Ian looped the reins over Hannibal’s head, and Con fell in step beside them as they walked into the barn. “I can put him up for you.”
“I’ll tend to my own mount, Brother. You’re up early.”
Con’s lips thinned. “The upcoming shoot means the chores will back up for a couple of days.”
The shoot and the dress ball they held the night before. The local gentry came by for the free food and the dancing. The English in the area showed up in hopes the royal neighbors might put in an appearance, which they had at least once a year.
“The deer herd can use thinning,” Ian said, unbuckling the gelding’s girth. “And the meat never goes to waste.” Nor the hide, nor the bones, nor the antlers, even.
“We’re going to waste.” Con muttered that sentiment, prompting Ian to peer at his brother over the horse’s back.
“Care to explain yourself, baby brother?”
“This engagement, Ian. I’m having second thoughts.”
Ian hefted the saddle off Hannibal’s back and took it to the saddle room lest he shout his agreement. “You’re not the one who’ll be marching up the aisle in full dress regalia, but say on. If you’ve some other way to fatten our coffers, I’m all ears.”
“We don’t need to fatten them this way,” Con said, scowling at the barn floor. “We’re managing, Ian, and have you thought about what this is like for Genie?”
Ian’s older-brother instincts twitched to life. Con had an agenda here, but Ian was going to be all damned day figuring out what it was. “If I have to, I will make Genie Daniels as congenial and considerate a husband as anybody could, Connor MacGregor.”
If he had to, which he would not. Somehow, he would not.
“But you don’t love her. You’re not choosing her, you’re choosing her money.”
Ian snatched a brush down from a peg. “And she would be choosing my title, as if I were some damned breeding bull guaranteed to throw broad quarters on all the heifers my own has been paid for me to service. Find me a hoof pick.”
Con pulled one from his pocket and bent to lift one of Hannibal’s sturdy forelegs.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this, Ian. Have you considered Genie might love another?”
“Yes, Connor. Yes, I have, and I have considered that I might love another given the damned chance, none of which will feed the doddies next winter or put a decent portion in Fee’s pretty little hands.”
Connor set the first hoof down and straightened to glare at Ian over the horse’s neck. “The haying this year is the best we’ve seen since the famine, and that whisky you found in the back cellars is worth its weight in gold. If we encounter a hardship, we’ve only to apply to the earldom’s trustees and—”
“Fenmore will expire of glee should we be reduced to begging for our own money, most of which I’m told is perpetually tied up in ‘long term investments.’ Give me that hoof pick.”
Connor passed it over, trading Ian for the brush. “Gil said you want us both to read the settlements.”
“I do. They’re sitting in plain view on my desk. I expect Daniels will be having a look at them before we’re done.” Ian answered easily but suspected Connor was simply angling around the topic to strike again from a different vantage. The urge to burden his brother with confidences and confessions was tearing at Ian’s soul, so he turned the conversation to a different topic. “I smell a rat in the baron’s financial situation, one he’s desperate for me not to find.”
“Which means you’re determined to find it. Pity the poor rat.”
Ian put down the last of Hannibal’s muddy hooves, dipped the bit in a bucket of water, and started wiping down his bridle while Con finished brushing the horse.
“I am determined to find the rat, Con, but not just because only a fool trusts an Englishmen bearing gifts. Daniels told me Miss Augusta was engaged to a decent prospect after her come-out, but her not-very-devoted swain was waved off under peculiar circumstances, just as marriage would have solved a great deal of difficulty for the woman.”
“Waved off by whom? Women get odd notions, particularly when they’re grieving.”
“What do you know of grieving women?”
Con paused while brushing the horse’s muscular neck. “Julia—Mrs. Redmond—is grieving.”
“Still?” And how would Connor know such a thing? “She must have loved her late husband.”
“Not him.” Con started back to the brushing with inordinate focus. “She grieves her youth, her innocence, the choices she was never allowed to make for herself, the years wasted… She grieves a great deal, and I’m not even sure she comprehends this.”
“Oh, that’s subtle, Con. Just as Genie will grieve endlessly married to me?”
Con glanced up, one corner of his mouth quirking. “If the shoe fits, Ian.”
“Right now, Connor, not one damned thing in my life feels like it truly fits.”
Nor did it feel like it ever would. And yet, last night, with Augusta’s naked body snug and warm around him, nothing had ever fit better.
Twelve
Augusta ventured into the library only after she’d taken trays for both breakfast and luncheon. She hadn’t hidden. She’d spent the morning wandering the woods with Fiona, searching out fairy rings and finding a small dance of stones Fiona promised her was full of good magic.
Maybe it was. Soaking in the beauty of Balfour, spending time with the child, Augusta gradually found some sort of balance. Enough to risk running into Ian in the library, enough to be relieved when he wasn’t there.
“Will I disturb you if I read here for a bit, Mr. MacGregor?”
Gilgallon rose from the desk, a blond, tired, sleeker version of his older brother. “I’ll be glad for the company, Miss Augusta. What are you reading?”
“It’s a grammar for the Gaelic, though Mary Fran says this is for the Irish version.”
“Irish and Scottish aren’t that different. Even an English grammar would be better than trying to plow through these marriage settlements. Ian doesn’t believe in leaving details to sort themselves out.”
“Marriage is a complicated undertaking,” Augusta said, eyeing the thick sheaf of documents in Gil’s hand. She wanted to burn them, as if without executed documents, there could be no wedding.
Which, come to think of it, there wouldn’t be.
“It shouldn’t be this complicated.” Gil set the papers down on the desk and paced to the window. “It feels like this is just one more way the English are conquering us.”
He spoke with his back half to her, his tone bleak.
“I’m very sure Genie is the one feeling seized and carried off, Mr. MacGregor.” Augusta winced a little at her word choice: To “seize and carry off” was the genteel translation for the Latin verb rapio.
“I’m not trying to be rude.” He smiled over his shoulder, though his eyes remained bleak. “It just seems to me that when much has been taken from a man—most of his family, the best of his lands, two hundred years of being a clan, his older brother—that choosing a mate ought to remain to him for his own pleasure. It shouldn’t be a matter of marrying for coin.”
Disjointed images—of Gil watching Genie, Gil carrying Genie from the woods, Gil faithfully taking the place beside Genie each morning at breakfast—coalesced in Augusta’s mind.
“You’re in love with my cousin, aren’t you, Gilgallon?”
He said nothing for a long moment, while Augusta reeled with the irony of it. Was this why Genie was so reluctant to marry Ian?
Gil’s smile was a sad echo of his brother’s. “I care for them both, Miss Augusta, or I hope I do. I hope I’m honorable enough to wish this marriage didn’t have to be, for both of their sakes rather than for mine.”
Augusta stud
ied the lean planes of his face while wheels turned in her mind. “If there were a way to spare them, a way that protected Genie from her father and left your family without financial obligations to hers, would you take it?”
“There isn’t a way, and even if there were, Ian is convinced his title is all we have left to sell for a cushion between us and the next disaster.”
“He doesn’t even have the title yet himself.”
“Yes, he does.” Gil glanced over at her, clearly measuring how much to tell an outsider. “Asher has been declared dead. We got that word yesterday, which means Ian is Balfour in truth, though the formalities yet remain. We agreed to keep that much from the baron. If he thinks we’re waiting for word on Asher’s death, then we have another reason to stall negotiations.”
“I think Ian will have done dragging his feet now, Gilgallon.”
He studied her with an intensity that put Augusta in mind of his older brother. “You call him Ian now?”
She nodded, finding it necessary to stare out the window across the beauty of the gardens stretching out behind the house.
“We’re a pair, aren’t we?” His green eyes were full of understanding and commiseration. “At least you can scurry back south and never set eyes on them again. Until they have some sons, I’m doomed to stay close at hand, being the spare and Ian’s henchman. I’m not sure there’s enough whisky left in Scotland to make that prospect bearable.”
Scurrying. She loathed the notion, but comparing miseries with Gilgallon would get them nowhere. “You’ve read the settlements in their entirety?”
“I’m on my second trip through. Ian is a careful draftsman. It’s heavy going.”
Augusta marched to the desk, found a pair of reading spectacles there, and hooked them around her ears. “My father used to make a game out of explaining contract clauses to me and quizzing me on the legal language. My impression is that lawyers delight in creating heavy going. Sooner begun is sooner done.”
His smile was slow to bloom, starting in his eyes then drifting down over his face like summer sun filling a valley from up over a high, cold tor. That smile lightened his countenance, taking away years and worries and woes as it cascaded down his features.
“Genie said you were formidable.”
“She did?” Augusta picked up the sheaf of papers and passed half to Gilgallon. “One wonders how she came to such an odd conclusion.”
***
“I am concerned for you.”
Augusta looked up to find Matthew peering down at her where she sat at the big estate desk in Ian’s library.
“Why would you be concerned for me, Matthew?” She tucked the settlement documents under a pile of letters and blinked up at him in what she hoped was convincing innocence.
“Gilgallon told me you’d been in here all afternoon, noodling away at some dusty old grammar. I find you with ink stains on both hands, circles under your eyes, and your usually tidy coiffure attempting disarray before sunset.”
“Sunset is quite late in these surrounds.” Still, Matthew had a point. She’d been in here for hours, absorbed in the minutiae of legalities that should not concern her in the least.
“We have an hour before we must dress for dinner, cousin. I was hoping for a game of chess on the terrace.”
Confidences, then. He wanted to pry them from her, or alert her to some situation that might devolve to her discredit—such as Genie falling in love with the wrong brother.
“A change of scene appeals,” Augusta said, getting to her feet. Matthew led her directly to the terrace from the library, pausing only to get a chess set down from the shelves. They’d no sooner started setting up pieces than a footman appeared with a tea service.
“Mary Fran has spies everywhere,” Matthew said, and this put a rare smile on his face. “No guest will go hungry or thirsty on her watch.”
“You’re enjoying your stay here, then?”
Matthew paused with the black queen in his hand. The set was old, ivory and onyx, gorgeous little carvings so detailed the pieces had ferocious, bellicose expressions on their faces—all save the queens. The one in Matthew’s hand was smiling.
“I did not expect to make a friend of an earl’s widowed daughter,” he said, putting the queen on the board. “Mary Fran got me talking about… the past.”
Augusta abruptly understood the sadness in Matthew’s smile. He’d finally chosen somebody to confide in about his wife, who had not survived the posting to the Crimea, while Matthew had. Mary Fran, being widowed herself, would be a sympathetic ear. “I’m guessing Mary Fran makes as impressive a friend as she would an enemy,” she said carefully.
Matthew looked up, the smile reaching his eyes. “Exactly so, as do I. I need to know, should I have to depart temporarily to deal with the press of business, that you will be all right here.”
Depart temporarily…? “Matthew, if you’ve finally found a lady with whom you are congenial, then now is not the time to depart, temporarily or otherwise.”
“I’m investigating options, Gus, not blowing full retreat, and yet I don’t like the idea of leaving you here without anybody to keep an eye on Altsax.”
“I can handle Uncle.” Brave words, brave, untrue words.
“If this business with Genie and the earl doesn’t come off according to the baron’s plans, he’s going to blame you, Gus, at least in part.” Matthew spoke very quietly as he started lining up his pawns.
“I know this. He’ll blame me, Julia, Genie, Balfour—everybody but himself. Julia has the resources to deal with him, and there’s a limit to what he’ll do to his own daughter if he wants her to remain marriageable in the eyes of Polite Society.”
The pieces were set up, but Matthew was studying Augusta, not the board. “When did you learn to give nothing away, Gus? I used to be able to tell what sort of game we’d have by the way you set up your men. I can’t tell if you’re in the mood to trounce me or if you’re just humoring my request for a game.”
“I’m considering options too, Matthew.” She opened with the white queen’s knight, which had her cousin frowning in consternation.
“I have money, Gus. Altsax scoffs and mutters about my dabbling in trade, but I’m good at it. You’re not to consider yourself on his charity any longer.”
She lifted her gaze from the board to regard a cousin she’d stopped seeing years ago. “Could you invest a sum for me?”
“If that’s all you’ll let me do, then yes. I should not have let him remove you to Oxford without making sure myself you were content to be removed. Allow me to make amends. I own properties as well, Gus. You need not rusticate in Oxford, not when I have handsome farms to let in Surrey and Hampshire.”
Augusta sat back, utterly flummoxed by the conversation. “I may have need of one of those farms, Matthew, at least for a time.”
He pursed his lips and studied the board for a long moment. “You’ll be careful, Gus. I don’t trust Altsax farther than I could throw him.” He put his hand on a pawn, withdrew it, then made the move.
“Neither do I, Matthew. Not any longer.”
She didn’t trounce him, but she did win. And all through the game, Augusta’s mind was in motion. The years in Oxford had not been wasted—she’d been wrong about that. In those years, she’d been learning to think for herself, to fend for herself, to manage life with the few tools available to a single woman of very limited means.
She’d been gathering strength so slowly, she hadn’t even noticed it herself. And now, she was willing to risk all she’d gained to make sure Ian had a chance at happiness.
She loved him. That was how strong she’d become.
***
“Were you spying on me?” Augusta stood in the doorway that led from the library to the terrace, the chess set in her
hands, her expression disconcerted.
“I was enjoying the sight of you. You were very absorbed in the game, and I had the distinct impression you relished your victory.” They were alone. Ian didn’t castigate himself for the honesty when all too soon, there might be no further occasion for it. He took the chess set from her and set it up on its customary shelf. “Will you share a drink with me, Augusta?”
“Yes.”
Bless the woman, she hadn’t even glanced at the clock, and the first bell would soon sound for dinner.
“I’m warning you, what you’re about to taste is considered very fine potation.”
He went to the sideboard and she joined him. “Everything I’ve had here, food and drink, has tasted good to me, better than anything I’ve had in the South.”
Well.
“It’s the Highland air. Puts the appetite on a person.” He poured her a finger of the best they had to offer, then did the same for himself.
What would it be like to share a wee dram with her every night, to watch her mind working out the path to victory over a chessboard on a long winter evening?
“Shall we make a toast?” she asked, bringing the glass under her nose. “My goodness, that is strong.”
Strong, complex, and satisfying—like her. “To your happiness, Augusta Merrick.” He spoke softly, as sincere a toast as he’d ever offered. The coming days would likely bring a great deal of upheaval for them both, and inevitably, Augusta would return south, but this moment Ian took for himself.
“To yours.” She lowered her lashes and took a sip. “My, my…”
“Do you like it?”
He liked watching the emotions play across her features. Liked it too well.
“I do. I’m sure I do, but it’s complicated.” She assayed another taste. “It’s fruity, smoky, sweet… I could probably drain that whole bottle and not describe the contents to my satisfaction.”
“If you drained the whole bottle, you’d likely be unable to speak.” And the idea of Augusta Merrick tipsy was intoxicating in itself.
“You must not look at me like that, Ian.”
The Bridegroom Wore Plaid Page 23
