Page 71 of The MacGregor's Lady
“I’ll have the carriage brought around. If you’ll excuse me?”
He bowed crisply at the ladies and disappeared, leaving Asher in a dimly lit library with five women, at least three of whom would have loved to report that Hannah’s bodice was drooping, her dress undone, and her laces damaged beyond repair.
“Perhaps you might be good enough to find the baroness’s husband,” Asher suggested, making pointed use of Augusta’s title. “And as a physician, I’m asking you ladies to give Miss Cooper privacy with my sister-in-law and me.”
The invocation of the title, or perhaps the promise in Asher’s eyes of social murder, had the women withdrawing in a subdued silence. When the door had clicked shut, Augusta let out a breath.
“A near thing, you two.” She took the glass Hannah proffered and drained the contents. “We’ll need to get Hannah out to the carriage before Lady Alcincoate can send servants spying with offers of hartshorn and burned feathers. You would not be the first young lady compromised by her stays. Can you walk?”
“I’ll carry her.” Asher shrugged out of his jacket and passed it to Augusta, who assisted Hannah into it. That Hannah made no protest did not bode well. “Augusta, when we get home, will you see to sending regrets to the social obligations remaining for the next two weeks?”
“There is no need for that,” Hannah said, “and it will only make people think the worst.”
Asher planted his hands on his hips and glowered down at the recumbent, though rapidly rallying, Miss Cooper. “What could be worse than losing consciousness before all of Polite Society? Striking a head as hard as yours, even on a convenient andiron—”
Augusta put a hand on his arm. “Hannah might be right, Balfour. If she withdraws from Society, all will remark the possible explanations for tonight’s bout of the vapors.”
Augusta stared at him, as if she could will some insight to penetrate his brain.
“Good God.” He dropped to the sofa. “They will think you are carrying and sailed to England to snag a wealthy husband before your indiscretion was obvious.”
Worse, that was exactly what they werealreadythinking, assuming they’d discarded the notion Asher was ravishing his own guest in other people’s libraries. He wanted to howl and destroy things and take Hannah far from a society that was not polite in the least…
Though all he could do for now was take her home.
“Augusta, get us out of here, please.” He lifted Hannah against his chest, and at least that much felt good and right, for all she was too light by half. They waited while Augusta got the mass of Hannah’s skirts modestly arranged and the excess folded up in the bend of Hannah’s body, then waited again until Augusta assured them the corridor was empty.
Augusta went ahead of them, Ian met the party in the mews, and before Asher could even mentally fashion another scold for his patient, he found himself ensconced with Hannah in the smaller of the family’s town coaches.
Ian and Augusta went back to the ballroom to collect Malcolm and Enid—and to scotch gossip—while Hannah squirmed against Asher’s side.
“I am perfectly capable of sitting unassisted, Lord Balfour.”
He looped an arm over her shoulders, the brisk show of resistance in her voice reassuring him almost as much as the feel of her next to him did. “And you could have walked to the coach unassisted too, but you didn’t. One has to wonder why.”
She sighed a mighty put-upon sigh, turned her face into his shoulder, and remained silent for the entire journey home.
***
A tape measure proved that Hannah had not been losing her wits. The waists on the dresses most recently made in England were five inches smaller than the waists on the dresses Hannah had brought with her from Boston, and Aunt Enid’s quiet direction to the modiste was to blame.
“I wanted to see you successfully settled. A lady must show herself to her best advantage if she’s to gain the notice of a worthy gentleman. Stop pacing, you shall make me dizzy.” Enid managed to sound put out rather than contrite, which had an entire shouting match boiling up from Hannah’s now full stomach.
Hannah came to a halt with her back to the fire in Enid’s sitting room. “Youmade me dizzy. You made me think I was putting on weight, made me think I was losing my wits. You made me an object of gossip and speculation. How do you think your brother will react when he learns of this?”
Enid unclipped her earrings and slipped off rings, one, two, three… seven in all. “It isn’t as if you wanted to marry the man, Hannah. You’ve chosen an inconvenient time to turn up sensitive to the requirements of decorum.”
A maid would put the rings, the earbobs, the necklaces, and the brooches into their jewelry box, would make order out of Aunt Enid’s chaos, and see to it at some point when Enid would not be disturbed by the activity.
“Polite Society found me in dishabille, swilling spirits, in a darkened library, alone with a man to whom I am not related, an eligible, titled, wealthy man whom they would like nothing more than to accuse of wrongdoing. This situation came about because of your meddling.”
Enid looked up from unfastening a ruby-red brooch from her bodice. “You are concerned for our host? He’s a man, Hannah. Because he is wealthy and titled, no one will attach any shame to him whatsoever. They will say you enticed him into a shadowed corner to work your wiles on him. This blasted brooch is stuck.”
The urge to scream like a mountain lion welled from Hannah’s soul. “I haven’t any accursed wiles, for God’s sake.”
Enid assayed her appearance in the mirror, touching the tips of her fourth and fifth fingers to her part. “You needn’t state the obvious, Hannah. I will require at least a posset to get to sleep after all this excitement. In fact, you’d best fetch me my Dr. Giles.”
Rather than screech that Dr. Giles wasn’t going to solve anything, Hannah took a moment to study her aunt. The hour was late, Enid was tired, and the cosmetics she used enhanced rather than hid her advancing years.
