Page 52 of The MacGregor's Lady
“Our bed.” He took off his eyeglasses. “Our lonely bed.”
She rose and turned down the sconces on either side of that bed. “Your older brother is lonely, Ian. Perilously lonely.”
So Asher was to join them in bed, just as he’d haunted his entire family all the years of his absence.
“He sent for us, and we’ve presented ourselves accordingly, Wife. I considered dragging him into the parlor to sing with us this evening, but the man honestly isn’t used to having family about.”
She climbed onto the bed in darkness, a frisson of female fragrance—soap, starch, and summer flowers—accompanying the dipping of the mattress.
“He knows about having family underfoot. He was raised with you from the age of eleven, and from everything you’ve said, he had loving family in his early childhood.”
Ian waited while Augusta extricated herself from the voluminous billows of her nightclothes. Since the child’s birth, she’d been more modest than when they’d first married, an endearing contradiction when she’d eschewed a wet nurse for their son.
“I can’t gainsay your conclusions, Augusta.”
“There are things you aren’t telling me. Things about our Asher. I like him, you know, but there’s a bleakness…”
Augusta got situated along Ian’s side, tucking close under his arm.
Ian’s wife on the scent of some topic was a force of nature. He didn’t even try to change the subject. “Asher’s mother died in his infancy, which has to leave a mark on a boy. That his father remarried almost immediately can’t have sat well with him either.”
A warm female hand stroked over the planes and muscles of Ian’s belly. “I think it’s worse than that. I think it has to do with his father being willing to leave his mother, to return to Scotland without her, no matter it wasn’t meant as a one-way journey. Could you travel from Canada without me?”
God, no.“If you commanded me to, if you insisted I make peace with my family in Scotland, the question might become very different.”
The hand on Ian’s belly went still, which was damned frustrating when those warm, knowing fingers had been drifting ever lower.
“Asher’s mother was literate, Ian. She could have at least written and let the man know he had a son.”
The discussion came very close to violating the confidences Ian had sworn he’d keep, but he hadn’t yet crossed the line of fraternal loyalty. “I suspect Asher’s mother wanted her husband to make a choice freely, between her and his family in Scotland. She withheld news of her pregnancy because she didn’t want to take unfair advantage.”
“Or she was being an idiot, or maybe she didn’t want her Scottish husband back?”
A prudent husband would make no rejoinder to that comment. “So what is this problem you foresee, Wife? Let’s set it aside, because there’s another problem arising for which I need your intimate and undivided counsel.”
To emphasize his point, he wrapped her hand around his burgeoning shaft. Augusta gave him a wifely squeeze and a pat, but other than that withheld hercounsel.
“I went down to the kitchen, thinking to warm up a mug of milk before we retired, and I found the room occupied.”
“Kitchens are generally warm. I’ve been known to occupy a few myself.” He occupied his hand with a luscious female fundament, which at least earned him a sigh in the darkness.
“Asher and Miss Cooper were engaged in a passionate embrace.”
Damn, not again.“How passionate?”
Rather than answer, Augusta shifted beside him so her derriere pressed against his hip. This was the marital signal to spoon himself around her, which Ian was abundantly willing to do.
“Your dear brother wore not a stitch, Ian, and Miss Cooper’s night clothing was in considerable disarray. Their embrace wasintimatelypassionate. I cannot attest to the full extent of the improprieties they were engaged in, but suffice it to say I retreated without gaining their notice.”
With the English—Augusta was English by birth and breeding—a man had to listen not so much to their words as to their inflections, their tone, what they chose to keep unsaid. “You were not shocked.”
She took his hand and removed it from the pleasurable exploration of her hip andderriereto wrap it around her breast. “I’m married toyou, Ian MacGregor. Shocking me has become a difficult undertaking. I was taken aback. Your brother’s eyes were closed, and the expression on his face—”
Ian let her have her pause, because for Augusta to have seen such a private moment would have been intensely uncomfortable, even if she hadn’t been precisely shocked. “Is he smitten, then?”
The selfsame question Ian had been asking since coming upon Asher and Miss Cooper kissing in the mews days ago. Augusta shifted again, nudging at his erect cock with her backside. “I think it’s worse than that. I think he’s in love with the woman and doesn’t even know it.”
“And Miss Cooper?”
