Page 93 of The MacGregor's Lady
“What about him?”
“He was helping me pack, or bothering me while I packed, the night before I took ship. He asked me why I never considered dying my hair. The question struck me as peculiar coming from a schoolboy.”
“Boys are odd creatures.”
“He said—” Hannah could not explain the dread or the pain of the memory. “He said red hair is wicked, and women with red hair have ungovernable tempers. Just like that. He doesn’t even know what ‘ungovernable’ means, and it came out of his mouth, full of righteousness despite the uncertainty in his eyes.”
“He was mimicking his father. Boys do this, and then they rebel, if all goes according to plan.”
Augusta was the mother of a son, but that son was still very young. Hannah slipped away and opened the second trunk. “He comes out with pronouncements like that more and more, understanding clearly they are the way to win his papa’s approval. I cannot abide the thought that Bertie will end up hating his own sister because she has red hair, feeling superior to her, thinking that if she’s beaten frequently enough, the man doing the beating might redress what the Creator Himself put wrong.”
The discussion was difficult, but putting Hannah’s thoughts into words also helped clarify the answer to Augusta’s initial question.
Hannah could find not one thing wrong with being the wife of Asher MacGregor, except that such an honor would require that she abdicate her every responsibility as a daughter, granddaughter, and sister.
And yet, Augusta did not give in. “Asher could—”
Hannah tossed another pair of gossamer stockings toward a hook and missed. “Asher could do nothing. Children are their father’s chattel, wives are chattel, and Boston is an ocean away. I will not ask a man I esteem greatly to commit murder for my convenience. Not when I can go home, endure the next little while there, and soon establish my own household.”
This earned Hannah a silence while Augusta paced to the window, arms crossed, expression resolute. “How common is it in Boston for a young lady to establish her own household?”
“My grandmother would join me. For a spinster and an elderly relation to live together would not be unusual.”
Augusta drew the sash down with a solidthunk!and yanked the curtain closed. “And when, as could happen at any moment, your grandmother passes on? Then there you are, twenty-some years old, without male protection, still attempting to battle a man more than twice your age for the safety of people whom you legally cannot touch?”
Hannah picked up the copy ofWaverleyshe’d purchased from the inn in Steeth. The book bore a slight lavender fragrance from its prolonged confinement in the trunk, and the peacock feather marking Hannah’s place had somehow been lost.
“Augusta, I have to try. I cannot turn my back on my family. Asher understands this.”
“And he cannot turn his back on his family. The pair of you will drive me to Bedlam.”
Augusta whipped away from the window, swooped down to administer one more tight, fleeting hug, and then left Hannah alone amid clothes and mementos that would be packed up again all too soon.
***
They were down to twenty-three days, five already having been spent accepting good wishes from a parade of strangers and acquaintances at Lady Quinworth’s town house. At some point, Hannah had been whisked away for fittings, though Asher wondered why she allowed such an outing when she never intended to wear the dress.
And now he was supposed to make polite conversation with her, when what he wanted to do…
“How do you like being engaged to an earl, Hannah?”
The weather being fine, they were enjoying the walk up to Arthur’s Seat. Or making the walk, regardless. Two footmen struggled along yards behind them, the picnic hamper carried between them.
“You shouldn’t joke about such a thing.”
He took her hand, ostensibly to assist her up the incline. “I like being engaged to you. I no longer have to guard my besotted gazes, no longer have to hold back every fatuous word that springs to mind.”
Though he did. In defense of his heart and hers both, he kept many of the fatuous words behind his teeth.
She smiled. A restrained species of her usual display, but a start. “I have not noticed much in the way of fatuous words from you, Asher MacGregor. Mostly when I see you, you are murmuring civilities at Lady Quinworth’s friends, or muttering curse words in Gaelic.”
“They sound better in Gaelic. Allow me to demonstrate my most fatuous look.” He drew her to a halt on their climb and set both hands on her shoulders. “Look at me, Hannah.”
Her smile died. What he saw in her eyes tore at his heart. She was worried, weary, and dreading the next twenty-three days. “I wish I could hold you, right this moment, I wish I could put my arms around you.”
She scooted out from under his hands and resumed walking. “If wishes were horses…”
“There wouldn’t be a blade of grass left, and we’d have to watch where we stepped much more closely.” He took her hand again, feeling the welling helplessness of a man who did not know how to turn love into appropriate action. The feeling was old and immensely frustrating. “My name is being put forth for the Scottish delegation to Parliament.”
