Page 7 of The MacGregor's Lady
“As if you’re a coach horse? Strong, sound of wind and limb, but not elegant enough for a hack or nimble enough for work over fences?”
He ran his finger in a slow circle around the rim of his mug. “An excellent question. Rum tends to bring out the imponderables. No doubt the Greeks invented it, and by rights the drink ought to be dubbed the Progenitor of Philosophy.” He fell silent for a moment, as if considering this profundity. “We seem to be contemplating similar exercises in futility for the coming Season.”
“Your secret is safe with me, sir.”
She reached for another bun just as he did, and their hands bumped.
“After you, miss.”
She took up a bun, broke it in half, and passed him the larger portion. “You’re supposed to say my secret is safe with you.”
“Bun-swearing,” he said, regarding his pastry. “A kind of alimentary fealty my mother’s family would have understood all too well, except you aren’t making any secret of your shameless intentions. You’re going to waste a great deal of good coin on dresses and dancing slippers, spend many nights out until dawn, leading the unsuspecting swains around by their noses, then laugh them to scorn and catch the next ship for Boston. Not very sporting of you.”
And yet, he sounded more impressed than envious.
“Not very sporting of my stepfather to send me away from everything and everyone I love to cross the Atlantic in winter, now was it?”
Hannah wished dear Step-papa might see the scowl her words provoked from the earl. “Not sporting at all, but you’re here. Why not make the best of it?”
“What best is there to make of it?” she said, dipping her bun in her drink. “I cannot marry here, else I’ll have to spend the rest of my days an ocean away from everybody and everything I hold dear.”
“England isn’t such a bad place.” He studied his drink, as if he were repeating a litany that had never been convincing. “England is pretty, in truth, and there’s a lot of variety on one island. I thought I’d go mad missing Canada, but I knew by my first winter in Great Britain there were compensations for leaving Canada. By the second winter, I was mostly complaining about going home to reassure myself I had a home.”
Canada?What was a Scottish peer doing wandering around Canada, and what had compelled him to return home?
“You’re saying I could learn to like it here.” She could certainly learn to like rum buns dipped in grog, and Scottish earls who commiserated with American heiresses. “Eventually, perhaps I could, but I cannot leave my grandmother to fight all the battles with Step-papa. If he had his way, he’d leave her in the servants’ parlor, swilling tea and knitting.”
“You’re protective of this grandmother, which speaks well of you.” He broke another bun in half, this time giving her the larger share. “Is she growing vague?”
“Hardly.” Hannah nibbled the bun, finding the earl’s approval as sweet as the icing. To air her situation like this was a relief of some sort—one she hoped she would not regret. “Gran is old, and she has no one else. She was my father’s mother, and she’s all I have left of him.”
“That doesn’t rule out finding a husband who would settle with you in Boston.” Balfour spoke gently, as if Hannah might not have reasoned her way to this solution on her own.
“Oh, of course. Some knight twice my age is going to give up all his comforts and honors to brave New England winters and never see his cronies again?”
“It is possible. Many people have found worthy spouses in unlikely locations.” His pronouncement had the ring of a tired admonition, not a declaration of unflagging optimism.
“Eat your bun,” Hannah said, passing him his uneaten sweet. “Anything is possible, sir. You could find the bride of your dreams in an unlikely location as well.”
He said nothing, but gobbled up the rest of his rum bun in about two bites, then rose and held out his hand.
Hannah regarded the large palm, the elegant fingers, the perfectly rounded clean fingernails, the slight callus on the fourth finger from years of holding snaffle reins. Perhaps not strictly gentlemanly hands, but they suited Balfour.
She gave him her hand, and he drew her to her feet.
Still holding her hand, he looked down at her, his expression serious. This close, Hannah caught his contribution to the ambient scents, a clean, bracing male fragrance that put her in mind of spices and sea breezes.
“I will make a promise with you, Hannah Lynn Cooper. I will make a good-faith effort to find a bride, if you will make a good-faith effort to find a husband.”
She considered his hand, wrapped around hers. His skin was darker than hers, as if he had Mediterranean blood.
“I can make that promise.” If good faith was merely the absence of bad faith. “I am not optimistic that I will be successful finding a spouse.”
He brought her fingers to his lips, and brushed her a kiss that was mostly air plus a touch of warmth and gallantry. When he had given her back her hand, he plucked his coat from the hook, then shuffled the wraps so he could settle her cape around her shoulders first. He shrugged into his coat but didn’t button it.
“The rum has warmed me up,” he said, winging an arm. “If I am not mistaken, we’re due for a thaw, and we’ll have nothing but sunshine and mud for the rest of this week, followed of course, by the inevitable blizzard.”
He sounded like a Yankee farmer, daring the weather to try to trick him with its inconveniences.
