“Because they aren’t her relatives.” Just like that she was off-script. How he riled her! “What is this all about? I’m here for a day and will be gone tomorrow. Does the rest of it matter?”
Tris studied her with a brooding expression. “Henry has been my closest friend since my childhood. Other than my family, I have a greater care for him than any other.”
In her time, the gist of those words would have earned a certain assumption regarding his sexual orientation. Since his gaze kept drifting downward as if of its own will, she expected that wasn’t the case. He was here to protect his best bro. Against her. She felt herself softening. “I’m not here to cause Henry any harm. I assure you. My sole interest is in keeping him safe.”
“Aye, so you said.” He leapt on the subject. “How did you know?”
Regretting the opening she’d given him, Brontë bit her lip. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come, Miss Hughes, don’t play the ingenue with me. You insinuated this morning that you vandalized our vehicles then in order to stop us from boarding the Titanic and finding our graves at the bottom of the North Atlantic.”
“Did I?” she murmured innocently.
“You said and I quote ‘You’re welcome.’”
She held her tongue.
“You arrive here minutes before what might have been a horrific accident,” he continued. “Saying bluntly in the instant before it happened that you’d come to save him. Again.”
Gnawing her bottom lip, she stared steadily over his shoulder at an exquisite oil landscape on the wall. She really shouldn’t have stayed. With the single exception of leaping into the abyss to save Henry, a lifetime of impulsive decisions had never gone well for her. This one wasn’t going to be any different. Backed into a corner with nowhere to run. No truth she could provide that would adequately satisfy him.
“Won’t you allow me the courtesy of an answer?”
Meeting his penetrating gaze once more, she sighed. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“Hazel has yet to consider the improbable coincidence of your timely intervention and Henry is content not to pursue the matter further. I, on the other hand, cannot. You are a puzzle, Miss Hughes. One I mean to solve.” His eyes searched hers for a moment before a frown turned his lips downward. “Are you even a cousin?” He shook his head. “When I initially met you, I noted that you seemed familiar to me. Now that it’s been pointed out, I can see the resemblance between you and Lady Burnham.”
“We are related,” she assured him honestly. “Distantly.”
“One truth. Yet I’d wager you won’t provide me the other answers I’m looking for, will you?”
“Highly unlikely.”
“Are you a clairvoyant?”
Why hadn’t she thought of that before? It was far simpler than the truth. “Sure, let’s go with that.”
Though he’d been the one to present the option, Tris looked even more disgruntled and disbelieving than before. He shifted his gaze to the glass-paned French doors on the far side of the room. After a few seconds, Brontë did the same, noting the streaks of color in the twilight sky. She’d stood on the tiny Juliet balcony outside those doors earlier, looking out over the Edinburgh skyline beyond… and at the circular park and street below where she’d saved Henry. The triumph she’d known then hadn’t carried a hint of the unease that filled her now.
What more could she say? A part of her wished she could tell him everything and ease his suspicions. She squashed the whim as visions of insane asylums as they were portrayed in old movies danced through her mind. Straitjackets and mad scientists in white coats with a tendency toward electric shock treatments. Unsanitary cells with leather restraints. Long hallways with flickering lights. Crazed laughter ringing down the halls…
“The accounts of the sinking by the Titanic survivors have haunted me over the past two years.”
His thoughts had deviated in a far different direction than hers. Both hands crossed over the top of his walking stick standing between his knees, he continued to look out the window.
The soft confession vanquished the imagery of mental institutions but raised a hundred more poignant. “I know,” she whispered with a little shiver. “The sinking has always struck a chord with me as well. Perhaps because He…my grandfather was one of those lost in the tragedy.”
He glanced at her. “Was he? I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” She couldn’t stop herself from adding, “I’ve seen the mov…film footage of the ship before it departed and seen pictures of the interior. There are memoirs from those who survived the sinking that send waves of sadness through me when I read them. And the exhibition of the arti —”
Brontë cut herself off, cursing herself for her loose tongue. This Tris — reflective and sympathetic — was surprisingly easy to be honest with, but she couldn’t let that happen. Hopefully he wouldn’t latch on to that last bit like a rabid dog.
Thankfully, he seemed to be dwelling on the catastrophe rather than the minutia of her words. He nodded slowly, his gaze upon her yet far away. “I’ve oft felt as though I cheated Fate and it will one day have its way with me to balance the scales. As it nearly did with Henry today.”
The thought made her stomach roll. “I sincerely hope that’s not the case.”
He jerked his head abruptly as if to shake away the maudlin thought. “However you knew, I suppose I must tender my sincere thanks for your intervention as well.”
“I’m glad I was able to help.”
“And that is all you have to offer on the subject?”
“It is all I can,” she told him. “Trust me, you’ll be happier without the details.”
Tris grunted his acceptance of her reassurance. He stood and held out a hand. “We should join the others downstairs. They’ll be waiting.”
With a nod, Brontë pushed out of the chair.
“Allow me.”
“Thanks, I got it.”
He caught her hand. “I insist.”
It was the first time he’d touched her other than to lift her off the ground or prevent her from hitting it. Even though they both wore gloves, the simple glide of his fingertips across her palm sent a shiver of awareness through her. That wasn’t good. In fact, it was the opposite of good.
She rose, standing closer to him than she would have liked. Cognizant, once again, not of the challenge he presented to her rationalization for being there, but of his masculine appeal.
“I can get out of a chair by myself, you know.” The husky retort held none of the feminist censure she’d intended.
“I’m sure ye can, but why deny myself the pleasure?” His soft brogue grew thicker than it had been earlier. The delicious burr chased the shiver down her spine and into a little shudder.
This was her cousin, she reminded herself, making all these thoughts a big no-no. Another twelve hours and he’d be nothing more than a name in a diary once again.
“Shall we go?” She inched away, putting space and sanity between them. “You said the others are waiting, right?”
Tris nodded and crooked an arm toward her. Brontë stared at it, torn between taking it for two vastly different reasons. The least of which included further female outrage. “I can walk by myself.”
“Contrary to what aspects of me you’ve been witness to, I am a gentleman.” He took her hand and threaded it through his arm before leading her toward the door. “It is my duty to assist a lady when needed.”
“When needed being the key words there,” she retorted, resisting the urge to curl her fingers into the thick muscles of his bicep. “I’m perfectly capable.”
“I’m sure ye are.” His brogue deepened again before he cleared his throat. “Then allow me to reiterate the pleasure ye would deny me in refusing my escort.”
He swept her down the stairs, holding her steady when the heavy beaded overdress caught on her heel and she stumbled. Fate proving his point? Or proving that there were
utilitarian reasons fashions had shifted over the hundred years between them?
Hazel and Henry awaited them in the foyer, the picture of a young wealthy couple in their formal wear. Henry in a tuxedo similar to Tris’s and Hazel in a frothy gown comprised of layers of peach chiffon and ivory lace. Both complimented her appearance and Hazel gushed on her excitement for the evening ahead. Persisting in playing the gentleman, Tris retrieved a satin-lined fur stole from a waiting footman and slipped it around her shoulders. Then took a black top hat and donned it at a rakish angle. He offered his arm yet again as they trailed the couple out the door.
A car waited at the curb, rear doors open and attended by a uniformed driver.
“Recognize it?” Tris bent his head to whisper close to her ear. “Or does having four fully inflated tires make it difficult to identify?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
His warm chuckle caressed her bare neck and her hand twitched with the urge to bat him away. Not because he annoyed her.
Quite the opposite.
She hadn’t anticipated any of this, to be sure, but he was a particularly unexpected bump in the time travel road.
Henry assisted Hazel into the rear seat then turned to offer Brontë a hand. With a smile, she gathered up her long skirts and climbed onto the high running-board before stepping into the boxy vehicle to sit by Hazel.
“I’ll ride up front with Ambrose, Henry,” Tris offered.
“Nonsense,” Henry responded. “From the front I can turn to look upon my bonny wife more freely. You take the back.”
Though he looked prepared to argue, Tris climbed in next to Brontë. With the three of them across, it was a tight fit, leaving her with no options in the middle but to cozy up to them both.
“What happened to that sporty little two-seater you used to have?” she asked him to distract herself from the press of his lean body along hers.
His lips quirked. “How is it you know of my Bearcat, Miss Hughes?”
As if she’d bite when he knew full well she had no intention of bringing up or confessing her past sins. Casting about for another topic, she latched again on one of Hazel’s known favorites as the car jerked into motion. “I forgot to ask earlier about how the two of you met. According to family lore, it was love at first sight.”
The couple in question shared a look and burst into laughter. Though separated by the seat, they might as well have been holding hands for the strength of the connection between them. A pang of envy struck her heart. What would it be like to be loved like that? Treasured. As Donell had said, not merely a prize but a gift?
“Hardly love at first sight.” Henry’s chuckled response covered Brontë’s wistful sigh.
“Henry and I met some years before I was out,” Hazel added.
“Out?” Obviously, she didn’t mean out of the closet.
“In Society,” Hazel clarified. “Though it was love at first sight for me, I daresay. Henry came to New York with Tris and our cousin, Laurie Ashley-Cooper, after they left Cambridge. I fell quite in love in an instant. Regrettably, I was not yet fifteen and rather awkward at that point. I may have gushed to an unseemly extent as well.” The pair gazed lovingly at one another again. “It was some years before I saw him again. Tris and Laurie visited each year to visit with Mama and Papa…”
“And to assist Mrs. Preston in her business dealings,” Henry added.
Hazel nodded. “Each time I hoped Henry would join them again, but he never did.”
“When was his turn?” Brontë asked as they wound through the now familiar route between Moray Place and the Lyceum at a pace not terribly dissimilar to her walking gait. “To fall in love with you, that is?”
A radiant smile graced Hazel’s face. “I forced Mama and Papa to bring me with them when they came over for Tris’s sister’s wedding three years later. He fell harder than I then.”
“A kind way to say that I literally fell when I saw her,” Henry put in.
“He tripped over his own two feet and had to pick himself… and his jaw off the floor. It was a rather lovely moment for me,” Hazel confessed quietly into her ear. “He then proceeded to court me with unseemly fervor, but I’d have none of it. At first, that is.”
“Payback can be such a —” Brontë bit back the word she’d intended to say. Watching and weighing each word was far more difficult than she’d imagined. This was why she’d never gone into acting. “Bother,” she finished.
“Indeed. I relented and he courted me for the entire journey, though when the time came for us to depart and he had yet to declare himself. I confess I was a trifle worried until he came charging into the train station and carried me off.” Hazel grinned. “That too was a lovely moment.”
Brontë nodded. She’d bet it was. Hazel had literally been swept off her feet by the man she loved. Grand gestures were a lost art.
“It’s all thanks to Tris,” Henry said over his shoulder as they slowed into the long queue of cars waiting to disembark in front of the theater. “He’s the one who helped me see the light before it was too late.”
They all turned to him. and Tris shrugged modestly. “He was being a fool.”
“And you were being a good friend,” Henry responded.
Tris lifted his shoulder again, clearly uncomfortable with the praise.
She wasn’t sure why, but Brontë felt compelled to save him with another change of subject. “How did you become friends?”
“Don’t you already know?” Tris asked. “Given your intimate knowledge of family lore?”
She swore she could see the air quotes hanging around the last two words. Whatever else, he didn’t quite believe her. Or trust her.
“I’m afraid the depth of my knowledge begins and ends with Hazel’s life.”
“Tris lives two doors down in number twenty-five,” Henry told her. “We’ve known each other since we were wee lads.”
“Oh. That’s nice.” Brontë looked between them. “Fortunate for you or you never would have met Hazel.”
Tris scoffed at that. “Better to thank my Uncle Jamie for choosing to sow his oats on American soil. Wedding Hazy’s mother and bringing her children into the MacKintosh clan was the true key to them meeting.”
The car inched forward about as fast as Brontë’s mind was functioning just then. She blinked. “Umm, what?”
Hazel nodded. “That’s true, though I don’t care for the vulgarity of your reference, Tris,” she chided. “Sowing oats, indeed!”
A frown of confusion furrowed Brontë’s forehead. “Wait. I feel like I’m missing something here.”
Hazel cocked her head. “Surely you’re aware my mother was wed prior to her marriage to James MacKintosh?”
“You always refer to him as Papa, so I assumed…”
Hazel’s delicate laughter swept over her. “Oh, no, dear. He’s my step-father technically speaking. In any case, I was quite young when they wed and have always referred to him as my papa.”
Ambrose brought the car to a halt in front of the theater. Tris opened the door and leapt out, extending his hand. “Allow me.”
“I’ve got it. Thanks.”
“I’m sure you do,” he countered smoothly.
He took her hand and a prickle of awareness rushed up her arm, did a summersault somewhere in the region of her heart before spiraling downward.
Not a cousin by blood. Only marriage.
She stepped over the high bumper and on to the cobbled street close to him. His breath teased at the fine hairs of her temples. His body heat radiated out, warming her more than the flush of attraction did already. All decked out in formal wear, he was devastating to the senses. Darcy meets Connery’s Bond. Dark tousled hair that curled around his ears earlier, was combed back now and he was freshly shaven. Outward formality and restrained urbanity veiled the primal beast inside.
At least she assumed there was a beast inside. He watched her intently, all that moody turmoil and sporadic fire in his eyes hinted that t
he passionate temper she’d gotten a glimpse of last time she was here, was still in there.
“Did I mention how verra fetching ye look this evening?”
Her inner goddess quivered as he kissed her hand, the merest brush of his lips on her fingers.
“You’re not bad yourself, Mr. MacKintosh.”
He raised a brow at the admission, elevating his already wicked good looks. Attraction inched toward desire. Brontë delivered a stern inward scolding. Whatever relation she had with him, it was entirely irrelevant. Historically hot or not, the sexist overtone of some of his comments — appropriate to the era or not — aggravated her twenty-first century sensibilities. More importantly, he was an overall skeptic of her and her two appearances at Moray Place. Time spent with him would do nothing more productive than unravel her tenuous tales.
No matter how Aila liked to tease, he wasn’t her trickle-down man. Brontë needed to remember that and not entangle herself in the past more than she already had. She was here for one night and one night only. Hardly long enough to entertain the thought that anything might come of the attraction…very well, blistering attraction she felt for him.
He offered her his arm. An apple in the garden of Eden.
Chapter 10
Tris didn’t know what to make of Brontë Hughes. For all the slight similarities between her and Hazel, there was a pronounced difference. While Miss Hughes appeared guileless with those big, unusually colored eyes, Hazel actually was. To be fair, Brontë’s professed intentions to ensure the wellbeing of his friend rang true. That fact notwithstanding, she fairly reeked of artifice and deceit in her refusal to answer for her well-timed appearance and precognition of the same events while reacting even more peculiarly to the introduction of normal facts of life, such as the recent declaration of war upon Germany.
There was far more to her than met the eye. A pit of lies if he wasn’t mistaken. His curiosity reached a boiling point where curbing the temptation to literally shake the answers from her had become most trying.
Then there were other temptations.
The ones he firmly chastised himself to ignore.
A Scot to Remember (Something About a Highlander Book 1) Page 9
