Page 97 of The MacGregor's Lady
“Keep the ring on, Hannah. I’ll carry your gloves.”
The weather was fine; they were newly engaged. All manner of lapses and indulgences would be tolerated—provided they eventually wed. Asher felt bile rising beneath his heart.
“The grog shop is this way.” And when they got to the grog shop, he would pry from her what the something was that lurked behind her smiles, the something that prodded her to make a rash declaration over a simple ring.
Or maybe he’d share with her the news brought by courier two days past, news he’d hoped not to have to burden her with.
“You’re very quiet, Asher, and it doesn’t strike me as a happy quiet. The ring is spectacular, and you’re right: it’s perfect.”
She was fishing; he wasn’t taking the bait. They wandered through the foot traffic of a weekday morning, moving generally in the direction of his town house, until Hannah stopped him.
“Is that the bench we sat on the day I slipped?”
Across the street, on a wider patch of sidewalk, the bench, empty of custom, appeared to enjoy the morning sunshine. Somebody had set a half-barrel of pansies at each end, violet and yellow intermixed. “Shall we sit?”
“Please, let’s.” They had to wait until a beer wagon rattled past, then ducked across the street, arm in arm.
When she tipped her face up to the sun, eyes closed, Asher wanted to tell her to remain exactly thus until he could memorize the image of her amid the flowers and friendly breezes, his ring winking on her finger in the sunshine.
“What did you bring me here to say, Hannah? I do love you, you know.”
She opened her eyes and turned to regard him, probably wondering if he’d left his reason back at the jeweler’s shop. “Thank you, though if you’re going to inflict such a recitation on me, I’m entitled to reciprocate. I love you, Asher MacGregor. I love you until I’m drunk and sick and crazy with it. Your love makes me wise and foolish and”—she looked him up and down—“and very affectionate. I’ll miss that in ways I can’t even imagine yet. I already do miss it. I miss you.”
She fell silent, allowing him a moment against the emotional ropes to regain his breath. He slipped his fingers through hers where their hands rested on the bench between them. The ring was sharp, warm, and different beneath his hand, a bit loose on her finger. The addition of a wedding ring would steady it.
“What else, love?”
She tipped her face up again, a goddess accepting her due from the elements. “My monthly is late.”
Four words that held a universe of conflicting feelings—for them both. There were so many wrong things to say, so many ways a man in all good conscience could blunder past redemption. He closed his fingers more snugly around hers, the emerald cutting into his flesh.
“Then perhaps it’s a good thing Fenimore has been having the banns read up in Aberdeenshire.”
She gave him a smile that said he hadn’t blundered, though possiblytheyhad blundered, and she gave him a few more words: “Perhaps it is.”
***
Hannah hadn’t known what to expect when she’d confessed to her fiancé that a child might already be growing in her womb.
Would he be pleased, thinking it made marriage a certainty, though it did not?
Would he resent a marriage based on necessity rather than sentiment?
Would he take the child from her to be raised an ocean away from her?
Asher confounded her by simply grasping her hand and keeping it in his. The metaphor extended through the rest of their stay in Edinburgh, as Hannah accumulated the gifts and griefs she’d take with her back to Boston.
She would never learn more than a few words of Gaelic, not until it was too late to understand the language spoken by the man who could turn it into the music of her soul.
She would never learn the reels Lady Quinworth could toss off with such panache, spun from son to cousin to uncle and back into the arms of her adoring marquess.
She would never learn the inner workings of the family distillery or become versed in the whiskey exports laws, much less the many customs surrounding a drink whose subtleties she increasingly appreciated.
She would never see wee John carried on his uncle’s shoulders to a favored fishing spot in some high, sunny glen.
Though there were consolations. Wearing MacGregor plaid, she danced the waltz with her beloved while he turned every female head in the room with his formal clan finery.
She clapped and stomped along with the family when Con got out his pipes, the swords were laid down, and in the middle of a crowded ballroom, Asher danced for her alone.
