Page 82 of The MacGregor's Lady
Asher’s first reaction was pleasure that Hannah should be so eager to depart for points north. “Don’t you mean it’s headed for the train station?” King’s Cross was the usual point of departure for the northbound express trains—and they would be taking an express to Edinburgh, of course. Likely hiring private cars, making a family party out of the journey.
“Not the train station.” The old groom regarded the trunk again, his expression sad, as if the thing were a casket, not a mere repository for clothes and books.
Asher leaned over to read the address carefully lettered onto the side. “Boston?”
“And she said she’ll have several more down here by the end of the week, though she isn’t sure t’other lady will be joining her for the return journey. I’da rather kept Young Miss and sent t’other ’un back. Come along, horse.”
With a sense of cold foreboding, Asher waited until the clip-clop of the horse’s hoofbeats had faded, then took out a knife and slit the twine fastening the trunk.
Hannah’s clothing, some everyday, some newly purchased, lay carefully wrapped in thin paper and folded around sachets of lavender and sage. A volume of Walter Scott occupied pride of place on the top of the heap, the edition Asher had last seen at the inn in Steeth.
A set of nightclothes was among the garments Hannah was sending back to Boston—a nightgown and peignoir of green silk bordered in satin, the embroidery a blue, green, and purple riot of peacock feathers and flowers. Beaded slippers completed the ensemble, though there was no lift on the right heel.
He refolded her clothes, the silk cool and soft in his hands.
Fiona’s cat came strutting by, standing on its back legs to peer into the trunk. Asher lifted the cat aside, wanting instead to either throw the beast a good distance or pick it up and cuddle it.
“She’s sending part of her trousseau back to Boston.”
He closed the trunk and sat on it for a long time, stroking the purring cat. Hannah had no sisters. Her granny wasn’t going to be wearing such finery, and neither was her uncommunicative mother.
While the black-and-white cat kneaded Asher’s riding breeches with needle-sharp claws, Asher mentally revisited his conversations with Hannah the previous evening.
I can’t do this alone anymore.He’d seized on those words as an acceptance of a proposal, while Hannah had intended them as an announcement of her departure. And off he’d charged—after swiving her repeatedly—to fetch the special license.
“What are you doing pampering that great hairy beast when he ought by rights to be stuffing his maw with some fat English mousie?”
Ian stood in the doorway in plain shirt, simple black vest, and a black work kilt, hands on hips, regarding the cat.
“I’m exchanging confidences, one peer of the realm to another.”
Ian scratched the cat’s head. “We’ve had a surfeit of titles on hand lately. You missed all the excitement.”
Asher set the cat aside, though the animal bounded right back onto Hannah’s trunk and commenced to wash its paws. “We’ve had callers?”
Vultures, no doubt. Circling the remains of Hannah’s reputation.
“Old Moreland came by with the reigning dowagers. His duchessandhis sisters. Malcolm didn’t know which one to flirt with first. Even Connor was strolling about the gardens like a besotted spaniel.”
Notvultures.Not anything Asher could have predicted, though for Hannah, he was glad. “I see.”
Ian pushed the cat off the trunk and settled beside Asher.
“You stink of the stables, Ian.”
Ian passed him a silver flask. “You stink of the City.” The cat popped onto Ian’s lap, already purring, while Ian mildly cursed the beast in Gaelic.
Asher took a bracing swallow of fine whiskey. “We’re leaving at week’s end.” He passed the flask back.
Ian tipped it up, offered it to the cat, then put the cap back on and tucked it into his sporran. “And where are we off to, now that our resident rebel has become the darling of Polite Society—despite an unfortunate tendency to lace her stays a bit too tightly?”
“Edinburgh. Home eventually.” Where a man could drink himself into oblivion if need be.
“Thank God.”
“You don’t like showing your ladies off, strutting about in your kilt, and flirting with duchesses?”
Ian smacked him on the arm hard enough to hurt, and that felt—good. “I don’t like watching you torture yourself with what you cannot have, and your wee rebel isn’t looking any too pleased with life these days either.”
