Page 95 of The MacGregor's Lady
The meal marked a turning point, with Asher sensing in Hannah a determination to appreciate the gifts they’d given each other, and to make the best of the time remaining. She had never intended to remain, after all, and he had not seriously intended to marry ever again.
“What do you make of that cloud?” Hannah had done her part to consume the wine. She lay on her back, Asher’s coat bundled under her head and one knee drawn up. Her posture was improper, but he’d paid good coin to ensure the footmen were waving away any who might stumble in this direction.
Asher glanced up from repacking the hamper. “It’s white. It’s fluffy. When the proper mood comes upon it, it will go carousing with a few of its mates and dump a cold rain on some undeserving village in the mountains.”
“Or a deserving village. A village where the gardens are all laid out and the winter stores depend on a good yield.” She held out a hand to him, so he arranged himself beside her on the blanket. “I’ll miss you, Asher MacGregor. I’ll look up at the clouds and wonder if they’ve blown in from Scotland. I’ll think of you.”
Ah.He put a name to the shift in their dealings, to what had eased: they were to grieve together for what could not be. Nobody else could grieve with them, and when they parted, they’d have grieving confidences to treasure in memory.
And to torture themselves with in solitude.
He took her hand. “My favorite fruit is a nice crisp, juicy, sweet red apple. What’s your favorite fruit?”
The rest of the afternoon went like that, as if they were engaged in truth, sharing secrets, looking forward to a lifetime of intimacy not simply of the body. She favored apples and raspberries; he leaned toward oranges, in addition to apples, provided they were sweet. She much preferred Scott to Dickens, and she did not have a favorite poet, though Tennyson was worth a mention.
Asher had a fondness for the language of the Old Testament, and as a boy had thought it held some rousing stories. His favorite bird was the hummingbird, for its exotic color, its agility, its ability to draw sweetness from a flower without harming it. Peacocks should be outlawed for the racket they created.
Hannah had watched his mouth as he delivered that last flight of nonsense, and then she had gone quiet for as long as it took for a cloud to drift by. When he was about to suggest they pack up and head down the hill, she curled close, kissed his cheek, and rested her head on his shoulder.
“I will not forget this day, Asher MacGregor, not ever. When I am old and bent and slow, when I neither hear nor see well, I will still recall every detail of this day.”
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and considered burning the city of Boston to the ground. He did not consider telling her that it had been too long since he’d had any word from his scouts in Boston. Any word at all.
Nineteen
In three days, Hannah would have the privilege of once again boarding the trains with Asher, Ian, Augusta, and wee John and heading north. In sixteen days, she would board a ship—Asher’s ship—and sail for Boston.
Not for home—which was one of the many insights to befall her in the past ten days.
Another was that when a woman loved a man, intimacy between them could come in many forms. With Asher, all closeness had a sensual thread, though not necessarily erotic. He could touch her with his gaze; he could read her with his body. Even silences across a breakfast table crowded with family could be comforting and speak volumes.
When that breakfast was concluded and Asher had asked her to meet him prepared to go on an outing, Hannah was all too happy to oblige.
“Where are we going, Asher?”
He winged his arm, she curled closer than courtesy required, and they took off across the wide streets of the New Town. “It’s a surprise, but I thought we’d wander toward the harbor and stop for some rum buns.”
Lovely idea. Lovely day. Lovely man. These few weeks of pleasure were the first superficial, glancing cut of heartbreak, the surprise and instinctive stilling of any response in anticipation of the burn and burden to follow.
She and Asher could remain in this benign state for a few more days, or Hannah could give in to the growing compulsion to hold nothing back, to move closer to the pain that awaited them both.
She walked along beside Asher for several blocks until he spoke again. “Do you realize your gait is no longer irregular?”
Hannah bodily inventoried her movement as they strode along. He was…right. “I’ve lost my limp.”
He smiled down at her. “A combination of putting a lift on your heel and walking you from one end of creation to the other. What was wanted was strengthening and straightening, though I’m sure the occasional dash of whiskey wouldn’t be ill-prescribed either.”
Now she stopped, trying to pinpoint when, where, how…
“Does it hurt, Hannah? Your back, your hip, your knee? Anywhere, does it hurt?”
“No.” Those places didn’t hurt at all. She resumed movement. “No, it does not. I want to kiss you. It doesn’t hurt, and I do not limp.”
The moment was a gift, like every moment they’d had together since arriving in Scotland. That she should share this revelation with him, that he should be the one to point it out to her was consolation beyond measure. “I want to skip. I want to ice skate, though it’s nearly summer. I want to run and dance in public. Oh, Asher, I want to dance.”
He patted her hand; Hannah resented the daylights out of her gloves. “Lady Quinworth’s ball is tomorrow night. We’ll dance, but for now we’ve arrived to our destination.”
Hannah peered up at the sign hanging over a tidy little shop on a quiet street. The place had a look of age about it, as if its solid granite presence predated the fancy neighborhoods farther back from the water. “This is a jeweler’s, Asher.”
