, given wonderfully Scottish names, swaddled in clan plaids and sent to sleep with the old songs. My cousins don’t invite you up there, don’t mention you might like to bide with them while the Queen is larking about Deeside with her royal consort.”
“That is none of your affair. How much, Malcolm?”
Bless the old boy’s fixity of purpose. “I want more than a season of finery in which to advance your schemes. I want security in my old age, something you’ve enjoyed for an obscenely long time.”
Fenimore couldn’t help how old he’d become, but he definitely deserved to be twitted for living off his deceased wife’s wealth in such a miserly fashion.
Malcolm compared the overstuffed elegance of the Fenimore study with his garret in Paris, a cramped, noisome space alternately freezing and sweltering by seasons, a place holding few meaningful memories and too many bottles of wine when a man needed decent whiskey in his veins.
The baron batted a gnarled hand in the direction of the bellpull. “Ring for Draper. He’s not yet departed for points south.”
Malcolm obliged. Yes, it was a petty command, and yes, the baron could easily have reached the bellpull in a few steps, but Draper’s presence would signify an intent to be bound by any terms struck.
Then too, as Malcolm studied Fenimore’s increasingly frail form he had to allow that maybe the baron wasn’tunwillingto get up and ring for his man of business, perhaps he wasunable.
***
The trip to the Royal Menagerie shifted something in Asher’s regard for Miss Hannah. The first time he’d seen the Menagerie, he’d been an adolescent. He’d pleaded a sudden, pressing need for the jakes, and as soon as he’d had some privacy, he’d given in to tears. He’d never quite known why, and it hardly mattered now. Taking Miss Cooper to see the lions hadn’t been the least bit gracious on his part; it had been… a test.
Rude, presuming, and not at all kind.
Maybe she’d sensed that, and maybe she’d wanted to cry a little too, for the lions, which was to say, she’d passed the test. He didn’t know whether to be pleased or disappointed, for himself, for her… none of it made much sense.
In any case, the tenor of his sightseeing trips with Miss Hannah moderated, and the weather followed suit, shifting from bitter to brisk, however temporarily.
