Page 36 of The MacGregor's Lady
He hadn’t answered her question. “Do not think of closing that door, sir.”
He was already on his feet, closing the door and then poking up the fire to a roaring blaze. “Fat lot of good propriety will do you when you’re expiring of lung fever under my roof. And no, your shoes are not safe from me. You were supposed to be visiting with your aunt as you do every morning first thing, and I intended to relieve you of only the one pair.”
He stood with the brass-and-iron poker in his hand, though a claymore would have been appropriate to his posture, too.
“I doubt my slippers would fit you, sir, and Maiden’s Blush is hardly your color.”
He set the poker back in its stand and began a perambulation of Hannah’s room, turning quickly enough that Hannah suspected he might have been hiding a smile. He did not blend with these fussy, overstuffed surrounds, and yet she liked the look of him sniffing at the sage sachets hanging from her curtains and fingering the brushes on her vanity.
“We really ought not to be alone in here together.” And Hannah really did not practice hypocrisy very convincingly, for this was the man in whose arms she’d spent a lovely, cozy night.
“Then agree to give me one of your dancing slippers—a right one.”
Hannah took a sip of tea, then realized she’d drunk from the only cup she’d poured—his. He’d watched her do it, too, the wretch. His smile said as much.
“You’ll ruin my slipper. Waste not; want not.”
“Such a Yankee. Are you going to tell me Maiden’s Blush is your favorite color?”
She had to get him out of her room, and not because propriety required it. “I’m telling you every scheme, exercise, and magic potion has been unavailing where mydisabilityis concerned.”
“So you’ve let somebody put a lift on your heel before?”
Because he was watching her, even as he brought a bowl of potpourri to his nose, he likely saw her hesitate as much as heard it.
“You have not allowed this previously.” He set the dish down and stirred the contents with his third finger before rejoining her on the settee. “Why not?”
Arguing was not evicting him from her room. “Nobody thought of it.”
He sat forward, straining the seams on his coat, making the settee creak softly. “You do not have pain in your foot, your knee, or your leg, as far as I can tell. If the difficulty is in your back and hip, then it’s possible your right leg is simply shorter than the left. Your fall might not have had much to do with it, other than rendering you weaker for a time as a result of inactivity, which exposed the underlying condition.”
While he spoke, he poured a second cup of tea, added cream and sugar, then passed it to Hannah.
She took it, being sure their fingers did not brush again. “You should not be discussing my person in such terms.” Not in England, in any case.
“Shall I send for a physician to discuss your ownlimbswith you? Another physician? An old fellow who smells of mildew and lemon drops, who’ll no doubt want to examine yourperson?”
“Thank you, no. Aunt Enid would get wind of it, and the letters would be flying, and thank you, no.” She took a sip of tea, finding it both soothing and bracing, and cradled the cup in her hands rather than set it on its saucer.
“So you’ll let me try, Hannah? If it doesn’t work, then there’s no harm done, except to ensure you’ll never encase your dainty feet in Maiden’s Blush.”
Hannah, not Miss Cooper, or even Miss Hannah. Maiden’s Blush, indeed. “I could not be so blessed.”
And the idea of him seeing her shoes—she ordered them by color—was vaguely disquieting, but that he might have seen her collection of stockings went beyond intolerable. “If this scheme works, Balfour, then you’ll expect me to dance.”
He sat back, again making the settee creak. “If this scheme works, then maybe you won’t be in as much pain. Maybe you’llwantto dance.”
Oh, drat him. Drat him and blast him.Damnhim, in fact. She hid behind another sip of her tea.
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” He spoke softly, pushing a lock of hair back behind her ear. “You cannot bear another disappointment. You long to dance, but you’ve given up.”
“Givenup?” If he’d knocked her to the floor, he could not have been more ruthless, and the gentleness in his touch made his words that much more difficult. “Givenup, because I don’t seek to bedazzle some spotty young fool on the dance floor? Given up, when all I want is to look after my grandmother and have the benefit of an inheritance left to me by my father?”
She set her teacup down with a bang and marched across the room to put space between her and the presuming, too insightful earl. “If I had given up, my lord, then I’d be married to Jeremy Widmore, carrying my second child by now, and likely sporting bruises in all manner of private places. If I had given up, I’d be in my bed, praying that my husband would content himself with his mistresses and gambling, while I watched the funds my children needed frittered away for Widmore’s pleasure or my stepfather’s.”
She whirled in a flurry of skirts and speared the earl with a glare. “If I had given up, I’d be envying Aunt Enid her laudanum addiction, for that’s what it is.Shehas given up, but as long as my grandmother draws breath, I cannot, I shall not, I…”
Couldnotbreathe.
