Grace Burrowes - [MacGregor 02]

by Once Upon a Tartan

  Spathfoy had apparently given up declaiming the eternal verities in Her Majesty’s English in favor of awkward silences.

  When Ian made no effort to leap into the conversational breach, Spathfoy eventually deigned to speak. “And how does Miss Daniels fare?”

  As the closest thing Hester had to a head of her family, Ian allowed Spathfoy’s question was the right one to ask. Fee’s situation was not urgent. Ian had concluded that much when, two weeks after the child had returned home, no lawsuits had been filed, and no demands for settlement or surrender of the child had been received.

  “Hester is coping.”

  Spathfoy peered at the best damned whisky Ian would ever be privileged to serve, but took not a taste. “What the bloody hell does that mean?”

  “Hester’s in the garden, Spathfoy. I was supposed to use all manner of subterfuge to lure you there, as I’m sure my countess has employed with Hester, but it’s clear to me I’ll get nowhere negotiating with you until you’ve been put out of your misery.”

  Spathfoy set his drink aside. “It’s that obvious?”

  “For God’s sake, man. You’re pathetic. You can barely hold a conversation, you’re moony-eyed in the broad light of day, and you’ve not been keeping in good pasture, from the looks of you. You’re an affront to single manhood, a disgrace to the gender, and worse than all of that, you’re wasting some of the best potation ever brewed in Scotland.”

  “Suppose I am.” He tossed the drink back in a single swallow. “Fiona stays here, unless she wants to come terrorize the bachelors of Edinburgh when she’s older. Assuming my parents have found their common sense, my mother will be happy to sponsor her.”

  “As will my countess.”

  “We understand each other.”

  “We do.” Ian stuck out a hand and clapped Spathfoy on the shoulder. “Now quit prevaricating, laddie. Faint heart never won fair maid, and my son is likely to wake up at any minute.”

  “You’ll be watching, I take it?”

  “Somebody might have to drag you off the field if you bugger this up as badly as the English bugger up most of what counts in life.”

  Spathfoy smiled the smile of a hopelessly smitten man. “Half English, but also half Scottish.”

  “Then we’ve a wee glimmer of hope.” Ian spun him by the shoulders and shoved him toward the door.

  ***

  A rose garden past its peak was a sad place to spend a summer afternoon, but Hester hadn’t wanted to accompany Augusta up to the nursery, and the stables had to at least throw a saddle on a horse before a lady could safely ride home.

  Tea had been awful, full of knowing silences on Augusta’s part, and sidelong glances that alternated between sympathetic and speculative, while Hester stared at the carpet or out the window and tried to make conversation. If Aunt Ree hadn’t forced her to accept Augusta’s invitation—her summons—Hester would still be sitting by the burn, losing games of matches to Fee.

  In a few short weeks, Hester had learned the difference between a bad judgment—such as allowing Jasper Merriman liberties—and a terrible judgment, such as flinging Tiberius Flynn’s proposal back in his face. She hadn’t made him a proper apology, and that rankled almost as much as the relentless pain of his absence from her life.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d still be here.”

  The pleasurable shock of hearing Tiberius Flynn’s voice was quickly doused in the reality of seeing him standing on the garden path, looking mouthwateringly handsome and well turned out in his riding attire.

  “Tiberius.” She wanted to rise, to go to him, but dared not. She wanted to speak but couldn’t find the words.

  “May I sit?”

  She twitched her skirts aside in answer. “You’re here.” A stupid thing to say—an imbecilic thing to say.

  “Your cousin and her earl have connived for it to be so. I cannot regret their scheming. Hester, are you well?”

  What was he asking? She did not meet his gaze but hunched forward, the better to hide her blush. “I am in good health. You?” He looked thinner in the face to her.

  “I am…” He trailed off, and Hester could feel him taking in her features one by one. Tired eyes, hair not quite as neatly braided as it should have been, fingernails a trifle ragged. “I am going to be honest, Hester Daniels, for the rest of my life, with you, with all of those who matter, I am going to honest.”

  She said nothing. This sounded like the introduction to a painful admission, though—painful for her. For the pleasure of hearing him speak, she’d bear it. Somehow, she would bear it.

  “I am unhappy… no, I am miserable. Abjectly, profoundly, unendingly miserable. I have transgressed before a woman who deserved honesty and more from me, and now my life stretches out, decades of meaningless time… I am making a hash of this.”

  He scrubbed a hand over his face, and Hester dared a glance at him.

  “Whatever it is, Tiberius, I promise I will listen.”

  His expression was solemn, grave even. He had never looked more dear to her, or more distant. “Do you carry our child, Hester?”

  “That is of no moment.” Oh, how she wanted to shoot off the bench and hide in the stables. How she wanted to throw herself into his arms. “If you are here to propose marriage again, I will not have you trapped. I know what it is to be trapped, to feel as if duty and honor leave one no reasonable options.”

  He sighed—perhaps a sigh of relief, maybe of frustration.

  “What of love, Hester? Amo, amas, amat? You recall the word.”

  “Please, Tiberius, no Latin now.” But her heart had picked up the rhythm of his conjugation: I love, you love, he loves, we love, you love, they love… A steady, anxious tattoo that wanted desperately to hear what he’d say.

  He moved, and the loss of even his proximity threatened to choke her. “Don’t—” She reached out a hand to stay him, when he slid to his knees before her.

  “My great, impressive vocabulary fails me, Hester Daniels. My wits fail me; my reason fails me. I only know that I have met the love of my life, a woman who can help me to face life’s hurts and wrongs with courage, a woman in whose love and trust I can repose my entire heart, if she—if you—will have me.”

  “This is not—” She was supposed to tell him this was not necessary, this dramatic offer, but she saw that for the man she loved, when he was looking for a way to redeem what he believed to be his compromised honor, this was necessary.

  And when she had promised to listen, he’d given her back her own words.

  “Tiberius, I understand that you had no choice, that the people you love were in terrible, terrible difficulties.”

  “I am in terrible difficulties.” He looked like he’d say more, but then bowed his head. “I love you, Hester Daniels. When I think of you, I want children for us to love too. Swarms of them, all with red hair, to sing to the trees and scare the fish and cheat at cards with their uncles.”

  He fell silent while the images he spun took root in Hester’s mind and in her heart. She wanted him to go on, to give her more lovely words, more dreams built with his sonorous tones, but he folded forward, sliding his arms around her waist.

  “Please, Hester.” A simple word. A beautiful, honest, heartfelt word rendered profound by the hoarse plea in his voice.

  A single word that banished her misgivings, her self-doubt, her fear.

  “Please. Please will you marry me, will you be the mother of my children? I’ve already told Quinworth he can keep his damned title, and I think he and my mother have finally set each other to rights. We’ll bide here in Scotland. Just… please, marry me.”

  She grasped his hands, feeling as if every good, blessed thing in creation had been given to her with his words. “Yes, Tiberius. Yes, I will marry you. We’ll bide in Scotland, and we’ll have swarms of children, and they’ll have red hair, and we’ll
love them all, each and every one of them, and we’ll love each other, for I do love you, so very much.”

  He said nothing, not one word, but when she kissed him to solemnize her promises, she felt his body and his heart and every fiber of his being resonating with agreement.

  And as it turned out, Hester was right: they married; they bided in Scotland; they had swarms of red-haired children—the first showing up something less than nine months after the wedding. That one was joined shortly by others who sang to trees, scared every fish in the burn, and cheated at cards when playing with their uncles and with their many, many, many cousins.

  Read on for an excerpt from Grace Burrowes’s latest novella

  Mary Fran and Matthew

  Available now for download

  One glimpse of Lady Mary Frances MacGregor, and Matthew Daniels forgot all about the breathtaking Highland scenery and his misbegotten purpose for this visit to Aberdeenshire.

  “For the duration of your stay, our house is your house,” Lady Mary Frances said. She strode along the corridor of her brother’s country home with purpose, not with the mincing, corseted gait of a London lady, and she had music in her voice. Her walk held music as well, in the rhythm and sway of her hips, in the rustle of her petticoats and the crisp tattoo of her boots on the polished wood floors.

  Though what music had to do with anything, Matthew was at a loss to fathom. “The Spanish have a similar saying, my lady: mi casa es su casa.”

  “My house is your house.” She either guessed or made the translation easily. “You’ve been to Spain, then?”

  “In Her Majesty’s Army, one can travel a great deal.”

  A shadow creased her brow, quickly banished and replaced by a smile. “And now you’ve traveled to our doorstep. This is your room, Mr. Daniels, though we’ve others if you’d prefer a different view.”

  She preceded him into the room, leaving Matthew vaguely disconcerted. A proper young woman would not be alone with a gentleman in his private quarters, and Mary Frances MacGregor, being the daughter of an earl, was a lady even in the sense of having a courtesy title—though Matthew had never before met a lady with hair that lustrous shade of dark red, or a figure so perfectly designed to thwart a man’s gentlemanly self-restraint.

  “The view is quite acceptable.”

  The view was magnificent, including, as it did, the backside of Lady Mary Frances as she bent to struggle with a window sash. She was a substantial woman, both tall and well formed, and Matthew suspected her arms would be trim with muscle, not the smooth, pale appendages a gentleman might see at a London garden party.

  “Allow me.” He went to her side and jiggled the sash on its runners, hoisting the thing easily to allow in some fresh air.

  “The maids will close it by tea time,” Lady Mary Frances said. “The nights can be brisk, even in high summer. Will you be needing a bath before the evening meal?”

  She put the question casually—just a hostess inquiring after the welfare of a guest—but her gaze slid over him, a quick, assessing flick of green eyes bearing a hint of speculation. He might not fit in an old-fashioned bathing tub, was what the gaze said, nothing more.

  Nonetheless, he dearly wanted to get clean after long days of traveling. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble?”

  “No trouble at all. The bathing chamber is just down the hall to the left, the cistern is full, and the boilers have been going since noon.”

  She peered into the empty wardrobe, passing close enough to Matthew that he caught a whiff of something female… Flowers. Not roses, which were probably the only flower he knew by scent, but… fresher than roses, less cloying.

  “If you need anything to make your visit more enjoyable, Mr. Daniels, you have only to ask, and we’ll see to it. Highland hospitality isn’t just the stuff of legends.”

  “My thanks.”

  She frowned at the high four-poster and again walked past him, though this time she picked up the tartan draped across the foot of the bed. The daughter of an earl ought not to be fussing the blankets, but Matthew liked the sight of her, snapping out the red, white, and blue woolen blanket and giving it a good shake. Her attitude said that nothing, not dust, not visiting English, not a houseful of her oversized brothers, would daunt this woman.

  Without thinking, Matthew picked up the two corners of the blanket that had drifted to the blue-and-red tartan rug.

  “Will you be having other guests this summer?” He put the question to her as they stepped toward each other.

  “Likely not.” She grasped the corners he’d picked up, their fingers brushing.

  Matthew did not step back. Mary Frances MacGregor—Lady Mary Frances MacGregor—had freckles over the bridge of her nose. They were faint, even delicate, and they made her look younger. She could have powdered them into oblivion, but she hadn’t.

  “Mr. Daniels?” She gave the blanket a tug.

  Matthew moved back a single step. “You typically have only one set of guests each summer?” Whatever her scent, it wasn’t just floral. There was something spicy in it, fresh like cedar, but not quite cedar.

  “No, we usually have as many as the brief summers here permit, particularly once Her Majesty and His Highness are ensconced next door. But if your sister becomes engaged to my brother, there will be other matters to see to, won’t there?”

  This question, alluding to much and saying little, was accompanied by an expression that involved the corners of the lady’s lips turning up, and yet it wasn’t a smile.

  “I suppose there will.” Things like settling a portion of the considerable Daniels’s wealth into the impoverished Balfour coffers. Things like preparing for the wedding of a lowly English baron’s daughter to a Scottish earl.

  “We’ll gather in the parlor for drinks before the evening meal, Mr. Daniels. The parlor is directly beneath us, one floor down. Any footman can direct you.”

  She was insulting him. It took Matthew a moment to decipher this, and in the next moment, he realized the insult was not intentional. Some of the MacGregor’s “guests,” wealthy English wanting to boast of a visit to the Queen’s own piece of the Highlands, probably spent much of their stay too inebriated to navigate even the corridors of the earl’s country house.

  “I’ll find my way, though at some point, I would also like to be shown where the rest of my family is housed.”

  “Of course.” Another non-smile. She glanced around the room the way Matthew had seen generals look over the troops prior to a parade review, her lips flattening, her gaze seeking any detail out of order. “Until dinner, Mr. Daniels.”

  She bobbed a curtsy and whirled away before Matthew could even offer her a proper bow.

  ***

  “Miss MacGregor?”

  Mary Fran’s insides clenched at the sound of Baron Altsax’s voice. She pasted a smile on her face and tried to push aside the need to check on the dining room, the kitchen, and the ladies’ guest rooms—and the need to locate Fiona.

  The child tended to hide when a new batch of guests came to stay.

  “Baron, what may I do for you?”

  “I had a few questions, Miss MacGregor, if you wouldn’t mind?” He gestured to his bedroom, his smile suggesting he knew damned good and well the insult he did an earl’s daughter by referring to her as “Miss” anything. A double insult, in fact.

  Mary Fran did not follow the leering old buffoon into his room. Altsax’s son, the soft-spoken Mr. Daniels, would reconnoiter before he started bothering the help—though big, blond, good-looking young men seldom needed to bother the help—not so the skinny, pot-gutted old men. “I’m a bit behindhand, my lord. Was it something I could send a maid to tend to?”

  The baron gestured toward the drinking pitcher on the escritoire, while Mary Fran lingered at the threshold. “This water is not chilled, I’ve yet to see a tea service, and prolonged t
ravel by train can leave a man in need of something to wash the dust from his throat.”

  He arched one supercilious eyebrow, as if it took some subtle instinct to divine when an Englishman was whining for his whisky.

  “The maids will be along shortly with the tea service, my lord. You’ll find a decanter with some of our best libation on the nightstand, and I can send up some chilled water.” Because they at least had ice to spare in the Highlands.

  “See that you do.”

  Mary Fran tossed him a hint of a curtsy and left before he could make up more excuses to lure her into his room.

  The paying guests were a source of much-needed coin, but the summers were too short, and the expenses of running Balfour too great for paying guests alone to reverse the MacGregor family fortunes. The benefit of this situation was that no coin was on hand to dower Mary Fran, should some fool—brother, guest, or distant relation—take a notion she was again in want of a husband.

  “Mary Fran, for God’s sake slow down.” She’d been so lost in thought she hadn’t realized her brother Ian had approached her from the top of the stairs. “Where are you churning off to in such high dudgeon? Con and Gil sent me to fetch you to the family parlor for a wee dram.”

  Ian’s gaze was weary and concerned, the same as Con or Gil’s would have been, though Ian, as the oldest, was the weariest and the most concerned—also the one willing to marry Altsax’s featherbrained daughter just so Fiona might someday have a decent dowry.

  “I have to check on the kitchens, Ian, and make sure that dimwitted Hetta McKinley didn’t forget the butter dishes again, and Eustace Miller has been lurking on the maids’ stairway so he can make calf’s eyes at—”

  “Come, you.” Ian tucked her hand over his arm. “You deserve a few minutes with family more than the maids need to be protected from Eustace Miller’s calf eyes. Let the maids have some fun, and let yourself take five minutes to catch your breath. Go change into your finery and meet us in the family parlor. I’ll need your feminine perspective if I’m to coax Altsax’s daughter up the church aisle.”