“No, she’s not.” Ian kissed the child’s forehead. “She is bloody damned not going to die while I have breath in my body.”
Albert, a man exceedingly familiar with small children, reached for Fiona. “Give her to me. I’ll gather a party at the stables.”
“We haven’t time for that,” Ian said, passing Fiona over. “Keep the women safe, explain to my brothers what’s afoot, but don’t alarm the neighbors.”
“Mama will yell at me,” Fee said, curling into His Highness’s neck. “I was really bad, going into the woods when you were hunting.”
“She won’t yell at you,” Albert said. “My word as a papa. Have a care, Balfour. Decent neighbors are hard to find.”
Ian smiled at that and melted into the woods.
Sixteen
“You turned that bull loose on us, didn’t you?” Augusta gathered her shawl more closely around her, but nothing was going to penetrate the chill in her bones. I’m going to die in Scotland after all.
“Of course I turned the bull loose on you,” Altsax said. “I also literally tried to move mountains to put period to your miserable existence, but Scotland has ever been unwilling to accommodate the plans of her betters.”
“Because she has none,” Augusta said. “Must you drag me at such an unseemly pace through this bracken?” She raised her voice as much as she dared, hoping the noise might alert someone from the hunting party.
“She has none? When all her best and brightest have long since deserted this heathen realm? The only Scots left behind are those too poor or stubborn to abandon the place. May disease and poverty soon finish them off. Come along.”
He jerked her elbow hard enough to send Augusta to her knees, where she briefly considered wrestling him for the gun.
“Get up, you stupid bitch. This hunt won’t last all morning, and your tragic demise can’t happen just anywhere. You have to be found in an area the hunt has passed through.”
Thank God for that.
“If you don’t let me catch my breath, I’m going to expire right here.” Augusta sat back, chest heaving with a drama that was only slightly feigned. Let him think her stays were too tight, though thank God she’d never held with the extremes fashion demanded of young women.
“If you don’t get moving,” Altsax said, shifting to stand right over her, “I’m going to sacrifice finesse for effectiveness.” He cocked the gun.
That little click, a small, common sound, settled something in Augusta’s mind. She was going to die. Very well. Everything born to earth died sooner or later, but she was going to die fighting.
She hadn’t fought. Hadn’t fought when she was shuffled off to Oxford, hadn’t fought when her fiancé deserted her, hadn’t fought when her uncle claimed all manner of impossible things about Trevisham, hadn’t fought when she thought her cousins had turned their backs on her.
Hadn’t fought to keep the man she loved when she’d had the chance, but rather, had meekly concluded he’d be better off sorting through the heiresses and debutantes, when what the man needed was somebody to love him, not to be a banker in the marriage bed.
“Uncle.” Augusta got to one knee. “You may go to hell.”
She surged upward, pitching her hat at his face at the same time she jammed the hat pin straight into his gut. For an instant, she saw victory, while the baron cried out in indignation and pain. Augusta moved off, thinking to put as many trees as she could between her and the baron’s bullets.
Only to fall flat on her face three feet away.
“Oh, well done, Augusta.” The baron’s voice was smug with delight. “A brave show, at long last, but brought low by a damned tree root. My condolences on your failure and on your impending death.”
“Not so fast, Baron.” Ian loomed right up out of the undergrowth not two feet from where Augusta had fallen. “You have two shots, but you’ll need both of them to bring me down. I’m that big, that mean, and that determined you will not escape justice.” He moved a step closer. “Augusta, get up and run. I’ll stand between you and this idiot’s gun, and then I will kill him for you.”
She somehow got her legs under her, though relief was making her knees unreliable, and fear was making her heart pound in her chest. “Don’t let him kill you, Ian.”
“Not a chance.”
“For God’s sake.” Altsax tried for a lofty tone, but Augusta heard the quaver of fear in his voice as she got to her feet. She picked up the old shawl and balled it up in her arms. “You don’t know what she is, Balfour. You don’t know what she could do to me. You’re supposed to be a member of the peerage. Have you no respect for a fellow peer?”
“To the extent you refer to yourself,” Ian said, shifting so he stood between Augusta and the baron, “none whatsoever. Give me the gun, and I might let you live.”
“Don’t trust him, Ian.”
“Scat, Augusta. I’d spare you the sight of his blood and sound of his begging.”
“I might like to hear that.”
“You’re both mad,” the baron said, raising his gun. “I’ll shoot you through the heart, Balfour. Married to your heir, my Genie will be the countess then, and nobody will listen to some bitter old spinster’s version of the tale. I’ll have Augusta committed… and she will meet with an accident in very short order.”
Augusta gave Ian little warning taps—one, two, three—between his shoulder blades, then pitched her wadded-up shawl into the air straight over Ian’s shoulder. Ian took advantage of the distraction to tackle the baron where he stood. The gun went off, and Augusta’s heart lodged in her throat.
“Ian!” He lay over the baron, who was blinking rapidly up at the canopy above him. “Ian, for God’s sake, say something. For God’s sake… please.”
Ian groaned and shifted back onto all fours. “Bastard actually fired.”
“You’re hit! Oh, God, you’re hit.” Augusta tried to get him to his feet, which was futile, since he outweighed her by nigh six stone.
“Augusta, my heart, I am not hit.” Ian wove to his feet. “Altsax, before more witnesses gather, I suggest you make your peace with the woman you’ve wronged.”
“Never,” the baron gasped where he lay. “She was going to ruin everything. Everything…” His breath came in a desperate rasp while blood welled from a wound high up on his left shoulder.
Ian’s hands landed on Augusta’s hips and turned her into his body. “Don’t weep for him. The bastard’s too tough to oblige us by dying.”
“I’m not weeping for him.” She smacked Ian hard on the shoulder. “I’m weeping for you! He was trying to kill you!” She fetched up against Ian’s chest, and his arms closed around her.
“He’s been trying to kill you, you mean, and I suspect this is not his first attempt.”
Augusta nodded and clutched Ian more desperately. “He said he tried to move mountains to kill me. He p-poisoned Ulysses. He hates me.”
And this—which should have been obvious—had her sobbing uncontrollably against Ian’s chest.
She heard him crooning to her in Gaelic, felt him lift her and move with her away from where the baron lay. When Ian settled with her on a boulder, Augusta lashed her arms around his neck and still could not stop crying.
“Hush, beloved. You’re safe. You’re safe, and he’ll never hurt you again. I vow this, I swear it.”
Ian’s voice, not his words but the sound of his voice, the soft, Gaelic music of it, the care and concern in his tone, gradually calmed her. When Augusta looked up, a half circle of men stood a few yards off, their expressions grave.
Gil, Con, Matthew, and another kilted gentleman who looked familiar, all wearing expressions of solemn concern, and each sporting a weapon in his hand.
“There’s been an accident,” Ian said, his gaze goi
ng to the fourth gentleman.
“Of course. There has been an accident,” the gentleman said, irony wreathing his slight German accent. “Most unfortunate, but these things occur to those who are careless. We will provide all possible aid to the injured. You’ll see to the lady, Balfour?”
Ian nodded and rose with Augusta in his arms.
“I can walk,” Augusta said, her voice a mere croak.
“You can walk,” Ian retorted, making no move to put her down. “You can cheat death, you can outwit a man bent on your destruction, you can subsist on hope and tough chicken for years, you can see my brothers happily married despite all odds to the contrary, and you can bloody damned well let me carry you.”
“Yes, Ian.” She tucked her face against his neck, more than willing to let him do just that.
***
The three weddings held in the days following were very quiet: Matthew married Mary Fran in the family parlor; Con and Julia married on the terrace; Gil and Genie were married at the foot of the garden.
And Augusta tried to get used to people addressing her as “my lady.”
“You’re the Baroness Gribbony, a peeress in your own right,” Ian had told her the morning of the shoot. “Your mother either didn’t know or didn’t care that the Scottish title went to the eldest and could be matrilineal, but as she was eldest and you are her only child, the title comes to you.”
“I don’t want it.”
Ian’s smile was sad. “That’s the hell of it. With titles you have them, and then they have you, and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.”
He hadn’t come to her room since the evening following the hunt almost a week past. That night, he’d come to her in silence, held her close all through the darkness, and departed before the sun had risen. She’d waited for him to come again then realized he wasn’t going to.
He’d said all the good-byes he was going to say to her.
So she made arrangements to go south with Con and Julia—not as far south as London, but to Julia’s holding in Northumbria. Chaperoning a honeymoon wasn’t the way Augusta wanted to spend her autumn, but the idea of her little property in Oxford, without even a cat for company…
And then were was Trevisham. She wasn’t ready to go back there either, though Matthew had explained to her privately that it would one day soon be hers again.
While Altsax recovered under strict guard, the safes in Kent had been opened, revealing the original copy of the very valid will left by Augusta’s parents. The baron had secreted the will, lied to her and the courts, created a guardianship of her property, and then set about reaping the rewards of his perfidy—making damned sure Augusta wasn’t viewed as a marriage prospect by any who might get to questioning her finances.
And in a subtle bit of cleverness, Altsax had started alluding to his possession of the Gribbony barony only years after Augusta’s parents had died, and then only on a few discreet occasions. Sooner or later his ruse would likely have been revealed, at which point he could pronounce himself repentant over having misinterpreted the vagaries of an old patent.
Ian and Matthew had conferred privately regarding a proper fate for the baron, but Augusta could not muster enough sentiment to care what befell her uncle, as long as his path never again crossed her own.
“Augusta?” Ian stood at the edge of the terrace, looking weary and dear in waistcoat, shirt, and plain work kilt. “Have you a minute, my lady?”
“I hate it when you call me that.”
One corner of his mouth quirked up a very little. “Shall I call you Baroness?”
“I like it better when you called me ‘my heart’ and ‘my love.’” She ducked her face, staring at her hands where they rested in her lap. Fatigue—or perhaps desperation—was taking a toll on her manners.
Ian came down beside her on the bench and let out a sigh. “I should not have presumed. I ask you to forgive me for it.”
She glanced over at him, feeling tears threaten. They were close at hand these days, as was a grinding, dragging fatigue.
“I will forgive you for that remark, Ian MacGregor. Honest sentiment should never be a cause for apology between a man and a woman who’ve been as intimate as we have.”
He was quiet a long while, the fresh scent of him coming to her on a breeze that bore a hint of autumn. Autumn, when everything died away and Augusta would be far from Ian and all she held dear.
“There’s something I want you to know, but I haven’t known quite how to put it,” he said.
Augusta’s gaze shifted to Ian’s hands—strong, callused, and yet elegant, and beautiful to her. For God’s sake, take my hand. Augusta smoothed out her skirts lest she grab for his hand instead.
“In the woods,” Ian said, “when the baron and I struggled, I think he was trying to turn the gun on himself.”
“To attempt suicide?”
“He isn’t sane, Augusta. I have been forbidden by no less than the Prince Consort to blame myself for not seeing Altsax for the menace he presented. I’m finding it difficult to respect the prince’s guidance on this issue.”
“Albert is your friend.”
“If such a man can have friends, I would be honored to think I’m among them.”
“He’s English.”
“By act of Parliament.”
They fell silent, while Augusta felt her heart breaking in her chest. They discussed suicide and princes, but not what mattered.
“You’ve a letter, Augusta. I think you’ll want to read it in private.” He withdrew an epistle from his pocket. “Before you read it, though…”
“What, Ian?”
He peered over at her, his expression impossible to read, and then his arms seized her, and his mouth was crashing down on hers. Hot, demanding, and so, so welcome. Augusta wrapped her arms around him and put everything she was, every scrap of love and determination she felt toward him, into her answering kiss.
And then he drew back and stood. “Read your letter.”
She glanced at the letter—Henry Post-Williams was bestirring himself to write to her while Ian was walking away.
“Hang the damned letter, Ian MacGregor. You don’t kiss me like that after days of leaving me to toss on my own all night and then just walk away.”
Ian stopped in midstride, his back still to her. He turned slowly, his expression fierce. “The letter is from a prosperous English gentleman seeking to offer you his addresses, Baroness. I suggest you read it.”
She marched up to him, held the letter up before his gorgeous Scottish nose, and tore the paper right down the middle. “Hester says his hairline is receding.” She tore it again. “He’s looking for a free governess.” She tore it yet again. “And he can’t kiss worth a farthing.” She flung the pieces over her shoulder. “I shudder to think of the poor woman who has to content herself with Henry Post-Williams’s company for the rest of her life. She’d be better off raising chickens in the shires.”
She put her hands on her hips. “I love you, Ian MacGregor.” She spoke the Gaelic carefully. “I will always love you. You are the beloved of my heart.” It was the limit of what she could manage in his native tongue. “I will leave tomorrow if you ask it of me, but I will spend my life regretting that I allowed you to send me away.”
She went up on her toes and kissed him softly but soundly on the mouth. “You will regret it too.”
And she was not going to leave the field, but if she didn’t sit down, the knocking of her knees was going to see her laid out flat at his feet—a metaphor she’d rather avoid. She marched back to the bench and sat, glaring at him where he stared at her.
He took one step toward her then halted. “I have nothing to offer you, Augusta. I’m poor.”
“You’re wealthy in your family, Ian.
You are surrounded by people who love you and are loyal to you.”
He took one more step toward her. “I know nothing but hard work, and hard work is all I foresee. Until the last member of my family is well fed, safe, and secure, it’s all I can allow myself.”
“You think subsisting in a farmhouse for years is easy? Weeding my own gardens, milking my own cow, slopping my own hogs? I could manage in a croft, Ian, and consider it a wonderful life if I could share it with the man I love.”
He shook his head, his hands fisting at his sides. “Augusta, I’d keep you pregnant until we had so many mouths to feed…”
“I’ve wasted years feeding chickens. Give me all the children the Lord sends to us, Ian. Green-eyed boys and girls with humor and pride and stubborn streaks as wide as their papa’s.”
He took the last step and sank to his knees before her. “I said…” He stopped, his voice hoarse. “I said an earl not in possession of a fortune must be in want of a wealthy wife. I was not… I was not wrong.” He paused again, swallowed, and slid his arms around her waist. “I was right, my heart. I need a wife with a wealth of courage and honor, a wife with abundant loyalty. I need a wife so canny and resourceful that even when her title and her wealth are stolen from her, she has the courage and wits to fight for me and mine… to love… to love me. Ah, God, Augusta…”
He gathered her to him, his embrace fierce. “I can offer you nothing,” he said. “Nothing except my love and my pledge to bend my entire being to your safekeeping and happiness, but for the love of God, will you marry me? You don’t need my title—you have one of your own—you don’t need the shelter of my house—you’ve one of those too. You don’t need…”
She kissed him into silence. “I need, Ian. I need from the bottom of my soul. I need your love. I need your arms around me. I need you beside me in this life. I need to bear your children. I will be your wife, gladly, joyfully. It will be my privilege and my honor to be your wife.”
A great sigh went out of him, a sigh of such surrender Augusta felt tears drifting down her cheeks. She burrowed closer, craving the scent of him, the heat of him, the touch and sound and essence of him drawn so deeply into her awareness it could become a part of her.
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