Once Again, My Laird

by Angeline Fortin

  She seemed a bit apprehensive. Nervous, maybe? He took a measure of comfort in knowing he wasn’t the only one. Coll hadn’t been far off the mark. Truth be known, he was a bit shoogly in his boots. Mal tugged at the ends of his sleeves again. Bugger it, this wasn’t like him at all. Innocent young misses had never before snagged his interest. No woman ever rattled him. Even more, their opinion of him had never held much sway.

  Now, strangely enough, he found the opinion of this wee chit mattered significantly. Whilst he didn’t care to examine too deeply the reasons why, such instantaneous devotion bothered him. He was a mere five and twenty years, too young to consider any permanent entanglement in the midst of his salad days. On top of that, his unit would be in Bath for a month or so at most. There was no time for anything beyond flirtation whether he had the inclination to explore something more or not.

  Which he did not.

  Georgie performed a slow pirouette as she looked about, providing a pleasing view of her dainty ears and the pearl earbobs dangling from them. The long length of her slender neck encircled by a single strand of matching pearls. Farther down, her full breasts strained against her bodice, prompting all sorts of visions in his mind that would most likely shock the young, white-clad debutante if she could see them.

  Och, what was he thinking? She wasn’t at all the sort of woman he usually pursued. She was too innocent, too inexperienced. The mere sight of the bare flesh of his hand might send her into a swoon. It would be best if he walked away now.

  He should…

  Aw, bluidy hell.

  * * *

  “He’s leaving,” Georgiana cried in dismay as she whirled around and discovered Mal standing a dozen paces behind her. Or rather, pivoting on his heel to walk away from her.

  Without his tall hat, the candlelight shone on his mahogany hair, revealing each dip and wave. He still wore his red jacket but had forgone his kilt in favor of white trousers and shiny black boots. Why make an effort only to leave now?

  She clung to her friend’s hands as Mal approached a group of senior officers gathered at the tea table. He offered them a salute and a bow before they fell into conversation.

  “Oh, Bernie, what should I do? Pursue him? Heavens, that would be too bold.”

  “And asking him here wasn’t?”

  “I didn’t…oh, Bernie, please! What should I do? I cou—Wait. Oh, wait. Is he…?”

  “Your bout of nerves has been unfounded,” Bernie teased quietly. “Looks like he likes you after all.”

  Georgiana might have swatted her friend for the teasing jibe but her hands were wrung tightly together as she watched Mal approach again, this time in the company of two older men.

  Both of her acquaintance.

  “Lady Georgiana.” A distinguished colonel with a thick head of white hair and a long mustache stopped before her and bowed deeply.

  “Colonel Abernathy, what a pleasure to see you.” Georgiana offered her hand.

  He kissed it lightly and gave Bernie the same courtesy. “Miss Gregson.”

  Bernie bobbed a wordless curtsey.

  The other officer, Major Lewis, offered the same greetings, which Georgiana returned as politely as possible, all the while watching Mal with wide eyes. Sensing her impatience, he grinned and gave a quick wink.

  “Is your father here this evening?” Abernathy asked when the round of pleasantries was completed.

  “I’m sorry, he is not. I’m here with Lady Gregson tonight.” Bernie’s mother had taken on the burden of acting as Georgiana’s chaperone and sponsor since her debut. “He will regret missing you,” she added, tearing her gaping stare away from Mal to smile at the Colonel. “Should I pass a message for you?”

  Abernathy cast a hesitant look between her and the lieutenant, clearing his throat as he probably read their eagerness with some accuracy. “Er, well then, ladies, may I present Lieutenant Malcolm MacKintosh of the 42nd Royal Highlanders under General Wade. Lieutenant, it’s my honor to introduce Lady Georgiana Wharton, daughter of the Duke of Wharton, and Miss Bernice Gregson, daughter of Lord and Lady Gregson.”

  Mal appeared nonplussed for a moment before he recovered and bowed low before them. Georgiana held out her gloved hand, doing her best to suppress her trembling. He took it, curling his fingers around hers before kissing it gently.

  “My lady, may I say how verra glad I am for that most proper introduction?”

  Then he lifted his beguiling brown eyes and grinned at her quite wickedly and Georgiana knew—despite the appalling weakness in her knees, the faintness in her heart—that she’d never felt so superb in her entire life.

  Chapter Four

  Grosvenor Square, London

  Early June 1821

  “Then he asked me to dance.” Georgiana concluded a highly abridged version of that transformative day when she’d first laid eyes on Mal with an indifferent shrug.

  “A waltz?”

  “No, of course not. It wasn’t as accepted then as it is now and most certainly not for a young debutante,” she reminded her daughter. “It was a cotillion. The Gallini Allemande.”

  “That’s rather specific. You remember it so clearly?”

  “I have a good memory for many things.”

  Maisie nodded with a knowing smirk. “You saw him again, obviously.”

  “Yes.” She withdrew a pressed rose from the box her daughter gestured to, idly twirling it between her fingers. “He came calling the next day.” A proper fifteen-minute call where he’d been able to do little more than make his greetings and meet her father. “I also came upon him again”—and not at all by chance—“walking my dog along the Royal Avenue in Barton Fields from time to time.”

  He’d worn his kilted uniform again. Virtually identical yet somehow more handsome than he’d been the day they’d met. He greeted her dog with a friendly scratch to both ears and belly, but conversely declared her fluffy, fashionable Pomeranian and her name, Bluebell, as ridiculous as the bonnet Georgiana had worn before. With that same teasing tone, he’d complimented the more sedate hat she’d purposefully chosen to wear that day.

  He’d generally been like that. Lighthearted, teasing. Clever and droll.

  “Occasionally I’d see him at various literary salons about town, or the bookstore. He was quite well read, though he preferred satire and poetry to fiction.”

  “Yes, I can see that.”

  While Georgiana was lost in her reveries, Maisie had worked her way through several more envelopes. “This one is quite lovely. So much time has passed/ I’d almost given up hope/ of e’er finding you/ or e’en coming close. How I would have missed/ that sparkle in your eyes/ the gentle touch of your hand/ the warmth of your smile. He must have had you all aflutter, Mama.”

  Aching, bittersweet, clenched her heart and stole her breath. What an understatement. There’d been fluttering aplenty, to be sure, along with giddiness, but it was the yearning of something she hadn’t quite understood at the time that sent tingling tendrils through her veins. She understood it now and the mere thought of him had a similar effect. Placing the flower back in the box, she stroked a fingertip down the green satin ribbon and ran it through her fingers. Yes, he’d tutored her well in passion.

  Releasing a tremulous sigh, she gathered the scattered letters and put them back in the box. “Perhaps it would be best if you didn’t read them anymore.”

  Mal’s letters were not all as tamely worded as the ones Maisie had opened. It wouldn’t do for her to come across one with more risqué subject matter.

  “But they’re so touching,” her daughter protested. “Was he as eloquent in speech as he was with a pen?”

  After placing the ribbon on top of the envelopes, Georgiana climbed to her feet and carried it to another crate containing a few of her more personal items. She shouldn’t have told Maisie as much as she had about Mal. Now that she’d begun, however, she was having a more difficult time putting the memories away than boxing the letters.

  “Ironicall
y, he was much more plain-spoken when we talked, but excellent company nonetheless. We walked in the park for hours at a time or ride. He was a superb horseman.”

  “You had that in common.”

  And so much more.

  “With such feelings as expressed in those letters, you must have gotten to know him well and spent a lot of time together.”

  “Yes, we met whenever I could…” Georgiana bit back the rest.

  Whenever I could sneak out to meet him.

  “Were you desperately in love?”

  The question stalled her thoughts.

  “Mama?”

  “Yes.” The word escaped, a wisp of a whisper. Truth torn from her soul. Though she’d never thought the word love fully encompassed the enormity of her emotions. She wrung her hands in an effort to restrain herself from burying her face in them.

  “I don’t understand. If you loved him why did you not marry him instead of Father?” Maisie gasped in horror. “Did he not ask you?”

  “He did,” came Georgiana’s soft admission.

  “Why ever wouldn’t you marry him then?”

  Georgiana put the lid on the crate, blocking the box of letters from sight. Wishing it might be so easy to banish the agony renewed by the flood of memories the letters released.

  “Darling, please…”

  “Mama!”

  “My father did not approve of him. It’s as simple as that.”

  Mal had called on her as proper society dictated many times, yet her father hadn’t approved of his suit. He’d been so adamant that she not encourage him, she’d been left with no choice but to resort to subterfuge if she wanted to see Mal.

  And she wanted…no, needed to see him. Like she needed the air to breathe.

  “Why?”

  “Mal…Mal was a third son. A soldier. Nothing.”

  Nothing more than the man who’d held her heart. A circumstance that hadn’t swayed her father’s opinion in the matter of her marriage one iota.

  “And your Mal?” Maisie cocked her head, winding that lock of hair around her finger again. “Did he not fight for you?”

  A knot of pain centered in Georgiana’s chest. Taking measured breaths, she concentrated on banishing the heartache. Failing, as she had each time she’d thought of him over the years.

  “His regiment was called away shortly after that. He left Bath to fight in the Mediterranean. I never saw him again.”

  “Oh, Mama,” Maisie cried. “Are you all right? I didn’t mean to distress you.”

  Georgiana forced a shrug of dismissal. “I’m fine, dear. It’s fine.”

  “Plainly, it is not. You’re fairly despondent.” Her daughter sighed mournfully and climbed to her feet. “It’s all so tragic.”

  Yes, it was. Yet, there was no point in lamenting the past again now. She’d suffered more than enough grief over the matter. Mulled it over for years after the fact, letting guilt, resentment, and heartbreak hold sway over her life. Following her final argument with her father—the tears, the curses, and his steadfast rejection—she never spoke to her sire again. Not when he escorted her up the aisle at her wedding to Anthony Egerton, the future Duke of Bridgewater. Not even when he’d begged her to come to his deathbed years later. He was gone, along with her resentment, although it’d faded too late to make amends.

  Bridgewater was gone now, too. Two years past. He’d been a stranger when he’d been proclaimed her husband, a man twenty years her senior. She’d held her father’s bullish despotism against her husband for a long time. But over the years of their marriage, he’d become a friend. She’d grown to care for him deeply.

  No, the time for misery and resentment was long past.

  The past was where it belonged, but her daughter refused to let it go.

  “You’ve longed for him.” Maisie circled the room in a dramatic whirl, creating a scenario of Georgiana’s past from her own melodramatic soul. “Oh, Mama! All this time.”

  For a woman spontaneously crafting some sort of fiction in her mind, her daughter was rather spot on in her assessment, but she couldn’t let Maisie’s imagination go too far.

  “What nonsense, Maisie. I’ve been satisfied with my life.” She turned her attention to her dressing table, burying her perfume bottles in a straw-filled crate that’d been brought to her chamber for that purpose. “I wouldn’t change a single thing. I had a long, contented marriage to your father, and I’ve you and David to show for it, haven’t I?”

  Maisie, as she so often was, was deaf to logic. She was twisting her hair again. Never a good sign. “Imagine. All this time, you’ve pined for your lost love.”

  “Maisie. Honestly, you have been reading too many novels.”

  “I know just the thing. You should find him!”

  Georgiana froze; a bottle slipped from her hands and landed with a solid thud on the carpet. “What? No!”

  Bending, she retrieved the perfume, thankful it hadn’t broken, and rose to find her daughter close by. A moment later, she was engulfed in a tight embrace.

  “Oh, you should.” Maisie released her. Her pale cheeks pink with enthusiasm and green eyes dancing with delight, she clasped Georgiana’s hands excitedly. “We should. It shouldn’t be difficult to find him. My husband works at the War Office, does he not? What an adventure it will be.”

  “Darling, no,” Georgiana said more calmly. “I didn’t tell you all this to prompt such a rash and utterly ludicrous notion. I am content to let the past remain just that.”

  “But with Father gone and your mourning period complete, there’s no reason you cannot marry again,” her daughter argued. “In fact, it makes perfect sense, what with me being wed and David ready to go it alone. And why not to your long-lost love?”

  Georgiana twisted the neck of the perfume bottle in her hands, striving to remain composed. “Maisie, please let the matter lie.”

  “How can I, Mama? When the very idea is so utterly romantic and…and perfect.” Maisie floated around the room again. “Think how wonderful it will be. We’ll find your lost love and you’ll…you’ll…”

  “Yes, darling, please do continue.” She set the bottle on her dressing table with a punctuated thunk, making no effort to soften the bite of sarcasm in the words. “I’ll what? Fall at his feet? Or, no, better yet, he’ll fall at mine. And what? Declare how he’s yearned for me all this time? Life is not a work of fanciful fiction.”

  Maisie’s face fell, her lips a pout of displeasure. “But what if he did, Mama?”

  What if he did.

  She tried to picture Malcolm MacKintosh prostrate at her feet, and a tug of reluctant amusement lifted her lips. “He wasn’t the sort, darling. May we leave it at that?”

  “Oh, no, Mama. I don’t think we can.”

  Stubborn, willful. Georgiana could only hope her daughter’s trip to Brighton for the remainder of the summer would wash away any further thoughts on the matter.

  She didn’t want to plunge any deeper into the past. They were the most painful days of her life.

  Chapter Five

  Bath, England

  Late March 1800

  These were the most wonderful days of her life.

  Georgiana hummed the lively tune that had accompanied her dance with Mal at the previous night’s Dress Ball at the Assembly Hall. They’d played a Scotch reel to mark the Scot’s Guard’s prolonged presence in town and they’d danced the Strip the Willow. The dance was an energetic one with much bouncing and changing of partners, but Mal squeezed her hands as they passed one another and winked behind the backs of the other dancers. Afterward, he escorted her to the refreshment table so they might catch their breath following such vigorous exercise.

  But she could never seem to do so when she was with him.

  Everything about him left her breathless and off kilter. His wit and banter. The way her hand tingled when he held it. Most especially, the look that came to his eye when the humor faded. The amber color would darken to a shade deeper than her morning choco
late, swirl with the same warmth. The knotted tension it inspired in her belly had caused her some trepidation at first. It sent shivers through her body, gooseflesh racing down her arms, yet left her overheated and faint. Nervous and excited at the same time. She didn’t quite know what to make of the contradictory feelings. If it were love, it was a far more nauseating condition than she’d been led to expect.

  Crowley, her mottled gray Arabian, nudged her shoulder hard enough to send her tottering off to the side like a drunken soldier, and she laughed.

  “I know, I know, Crowley. You’d rather I be riding you instead of walking.”

  They’d ridden down the Royal Lane through Barton Field one time so far that morning, and that at a sedate trot, before she’d dismounted and opted to walk for a while. “I don’t want either of us to get injured over my wandering mind this morning, you see? You’re a handful as you well know and require my full attention. If it makes you feel any better, Jimmy isn’t too pleased either,” she added, referring to her groom who gloomily plodded along on his pony far behind them. Both Crowley and Jimmy preferred an invigorating run over a placid walk any day.

  “Give me a moment or two to collect myself, then I’ll mount up again. We could even take a gallop or two when no one is watching. What do you think?”

  “Do ye expect the beast to answer ye, lass?”

  Georgiana looked up to find Mal leaning back against a tree a few yards ahead of her. Much as he’d been when she’d met him the Friday morning after their first dance more than a week past. Today, as if reading her mind, he was dressed for riding in a dark burgundy jacket and tight-fitting buckskins tucked into tall black boots. The reins of the chestnut Thoroughbred grazing nearby were looped loosely around his hand. He pushed away from the tree, removed his hat, and swept a deep bow. Proper, but for the wicked grin on his face.

  The entire picture had her breathless and distracted all over again. As the days passed, she’d come to savor the sensation. And anticipate the giddiness he provoked each time he neared. And revel in it, as she did now.