Four
The lady was half-tipsy, or perhaps a quarter. Asher usually avoided tipsy women, but Hannah Cooper wasn’t silly or giddy with it. She was more like a man who’d imbibed a wee dram at the end of a taxing day: relaxed, her sense of humor closer to the surface, her dignity not quite so tiresomely evident.
The liquor was the simplest explanation for the lady eating up her dinner with her bare fingers, wiping her mouth on her scarf, and thanking him kindly for the most crude fare.
She’d drunk from his flask without comment too, and set about gathering rocks and kindling without grumbling. He’d tossed the tasks at her mostly to give her something to grouch about and to keep her moving, but she was singularly lacking in biting retorts.
She came around from her side of the bushes and took his arm as if they were bosom bows.
“It gets like this in Boston,” she said. “So cold your lungs shiver with each breath.”
“So cold,” he took up the conversation, “you don’t dare breathe through your nose, for the thing freezes together on you.”
“Yes!” She beamed at him. “That cold. Do you suppose we’ll freeze to death in our sleep?”
“Tonight? Of course not. This isn’t dangerously cold by my standards. It’s merely inconvenient.”
“And compromising,” she added, her tone dismissive. “I’ve been compromised before. Will you read to me?”
“Read to you?”
“You did earlier this week. The Walter Scott, I think.”
“You’re reading Scott now.” He’d thought she’d been asleep as soon as he’d started reading. She’d certainly acted asleep. “I can read to you for a bit.”
When they were back on their blankets under the lean-to, and Asher had arranged the tarps to keep the snow off the fire, he took up the book, lit a coach lamp, and began to read, slowly, because his glasses were in his breast pocket, and he wasn’t about to wrestle them onto his nose before company. For almost an hour, he regaled Hannah with the deeds of old Ivanhoe—an idiot, by Asher’s standards—while she sighed and watched the fire beside him.
“Nobody’s coming for us tonight, are they?”
“They’d be fools to try. Had the wind not come up, there would have been a broken track to follow, but that’s not the case now.”
“Time for bed?”
She sounded wistful, as if she were longing for a nice, cozy four-poster after somebody had made good use of the warming pan.
“Time for bed. Give me your cloaks.”
“I beg your pardon?” Not so tipsy now—not tipsy at all.
“If we’re not to freeze, and we’re not, then I need your cloaks. We sleep together, like kittens, and use both our coats as extra blankets.”
“You are a very large kitten, Mr. Balfour.”
“Call me Asher.”
“Is that yet another title? I can’t keep them straight as it is. Lord This and Lord That, it’s quite confusing.”
“Asher is my name, Asher MacGregor.”
“If you say so.” She untied a cloak and passed it over to him. “Both of them?”
“Please. We’ll be warmer this way.” He unbuttoned his coat as her second cloak landed in his lap.
“Now what?” Her teeth were chattering.
“Under the blankets,” he said, holding up the top several. “You’ll be between two lap robes and have several thicknesses above and below you.”
“How c-c-cozy.”
She curled up on her side in a ball. Asher arranged himself behind her, so she was between him and the fire, then spread their respective outer garments on top of the blankets.
“Asher?”
He scooted down into the blankets and drew them up over her shoulders, spooning his body around hers.
“Mister Balfour Asher Lordship MacGregor? What are you doing?”
“Keeping us both warm.” He tucked her close under the blankets, wrapping an arm around her waist and threading another under her neck so she could use his biceps as a pillow. “Now go to sleep. It’s the best way to get through a truly miserable winter, endorsed by no less beast than the great white bears of the North. I should know.”
After a few minutes, her teeth stopped chattering, while Asher thought back to all the nights he’d spent in the longhouses, shivering his way to sleep to the sound of incessant coughing and the thick scent of bitter smoke.
Nobody in the longhouses had ever smelled quite this good, though, or cuddled this agreeably. Canadian winters might have worn an entirely different face if they had.
He woke several times in the night, cozy and warm, the fragrance of Miss Hannah Cooper’s hair tickling his nose. She smelled incongruously of flowers and lavender.
Were their situation not so dire, his unruly body would no doubt be getting ideas. To Asher’s relief, cuddling, while comfortable and even comforting, did not engender overwhelming sexual cravings.
Evidence that even his long-deprived intimate parts comprehended the folly of entertaining notions about a woman determined to return to her side of the ocean without a husband, fiancé, or similar inconvenience.
***
“Beastly damned weather, Laird.”
Maxwell Lockhart Fenimore was laird of nothing more than a constant bellyache, sore joints, and a lot of bleating sheep, but Evan Draper was a loyal retainer and of mature years himself—also stubborn as hell.
“It’s merely cold and snow, Draper. This is Scotland, and we excel at cold and snow. Did Balfour get under way, or is he still fussing about in Edinburgh?” Though thank God the boy was fussing about on Scottish soil at long last.
“They left the town house for the train station early this morning,” Draper reported. “Shall I build up the fire, sir?”
Fenimore’s study was a veritable camphor-scented inferno, and yet, the ache in his joints was unrelenting. “You’ll provoke my cough if you add coal to that fire. Tell me about the Americans.”
“Perhaps your cough might benefit from a wee dram, Laird.” Meaning Draper was in want of a wee dram or three, but then, the man had spent much of his day braving the elements, and everybody benefited from an occasional tot.
“Help yourself to the decanters, you reiving ingrate.” Had Fenimore been a few years younger, he would have risen to pour the man a drink himself. Instead he twitched at the tartan over his knees and silently cursed old age.
“Don’t mind if I do. The American girl limps. The aunt tipples or uses the poppy. I chatted up the maids, and they don’t have much good to say about the aunt.” Draper tossed back a shot of whiskey and patted the decanter as if it were a pretty girl’s bum.
“Draper, have you gone daft?”
“Oh, aye, years ago. It’s that cold, too, and the drink is that good. Balfour’s being a conscientious host.”
“He’d better be.”
Without permission, Draper poured himself a second drink and ambled over to the hearth with it. He turned his backside to the fire, not out of any manners, of course, but because a roaring blaze felt ever so good toasting that part of a fellow’s anatomy. “The American girl sasses Balfour, according to the maids. He seems to like it.”
This was good news. “You call that a report?”
“She slipped on the ice, and he carried her nigh five blocks in his arms, all romantic-like. The maids were fair swoonin’ over it.”
Draper’s grizzled face split into a beatific smile, one the occasional maid found passably tolerable. There was no accounting for the queer starts of females, though Fenimore suspected cold weather might be a factor. A fellow of Draper’s hulking dimensions would give off significant heat.
“Balfour was a physician before he started running from his birthright. I take it he dealt with any twisted ankles, megrims, or sprains the American came up with?”
Draper peered into his drink. “He read to her.”
Outside the wind moaned as only a Scottish winter wind could, but inside, Fenimore felt a spark of hope. “Balfour has years of medical education, the woman’s worth a bloody fortune, and he read to her?”
Half of Draper’s whiskey disappeared. “Aye, when they wasn’t arguin’. Even the housekeeper found it quite touchin’.”
The Edinburgh housekeeper, one Bessie Flaherty, had been old when Roman legions had marched past Arthur’s Seat.
“Draper, I do not pay you to decimate my stores of whiskey. You will keep track of Balfour and his charge, and report back to me regularly. Now get out.” Though Draper was too honest a man for the rest of the scheme Fenimore intended to put into play. For those machinations, a more dastardly relation would have to serve.
“I’m leaving, Laird.” In no particular hurry, Draper set his half-full glass within Fenimore’s reach, tossed more coal on the fire, and tugged at the plaid over Fenimore’s knees. “And Mrs. Flaherty sends you her regards. I left a jar of her special liniment in the pantry.”
That liniment was magic, and yet, if Fenimore had asked for it, the damned woman would have said she had none to spare. “Be gone, Draper, and send my quack to me—with the liniment.”
“Oh, aye, mustn’t forget the liniment. Sweet dreams, Laird.”
Draper toddled off, a good, loyal man with friendly blue eyes, and an incongruous talent for flirting up the maids. And Draper knew what mattered, too, for he’d noted that Balfour had read to the American girl.
Fenimore’s gaze went to the portrait hanging over the hearth. A pretty red-haired lass in the Clan MacGregor formal attire held pride of place there, though her dress was at least half a century out of date.
Fenimore lifted Draper’s neglected drink—an indulgence for which the snippy little physician would offer a grand scold, if he learned of it—and saluted the lady in the painting.
“I used to read to you, my dear, and you sassed me regularly. Look how well that turned out.”
***
Hannah awoke to the certain knowledge that she was safe. Without being able to articulate how, she knew she was for once beyond the reach of her step-papa and his schemes, she was beyond the whispers and gossip, and she was completely, utterly safe.
The feeling was novel and precious, carrying with it more relief than she’d thought herself capable of. Great, swooning buckets of relief, mental and physical, that made her want to both weep and smile.
And she would have to relieve herself soon too, but not just yet.
She was content instead to drowse in a cocoon of warmth and good scents. Cinnamon, nutmeg, clove… a soothing blend of fragrances wrapped all around her, along with a vague memory of being cuddled and comforted in the night.
“You’re awake?”
She felt the words as much as heard them, for she was intimately aligned with Lord Balfour.
He’d asked her to call him something else; she forgot exactly what.
“I’m awake, and it is morning.”
“You sleep very soundly, Hannah Cooper. A blessing, considering. And only a few more inches of snow fell during the night.”
“Another blessing, of course.”
Neither of them moved.
“It’s warm in here,” Hannah said.
“Verra cozy.”
He shifted a little, so Hannah became aware she was resting her cheek against his arm. Had she done that all night?
“It’s warm in here,” she said again, “and it is decidedly not warm out there. Has the fire gone out?”
“There should still be some coals, and we’ve bread and cheese to break our fast.”
“And then what?”
“And then we wait for help to find us. Your aunt will no doubt raise Cain to see us rescued immediately.”
That thought was enough to inspire Hannah to scoot away from him, but not quite enough to get her out into the frigid air.
“My aunt will have dosed herself with her nerve tonics and headache remedies and possets and whatnot until she slept like the dead,” Hannah said. “She believes it her fashionable obligation to sleep until noon.”
“While you’re out on the moor with a winter storm looming?”
Hannah didn’t need to look at him; the pity was palpable in his voice.
“Aunt is too… distracted by her petty ills to understand that her own brother expected her to cross the Atlantic in winter, Mister… Lord…” She stopped, and wished it might resume snowing again in earnest. “What was I to call you?”
“Asher,” he said, rummaging around among their covers. “Asher MacGregor, ergo, Asher to my friends.”
“Are we friends, then?” She hoped they were, because as her mind stirred from its mental blankets, a snippet of memory assailed her. At some point in the odd and cozy night, Balfour had kissed her hair, right above her ear. Not a flirtatious or even naughty kiss, but rather an “I’m here, don’t worry” kiss.
He likely hadn’t even been awake, which was a profound mercy.
Hannah scooted some more, so she could rest back on her elbows and see her companion. She wished she had not.
His dark hair was disheveled, and it was longish hair, brushing his shoulders. Its disarray made her want to… to sift her fingers through it until it was in some kind of order. And his chin and cheeks were dark with the hint of a beard, though the darkness suited him. And his eyes…
“You do not have polite eyes, Mr. Asher.”
“Just Asher will do, and what I have are tired eyes. Sleeping on the ground, even with the pleasure of present company, was not entirely restful. Shall we tend to business now, or procrastinate another five minutes in hopes of an early spring?”
“Where are my cloaks?” Her voice was crisp, and her movements were crisp as she fastened the frogs, and her manner was brisk, but inside, where even Asher’s dark eyes couldn’t see, Hannah was mourning the loss of her little cocoon of blankets and the rare sense of well-being she’d experienced there.
And she’d been right: stranded on the snowy plain—moor, they called it here—curled up under the blankets with the Earl of Balfour, she had been safe. Perhaps insultingly safe.
She slogged through the snow to her side of the bushes, sacrificed yet another handkerchief, and didn’t even take note of the cold air on her delicate parts. When she rejoined Balfour, he was carrying an armload of dead wood.
“I never did ask how you got the fire going in the first place. Do all English gentlemen travel with a flint and steel?”
“This one does—this Scottish gentleman,” he said. “And with some medical supplies, and a hatchet, as well as spare leather, two knives, wool blankets, a compass… what?”
“In England?” She took the wood from his grasp, though he made her wrestle for it. “The beating heart of civilization, and you equip yourself as if you were striking out like President Jefferson’s explorers?”
“We’re still very much in Scotland. Which way is north, Hannah Cooper?”
She surveyed the vast stretches of white all around them, fairly certain she knew in which direction they had come, though the road meandered, so that told her little. She spotted stray clumps of trees—Balfour would know the species and all of its potential uses—some of them fairly sizable, but the landscape was bleak, and the sky even bleaker.
Hannah couldn’t reckon their direction by the morning sun, hiding as it was above a cottony batting of clouds.
She couldn’t reckon by anything.
“I don’t know which way is north.” Though she knew in which direction warmth lay.
“And there are landmarks here,” he said. “In some places, the moors and dales sport no vegetation higher than your knee, and they go on and on for miles. People die on the moors, people born and raised in the North, people who know better.”
He fell silent, as if he’d known somebody who’d died for lack of a compass. Maybe several somebodies, in the middle of a winter storm.
“Feed a little at a time to the coals,” he said, gesturing to the wood with a bare hand. “Too much, and you’ll smother the flame.”
“I understand how to coax a fire from coals.” The words might have been full of innuendo, with any other man, in any other situation.
“Then I’m going to scout the surrounds and retrieve a few more things from the coach, maybe scare up Dusty.”
“Who is Dusty?”
“Destrier. My horse. He’ll be hiding on the lee side of some thick patch of fir trees, if he didn’t find himself a cozy shed and some hay to poach.”
He departed, and Hannah bent to her task, thinking over his list. A hatchet was a New World tool—or weapon—and not something one typically found in English arsenals. He’d recognized her accent, too, and been quite at home camping on this moor. He’d kept her warm and well fed, not simply alive.
Warm and comfortable.
Comforted, too, in some regard, and even a bit kissed, unless she’d dreamed that small gesture.
She peered around the end of their little lean-to, searching the area for Lord Balfour.
He was nowhere to be seen.
His tracks led off around where she imagined the road would curve, but the only sound was the chill sweep of the wind across the frozen white ground.
She fed the fire very, very carefully.
***
“Tiberius, I have the best news!”
Tiberius Flynn, Earl of Spathfoy, accepted a kiss from his wife, though the dear woman was lying through her pretty white teeth. She waved a single sheet of fine stationery he recognized all too easily.
“When are they coming? Be honest, Hester, for only family could put that sparkle in your eye so early in the day.”
Her smile faltered then turned mischievous. “You are trying to act peevish, which you do very well, sir, but I know you are always happy to see our family.”
Her family, whose visits made Hester happy, so Spathfoy tolerated them as best he could.
Spathfoy led his countess to the saddle room, the coziest and most private location in his London mews, because a woman in her condition ought not to be out in the elements without her husband’s protective presence.
Then too, a lady in her condition was given to frequent and unpredictable bouts of kissing, which a husband also tolerated as best he could.
“I have never met a woman so eager to call cousins-by-marriage her family. And no, I have not taken to reading your correspondence. Mama wrote to you, but Joan wrote to me.”
The marchioness was nothing if not a reliable correspondent, while Tiberius’s sister Joan was a reliable correspondent too—and an effective spy. In claiming the hand of his countess, Spathfoy had unwittingly blundered into the outer reaches of Clan MacGregor, for Hester’s brother had married Mary Fran MacGregor, and Hester’s cousin had married Ian MacGregor, both siblings to the present laird.
Hence the need for Mama’s helpful and informative letters, and Joan’s watchful eye.
Hester scooted onto a trunk as Spathfoy closed the saddle-room door. “If Asher brings that American woman south, then I cannot but hope the rest of the family will follow.”
Spathfoy contained his joy at such a prospect; indeed he did. “My love, you do realize that my mother, among others, would thus expect me to maintain surveillance over the hulking, kilted lot of MacGregor brothers?”
“There are only four, Tiberius, and you are adorable in your kilt.”
He kissed her, lest she elaborate on how adorable he was when they were some distance from the house.
“Besides,” Hester went on as Spathfoy shifted to nuzzling her ear, “Ian, Connor, and Gilgallon are all quite civilized now that they’re married.”
“They’re not civilized. They’re besotted. This is an entirely different matter, particularly among the Scots, and means they can be trusted only when in the company of their ladies.” Much like Spathfoy himself, come to that.
The specific nature of the sigh Hester feathered across her husband’s neck suggested a trip back to the house—to the bedroom on the second floor—might be a prudent course. Spathfoy was ever the servant of his countess, especially when her delicate condition had imbued her with all the shyness of a pillaging Roman legion.
“Asher has been back from Canada only a short while, Tiberius. We must help him feel welcome, for he is not married, and his siblings are all quite preoccupied starting families. I have explained this to you.”
She kissed his chin, like a tutor might pat a slow pupil on the head.
Balfour wasn’t married yet. The poor bastard was wealthy, titled, and had a “curious past.” This was the reason Spathfoy’s mother had sent out her warnings and Joan had monitored the situation as well. For all Balfour could track wolves and hunt bears, he’d be no match for the predators in the London ballrooms.
“Dear Asher has brought protection in the form of that heiress,” Spathfoy said, which was quite shrewd of him, “though you and Mama are right: in the interests of protecting their older brother, Ian, Connor, Gilgallon, and Mary Fran will all likely come south. I thought perhaps you and I might spend a few weeks in France.”
Hester smacked his arm, which bore the impact of a hummingbird wing brushing past a rose petal. “You are such a tease, Tiberius. I love your sense of humor.”
And Spathfoy loved his countess, so he did not make plans for a few weeks of Paris in springtime. He did, however, escort his wife back to the house.
And up to the second floor.
***
“You took us in a couple of hours before sunset,” Asher said.
The man before him lowered bushy eyebrows and extracted a cold pipe from between crooked teeth. “Did we now?”
Asher fished out his wallet and unfolded a wad of pound notes.
“You did. You were kind enough to give the lady your own bed, and you gave me the run of your hay mow and your spare blankets—after feeding us both a substantial dinner.”
The man eyed the pound notes. “A substantial dinner?”
“Your missus lent the lady a dressing gown.” Several of the notes changed hands.
“We had a fine stew last night,” the fellow allowed. “Plenty to go around.”
“Plenty,” Asher agreed, passing a couple more notes over. “Lamb stew, if I recall, and lots of bread and butter.”
“That’s a tricky curve there on t’other side o’ them trees.” The notes disappeared into the farmer’s jacket pocket. “Missus was glad for the company.”
“I’ll fetch the lady then.”
“Missus will get the kettle on.”
And because Asher knew the fundamental character of the Scottish crofter, he also knew the man hadn’t asked for their names on purpose, and wouldn’t.
The fewer lies the better when a fellow was being paid for his mendacity.
Failing to scout the terrain in the last of yesterday’s fading light had been an oversight no self-respecting frontiersman would have committed. Last evening, keeping Miss Hannah Cooper from panicking, keeping her busy and warm and well fed, had seemed more important than observing the commonsense safety protocol of setting up a new camp.
And so they’d spent the night together, not merely under the same flimsy roof, but wrapped in the same blankets, cloaks, and robes. In sleep, she’d trusted him, burrowing into his greater warmth like a kitten under the covers. And there she’d stayed, barely moving through the night, content in his arms.
It should have been a simple matter of keeping warm, and on one level it had been.
On another level, though, Asher had enjoyed their proximity, enjoyed the scent and feel of her in a way he didn’t examine too closely. His pleasure had had to do with keeping her safe, with avoiding the guilt of causing her discomfort or risk. He’d loved Monique dearly, and he was already carrying around enough guilt for a lifetime.
“I’ve fetched the bread and cheese,” Miss Cooper said when he approached the fire. Even when she’d been half seas over, she had not invited him to use more familiar address. “I think the air is warmer than yesterday.”
“Which suggests it might snow again,” he said. “We’re going to have to break camp.”
“Break camp? And wait in the coach? It’s at a rather precarious angle.”
For an instant Asher considered not telling her about the farmhouse just out of sight around that bend. Consequences would arise, serious consequences for both of them if he held his silence. What made him speak was an instinctive repugnance for manipulating the lady’s circumstances, even for her own good—perhaps especially for her own good.
And yet, she needed a husband, he needed a wife, and they could both be spared the farce and folderol of a London Season.
“We’ll be sheltering at a smallholding around that turn and through some trees. It ought to be the first place anyone from the village looks for us.”
“A smallholding?”
“If we break camp quickly, we can credibly claim we spent the night there, but not if it looks like we stayed here for any length of time.”
“I… see.”
Her thoughtful expression said she saw what his lies would gain her, and she assented. She rose from the fire, which was blazing merrily, and began to kick snow into it without another word.
And a faint, lingering, what-if in Asher’s mind was snuffed out as effectively as the fire, leaving him in an unaccountably surly mood. They folded blankets with equal dispatch and stuffed them back into the boot of the coach. Asher tossed the saplings into the ditch, and except for the way the snow had been trampled all around, there was shortly no evidence of any overnight camping.
Nor of any near-compromises, nor any ill-advised proposals of marriage that might have followed.
They were lucky. They were sitting around a cozy kitchen table, swilling tea and munching on brown bread and butter when a sleigh pulled up in the barnyard, Asher’s coachy at the reins. A short while later, Asher handed Miss Cooper into the sleigh, tied Dusty behind, and climbed in after her.
He was all the way back to the village before he swiped a glove over his mouth and found a memory swamping him in the frigid air.
Hannah Cooper had slept soundly, but not soundlessly. She had stirred shortly after dropping off, making the kind of noises that signaled a troubling dream. Half-asleep himself, Asher had kissed her hair, the way he’d once kissed any random, available part of Monique when she’d had the same sorts of dreams—her hair, her ear, her shoulder, it mattered not which part. Not the kiss of a lover, but the kiss of a husband and protector, for comfort—his and hers.
He begrudged Hannah Cooper that kiss, half-stolen as it was from his past. And yet, what he’d felt when Hannah had kicked the snow over the fire was not relief that she’d accommodate a handy subterfuge, but rather, anger that she should so easily reject him as a potential mate, without question, without pause, without thanks, without anything—when in the care of any other man, she might well have perished from the cold.