Page 58 of The MacGregor's Lady
He ought to be worried about finding a woman who didn’t regard his marriage proposals as misguided courtesy even as she straightened the folds of his kilt.
Knowing Augusta was probably watching from a convenient window, a sister-in-law stationed at each elbow—and knowing some considerate gardener had planted a thriving trellis of pink roses on the side of the gazebo facing the house—Asher crossed the grass, leaned down, pressed a kiss to Hannah’s cheek, and laid a sprig of lilacs by her correspondence.
“I’ve been keeping you out too late if you must steal a nap here in the garden.”
She opened her eyes slowly and smiled at him—for which he might have been grateful had her gaze not been so sad. He appropriated the seat beside her without asking, and cocked his head to study her epistle.
“You never write to your mother, and she has yet to write to you.”
Whatever tenderness had lingered in Hannah’s gaze guttered and died. “I have little to say that can’t be conveyed by my brothers. I am well. I am meeting eligibles. I am coming home in a few weeks.”
He might catch her napping in the sun, but he’d never catch her wavering from her self-appointed itinerary. “You could marry Malcolm. He’d be happy for a chance to start over in a new world.”
Asher tossed out that bait only because Malcolm’s appreciation for the company of women was rumored to stop at the bedroom door, though it was rumor only.
Hannah wiped a spot of ink from her third finger with a linen handkerchief, probably ruining the fabric in the process. “What exactly does Malcolmdo?”
Because Asher had spent years traveling in the former Colonies, he understood the inquiry for the blunt question it was.
“He is a gentleman at leisure, his welfare sustained by our semi-mutual relation, the Baron Fenimore. Do you like Malcolm?”
Hannah drew the lilacs under her nose, though her expression suggested their fragrance was lacking. “A remittance man, then. Malcolm asked me if I liked you. He wants me to like you.”
A pronouncement such as that might presage Hannah’s intent to flee the gazebo, so Asher took possession of her bare hand and brushed his thumb across her knuckles. “Did you dissemble prettily and tell him you found me very agreeable?”
She regarded his thumb, the motion of it back and forth across the smooth skin of her hand. He’d touched her for his own pleasure, and because he needed to, but with her acquiescence in the contact, it became something else entirely.
“I told him I both like and respect you. I also desire you. I didn’t tell him that.”
He dropped her hand then wished he hadn’t. “You are going to harangue me now about your lack of virginity, about your need to be thoroughly ruined, et cetera, et cetera. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a man who finds ruining ladies a worthy pursuit.”
She sat back, looking like a cat disgruntled to have been removed from the toastiest patch of sunlight. “I don’t need a major scandal. A tidy indiscretion would do.”
He was disappointed that she’d cling to her scheme with such tenacity, and pleased that he’d divined her plans so easily. “In these surrounds, no scandal is minor, Hannah Cooper. If you are ruined while I am hosting your visit, then my reputation will suffer significantly.”
“You’re a man.” She might have said “You’re a toad,” for all therespectandlikingin her tone. “I could misstep at some ball, and you could pack me off on the next ship, a host victimized by my colonial vulgarity. You’d earn the sympathy of every mama for ten blocks in any direction.”
This was a recitation, not a sudden inspiration. All the evenings Hannah had been smiling and swilling champagne punch, she had been mulling over her tactics. Refining some plan that would end in social disaster, could she but manage it.
“How would this go for your aunt, Hannah? You sail home head held high, triumphant in your disgrace, and she—dependent on her brother’s charity—must pay the price for having let your fortune slip away from her brother’s control.”
“It wouldn’t be like that.”
“She would fall into a permanent medicinal haze, her hope of any sort of dignity and joy blighted for the rest of her days.”
Hannah stared at the correspondence spread on the small table in the center of the gazebo, at the lilacs already beginning to wilt for lack of water. While Asher admired the curve of her jaw and the freckles sprinkled across her cheek, a tear slipped down that cheek.
Whatinblazes?
“You are not to cry.” His handkerchief was out, and he was dabbing at her cheek even as he spoke. “Crying is low and female and it isn’t…pleasedon’t cry, Hannah.” He fell silent lest he start begging. To see his Boston adrift like this, cast down by tears…
“Aunt is doing m-much better.”
“Hush.” He tucked an arm around her and pushed her head to his shoulder. “Of course she’s doing better. She’s chaperoning the wealthiest heiress to be seen here in five years, my brothers are standing up with her almost every evening, and my sisters are distracting her from her potions by day.Stopcrying.”
And that campaign had ensued after little more than hints from Asher that it would be appreciated.
Hannah turned her face into his shoulder and nigh broke his heart. She hated to lean, hated to show weakness, and while he relished that she’d allow him to comfort her, he hurt for her, too.
