Seven
Asher had the knack of putting his guest off merely by drawing breath, which was fortunate.
He was coming to like looking at Hannah Lynn Cooper too much, to enjoy watching the way lamplight played with the red-and-gold highlights in her hair. He liked to feel her hand slipping into his, liked to think she appreciated that he would not let her fall.
He liked to ponder the quality of her silences as she ambled through the park with him, liked to provoke her into smiling despite herself.
“Might I have the butter, Miss Hannah?”
She put the little silver dish by his elbow. “You always start your meal with buttered bread.”
He hadn’t realized that about himself. “A man can do without some thin soup, while bread and butter will sustain life. Wine, Miss Hannah?”
“Please.”
“You’re learning to drink it, I gather.”
“I’m learning that water in London is not like water at home. I can see why tea is the mandatory beverage here.”
Ale was probably consumed in greater quantity than tea. He didn’t point that out because she was about to make another blunt pronouncement. “And why is tea mandatory?”
“Because the water in London is undrinkable in its plain state.”
True enough. “You must not say as much in public.”
She sat back and remained silent while the soup course was removed. Asher waved the footmen off, as he usually did. The meal was sitting on the table in plain sight in chafing dishes, and he and his guest were more than capable of feeding themselves.
“I will not embarrass you, sir.” Her admission was grudging, offered more in hope than confidence, though her manners were impeccable.
“You will not cause embarrassment purposely, and yet I suspect you will not take, though it won’t be entirely your doing, and I doubt it will matter to you. I like this about you, Hannah Cooper, even as I wish you might accept the smoother path of compromise and accommodation. I’m hoping I don’t embarrass you either.”
Because compromise and accommodation also weren’t in his nature.
She stopped mid-reach toward her wine. “Does this have to do with that comment about the longhouse?”
Upon consideration, he found that yes, it did. “I am not the ideal escort for a young lady seeking to make a fine impression on Polite Society. I suspect my uncle offered my services as a way to punish me more than a way to see you effectively introduced.”
“I’m a punishment?”
“Don’t sound so pleased.”
She smiled, a gorgeous, mischievous grin that suggested if she’d wanted to, if she’d had the least inclination, she’d do well enough among the London bachelors. “Tell me about the longhouse and why you are such a sorry excuse for an escort.”
“I wouldn’t go quite that far. I am an earl, I’ll have you know.” Though this was the first instance he could recall having a use for the title.
“Where I come from, your title is not considered an attribute you’ve earned, and you view it in the very same light. Now, tell me about the longhouse.”
Much to his surprise, over the rest of the meal, he told her. He told her about interminable bitter winters spent in snug proximity to people who’d known him since birth. He talked about the beauty of the wilderness, the scope of the knowledge a fellow needed to survive there, and the curiosity and dread he’d felt entering the trading post as a boy of eight.
What surprised him was how easily the happy memories came, how easily and how plentifully. He did not speak about the coughing, about the remorselessness of disease under such circumstances—especially not about that—about the starvation in early spring.
Not even Ian had asked him for this recitation; nor would Asher have welcomed his brother’s inquiries.
Hannah Cooper listened, asking questions when he occasionally fell silent.
What tribe were his mother’s people from?
How long had he lived with his grandparents after her death?
How long had he lived at the trading post after his grandmother’s death?
What was it like crossing the Atlantic at the age of eleven?
How did a boy of eight reconcile a life in the wilds with life among his father’s people?
“Not well, not easily. The minister who took me in was kind, but at the trading post, they wore too many clothes in summer, they used too many utensils to consume their food, they tried to go about in winter as if it weren’t murderously cold, when what was wanted were long, long stories told by the fire. My mother’s tribe included people who could recite our entire history from memory, an undertaking that goes on for nine days, and yet it wasn’t until I got to Scotland that I heard some decent tales told in English.”
“From?”
“My father’s father. My father died immediately after learning of my existence and sending for me.”
She patted his hand. Not a surreptitious little gesture, but a firm squeeze of his hand followed by a soft, warm pass of her fingers over his knuckles.
Gestures of comfort had been rare and few in his life, at least his life among his father’s people. They were a ridiculous bunch, making war on one another without ceasing, though they shared the same God, lived side by side, and aped one another’s fashions. And yet, Scots, English, Welsh, Irish, and even Americans had a pecking order as well-defined as chickens confined in the same malodorous coop.
He brought Hannah’s hand to his lips in a traditional gesture he approved of but had seldom used. “It’s late, and I’ve talked enough. Shall I see you to your rooms?”
“Please. I also want to check on Aunt Enid. She barely stirred when I asked if she was coming down for tea.”
Asher appropriated a candle, the sconces having been turned down for the night, and led Miss Hannah through the darkened house. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought she leaned on his arm more heavily and took longer to navigate the steps.
“You might try a tot of laudanum,” he suggested as they approached her door. “Just because your aunt has made a crutch of her patent remedies doesn’t mean you would fall into the same trap.”
Even soothed with a glass or two of wine, Miss Cooper ought to have fired off a tart retort, ought to have pinned his ears back for his presumption—she’d made a point of refusing laudanum more than once. They couldn’t very well part on the cozy, almost friendly terms on which they’d passed the meal, could they?
“I’ve already fallen into the patent-remedy trap, or nearly so. I believe my stepfather was ready to snap it closed on me.”
He stopped outside her door. By the light of a sconce at the end of the hall, she looked tired and wan, but not defeated. Never defeated. “Did this come about because of your hip?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Because of my stupidity. When I was twenty, I had one of those nasty falls, and the physician prescribed bed rest. My stepfather suggested some elixir for the pain because, when I took it, I was far more biddable. Grandmother figured out what he was up to—as I was only twenty, he could still try to marry me off—and had a stern talk with my physicians, my mother, and my maid. I’ve avoided even strong spirits ever since—at least until I became acquainted with the local version of grog.”
No wonder she was loyal to the old woman, and no wonder she viewed a London Season as a mere inconvenience. She knew what it was to fight for her freedom, and she was fighting still.
And yet she had offered him a respite from some adult version of homesickness.
He set the candle down, leaned in, and pressed his lips to her cheek. He lingered only long enough to catch her lavender-and-clover scent before he stepped back. “It will be an honor to escort you about Mayfair this spring, Miss Hannah Cooper, and I was wrong when I predicted that you would not take. You will be, as they say, all the rage.”
He bowed and withdrew before he could say anything more foolish than that—before he could do anything more foolish—and left her standing outside her bedroom, illuminated by the light of a single candle.
***
The Earl of Balfour kissed gently, sweetly, at complete variance with his hard, dark eyes, his blade of a nose, and his odd, growling accent. Hannah took the memory of the earl’s good-night kiss with her into her bed and woke with it the next morning.
She’d liked his kiss. Not one scintilla of disrespect had marred the gesture, nothing presuming. He smelled good, like Christmas and sweet spices, and he’d kept his hands to himself, touching her only with his lips.
That such a large man could be delicate was breathtaking.
Also deceptive.
“Turn loose of my shoe, sir, or I shall scream.” Hannah used the same tone she regularly applied to her younger brothers, though it apparently had no effect on full-grown earls.
“It’s just a dancing slipper.” He gave the shoe in her hand a hard tug, though not hard enough to wrest it from her grasp. “You have at least twelve pairs. Go ahead and scream. Perhaps it will motivate your aunt to leave her bed for a change.”
No, it wouldn’t—and how lowering was that?
“I will not allow you to visit your fool scheme on my hapless apparel, my lord.”
This gave him pause in the tug-of-war going on between them. “You almost never call me ‘my lord.’” As he made this observation, he seemed to grow larger. He used the shoe to step closer to Hannah, so close she could see his eyes were not in fact black, they were a dark, gold-flecked brown.
And bore no hint of compromise.
A startled gasp came from the doorway as a maid bearing a tea tray came to an abrupt halt, eyes wide.
“Leave us,” the earl barked. The maid set the tray on the low table before the settee, dipped a curtsy, and departed.
The dancing slipper was of that pale shade of pink referred to as Maiden’s Blush. Hannah could not envision an occasion when she’d be caught dead in such a color, but her newly acquired collection included Spring Dew (green), Moondust (ivory), Spanish Pewter (gray), and assorted other impracticalities.
The earl leaned closer, nose to nose with Hannah. “I would verra much like a cup of tea.” He turned up Scottish when intent on a goal.
“Unless you’re going to drink it out of this dancing slipper, then you’d best let me have my shoe back.”
He turned loose of the slipper, but for a long moment did not step back.
A visual contest of wills ensued, two people locked in mutual, unblinking glowers, even as Hannah knew she was being ridiculous. She forgot she could not back down, and instead took note of the contrasts in the earl’s morning attire. His shirt was snow white, his cravat dark blue silk, his morning coat a darker blue, and his shirt studs and sleeve buttons gold. His waistcoat was of yet another shade of blue embroidered in a paisley pattern with gold threads.
With his dark complexion, the ensemble was quietly elegant and… lovely.
And again, his scent—nutmeg, clove, cinnamon—stronger than it had been the previous evening. With something like amazement, Hannah watched her own hand reach up and free a fold of his cravat from the lapel of his coat. She eased one finger between soft layers of fabric, tugged silk from linen and wool, then smoothed her palm over the center of his chest.
He moved back slowly, as if he’d spotted a predator across a clearing in the woods and was avoiding the snap of even a single twig.
“Shall you pour, Miss Hannah?”
He sounded damnably composed, while for Hannah, something wild and fluttery paced the confines of her belly. “Of course.”
Balfour waited for her to take a seat, then waited for her to gesture him into the place beside her on the settee, though of all the men he was—lord, Highlander, frontiersman—the earl was the least in evidence.
“You steal my shoes then stand on ceremony, sir?”
“You call me ‘my lord’ only when you’re trying to distract me?”
She did not reach for the teapot. Bad enough when he was being obstinate; now he must turn up teasing.
“Your eyes change color with your mood, Balfour. Did you know that?”
“I suspect it’s true of most people, and I apologize for troubling you over your dancing slipper.”
To distract herself, Hannah began the ritual of the tea service. “My shoes are now safe from your larceny?”
His gaze was on her hands as she added cream and sugar to his Darjeeling then stirred for him, removed the spoon, and passed him his cup and saucer.
“Your hands are cold, Hannah Lynn Cooper. This room is cold, in fact.”
He hadn’t answered her question. “Do not think of closing that door, sir.”
He was already on his feet, closing the door and then poking up the fire to a roaring blaze. “Fat lot of good propriety will do you when you’re expiring of lung fever under my roof. And no, your shoes are not safe from me. You were supposed to be visiting with your aunt as you do every morning first thing, and I intended to relieve you of only the one pair.”
He stood with the brass-and-iron poker in his hand, though a claymore would have been appropriate to his posture, too.
“I doubt my slippers would fit you, sir, and Maiden’s Blush is hardly your color.”
He set the poker back in its stand and began a perambulation of Hannah’s room, turning quickly enough that Hannah suspected he might have been hiding a smile. He did not blend with these fussy, overstuffed surrounds, and yet she liked the look of him sniffing at the sage sachets hanging from her curtains and fingering the brushes on her vanity.
“We really ought not to be alone in here together.” And Hannah really did not practice hypocrisy very convincingly, for this was the man in whose arms she’d spent a lovely, cozy night.
“Then agree to give me one of your dancing slippers—a right one.”
Hannah took a sip of tea, then realized she’d drunk from the only cup she’d poured—his. He’d watched her do it, too, the wretch. His smile said as much.
“You’ll ruin my slipper. Waste not; want not.”
“Such a Yankee. Are you going to tell me Maiden’s Blush is your favorite color?”
She had to get him out of her room, and not because propriety required it. “I’m telling you every scheme, exercise, and magic potion has been unavailing where my disability is concerned.”
“So you’ve let somebody put a lift on your heel before?”
Because he was watching her, even as he brought a bowl of potpourri to his nose, he likely saw her hesitate as much as heard it.
“You have not allowed this previously.” He set the dish down and stirred the contents with his third finger before rejoining her on the settee. “Why not?”
Arguing was not evicting him from her room. “Nobody thought of it.”
He sat forward, straining the seams on his coat, making the settee creak softly. “You do not have pain in your foot, your knee, or your leg, as far as I can tell. If the difficulty is in your back and hip, then it’s possible your right leg is simply shorter than the left. Your fall might not have had much to do with it, other than rendering you weaker for a time as a result of inactivity, which exposed the underlying condition.”
While he spoke, he poured a second cup of tea, added cream and sugar, then passed it to Hannah.
She took it, being sure their fingers did not brush again. “You should not be discussing my person in such terms.” Not in England, in any case.
“Shall I send for a physician to discuss your own limbs with you? Another physician? An old fellow who smells of mildew and lemon drops, who’ll no doubt want to examine your person?”
“Thank you, no. Aunt Enid would get wind of it, and the letters would be flying, and thank you, no.” She took a sip of tea, finding it both soothing and bracing, and cradled the cup in her hands rather than set it on its saucer.
“So you’ll let me try, Hannah? If it doesn’t work, then there’s no harm done, except to ensure you’ll never encase your dainty feet in Maiden’s Blush.”
Hannah, not Miss Cooper, or even Miss Hannah. Maiden’s Blush, indeed. “I could not be so blessed.”
And the idea of him seeing her shoes—she ordered them by color—was vaguely disquieting, but that he might have seen her collection of stockings went beyond intolerable. “If this scheme works, Balfour, then you’ll expect me to dance.”
He sat back, again making the settee creak. “If this scheme works, then maybe you won’t be in as much pain. Maybe you’ll want to dance.”
Oh, drat him. Drat him and blast him. Damn him, in fact. She hid behind another sip of her tea.
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” He spoke softly, pushing a lock of hair back behind her ear. “You cannot bear another disappointment. You long to dance, but you’ve given up.”
“Given up?” If he’d knocked her to the floor, he could not have been more ruthless, and the gentleness in his touch made his words that much more difficult. “Given up, because I don’t seek to bedazzle some spotty young fool on the dance floor? Given up, when all I want is to look after my grandmother and have the benefit of an inheritance left to me by my father?”
She set her teacup down with a bang and marched across the room to put space between her and the presuming, too insightful earl. “If I had given up, my lord, then I’d be married to Jeremy Widmore, carrying my second child by now, and likely sporting bruises in all manner of private places. If I had given up, I’d be in my bed, praying that my husband would content himself with his mistresses and gambling, while I watched the funds my children needed frittered away for Widmore’s pleasure or my stepfather’s.”
She whirled in a flurry of skirts and speared the earl with a glare. “If I had given up, I’d be envying Aunt Enid her laudanum addiction, for that’s what it is. She has given up, but as long as my grandmother draws breath, I cannot, I shall not, I…”
Could not breathe.
He was beside her in an instant. “Sit.” He did not scoop her up against his chest as he had so easily in Edinburgh, but his arm was around her waist, conducting her to the bed, the nearest piece of furniture that would hold both of their weights. “Head down, breathe slowly.”
His hand on her nape had her bending forward. “Don’t move.”
She didn’t. Even in the short stays she refused to lace too tightly, it was easier to breathe like this. “God in heaven, what is that for?”
He held a short, wicked-looking knife. The handle was bone with some scrimshaw design etched on it, and the blade positively gleamed.
“I’m going to cut you out of your goddamned stays.”
Hannah bounced away from him, which was difficult given how high the bed was. “That will not be necessary.”
The knife disappeared, up his sleeve, into his boot, into some sort of sheath affixed somewhere on his person—Hannah knew not which.
“Tell me about Widmore, Hannah.”
She’d started out the day as Miss Hannah, Miss Hannah Lynn Cooper who’d enjoyed the most innocent good-night kiss last night. This morning she was Hannah, her name spoken in a low, harsh rasp, and she was about to be laid bare by a knife-wielding Red Indian Scottish Earl Physician.
Despite all inclination to the contrary, she talked. “Widmore was the last threat, the one I’m fairly certain step-papa manufactured to inspire me to acquiesce to this trip.”
Balfour reached out with the same hand that had gripped her slipper so tightly, the same hand he’d used to fix her tea and brandish that knife, and brushed his thumb over her cheek. Hannah didn’t realize what he was about until he tasted the pad of his thumb then produced a handkerchief.
The wild and fluttery sensation in her stomach leapt higher at the sight of him tasting her tears.
She took the little cotton square from his hand lest he wipe her face for her.
“Go on, lass.”
As if she hadn’t already explained, as if Balfour knew in his bones there was more to the tale.
“He was not honorable.”
A calculating coldness came into Balfour’s eyes, one that gratified Hannah even as it took her aback. “I have many connections on the American seaboard, Hannah Cooper. I can make sure this Widmore never has an opportunity to be dishonorable with a young lady again.”
The image of the knife flashed in Hannah’s mind, and just then, she was glad this earl was, among other things, also part savage. She adored him for it, in fact, and wished she were part savage too.
“His sins will catch up with him.”
If anything, this tired pronouncement made the chill in the earl’s eyes deepen. “I’d rather you allow me to catch up with him, Hannah Cooper, me and my knife and a quiet, dark alley. If the knife won’t do, there are herbs that can make a man wish he were dead and leave him—”
Hannah put a finger to his lips and barely, barely resisted the urge to run that finger over his eyebrows.
“That won’t be necessary. When I return to Boston, having failed so spectacularly in London, Widmore will have reason to gloat, and that will be his revenge upon me. He’ll trouble me no more.”
Balfour grabbed Hannah’s hand and kept it in his grasp, and abruptly, Hannah’s problem was not tight stays or a soaring temper.
“You could marry me, Hannah Cooper. If I’m to do my part for the earldom—and I shall—then I must marry. As my countess, you’d suffer no more Widmores bothering you, no more dodging your stepfather’s schemes, no more fretting over the fate of your fortune, and we could easily see your grandmother comfortably settled.”
He was talking himself into this rash offer, grabbing for reasons in support of it only as he glowered at his would-be intended and kept her hand captured in his own.
And Hannah loved him for it—purely, unabashedly loved him for his protectiveness and for the simple, honest workings of his honor. Her regard echoed the way old Sir Walter’s characters became impassioned in their high-flown romances, and would give her something to dream about when she was old.
As old as the grandmother, upon whom, Hannah would never turn her back.
Hannah touched her fingers to his lips. “Asher, please don’t. My grandmother is very old, and I would not abandon her to the tender mercies of strangers. As long as she must bide in America, my stepfather could find a way to hurt me through her. He’s a vengeful man, is Step-papa.”
Very vengeful. The temptation to blurt out just how vengeful was nigh overwhelming, but that admission would provoke Asher into a renewed proposal—of marriage or murder; they were equally endearing offers.
“So bring your grandmother here, Hannah. We’ll keep her in toasted bricks and possets and teach her to cheat at whist. We’ll give her great-grandchildren to tell her stories to.”
This was such a low, unforeseen blow, that Hannah wrapped her arms around her middle and leaned into the man beside her. “You must not say such things. Enid barely survived this crossing, and Grandmama is increasingly frail.”
His arm came around her, a welcome support that shifted to an embrace. His chin rested on her temple, and memories of a frigid night in a warm embrace swamped Hannah’s reason.
“Among my people, both my father’s people and my mother’s, the safety of a guest is a host’s sacred responsibility. I need a countess. You need to be free of your family’s scheming. We’d find our way well enough, Hannah.”
For mere instants, she let herself consider the bounty he laid at her feet. Asher MacGregor was wealthy, and in their short acquaintance, Hannah had found him honorable as well.
He was also practical, not easily shocked, no slave to fashionable Society’s dictates, and while not precisely handsome, his looks appealed to her strongly.
Then too, he made her feel safe, his scent was lovely, and he’d never once offered her a hint of disrespect.
“Finding their way” with him would not be a matter of furtive couplings three Sundays a month in the dark. He would not take a mistress without giving Hannah children as well, and he would never publicly shame his countess.
Before the list of his positive attributes could grow any longer, Hannah reminded them both why no such list would ever be long enough. “You are an earl. Your responsibilities lie here. My responsibilities lie in Boston. My grandmother buried her son there, and that means a great deal to her. She also feels a duty to mitigate the worst of my stepfather’s decisions affecting my mother and younger brothers.”
A large, warm male hand came up to cradle Hannah’s jaw, a caress that brought equal parts comfort and despair.
“She could live another ten years, Hannah, the only years when you might bear children. Will you martyr yourself to her cause so she can martyr herself to your mother’s?”
Plain, accurate speaking.
“If I must,” Hannah said, making no move to sit back. Her grandmother hugged her from time to time, in private, but nobody held her. Her brothers jostled against her getting into or out of coaches, Aunt Enid leaned on her—but an embrace like this, one that offered warmth and comfort, was more dear than rubies.
“You do not argue with me, Balfour. Have your manners asserted themselves belatedly?”
His hand stroked over her hair, wracking Hannah’s composure sorely. “I abandoned my family when the famine had decimated our resources. I had reasons, or so I told myself, and my brothers did not argue with me, but then I did not return to Scotland, and one year turned into five, and then it became prudent for me—in my narrow view of things—for Ian to take on the title. I was declared dead—I let my brothers and my sister think I was dead—rather than come home and see to my Scottish family.”
Within the circle of his embrace, Hannah sat back—and even that much was monumentally difficult. She took his point. “I cannot stay here, and you cannot leave your responsibilities behind to bide in Boston.”
And yet in the space of a few moments, it had become much harder for Hannah to contemplate that journey back across the Atlantic. Lest the return trip to Boston become impossible, Hannah rose and crossed to the wardrobe, extracting the pink slipper custom-made for her right foot. She brought it to him and put it into his hands.
“If you’ll excuse me, my lord, I have to check on Aunt Enid.”
His arguments had all apparently been silenced, and while that was a relief—the idea of becoming his countess was extravagant, generous, and ridiculous—it was also a profound grief.
He stuffed the slipper in his pocket, paused by the door, offered her a silent bow, and withdrew.
When the door clicked shut softly behind him, Hannah did not square her shoulders and cross the hallway to offer her aunt mendacious good cheer and false subservience. Hannah instead plunked herself down on the settee, helped herself to a sip of the earl’s cooling tea, and assumed his place on the sofa.
She took out the handkerchief he’d given her and permitted herself a few minutes of honest, bitter tears.
***
Asher made it no farther than the hallway, where he had to stop and lean his back against the paneled wall—only to hear Hannah weeping.
Red Indians were accused of having a cold demeanor, one roused only by the primitive emotions of lust and anger. The same could probably be said of the English, though they’d likely piss themselves before they admitted to lust in decent company.
Stoicism was not a lack of feeling, but an ability to control expression of that feeling. One learned stoicism in the cramped, smoky confines of a longhouse. One learned depths of reserve and patience, with oneself and others. The alternative was to brave brutal winters alone, facing impossible survival odds.
Monique had understood this, or at least accepted that it was so when Asher had explained it to her. Asher missed her with a jagged ache, missed the sound of her laughter and the way she’d been able to steady him with a look, with a touch. He missed the privilege of comforting her with his body and with his simple presence.
He was not in love with Hannah Cooper, and she was not in love with him. His offer of marriage had been impulsive and pragmatic, and her rejection of it should not have stung, particularly when she was right: he was bound to Scotland, while her obligations were in Boston.
And yet, Asher did not leave his place outside her door until the sound of her weeping had ceased.