Twenty
“If grief had a landscape, it would be these Highlands.”
Hannah tucked herself more snugly to Asher’s side and tried to pretend the sun was not sinking closer to the rugged hills around them. This was no more successful than pretending a week had not already passed since her arrival at Balfour House, a week in which she’d made many such fanciful pronouncements.
Asher shifted, as if eluding a pebble beneath a triple thickness of tartan wool. “Why do you say that?”
“Many reasons. These are not high mountains, not compared to what you’ve seen in Canada, but they have a forbidding quality. And yet, we’ve walked them.” She shaded her eyes and pointed to the highest summit. “We ate scones and drank whiskey up there, three days ago.”
They’d eaten scones and drank whiskey on many a blanket, making more picnic memories in a week than most couples collected in two decades of marriage. They’d ridden out together, fished the River Dee, tramped the woods, and stayed up late playing cards as an excuse to talk far into the night.
Ian and Augusta made no pretense of chaperoning them, which was fortunate. In the wee hours of the morning, and on the high hills and in the forests, Asher had told Hannah of his years in Canada, and he’d told her his family knew little of what had happened there. She’d argued with him over that, until that argument, like so many others, had ended in a spate of kissing.
Lying on the wool blankets under the afternoon sun, he laced their fingers and laid Hannah’s palm over his heart. “Your point is that grief can be surmounted.”
She’d been trying to say that the sadness she felt when she stared at the calendar had a wildness to it, a passion that had certainly eluded her before her journey across the ocean.
“I don’t know if it can be surmounted, but people dwell here, and they love it. You love it, despite the winters, the cold, the loneliness. People have died for this land.”
He shifted again, turning her, too, so they were spooned together beneath the wide blue sky, his chest blanketing her back. “There will be no dying of broken hearts, Hannah. You and I are not that kind of people. We will be dignified, like these mountains. We will endure.”
They hadn’t made love, not since they’d arrived in Edinburgh, and that had broken Hannah’s heart more than anything else. And yet, it was good that she could not see his face, or he hers. “I’m not carrying.”
He petted her hair and gathered her closer. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. The day before I start my monthly, I get twinges, warning shots, so to speak, and they’ve started. I consider it a kindness that my body alerts me this way to impending inconvenience. We’ll not be tramping up here again tomorrow.”
They wouldn’t be tramping much of anywhere for the next several days, which meant they had likely scaled their last peak together.
“I am sorry, my heart. I am sorry we are not to have a child. I sense, though, that a child would have complicated matters for you, not simplified them.”
He knew her so well. She could not have loved him more, not if they’d had eighty years together on earth. Hannah turned so she could wrap herself against Asher’s body. Their situation was too blessed simple. “Nothing can fix our situation. Nothing.”
Nothing made it easier; nothing made it less painful. They would endure, as Asher had said. Dignity was far less certain.
He kissed her, probably for comfort, but Hannah was incapable of being consoled by a mere brush of lips. What raged through her was as implacable as the high barren hills, as deep and unrelenting as the winter that scoured the summits of their trees.
“Asher, I am uncertain of many things. I am uncertain that my decisions have been wise, uncertain of my reception in Boston, uncertain of… much, but I know I want to make love with you right now, right here.”
He sighed against her mouth, something about a simple exhalation conveying a stubborn intent to apply reason. “Hannah, there is nothing I would deny you, but you might be mistaken in these twinges and warning shots. You’ve never carried a child, never conceived before that you—”
“Damn you, Asher MacGregor. I am not asking for your permission, I am asking for your passion.”
She pushed him by one meaty shoulder onto his back, and he went. When she straddled him—no dignity there—and unfastened his kilt, he sank his fingers into her hair and extracted one pin after another.
His complicity gradually cleared the fog of desperation choking her, until Hannah could sit back and admire the man whose kilt, waistcoat, and shirt she had nearly torn from his body.
Asher brushed her hair back over her shoulder. “Is it my turn, then? Shall I unwrap m’ treasure the way ye’ve unwrapped yours?”
When a man was blessed with a burr, the inflection in his questions lifted not the end of an inquiry, as was common in Boston, but rather, gave the entire question a lilt.
“Yes. Unwrap your treasure.”
He started by framing her jaw in his hands, ensuring that Hannah’s gaze collided with his and stayed trapped in what he promised with his eyes. Slowly, slowly, he worked his way down the buttons of her shirtwaist.
Never had a lady’s attire had so many buttons. Hannah dragged in one breath after another, while beneath her, Asher’s arousal became more and more firm against her sex.
For the last time…
Weeks had gone by while she’d pushed, wrestled, and blasted that sentiment away from her, moment by moment. Through their journey from London, their wandering in Edinburgh, their engagement ball, their travel to Balfour, and every day since.
She let the reality of their parting take over, let the horror and terror of it fill her being, the wrongness of it, the inevitability, and the permanence.
Asher peeled back her blouse but didn’t push it off her arms. “Are you sure, Hannah?”
She was ready to deliver a lecture to him that could be heard from one peak to the next until it occurred to her he wasn’t doubting her desire for him, but rather, her conclusion regarding conception.
“I am sure. There will be no baby for us.” He closed his eyes, as if a great wave of pain had risen up to seize him from within. “I’m sorry, Asher, but there will be no child.”
A man who’d buried his family in the Canadian woods would regard their childless state with particular regret, and also with relief. The relief would be trifling compared to the regret.
The need to comfort him flooded past impending loss and tangled with desire, making it nigh impossible for Hannah to hold still while Asher untied her laces.
He patted her bottom. “Your skirts, too, love.”
Skirts and petticoats, then drawers and stays, were gathered in a growing pile of clothing at the edge of the blankets, until Hannah lay on her back in nothing but her stockings and garters, and Asher wore not one stitch.
“I’m glad we are not in some darkened bedroom,” Hannah said, running a hand down his ribs one by one. “Glad I can see you. See all of you.”
The stroke of his hands, warm against her upraised knees, paused. She should have been mortified, but she liked the look of him kneeling naked and aroused between her legs, silhouetted against the white clouds and blue sky.
“You are so fair, and I am so dark. Not every woman would regard the sight of me with welcome.”
What would children of such a union look like?
“You will please stop chattering, Asher MacGregor.”
He came forward to brace himself above her on his hands. “There’s no hurry, Hannah of my heart. The sun will be up for hours yet.”
And yet, her skin was already growing chilled, though the sunshine was warm and afternoon wasn’t over. At this altitude, at this latitude, nights were short but never quite warm, not like they would be in the middle of a Boston summer. There was every reason to hurry. “Make love to me, Asher. Please.”
She reached for him, and he obliged by settling his weight close. “Shall I teach you some Gaelic? Just a few words to pass the time?” He whispered this to her and punctuated his offer by kissing the curve of her jaw.
“I don’t want a grammar lesson, you dratted, miserable—”
His arousal, blunt and warm, nudged at her sex.
“That’s what you want, isn’t it, Hannah? It’s what I want, too. What I’ll go to my grave wanting. With you.”
Hannah closed her eyes, the better to catalogue sensations, to hoard them up against the barren expanse of the rest of her life. At her back was soft wool, three sturdy thicknesses of clan MacGregor tartan. When Asher fell silent, she could hear the wind sighing in the nearby pines on cool, heather-scented breezes. Asher brushed his thumb across her palm, a small touch, and exquisitely tender.
He flexed his hips forward. “I love you, Hannah MacGregor.” He’d spoken Gaelic, but she recognized her name, the name she might have had if they’d been married.
She arched up to meet him. “I love you, Asher MacGregor.” The Gaelic was sweet on her tongue, more sincere than anything she’d said in English. “I love you.”
He was like the mountains, implacable, incapable of hurry, while Hannah could not govern her desire in the smallest degree. She convulsed around him before he’d even completed their joining.
He nuzzled her ear. “Such a passionate lady. You will not destroy my concentration so easily.”
Hannah locked her ankles at the small of his back and tried to still his hips. “For the love of God, let me catch my breath.”
“I prefer you breathless.” He raised himself up enough to cross his arms under her neck. “I want you panting, in fact. Hot.” His lips brushed her mouth then lifted away. “Frantic would be a lovely sight. A sight to remember.”
God in heaven. She went on the offensive, seizing him by the hair and fusing her mouth to his, undulating into his movement. “I want you frantic, Asher MacGregor. I want you roaring your desire to the hills. I want… I want—”
Oh, gracious heavens, how she wanted.
When she’d come a second time, Asher straightened his arms, letting a cooling draft of air between them. “Ye’re all right?”
She brushed his hair back from his brow, needing to imprint the sight of him on her memory forever. The muscles of his chest and arms were exquisite, but the warmth in his gaze—the love and longing, the tenderness—made her turn her head.
“I will be.” Sometime, years and years hence, she would be. She would tell her nieces of the great love she’d known in the Highlands—the love she’d lost. “I will be.”
His smile was crooked and sad, confirmation that he knew she was lying. He settled closer, bringing Hannah the scent of man and heather. “Ye must not cry, Hannah. Ye’ll break my heart all over if ye cry.”
Hannah had no argument to such a gentle scold. She wrapped herself around him and let him set an excruciatingly deliberate pace, her hands laced with his, her body moving to his rhythm.
She knew what he was about: he was trying to make it last, holding back time for them for one more moment, then another, until Hannah’s passion welled again unstoppably.
“Asher, please…” Come with me, one last time.
He groaned, softly, raggedly, joining her for a procession of instants in pleasure that obliterated everything else save awareness of each other. Hannah felt him spend, felt the ecstasy and surrender of it, felt the turning point when passion overcame his restraint.
Asher hung over her, breathing like a bellows.
“Come here, Asher. Let me hold you.” One last time. They would embrace again, they would hold hands, they might even share a bed, but this—to be naked, passionate, wanton—it would not befall them again.
Ever.
He slid his palm under her head and cradled her close. Hannah said nothing, not while his breathing slowed, not while bitter, bitter tears slid from her eyes into her hair. He kissed her tears, wiped them across his cheeks, and let the silence stretch until she had no more tears.
When he had slipped from her body, she still did not let him go. “I never meant to break your heart, Asher MacGregor.”
His hand passed over her brow, smoothing her hair back. “You are my heart. You will always be my heart.”
The words were meant to comfort, and yet, Hannah hurt. She hurt with an emptiness that resonated in every particle of her soul. When Asher eased away, she let him go, and the pain of that was beyond description.
The mundane business of dressing each other provided the next steps in the direction of their ultimate separation. Asher passed her a handkerchief, and while he pinned and buckled himself into his kilt, Hannah dealt with the less delicate aftereffects of shared passion.
She shook out the little cotton square, intending to refold it into quarters and hand it back. Asher pulled his shirt on and left it unbuttoned, then passed Hannah her drawers, stays, and shirtwaist.
“Shall we go boating on the loch tomorrow?” The burr had been wrestled into submission. The earl was trying to put the lover to rout, an effort Hannah suspected was undertaken for her benefit. Asher was no more interested in boating on the loch than Hannah was.
“That sounds pleasant, if the weather allows.” They’d bring the inevitable picnic, maybe some Walter Scott, and spend another afternoon suffering together. How lovely.
He helped her with her stays, though his idea of what constituted a proper fit was much looser than Hannah’s. He also laced her boots for her, and when Hannah made no effort to rise from their blankets, he sat beside her, silent and solid.
Only then did she pass him his handkerchief. “It’s the same color as my dancing slippers, the first ones you repaired for me.”
He took the little cloth, his brows knitting. “The same color?”
Hannah nodded at the handkerchief, which sported three faint pink streaks. “Maiden’s blush.”
Her next spate of tears was not quiet. Not quiet at all.
***
Asher had stowed Hannah’s bags, inspected her cabin, lectured the maid to within an inch of her life, then conferred with his captain at length, though not one moment of their discussion had been spent on cargo, schedules, or changes made to the ship’s crew.
In the morning, Hannah would take ship, and by noon, Asher would be blind drunk. As plans went, it left something to be desired.
“It’s when they go quiet you worry the most.”
As he offered this observation, Connor took the seat to Asher’s left on a comfortable sofa, passing his brother a drink. The inn’s appointments were far above reproach, Asher having insisted on the fanciest harborside accommodations Edinburgh had to offer. He had not wanted Hannah to have to depart for the ship from his town house.
“When who goes quiet?” Asher asked. “Certainly not our brothers.”
Con took a considering sip of his whiskey. “The women. I was about eleven when I realized Mary Fran’s tantrums weren’t the worst havoc she could wreak. She’d go quiet, and it drove me nigh to howlin’. Those big green eyes, the stiff little shoulders. Diabolical, she was. Probably doesn’t have to say a word to have Daniels stepping and fetching double-time. Just goes silent, is all. Poor sod’s probably on his knees right now, begging her to say something to him.”
Asher set his drink aside—time for that later. Less than twenty-four hours later. “Do I have her to thank for everybody’s presence here at the inn?”
“We’re your family, Asher MacGregor. We’ve come to see our Hannah off on her journey.”
Connor was his baby brother, and yet of all of them, Con was in some ways the most substantial. The man could be as silent as an oak cask, and about as flexible. There would be no running Con off, no intimidating, reasoning, or bullying him into giving Asher privacy.
“When we’ve seen Hannah off, will you get me home before I start drinking?”
“Aye. And we’ll drink with ye, and pour ye into bed, and mind the fires until ye’re able to walk again. Ye’re neglecting your medicine, Brother.”
Con did not neglect his. He downed his whiskey in one swallow, then rose and crossed to the little table where a decanter and glasses sat on a tray. The door to Asher’s sitting room opened without a knock.
“And here I thought this was a decent inn.” Connor held out a drink to Spathfoy, then poured for Gil. “Asher was just about to get out the cards. Ian, you can get your own drink when you’ve tossed me wee fartin’, stinkin’, burpin’ nephew into the street for the rag man to pick up.”
Wee John liked that idea fine, banging on his father’s shoulder with a tiny fist and grinning at his uncles.
“Is he cutting more teeth?” Gil asked.
“He’ll be cutting damned teeth until he’s in short coats,” Ian grumbled. When he took the place on Asher’s right, the sofa cushions temporarily heaved up then settled as if on a sigh. “Little man kept his poor mama up half the night, and now he’s all smiles.”
Asher reached out a hand to the child, knowing his finger would be taken prisoner. “Plotting civil disturbance and insurrection, no doubt. He will be cutting teeth pretty much until he’s two, then it comes in spurts.”
“Two years.” Ian’s expression suggested the number was comparable to two thousand. “And we’ve likely another one just like him coming along behind.”
For some reason, Ian’s misery was a cheering sight. “Things do improve. They stop cutting teeth, and not long after that, they start to catch on to using the Jordan pot, and what a happy occasion that is.”
Spathfoy took a seat at the table uninvited. “Are we going to pick out baby names or take advantage of Balfour’s bout of insanity to rob him blind?”
“The bad fairy speaks,” Ian muttered. “I’ll man the decanters. Spathfoy, why don’t you hold the baby?”
“Because you’re his papa, and I may be English, but I’m not entirely stupid. What’s the game?”
A desultory debate ensued, with the decision being that hearts would make an adequate pastime, though when Asher looked at the clock, the thing seemed to have forgotten how to advance the hour.
He made no effort to toss his brothers out, though he suspected Spathfoy, in a kind of begrudging sympathy, would probably have withdrawn without a fuss. His brothers were holding a wake though, a wake for the dreams Asher had never thought he’d dream again, for the hopes and aspirations of a heart that had sworn off aspiration for all time.
Rest in bloody goddamned peace.
“Your turn to hold the brat.” Spathfoy lifted wee John high, high up, brought him down nose to nose, and lifted him up again.
A wet little baby fart resulted, and five grown men went silent. Spathfoy passed the child over to Asher with no further displays of avuncular affection.
“Typical English, handing back the goods when trouble’s bound to ensue,” Con remarked. He tossed out the two of clubs, and everybody but Spathfoy followed suit.
For Asher to arrange cards with a baby in his arms was not difficult, provided said baby was not in the mood to snatch at the cards with tiny, damp fingers. Asher gave the child a blue poker chip to gnaw on.
“How did you know to do that?” Gil tossed out the ten of diamonds, and everybody followed suit except Spathfoy, who pitched the king of spades onto the table.
Ian was sitting the game out, and true to his word, topping up drinks between tricks. Asher contributed the king of diamonds, Con the ace. “Do what?”
“Give His Fiendship the chip so he’d stuff it in his maw and leave your cards alone?”
Across the table, Ian pretended to study the whiskey remaining in a simple glass vessel. Loyal of him, more loyal than Asher deserved.
“Must be from being a physician,” Con muttered. “Physicians have to deal with bairns and hysterical women and crabbit auld men like Spathfoy.”
Spathfoy swirled his drink. “They can also treat conditions of male inability to perform, Connor. You might keep that in mind in case you live long enough to become an auld man.”
Con grinned. “Me wife will wear me out long before I’m auld, but I’ll die happy and leave a handsome corpse. Unlike some.” He led the ten of clubs, tossing the card directly at Spathfoy.
These men are my brothers, and I love them.
The thought bloomed in Asher’s heart and in his mind just as the baby pitched a thoroughly gummed chip onto the table. Gil played the eight of clubs, caught the chip as it rolled off the edge of the table, and held it out to Asher.
“Don’t give it back to him,” Asher said, “or it will soon be raining poker chips in here. The wee ones train us like monkeys, all for their entertainment.”
This time, Asher fished in his pocket and passed the boy an empty brass money clip. When he looked up, Gil, Con, and Spathfoy were frowning at him, while Ian’s gaze was steady. Just steady.
As wee John brought the money clip to his mouth, Asher felt a question form over the table. A curiosity coalesced that had probably been building through all the days Asher had ignored John in London, through the morning they’d been found asleep on the train, John clutched to Asher’s chest.
“He’ll find the taste interesting,” Asher said, cradling the boy closer. “It won’t hurt him any more than sticking his fingers in his mouth would. Not particularly sanitary…”
Spathfoy set his cards on the table and folded his arms. Con tossed back his drink and set the glass on the table like a judge lowering a gavel. Gil watched the child drooling all over the money clip, and still Ian said nothing—nor did he pour anybody any more whiskey.
Asher brushed a kiss to the baby’s downy head as an old pain, one not directly related to Hannah’s departure, but one entwined with it, welled from his past.
“Shall I take the bairn?” Ian’s voice was soft, carefully neutral, but in that moment, the last thing Asher wanted was to give up the child he held in his arms.
“He’s fine.”
While five grown men struggled with a taut, aching silence, the baby spluttered happily with his new toy. Asher stroked a hand over the child’s head.
He couldn’t hurt any worse if he were put to the rack and stretched to the utmost. The thought held a wry kind of grace. Maybe it had helped to rehearse his confession with Hannah, who’d listened and cried and listened some more.
“I had a son.”
Con swore softly and nudged Asher’s drink closer, not close enough that the baby could knock it over. “I had a son, and like Ian, I named him for Grandda. I named my boy John.”
Ian sighed, not with exasperation. That sigh struck Asher as a sigh of relief, one long overdue.
Gil kept his gaze on the child, his expression unreadable but for the sorrow in his eyes. “Tell us about our nephew, Asher. I wish I could have known him.”
The next words were hard, so hard. “He didn’t live long, not quite a year, but he was a merry lad.”
Spathfoy, to whom Asher was not related, posed the awful question: “Smallpox?”
Asher nodded.
Con swore again and dipped his head, pressing his fingers to his eyes. Gil was blinking rapidly, though Ian found his voice. “Brother, I am sorry for your loss. Your grief is ours.”
“No,” Asher said, and these words were not so hard to say at all, “it isn’t. I haven’t let it be. The rest of what I’ve kept from you is that the boy’s mother lasted only a week after she knew our son was gone. I am a physician, schooled by the best, trained for my craft, and for the two people I loved most in the world, there was nothing I could do.”
Except love them. He knew that now, like he knew his brothers loved him, and Hannah loved him. The knowledge was all that would get him through the next twenty-four hours and the next twenty-four years.
Spathfoy scowled mightily. “There should be a marker. He lived, he had a name, you loved him, his mother loved him. For the few months of his life, he was in line for an earldom.” That would matter to a marquess’s heir. The scowl was directed at Asher. “You loved his mother. There should be a marker. My brother died in the godforsaken Canadian wilderness, but we had a marker made long before we could get him home.”
Ian turned a thoughtful expression on Spathfoy. “We forget that you are only half-English, Spathfoy, though it’s usually the louder half.”
Spathfoy glared at Ian. “The more articulate half.”
“Spathfoy is right,” Con said. “The wee lad was one of us, his mother too.”
That Connor and Spathfoy would agree on anything was extraordinary.
“There will be a marker,” Asher said. “A proper memorial in the family plot… and a service.” The last felt as important as the marker.
“I’ll bring me pipes,” Con said. “The ladies will put on a spread, and we’ll tell the stories.”
The decision was right. It felt right, and as Asher mentally tested around the edges of his various pains and regrets, he found his disclosure had not, in fact, made anything hurt worse. They’d drink and they’d dance, and if they drank enough, maybe even cry—and they’d do it together.
But as for putting Hannah on that ship bound for Boston at dawn tomorrow, that was something Asher had to do alone.