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.”
And abruptly, she no longer wanted to skip and dance or ice skate, though she did still want to run.
***
A ring was a token of eternal regard, and in that sense, Asher was determined that Hannah should have one from him.
And yet, a ring was risky, and not simply because it announced to the entire world that they intended to marry.
Behind all of Hannah’s smiles, behind her affection, behind her comfortable silences and insightful observations, even behind the unfathomable pain of their impending separation lurked something, and it tormented Asher with the same sense of frustration as when he’d tried to diagnose a patient whose symptoms did not add up to a known ailment.
Did Hannah battle the identical feeling regarding him?
“If we’re to stand up at Lady Quinworth’s ball,” he said, “then all will be expecting you to wear my ring.” Hannah’s brows came down, her chin lifted, her expression shifted in a manner that had him adding, “Please let me do this, Hannah. I want to, badly.”
The sails of her indignation luffed, then went slack. “An engagement ring, only.” She swept past him into the shop.
The shop owner, young, blond, natty, and friendly without being in the least obsequious, was a distant relation, which meant the sign was switched to “closed” when Asher and Hannah were through the door. While Hannah had gone for her fittings, Asher had taken one of her rings and spent a morning sorting through settings, gems, and options.
If all he was permitted to give her was a single piece of jewelry, it had to be right.
“You should not be doing this,” she muttered as she stripped off her gloves.
He stuffed her gloves in his pocket as some sort of surety against her departure. “If you raise a fuss before Cousin Alasdair, Lady Quinworth will know of it by luncheon.”
“But rings are expensive.” She hissed this while Alasdair pretended to root around at the back counters. The shop was small and dark, the better to show off a few gleaming glass-and-brass cases, and a scattering of glittering offerings on jewel-toned velvet cloths. The place was without a discernible scent, as if even smells might dim the brightness of the gems.
“Don’t turn up Puritan on me now, Boston. If you won’t wear my ring, I’ll pierce my ear and display your stubbornness to all who meet me.”
He’d do it too, gladly.
“I’ll wear your ring.” She patted his cravat in a manner that said clearly, for now.
Alasdair emerged from the back room, bearing a small hinged box of polished maple. He set it on the counter. “If my lord would do the honors?”
A knowing smile accompanied the question, and yet, as if he’d presided over many such moments, his cousin’s grin held something of a dare, too. Asher regarded the box then regarded the woman who appeared to be studying a case of silver bracelets.
“Hannah, your hand, if you please.” She straightened and faced him, extending her bare hand.
Asher opened the box and beheld his first attempt at designing adornment for a lady. A fat, happy emerald sat amid a Celtic knot of worked gold, winking merrily in all directions. He slid the ring onto the fourth finger of Hannah’s left hand, wondering if she heard the same words that rang through his mind: With this ring, I thee wed…
“Do you like it?” He would not surrender her hand until he had an answer to his question.
She didn’t even look at the ring, but rather, kept her gaze locked with his. “I love it. I love it with all my heart, and I always will.”
Damn her, bless her. She was getting even, she was making him want to skip in public, and she was breaking the few pieces of his heart not yet pulverized.
He brought her knuckles to his lips. “That’s… good. I love it, too. It’s… right, somehow. Perfect. Precious, irreplaceable.”
They stood like that, her hand in his, profound sentiments lingering in the air, while Alasdair started chattering about God knew what. No coin was to be exchanged—Asher had made damned sure of that—and Alasdair likely knew better than to try hawking more wares while two hearts broke right before his eyes.
Hannah stepped closer and tucked her arm through Asher’s. “Shall we be going? I recall somebody mentioning a rum bun and a tot of grog.” She smiled up at him, a credible smile of infatuation, while her eyes held a desperate plea.
Take me away from this place and this moment.
They gained the street, the bright sunshine making Asher blink and hang onto Hannah’s arm more tightly. A coach-and-four clip-clopped past, the sound serving as a pretext to put off conversation for a procession of seconds.
“It’s a beautiful ring, Asher.” Hannah spoke softly. “Should we put it back in its box? My gloves aren’t fitted enough that I could wear them and the ring both.”
The courage of women, as Ian had said, was different from the courage of men.
“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 possibly they had 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.
And on the train north, she could lay her head on his shoulder, pretend sleep, and know she could not be censured for her presumption.
“You are not asleep.”
She would not be believed in her deception, either, but Hannah made no move to sit up. “I ought to be asleep. I ought to be asleep for a week after dancing with all of your brothers and Spathfoy. You Scots take your celebrations seriously.”
“We do.” He wrapped her hand in his, the gesture having at some point become automatic for them both. “Our betrothal ball was the first time many of the clan have seen me since I was a boy. They grieved when I was declared dead, they rallied to Ian’s side, and before they could rally to mine, they needed to see me, to know I would not abandon them again.”
“I was hoping you’d come to that conclusion.” Hannah certainly had, and while she’d been pleased for him, pleased to see the sheer number and vigor of his extended family, she’d also grieved.
An earl she might have allowed herself to remove to Boston, but not a laird. Not when there were so few left who could live up to the name.
“How are you feeling, Miss Cooper?”
Subject changed. She silently thanked him for it.
“Glad to be on my way to your home. One hears the Highlands are beautiful.”
“They’re bloody cold is what they are. I think it’s one reason the Scots leave home so successfully. Even Canada looks like a fine bargain—the winters are no worse, and there’ll be no clearances to part us from our property there. A few bears and wolves are nothing compared to the threats we endure from our neighbors to the south.”
He had preferred bears and wolves to home and family. Hannah took some comfort that his priorities had shifted.
His thumb stroked over her knuckles. “May I ask you some medical questions?”
Ah. That subject. “Of course.”
“Are you having to use the necessary more often than usual?”
She considered her answer. “I am not.”
“Are your breasts tender?”
She might have replied in several ways, some of them flirtatious. “Not particularly.”
“And your dresses are still fitting?”
“They are.”
“You aren’t abruptly sleepy at odd times of the day?”
“I would say I’m tired generally, from touring the city with you or from being up half the night dancing.”
He fell silent, though his point was clear: there might be a baby. There might not.
In this too, he held her hand. On the strength of that connection and trust, Hannah shared a thought that had plagued her since they’d left London. “I’m told there are herbs, Asher—”
“No, my heart. Those herbs are not reliable, and they are not safe, particularly not as a pregnancy advances. I would never ask such a thing of any woman, much less one I cared for deeply.”
The immediacy of his reply and the reason for it both warmed her heart. The next words slipped out, no caution or forethought to them at all. “Asher, I don’t know what to do.”
His lips grazed her temple. “Was that so hard to say?”
He sounded proud of her, but she didn’t dare look into his eyes, not when her uncertainty had been made audible. “I have never voiced such a sentiment to anybody, not even Grandmama.”
“Would you like to say it again? In some endeavors, practice is advisable.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
He was quiet, reassuring her with his steady presence and with his warmth rather than with words. “I was married before, you know.”
The feeling engendered in Hannah’s breast at this confidence—for it was a confidence—was a vast, unconditional protectiveness that chased away her own woes and wobbliness. “You loved her. You still love her.”
More silence, while Hannah tucked herself as close as she could without sitting in his lap.
“I loved her as a lonely young man far from home loves a woman given to smiles and laughter. I loved her simply, without reservation, and that was unwise.”
“It was not un—”
He pressed two fingers to her lips. “For a physician to watch his family sicken and die is impossible, Hannah. This feeling you have, this great regard for another you admit to me not once but twice, when you are helpless to protect your loved ones, it builds and builds, not knowing what to do, until it becomes a purgatory with no exit.”
His family? Not just his wife? No wonder he’d wandered for years in the wilderness. She pressed her cheek to his shoulder and tried not to cry.
“Hannah?” He’d dropped his voice to a whisper. “I am not in that purgatory any longer. Sometimes there’s nothing to do but love as best we can.”
The griefs in Hannah’s heart piled high, like so much snow driven by a harsh, relentless wind into suffocating drifts.
Though the gifts piled higher: because Hannah had come to Scotland and joined her heart to Asher’s, there would be an exit from every purgatory; there was a hand to hold, if only in memory.
The train roared northward on the track between the wide, rough sea and the high, cold mountains, and Hannah told herself the memories would be enough.
***
Asher scowled at the letter before him, a single sheet of crabbed, nigh indecipherable scrawl delivered by messenger right here to the room that served as the Balfour billiards room and armory.
“What does Fenimore have to say?” Across the card table, Ian peered down the barrel of an antique pistol, gun parts scattered before him on a folded Royal Stewart plaid. “Wishing you felicitations on your upcoming nuptials?”
“Hardly.” Royal Stewart deserved better treatment than Ian was giving it. “He castigates me for having ruined a good man by allowing him to become distracted by the charms of the weaker sex.”
Ian paused in the middle of working a soft, dirty cloth down the gun barrel. His fingers were dirty too. “Which good man?”
Ian would get the letter dirty as well, so Asher didn’t pass it to him. “In his peregrinations about the realm on Fenimore’s business, Evan Draper made the acquaintance of one Enid Cooper, late of Boston. Draper treated the lady to a recitation of the ills and indignities suffered on his travels, and she was the soul of sympathy and solicitude—had a remedy for all of the man’s trials, including his loneliness.”
Ian glanced up. “Aunt Enid? That Enid Cooper? She’s little more than a fading sot herself.”
“A fading sot marginally revived by the attention of an old flame from her youth, though Draper appears to have routed the competition.”
Which would be downright funny if Asher himself were drunk.
“What else does Fenimore say?”
“He demands we set a date.” Nobody else had had the temerity.
“There isn’t going to be a wedding, is there?” Ian pulled the cloth through the tube of metal and began reassembling the parts.
Rather than face his brother’s questions, Asher folded the letter and set it on the journal that had accompanied it, rose and crossed to the rack of cue sticks on the opposite wall. “Care for a game?”
“Thank ye, no. The baby will going down for his nap soon, and I’ll be taking tea with my wife.”
Taking tea. Oh, of course. Behind the locked door of their bedroom, Ian and his lady would be taking tea, with his pinky finger extended just so. Asher envied his brother and sister-in-law their frequent cups of tea almost as much as he envied them the way each knew the other’s schedule and whereabouts without even thinking about it.
More, they both knew the child’s schedule, and to some extent, organized their lives around it.
Asher racked the balls, broke, and studied the possibilities. “Whether there’s a wedding or not hardly matters. Hannah has to leave. I have to stay.”
Ian screwed the barrel into its fitting. “You could go with her. I’ve held the reins here before. I can do it again.”
So offhand, and yet the offer was sincere. Asher sank two balls in a single shot, one into each corner pocket. “You have not asked Augusta her thoughts on the matter.”
“I have. We do not agree. She thinks Hannah should stay here. I think you should go to Boston.”
The next shot wasn’t lining up—the price one paid for succumbing to the lure of sinking two balls at once. “I have not been invited to Boston. I have, in fact, been refused entry to the port. Hannah would protect even me.”
Ian swore, ostensibly at the gun. “Then I can go to bloody Boston, or Gil or Con can go.”
“You all have children to raise, or on the way, and you’d have no more authority in Boston over Hannah’s mother or half brothers than I would, and therein lies the difficulty.”
Ian threaded screws through the inlays on the gun’s handle and tightened them in alternate applications of a small screwdriver. “You can’t just reive her family out from under the man’s bloody nose? He’d not wrest them away from an earl’s keep if you could get them here in one piece.”
On the next shot the cue ball rolled slowly, slowly across the table, tipping into a pocket by a whisker, which at least allowed a man to do a little swearing of his own.
“It’s good to hear you using the Gaelic,” Ian said, finishing with the screwdriver.
“Gaelic is a good language for cursing in. I’ve considered inviting Hannah’s family here, asked my man for his thoughts on the matter, and received no response. Now I doubt my message even got through.”
“Inviting. Such an earl you’ve become.” Ian’s taunt was without heat, and all the more annoying as a result.
“One doesn’t force a woman to marry against her will without becoming the very thing that woman loathes most in the world. Why do you bother cleaning that old pistol when the servants could do it?”
The gun was back in one piece, looking substantial and well cared for in Ian’s hand. He wiped it down with the dirty cloth, which somehow did in fact polish the metal. “The woman loves you. A little loathing won’t change that, particularly when you’ve given her a child or two.”
“And I love you, Ian, but I would rather not leaven my fraternal affection with loathing. If you can’t leave this topic alone, then my preferences will not carry the day.”
Ian smiled and sighted down the gun barrel at a portrait of some old fellow in tartan and hunting boots. “You love her too. A sorrier pair I have never seen.”
Yes, Asher did love Hannah. The knowledge was unassailable, a fact of Asher’s bones and organs and his very mind. “You’d stand up with me, if there were a wedding? Even if there were a wedding merely to give her my name?”
Ian set the gun aside and rose, coming to study the arrangement of balls on the table. “Why’d you set the cue ball down there? It leaves you not one decent shot.”
“I’m not playing a game. One needs to practice the impossible shots.”
“I’ll stand up with you, and so will Gil, Con, Mary Fran, and even that snippy English bastard Spathfoy. If you love Hannah Cooper, then we’re standing up with her too.” He set the cue ball down two inches from its original location, then scooped up his antique gun and left.
One did need to practice the impossible shots, except, by moving the ball two inches, Ian had changed the entire field of play, such that the impossible had become, in several different ways, the possible.