Page 62 of The MacGregor's Lady
“I suppose I should not be shocked,” Asher said slowly. “I’ve traded in the New World for a mere five years and found it quite lucrative. Your father probably had decades to build his fortune.”
“He did—he was somewhat older than Mama—and he also said the fur trade used to be a considerably easier business because the game was more abundant and the competition for trappers, pelts, and buyers much less.”
Rather than dwell on her stepfather’s nasty little epistle, Asher instead posed question after question to Hannah regarding her father’s business. She answered with both knowledge and enthusiasm for her topic, until they were in view of the large woods on the Thames’s side of the park.
At Hannah’s suggestion, they cantered the distance to the wood, and to the extent Asher could determine from surreptitious glances, Hannah remained comfortable in her saddle.
They’d wandered some distance among stately trees and startled a herd of red deer in a grassy clearing when a shout from behind had Asher drawing his horse up.
“That’s the groom,” Hannah said, bringing her mare to a halt. “He sounds exasperated.”
“Your lordship? Milord? Oi!”
“Over here!” Asher nudged his horse down the path, with Hannah falling in behind.
The groom stood beside his dappled cob, stroking a hand over the beast’s shoulder. “Come up lame, ’e ’as. Poor blighter must ’ave picked up a stone.”
Except examination of all four hooves showed no stone embedded in the frog of the horse’s soles or wedged against its shoes.
“You’ll have to walk him back,” Asher said. “Can you find the way?”
The groom squinted up through the trees, saying nothing. From his accent, he was a city man, and Richmond was more primeval than much of the shires themselves.
“We rode in with the sun to our right shoulders,” Hannah said. “If you keep the sun to your left shoulder, you should find your way back easily enough.”
City man he might be, though the groom’s smile suggested he understood her reasoning. “Right you be, miss. Come along, ’orse. We’ve a ways to walk.”
With a slight bow in Hannah’s direction, the man departed down the track they’d just traveled, the horse stumping along behind him.
Asher wanted to ask if their misadventure in Scotland had motivated her to gauge directions by the sun, but she turned a troubled expression on him. “Shouldn’t we accompany him back to the meeting point?”
“He’s a grown man, Hannah. Part of the purpose for bringing a groom along is precisely so there’s somebody in the party who can take a lame horse in hand—”
He fell silent. Her concern was not for the sturdy groom, but for the appearances.
The proprieties. They were alone, deep in an overgrown woods, not another human being within eyesight or earshot, and both of marriageable age.
Abruptly, the moment becameinteresting.
***
The longer they were in London, the less Hannah could read Asher’s—Lord Balfour’s—moods and expressions. Today he was in casual English riding attire, which meant tall field boots, breeches, waistcoat, and riding jacket all done in buff, brown, cream, and green. The ensemble complemented his robust complexion beautifully, and the way he sat a horse…
Some men rode well, and some men rode with such an intuitive feel for the horse as to raise the activity to an effortless dance. Horses responded to that sort of assurance.
Hannah had responded to it.
“Let’s water the horses,” Asher suggested. “If you want to go back, we can, and we’ll overtake the groom easily.”
“Provided he doesn’t get lost.”
He gave her an amused look. “You’re concerned for thegroom, Hannah?” He lent the word a mocking emphasis, alluding subtly to bridegrooms, and somehow to himself as well.
When she didn’t answer, he swung off his horse and came around to assist her to dismount. This involved taking her boot from the stirrup, unhooking her knee from the horn, turning her seat perpendicular to the saddle, and… putting her hands on Asher’s broad, muscular shoulders.
“Down you go.” He did not lift her; he waited until she leaned forward enough to tip her derriere from the saddle. She intended to whisk herself to the ground with no more than an instant or two of proximity to him and his shoulders.
And his smile.
