Page 55 of The MacGregor's Lady
“Thank you.” She accepted a glass of some reddish drink from Malcolm. “I don’t know how these ladies dance, their frames are that delicate.”
The waistlines in evidence were so tiny as to strike Hannah as… deformed, as discordant as the cheerful greetings offered by one young lady after another, completely contradicting the calculation in their eyes.
“They haven’t your presence, Miss Hannah. You must pity them.”
They hadn’t her fortune was what he meant, but a little dissembling in the name of manners had to be permitted.
“Tell me about Paris. I’ve wondered if it’s as beautiful as one hears.”
He obliged her with small talk while they strolled the gallery that ran along one side of the ballroom and opened onto a large brick terrace. The breeze from the out-of-doors was heavenly, a siren call to obscure shadows and fresh air.
“Would you like to sit for a moment, Miss Hannah? Dancing slippers have been known to pinch as the night progresses.”
Malcolm offered the same friendly smile, making Hannah realize she’d become overly sensitive. He wasn’t alluding to her limp, and he could not possibly know about the lift on her right heel.
“Might we take some air, Mr. Macallan?” The question was half-sincere, manners being even more strict here than in the stuffiest reaches of Boston’s version of Polite Society.
“Of course. The terrace will be nearly as crowded as the dance floor.”
Another not-quite-truth, because save for two couples conversing at the balustrade, the terrace was blessedly peaceful and quiet. Hannah settled herself on a bench and took the opportunity to taste the libation in her glass.
Gracious heavens, the drink was more honey than anything else. She set the glass aside, vowing to follow the example of the MacGregor ladies and tuck a wee flask into her pocket on the next outing.
Malcolm came down beside her on a whiff of gardenia. The scent was soothing, if a trifle odd on a man. “What would you like to know, Hannah Cooper?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“About my cousins, or third cousins, whatever. In Scotland, anybody with a drop of consanguinity qualifies as family, particularly with the Highland clans.”
Rather like Boston. “Why is that?”
He let out a sigh, and with it, a bit of his genial persona slipped away into the shadows. “Because there are so damned few of us left. It’s the fault of the sheep, you see.”
“Sheep here devour Highlanders?”
This was contrary to the tales Hannah’s idiot half brothers told regarding sheep and rural populations, though she knew better than to offer that comment.
“Sheep are profitable. They’ve been bred to thrive even where winters are harsh and fodder hard to come by. For generations, the landlords have been smitten with the idea that more sheep and fewer crofters means better income. The land can’t support both the tenants and the flocks. Ergo, the tenants have been burned out.”
Malcolm’s tone had lost all bantering and taken on an edge of lament—not anger, but sorrow.
“Surely in these modern times, such a barbarity—”
He shook his head. “In these modern times, there are hardly any crofters to burn out and chase down to the docks of Aberdeen and Edinburgh, there to take ship for the New World—any new world—before they starve trying to live on seaweed and mackerel. And what the Clearances didn’t accomplish, the famines did.”
“I thought the famine was in Ireland.” And she’d thought the terrace would be a pleasant respite, not a place to tell tales of ghosts and feudal destruction.
Malcolm glanced over at her, as if trying to gauge how much honesty she might endure without a fit of the vapors. “There is good land in Scotland, but not enough of it. The potato is a humble crop, needing neither rich land nor much tending. It’s the only crop suitable for difficult conditions that produces enough yield per acre to support the most impoverished. Then too, it’s a simple crop to plant and harvest—children wielding a shovel can see it done. We grew enough potatoes up north to feel the blight keenly.”
We.In this he was like the MacGregors.Wereferred to the family, the clan, the nation.
When was the last time Hannah had used the word in any of those senses?
Malcolm squeezed her gloved hand. “I’ve lectured you to silence. You must retaliate by interrogating me. Did you know Ian used to be the earl?”
A cheerier topic by far, though Hannah had been apprised of this bit of MacGregor history by Augusta herself.
“While Asher was thought dead,” she replied. “I haven’t quite figured out what Asher was doing larking around in the north woods in the first place, and one can’t exactly quiz him on it, can one?” Though one wanted to. Badly.
