Page 31 of The MacGregor's Lady
“I have half brothers,” she said as she twirled the red tulip between gloved fingers. “They are spoiled rotten, and I love them. I want a home of my own and babies as much as the next woman, but I already have a family. Tossing aside the family I have for the family I dream of having hardly washes.”
She was in spectacular form today, casually pummeling every bruise on Asher’s soul, and without even knowing the havoc she wrought.
He forced himself to focus on the plain sense of her words. “You refer to your not-quite-sainted grandmother, whom you must protect at all costs. An Englishman might not bow as easily to your stepfather’s schemes, or the right Englishman would have wealth of his own.” So would a Scotsman, for that matter, but Ian, Gilgallon, and Connor were happily married.
Miss Hannah sat forward and braced herself on the bench with both hands, hunching her shoulders in an unladylike attitude. “My grandmother depends on me, and I owe her. When Papa died, Mama would have let all the help go, taken to her bed, and remained there all her days. Grandmother stepped in and maintained order, even though my mother treated her miserably. When Mama married my stepfather, it was my grandmother who alerted Papa’s lawyers to the need to see to my fortune.”
“She sounds very devoted.” Also meddlesome, and not even an impoverished Englishman wanted to marry into meddlesome female relations.
“She is mine to love now, so this foolishness of a marriage in England will not do.”
Hannah Cooper was living up to her nose, demonstrating a determination that boded ill for the coming social Season, and she intended to have her debacle on Asher’s watch. Because that would not do either—for his sake as well as hers—Asher tried for some honesty.
“If you do not take, if you are shunned or ridiculed because you engage in outlandish behavior, word will reach my uncle and very likely your parents as well.”
“My stepfather is not my parent.”
“Nonetheless, he’s in a position to make you miserable.” Just as old Uncle Fen would make Asher miserable.
She said nothing for a time, confirming Asher’s sense the damned stepfather had made Hannah miserable already.
“Shall we go, sir? Aunt will be rising from her nap, and it looks to be threatening snow or sleet.”
She didn’t get to her feet. Already, she’d absorbed enough English etiquette to resort to the weather for a change of subject and to wait for his assistance before she rose—or maybe her hip was paining her from all their tramping around.
“Your aunt will likely sleep through dinner again.” Enid slept most of the time, in fact, which was the reason—mostof the reason—Asher had sent for reinforcements. A chaperone asleep at the switch was no sort of chaperone at all, and servants would hardly keep such a development to themselves.
He rose and extended a hand down to her. “Come, it does look like the weather might turn nasty.”
As they made their way back toward Park Lane, Asher casually noted each species of bird, tree, and flower around them. In the Canadian wilderness, such knowledge could spell the difference between a full belly and an empty one, between life and death.
And yet, here he was, far from the wilderness, in a land where a man learned of flowers only so he might speak symbolically through them in courtship, and the women—theladies—understood such sentiments easily.
***
Ian MacGregor, heir to the Earl of Balfour, loved his brothers and loved them dearly. This was likely why he also wanted to bash their idiot heads together regularly.
“Asher is laird, head of this family, and holds the title—if he summons us, we go.” At Ian’s opening salvo, Connor and Gilgallon exchanged younger-brother looks that presaged mutiny, or at least a long, tiresome spate of arguing.
“I agree with Ian.” Their sister, Mary Fran, spoke up from the love seat she shared with her husband, Matthew. They held hands, their laced fingers resting on Matthew’s thigh, Mary Fran’s lap being rather less in evidence than it had been several months ago. “I’d quite honestly like to spend time around our brother,” Mary Fran said. “He holed up at Balfour for most of the winter, like some sort of monk. If we avoid him, he might as well still be trapping bears or whatever he was so happy doing in Canada.”
He hadn’t been trapping bears—or not merely trapping bears. Ian knew that much.
“I’ll pour.” Ian’s wife, Augusta, left his side to tend to the hospitality, though adding whiskey to his brothers’ tempers wasn’t necessarily wise.
Gilgallon, the most charming but also the most hotheaded, led the charge. “Asher disappears for so long he’s declared legally dead, then pops up last autumn with almost no warning. Royal decrees are issued, he snatches the earldom back from you, and then at the first sign of spring, he’s off to frolic in London?”
Augusta served the first drink to Gilgallon’s blond, English wife, Genie, the second to Con’s beloved, petite Julia. Genie passed the drink to Gil without taking a sip, which was interesting—and might explain why Gil would rather linger in the North, glued to Genie’s side, even with spring approaching.
“A London Season is hardly a frolic,” Genie said, English refinement echoing in every syllable. “A newly minted earl with a mysterious past will be mobbed, and he won’t know what’s about to hit him.”
Connor, the most quiet and blunt of the siblings, spoke as Julia took a delicate sip of her drink. “Asher is no stranger to a dangerous wilderness. I’m saying he might not want us Trooping the Colours in full regalia. He wired Ian. Let Ian scout the situation. The rest of us can get down there on a week’s notice or so.”
“Spathfoy and Hester have been biding in the South since autumn,” Ian said, because the family now included Augusta’s cousin Hester and her English earl. “Asher’s invitation was to his entire family, and I agree with him. We haven’t all been under the same roof since Grandfather’s funeral.”
A man who’d impersonated the head of the family for a few years could pull rank like that. Mention of their departed grandfather had Gil downing his whiskey and Connor reaching for Julia’s hand.
“If Asher has been racketing about the Canadian mountains these past years, then he’s going to be a curiosity among the English,” Mary Fran said. “We can’t leave him on his own any longer, not if he’s asking for our help.”
