Seventeen
The pain was like a brutally laced emotional corset, offering discomfort from every direction, impinging on Hannah’s every thought and impulse. While the wheels of the train rumbled rhythmically beneath her feet, Hannah stumbled about mentally, trying to grasp that Asher MacGregor had procured them a license to marry.
Which was the reason—the only reason—he’d gifted her with his intimate favors. She watched him in the close confines of their railcar as he played cribbage with Ian.
Were Hannah to marry Asher, such a sight would become prosaic, commonplace. She would not notice that he looked tired, that with his sleeves cuffed back, his exposed wrists had a particular masculine appeal.
She would not notice that his brothers and sister watched him in stray moments, as if making sure he were still among them.
“You are a thousand miles away, Hannah Cooper.” Augusta’s voice was kind, offering distraction, only if distraction would be welcome. Her observation was quiet, too, the noise of the train ensuring an odd measure of privacy.
“I’m wondering why my grandmother’s letters have grown so sparse. She’s a reluctant correspondent, but reliable.” If two letters a month could be considered reliable.
“The elderly must be allowed their crotchets. I certainly intend to indulge in them when Ian and I are getting on.”
She kissed her baby on his fuzzy head, the infant apparently content to sleep anywhere, provided he was held in loving arms.
Another jab at Hannah’s heart: she’d never have children with Asher MacGregor. Never catch him looking at her the way Ian regarded his Augusta when she tended to the child.
“How is it Asher spent years in the Canadian wilderness?”
Augusta’s expression didn’t change, but her violet eyes filled with sympathy.
“He wasn’t in the wilderness for the entire duration. For at least the last few years, he was mostly on the coast, enjoying the blandishments of civilization. I’m told your father was in the fur trade as well.”
Hannah managed a nod. She missed her grandmother, she missed her mother. She missed her half brothers, too, with an intensity that was surprising. Lately, though, realizing what she’d leave behind in Scotland, realizing a small part of what her parents had shared and what her mother had grieved, Hannah had also missed her papa.
“Hannah, are you well? You look as if train travel might not agree with you.”
No, she was not well and never would be again. “I’m fine. When do we arrive to York?”
“Within the hour. This child will wake up just in time to ensure Ian and I have no peace until at least the middle of the night.”
“And yet, you want more children exactly like him.”
Augusta’s smile was soft, female, and a trifle naughty. “Ian says it’s our duty to see to the succession, at least until Asher marries and he and his countess can take up the job themselves.”
A question hung in the air, like a knife suspended over Hannah’s composure. Thank a merciful God, her lapse with Asher had been timed such that conception was unlikely.
“Do you think Asher will ever practice medicine again?” She tossed the question out as a means of changing the topic.
“It isn’t likely. Belted earls must tend to other obligations. Would you like to hold the baby? He’s ever so dear when he’s sleeping.”
Hannah reached for the child without thinking. Augusta had never offered before, and Hannah had never presumed to ask. Across the narrow railcar, Ian peered up from his cards and exchanged a glance with Augusta. They communicated much in an instant, about the baby, about train travel, maybe even about plans for later in the evening.
As Hannah hugged the baby gently, she added to the list of jabs and pinches suffered by her heart: she and Asher would not exchange such potent glances while others looked on without being able to translate the nuances.
She and Asher would not spend the shank of an evening murmuring to each other of the day’s events in a peaceful darkness.
She and Asher would not use that license, and it was—all of it—her fault.
***
To cram his entire family together in a few train cars had struck Asher as a brilliant inspiration. With siblings, in-laws, children, and a cat underfoot, there was little likelihood he and Hannah would have to deal with each other directly.
He had forgotten though, or ignored, that such proximity meant they’d all be living on top of each other for two days. Watching Hannah cuddle the sleeping baby had nigh unmanned him, and he had a sense she wasn’t faring much better than he.
And now, here she was, standing on the platform between the ladies’ sleeping car and the parlor car, wearing her night robe, slippers, and a tentative smile.
Manners. When all else failed, a fellow who’d been stupid enough to dash out and procure a marriage license still had his manners. “I beg your pardon, Hannah. I didn’t know you were out here.”
“Nor I you.”
For an instant, swaying along with the locomotive’s rhythm, they said nothing.
Bloody goddamned manners, MacGregor. “Are you looking forward to reaching Edinburgh?”
“Of course. It’s said to be a lovely city, though I was in no mood to appreciate it when I first arrived.”
“It’s an old city, dating back to before the Romans.” He slipped off his coat and draped it around her shoulders. “I’ll enjoy showing it off to you.”
Assuming she didn’t take ship for Boston the very next day. The thought nearly brought him to his knees.
“This coat is marvelously warm. How long will we be staying?”
How long can I get you to stay? “At least a couple of weeks, though I’d like you to see Balfour, too, assuming you’re willing to tarry that long?”
She turned so she faced the north country rolling past under the moonlight. “I feel like I’m not going toward anything. I feel like I’m racketing about, like one of those round cheeses that’s rolled down a steep hill for sport.”
A fine analogy. She was leaving, and because she was leaving, she’d permitted him rare and precious liberties.
But she wasn’t gone yet. He positioned himself behind her and slipped his arms around her waist. “Do you miss your aunt?”
She relaxed against him, letting him balance for them both. “Miss her? Are you teasing me? When she declared her stomach too delicate to journey north with us, I wanted to dance one of your reels.”
“I expect Mr. Trundle did too, discreetly of course. May I kiss you, Hannah?”
If a man was to suffer the torments of the damned, then they ought to at least be the more enjoyable torments. Not the torment of watching her cuddle Ian’s dratted infant, or the torment of knowing she was leaving.
Leaving.
Leaving.
She turned in his embrace and propped herself against the railing, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her forehead on his chest. “We haven’t spoken much since leaving London.”
The hour being late, he’d discarded his cravat. Hannah’s tongue grazed his throat.
“We haven’t had any privacy.”
“I like your family, Asher. They are very dear, and they are devoted to you and to one another.”
Unlike her blighted family, all of whom needed Hannah to protect them, or so his informants in Boston implied. He dipped his head to gather her lavender scent. “My family likes you, too. Will you be able to sleep? We’ll reach Waverly Station quite early.”
She sighed, a weary exhalation that suggested his question was inane, which it was—though bloody polite, too. “I’ll not sleep. You’ll not sleep either. The baby sleeps, Fiona sleeps, and that infernal cat sleeps. Your brothers are no doubt playing cards and drinking until they can’t keep their eyes open, while their wives are ‘resting.’”
“You should rest too.” And he should go play cards, because if he stood out here with her much longer, he wouldn’t answer for the consequences. “The baby is learning the finer points of poker as we speak.”
This made her smile, her teeth showing white against the darkness. “Is he taking a wee nip every now and then?”
“No, but I am. Kiss me, Hannah.”
She did better than that. She nigh climbed him to fuse her mouth to his, mashing her body against him until his arousal was a throbbing presence between them. It took strength, determination, and cooperation, but within minutes, Asher had her backed against the parlor car, wedged between the wall and the railing, her leg around his hip, and his trousers unfastened.
“We shouldn’t, Hannah. There could be a child.” Bad things happened when people destined to part procreated. He was the living proof.
She curled her fingers around his shaft. “Stop being reasonable. Whether we suffer one lapse or two makes little difference.”
They were up to three lapses, with the fourth impending, when the dratted, blessed woman scooted a little, so that what ought to have been a feat of sexual gymnastics became entirely possible. Asher widened his stance, half-hiked her to a perch on the railing, and probed at her heat, desire clawing its way past reason. “Don’t let me drop you.”
“Don’t let me fall.”
They came together in a fit of insanity, as if all the power of the locomotive itself fueled their coupling. He tried to hold back, tried to exercise a little finesse—manners, be damned—but Hannah clutched at him and leveraged herself against the wall to buck into his thrusts.
“Harder, please, Asher. You have to…”
He covered her mouth with his, lest somebody hear her demands. She groaned into the kiss while he got a hand firmly under her backside.
“Better. Hold me tight, Asher.”
For an instant he let her balance on sheer strength while he found her hand and used her own fingers to apply pressure to a nipple. The sound she made, low, earthy, and voluptuous, went right to his cock.
He’d seen a meteor once, in the cold, starry depths of the Canadian wilderness. It had streaked into the night sky, growing brighter and brighter as it hurtled across the firmament.
Hannah’s pleasure was like that. Glorious, incandescent, a perfect complement to the train rocketing them north at the speed of a horse galloping for its life. He lasted only a half-dozen ferocious thrusts longer than she did, pounding Hannah into the wall before he withdrew and spilled onto their bare bellies.
She recovered first, kissing his jaw. “Put me down. I can feel you shaking.”
He didn’t want to let her go. He settled for allowing her leg to slide off his hip, while he stood, arm braced above her, panting. That he had her physically cornered was some consolation.
Her fingers winnowed through his hair, trying to put right what she and the train had utterly disordered. “I think I’ll sleep now.”
“And I’ll play cards. Stare at them, in any case.”
They both smiled. As long as conversation wasn’t expected of them, they were on safe ground.
“You should rest, Asher. I’m going to expect your devoted escort once we get to Edinburgh.”
“You’ll have it. I’ll expect you to be the scintillating American heiress who had old Moreland mustering his troops.”
The exchange petered out, and abruptly, Asher was aware of the night wind on his damp, exposed parts. He kissed her again, slowly, a sure way to bring heat back into his system. The words “I love you” began to drum at his brain, but where would that leave them?
Did a man who loved a woman try to hold her against her will with words?
Even honest words?
“Hold still.” Hannah fished in his pockets, produced a handkerchief, and dabbed at herself. She folded the thing over to use on his stomach, then arranged his softening cock in his clothes and fastened his trousers.
“You are proficient at that, Hannah Lynn Cooper.”
She tossed a look up at him, as if she’d say something, then changed her mind. When she would have ducked around him, left him on the platform without so much as a good-night kiss, he caught her hand.
“What were you about to say?” He could not read her expression, but he could feel her unhappiness with every instinct he possessed. “Tell me, Hannah, because this is as much privacy as we’re likely to find, and if you were going to say this mustn’t happen again, I agree. It must not. Ever.”
***
What was he saying?
Hannah put her hand to Asher’s cheek, as if by touching him she could gain powers of divination to defy the darkness around them. Against her palm, his jaw was rough with the beginnings of a beard, and warm.
She craved that warmth.
He captured her hand in his own and gently removed it from his person. “Shall we sit, Hannah?”
He gestured to a bench fashioned on the side of the platform nearest the ladies’ car. A simple, flat surface such as a man might use to enjoy a cigar or to escape from the confines of the train’s cramped compartments.
Hannah took a seat, gathering Asher’s coat around her. He settled beside her, making no move to put an arm about her shoulders or draw her close.
So that’s how it was to be?
“You said this must not happen again, ever. What did you mean, Asher?” Was she to go back to my-lording and Balfouring?
“I want to touch you. It’s a distraction not to.” He took her hand, though his tone was truculent. “I meant, Hannah Cooper, that after the Alcincoates’ ball, we had a discussion, and that discussion led to indiscretions such as we just enjoyed moments ago.”
Passionate lovemaking was an indiscretion. He spoke the truth—a truth—but she wanted to pitch him off the train before he could say one more word—or perhaps jump from the train herself.
“My lord—” Wrong. For this discussion, all wrong. “Asher, I owe you an apology.”
He brought her knuckles to his lips. “You will explain this apology.”
The nature of their misunderstanding was apparently clear to him, and yet, she wanted to be the one to acknowledge their mistake. “When we had that discussion, I should have been clearer about my position. I was not accepting your proposal of marriage.”
“I know that now. You were announcing your intention to take ship. So why are you still here, holding hands with me?”
And committing further indiscretions? Between them, that question was fair even if the answer lay beyond Hannah’s grasp.
“I learned you had procured that license. Malcolm must have guessed, and he let it slip. I could not find a way to tell you…” That she loved him, that she wanted to spend the rest of her days and nights with him, but that she was leaving him all the same.
“So you’re telling me now, after scrambling m’ wits in five minutes flat?” That he could manage any pretensions to humor was a testament to the depth of his gallantry.
“My wits were scrambled the moment you stepped onto the platform, sir. They’re scrambled still.”
His arm came around her shoulders. Her throat began to ache.
“Not scrambled enough, I’ll warrant. I’m sorry, Hannah. It’s harder when we know what we’re giving up.”
How could he be so damnably philosophical?
“So we’re not engaged? That license doesn’t create an engagement?”
His lips grazed her temple. “It’s just a piece of paper. You’re free to tend to your responsibilities, and I’m free to tend to mine. I’ll squire you about Edinburgh for a couple of weeks, maybe show you Balfour if you’re interested, and then put you on one of my fastest ships bound for Boston.”
A list of tasks to be completed, or a recipe—for heartache.
“Thank you.”
“You are not welcome, Hannah Cooper. I have business in Boston, you know. I could visit there from time to time, once I spend a few years playing earl here to everybody’s satisfaction.”
“You need heirs, Asher. Don’t torment me with what-ifs, maybes, and perhapses.”
“I’m asking you to plan, Hannah.” His voice was very gentle, his grasp of her hand loose. “Plan for that day you’re larking around the shops, picking out a book to give a friend or to read to your hundred-year-old granny, and you look up, and there I am, across the street. I might have a touch of gray at my temples, my hair will likely be shorter, and our eyes will meet. Plan for that day, and the regrets and desire that will deluge us both.”
And he might be holding the hand of a small boy who resembled him, or have on his arm a pretty, wellborn Scottish countess. She turned her face to his shoulder. “I hate you.”
She’d have no husband at her side in that bookshop, though, which was a consolation of sorts.
“Then you also hate the part of you that is responsible, loving, and loyal. I’ve tried, but I cannot hate these things in you. I can resent them, though, just as you must resent them in me.”
His ability to see the situation clearly only made her determination to leave him that much more of a burden. “I want you to rant at me and wave the license in my face and tell me I have no choice.”
“We all have choices.” More humor, however bleak.
And he was right, blast him to Halifax. Hannah did have choices.
“I choose two weeks in Edinburgh, two weeks at Balfour, and then you will find me that ship.”
“A month, then. We’ll have one more month.”
For him that seemed to settle something. For Hannah, it only raised the question of how she’d endure her life when that month was over.
And then, because he had not and would never take her choices away, she entrusted him with one of her heartaches. “The last letter from my grandmother? She asked when I was coming home. She’s never asked that before, and I haven’t heard from her since. My brothers have stopped writing.”
He remained silent for a time, the sound of the train rolling north reverberating against Hannah’s soul. “Tell her you leave in a month. Tell them all you’ll be leaving me in one month.”
He kissed her, a soft press of lips against her mouth, no insinuation or reproach to it. Just a kiss.
As he offered her an ironic little bow and withdrew to the parlor car, Hannah knew that kiss for what it was: they might kiss again, they might even lapse again if she had the strength to endure such pleasure and passion, but that had been a kiss of parting, a kiss good-bye.
***
A man wasn’t worth the name if he sought to hold a woman by a confluence of desire, misunderstanding, and guilt. For Asher to accept this conclusion required no great love, no feat of sacrifice. Common sense said a female as convinced of her conclusions as Hannah Cooper was would eventually resent any marital choice imposed on her, and resent the man who’d imposed it.
When Asher returned to the parlor car—where else could he go?—his brothers were still in their shirtsleeves, playing cards, drinking just enough to dull the restlessness, and trading desultory insults to pass the time. Their company was at once comforting and oppressive.
“It’s Asher’s turn to hold the bairn.” Connor offered this pronouncement but made no move to pass the infant along.
Asher poured himself a drink and remained standing at the scaled-down version of a sideboard bolted along the wall. “You take turns with him, then? The deal passes to the left, the baby to the right?”
Gil cracked his jaw and tipped his chair back onto two legs. “Bring the whiskey here, why don’t you, or at least pour a man a wee dram.”
Asher set the decanter in the middle of the table, next to a pile of red, blue, and yellow chips. “Aren’t you all up past your bedtimes?”
“Tell it to the lad,” Connor grumbled. “Though I’ve no wish to sleep among the fartin’, snorin’ lot of you when I ought to be sleepin’ wi’ me darlin’ wife.”
“Take the baby,” Ian said, speaking up for the first time and spearing Asher with a look. “It’s your turn.”
“I’m not anybody’s nanny, Ian.” Asher took a seat next to his brother and heir. “Connor can teach the boy how to fart and snore, assuming the lad doesn’t already know. I suspect he does, and his mother thinks him quite the braw fellow for it.”
Ian shuffled a deck of cards and let them riffle back into order between his hands. “And you know how to hold a sleeping baby.”
God above, not now.
Gil’s chair scraped back. “If I join Malcolm in the gents’ car, then I have a prayer of getting to sleep before you lot come lumbering to bed. Do your farting out here, if you please. Open a window, and the ladies will pretend not to notice anything come morning.”
“We’ll be in Edinburgh come morning,” Connor observed. “It’s always good to get back to Scotland.”
He rose and laid the baby against Asher’s chest, apparently willing to risk letting the lad tumble to the floor—which, of course, Asher could not allow. He tucked the boy into the crook of his arm while Connor and Gil tossed back whatever remained of their drinks and moved off to find their beds.
“You will admit the earth is not shaking,” Ian said, gathering up the chips. “The sky is not falling. Your heart is not ceasing to beat.”
Asher used his free hand to reach for his drink. “And I will admit my brother is a bleating fool. Take this baby.”
Ian started separating the chips into piles—blue, red, and yellow. “He’s happy where he is. Never rile a sleeping baby. I can smell the woman on you.”
Which might be why the child was content. Asher sat for a moment, exploring sensations. The baby had the solid feel of a child in good health. He was cozy and warm in his dress and blanket. Every few moments, his little mouth worked in a memory or a dream of suckling.
Beneath all those observations, clinical observations, was an awareness that Asher held life against his body, and not just any life. This child might someday become Earl of Balfour.
“The protectiveness does you no good,” Asher said, arranging the blanket more snugly around the sleeping child. “You want to keep them safe, but to keep them safest, you must allow them to suffer. I hate that.”
“Is this how you convince yourself that allowing Miss Cooper to return to Boston is the best thing for everybody? You might get a bairn or two or ten on her, and she’d never endure the inconvenience?”
The child made a noise, not a sigh, not quite a sound of sleeping-baby distress. Asher tucked him closer, catching a distinctive and wrenching whiff of clean-baby scent for his trouble.
“You know little, Ian, and you judge much.”
The chips stacked higher, as many red as blue and yellow combined.
“I know what it is to be an utter ass where the woman of my heart is concerned. I know what it is to let theories of duty and honor get tangled up with truths fashioned in the soul. I know what it is to be weary and afraid, Asher, and I can promise you this: the only thing that makes the whole burden bearable is to have the love of the woman your heart has chosen.”
“My heart has chosen a woman who has other obligations. I suspect Hannah’s stepfather is abusive to all in his ambit, and that means she has not only her granny riding her conscience, but also her brothers, her mother, very likely the household help, and the beasts in the stable. She is the Countess of Boston, or her little corner of it.”
Ian stared at a blue chip. “A man’s home is his castle. The Americans have taken on that much of the common law, so the bastard is free to terrorize all in his personal kingdom. How does Hannah think to stop him?”
“She has money; she has lawyers; she has wits and determination that have likely been beaten out of the others. All she needs is some time to get her hands on the money, and she’ll be able to send her brothers off to boarding school, set her granny up in style, and I don’t know what for her mother.”
Though Hannah likely had a plan of some sort. Why hadn’t he asked her about this?
“You have money; you have solicitors; you have determination. I’m not sure about the wits.”
Asher gave in to temptation—to instinct—and cuddled the child to his chest. “Neither am I.”
At that rejoinder, Ian sat back and regarded him out of tired green eyes. “A woman’s courage is different from a man’s. We pillage and plunder. They endure. I don’t pretend to understand it, but I suspect the race would die without their version of courage much sooner than it would without ours.”
The lateness of the hour, the topic of the discussion, and the weight on Asher’s heart—a month was little more than four weeks—made further thought difficult. “Marriage has turned you up philosophical, or perhaps it’s the whiskey.”
“Marriage, Asher MacGregor, has made me happy. Con, Gil, and Mary Fran would say the same. I bid you good night. Don’t let the boy drink too much, or I’ll never hear the end of it from his mother.”
And just like that, before Asher could protest, whine, or strategize a countermeasure, Ian had disappeared into the gentlemen’s sleeping coach, leaving Asher… holding the baby.
The parlor car sported a couch, a well-cushioned, sturdy affair positioned beneath the windows on the far wall. With the one-handed efficiency of a man holding a baby, Asher stashed the decanter back in its bracket, found an afghan in the sideboard, doused the lights, and arranged himself on the couch, the sleeping child swaddled against his chest.
In the darkness, the rhythm of the train brought sleep closer, and memories closer as well.
“Do you know, lad, for a long time I hated my father. He left my mother and went home to Scotland, there to die. Eventually, I understood a man must sometimes make his way, leave his loved ones, and be about his other obligations. I don’t like it, but it’s the way of the world.”
He brushed his lips across the infant’s downy crown, the sensation bringing back more memories, memories both sweet and piercingly sad. “I hated my mother next. She let him go—she didn’t have to, she might have made the journey with him.”
Though for the first time, Asher had to wonder if she’d suspected she was carrying, in which case, thirty years ago, the journey would have loomed as a risky ordeal—to the child at least. The thought made his hand on the child’s back go still, and his mind come to rest as well.
“She could have been worried. Afraid for her child, unwilling to see her husband’s journey put off for another year.” And of course, afraid for her man, assuming she loved him.
“In any case, I hated her for years, for letting him go. And for dying.” The hate wasn’t in his heart now though. As Asher rummaged through his emotions, the sleeping baby tucked close, he couldn’t even find the anger or many traces of bewilderment.
“They did the best they could. You’ll find that realization a great comfort at some point. Recall your uncle Asher told it to you first.”
And Asher was doing the best he could, too, but that was no comfort—no comfort at all.