The MacGregor's Lady
MacGregor Trilogy [3]
Grace Burrowes
Sourcebooks Casablanca (2013)
* * *
Rating: ***
Tags: Romance, Historical Romance, Regency Romance, Scotland, Scotland Highland, Highlander, England, London
What if the steps they take to avoid marriage...
The last thing Asher MacGregor, newly titled Earl of Balfour, wants is a society wife, though he has agreed to squire Boston heiress Hannah Cooper about the London ballrooms. When he's met that obligation, he'll return to the Highlands, and resume the myriad responsibilities awaiting him there.
...Lead instead to impossible love?
At her step-father's insistence, Hannah Cooper must endure a London season, though she has no intention of surrendering her inheritance to a fortune hunter. When she's done her duty, she'll return to Boston and the siblings who depend upon her for their safety... or will she? The taciturn Scottish earl suits her purposes admirably - until genuine liking and unexpected passion bring Asher and Hannah close. For if the Scottish earl and the American heiress fall in love, an ocean of differences threatens to keep them apart.
Copyright © 2014 by Grace Burrowes
Cover and internal design © 2014 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover illustration by Jon Paul Ferrara
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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Excerpt from The Bridegroom Wore Plaid
Excerpt from Once Upon a Tartan
Excerpt from Mary Fran and Matthew
About the Author
Back Cover
To those who venture far from home
One
Asher MacGregor, ninth Earl of Balfour, had crossed the Atlantic five times in his thirty-some years on earth, each passage worse than the last, each leaving him a little more symbolically at sea.
And yet, he’d learned a few things in his wanderings. Though the Harrow had made port yesterday afternoon, her captain would wait until morning to come into Edinburgh’s harbor, so he might get a day’s work from his crew before they went ashore to drink and whore away their pay.
Giving Asher one more night to avoid his fate.
Asher also knew that after a winter Atlantic crossing, Miss Hannah Cooper and her aunt, Miss Enid Cooper, would be weary travelers. They had no notion the aging Baron Fenimore was using them to punish his nephew for being… what?
Being alive, very likely.
Asher climbed from the traveling coach at the docks, the heavy vehicle being the only one in his Edinburgh mews suited to dealing with muddy, slushy streets and heavy loads of baggage.
“Stay with the horses,” Asher admonished the coachy and both footmen. The docks were safe enough by daylight—for docks, and particularly for a man with some height, muscle, and frontier fighting skills. Asher knew which quay would be unloading the Harrow’s cargoes and debarking its passengers, but the whole situation brought back memories.
Memories of being eleven years old, on just such a cold, blustery morning, on just these docks, and only servants to fetch him to the family he’d never met.
Memories of landing back on Canadian shores as a twenty-year-old, hoping for some sense of homecoming, of welcome, only to realize he wouldn’t even be met by servants.
And two more returns to Scotland, both solitary, one at age twenty-two, and the most recent—the hardest one—less than six months past, both with a disappointing sense of bowing to an empty fate.
A lonely fate.
Dockside, a tender shipped oars and lowered a gangplank as the passengers and a small crowd on the wharf cheered. Families were reunited, travelers tried to adjust to walking on land, and one old gent creaked to his knees and kissed terra firma on the weathered and chilly wooden cheek of the wharf.
A total of six women debarked. Two were clearly of the lower orders, the younger showing sufficient symptoms of scoliosis to ensure a crabbed old age. They bustled away in the direction of a waiting mule cart, a sturdy yeoman at the reins.
Two were just as clearly wellborn, or at least well off, though the younger of this pair suffered acute strabismus. They climbed into a black-lacquered coach-and-four, two liveried footmen behind.
Leaving…
His guests. Plain but not too plain in their attire, the older one taking a bench while the younger one stood by like a protective hound, scanning the wharf for either danger or welcome. The young lady suffered neither a hunched back nor a squint, though she was afflicted with red hair.
Nearly the same shade of red hair as Asher’s sister, Mary Frances.
The older woman patted the bench; the younger shook her head. Her bonnet ribbons weren’t tied in a fetching, off-center bow, a sign she either wasn’t seeking the approval of fashionable Society or wasn’t native to Great Britain.
The younger Miss Cooper looked chilly, wary, and alone, and though she was a burden Asher had done nothing to merit, neither did she deserve to stand watch in the bitter shore breeze, courting an inflammation of the lungs.
“Ladies, I hesitate to be so bold, but if you’re Miss Hannah Cooper and Miss Enid Cooper, I’m Balfour, your escort.”
“Mr. Balfour.” Miss Hannah bobbed a stiff curtsy, one hand braced on the back of the bench. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Lord Balfour.” Miss Cooper held out a hand. “Forgive my niece her form of address. We discussed it endlessly on the crossing, but we are weary and forgetful.”
“And likely chilled,” Asher said, bowing over the older woman’s gloved fingers. “The rest of your bags will be sent on to the town house. If I might take you to the coach?”
The aunt kept her hand in his and rose with his assistance. The young lady merely watched while Asher tucked the aunt’s hand over his arm and gave a few instructions to the stevedores. He did not linger over civilities, knowing Miss Hannah’s impassivity could mask fatigue, bewilderment, homesickness, and other emotions common to the weary traveler in a strange land.
“This way, ladies.”
At first he thought Miss Hannah was having difficulty walking on land. After days at sea, it could be like that. The ceaseless, nauseating movement became normal, and then concentration was needed to adjust to stillness.
“How was your crossing?”
“Truly, truly unpleasant, my lord,” the elder Miss Cooper said. “I dread the return trip alread
y.” She chattered on about the food, the crowding, the rough crew, the cold, the endless stench of the sea, and all manner of discomfort, and occasionally, she’d stumble a little, lean on Asher for a moment, then resume both her walking and her complaining.
When she at one point turned her face up to his with the apparent intent of batting her eyes—Uncle Fenimore must truly have taken Asher into dislike—Asher noted that the aunt’s pupils were a trifle enlarged.
“Though I must say”—she paused for breath as they neared the coach—“it is exceedingly good to hear the Queen’s English spoken with the Queen’s accent and intonation. It has been twenty years, you know, since such a sound graced my ears. Twenty years.”
Of course he did not know, nor did he care. Miss Cooper shook her head at the sorrow of it all, and Asher glanced over his shoulder to see how this dirge was striking the niece. The poor girl had doubtless endured an ocean of such woes, for a woman dependent upon the poppy was usually a self-absorbed creature indeed.
Miss Hannah’s expression was unreadable, and her remarkably ugly brown bonnet had remained on her head, despite the limp ribbons and a brisk breeze. She trundled along unevenly behind them like a servant, but her head was up and her gaze was darting all over the passing scene, like a small child on her first trip to the trading post. A coil of russet hair tried to escape the bonnet’s confines near her left ear.
“This is the Balfour coach,” Asher said. He handed in the older woman, then extended a hand to the niece. She glanced around one more time as if reluctant to part with the scenery—Edinburgh was a lively and beautiful city, after all—then darted into the coach after barely touching her fingers to his.
He climbed in, predictably tipping the coach with his considerable weight. When the thing righted itself—an earl’s coach must be well appointed and well sprung, regardless of the expense—Asher thumped the roof with a gloved fist.
Miss Enid pulled the shade closed on her coach window, no doubt because her eyes were offended by the Scottish winter sunshine.
“Tell me, my lord, will we pass an apothecary on the way to our accommodations?”
“We shall. Edinburgh has shops aplenty, including apothecaries, though the town house is quite commodious. If you need a common medicinal, we likely have it on hand.”
“I’ve the very worst head. Didn’t I tell you, Hannah, my head would plague me terribly? A touch of the poppy might provide a little ease.”
“I’m sure we can accommodate you.” As much as old Fenimore grumbled about aches and pains, there was bound to be an entire pantry of nostrums and patent remedies somewhere in the house Fenimore had used as freely as if he owned it. “What about you, Miss Hannah? Has your health suffered as a result of a winter crossing?”
She was peering out the window and trying not to get caught at it. Asher didn’t smile, but something of his amusement must have shown in his eyes, because she shifted her gaze to meet his, like a cannon swiveling to sight on an approaching target.
“I am in good health, thank you.”
The tones were clipped, the vowels flattened, and the sound was music to Asher’s cold ears. Her accent might strike some as uneducated, but it would never sound slow-witted. That accent connoted a wily mental agility, and he hadn’t heard it in too long.
“Boston, if I do not mistake your accent?”
The aunt waved a hand. “Oh, the accent! There’s nothing to be done, I’m afraid. She’s had the best tutors, the best dancing masters, the best instructors of deportment and elocution, but none of them made any headway against that accent.”
This use of the third person on a fellow occupant of the same coach, even a large coach, had the effect of compressing Miss Hannah’s lips and turning her gun sights back to the streets. When she shifted her gaze, the fugitive coil of hair escaped the bonnet altogether to lie in coppery glory against her neck.
Edinburgh was a bustling place year-round. Its better neighborhoods—some of them less than fifty years old—did not empty out in summer, nor did the city limit its social activities to a mere three months in spring. Asher had enjoyed his visits here, as much as he enjoyed any city, and he rather liked Miss Hannah’s curiosity about it. As the horses trotted off in the direction of the New Town, he recounted various anecdotes about the place, suspecting his guests were too tired to manage much conversation.
And all the while he talked, he watched Miss Hannah Lynn Cooper as surreptitiously as close quarters would allow.
She was a disaster of the first water in terms of fashion—something he also had to like about her. The bonnet, with its wrinkled ribbons, peculiar brown flowers, and slightly bent brim was only the beginning. Her index finger poked out of her glove. The seam wasn’t frayed, the end of the finger hadn’t been obviously darned, the glove was simply shot, and stained across the knuckles to boot.
Her cape was stained as well, especially around the hem. Her attire was adorned with salt, mostly, which could have been brushed off had she cared to apply a deal of effort. The aunt’s clothing was in much better repair, her hems tidy, her gloves pristine and whole.
Perhaps the aunt had been waiting for landfall to take the girl in hand?
Asher wished her the joy of such an undertaking, for no amount of finery would help with the proud tilt of Miss Hannah Lynn Cooper’s nose or the determined jut of her chin. Her mouth was wide, and her lips were generous. She compressed them constantly, as if to hide this backhanded gift from the Almighty.
And to go with such a definite nose and chin, the Deity had also bestowed on the woman large, agate eyes with long, velvety lashes. The eyebrows were bold slashes in dark auburn, a dramatic contrast to pale skin and coppery hair. Such features would have been handsome on a man, but on a woman they were… discordant. Arresting and attractive but not precisely pleasing.
Not boring or insipid, either.
In any case, Miss Hannah Cooper was going to be a royal project to launch socially. He’d been hoping for a giggling little heiress he could drive about in the park a few times, the kind of harmless female who’d be overcome with mortification when she misstepped. This one…
Asher prosed on about the city’s history, but in the back of his mind, he had to wonder if Miss Hannah Cooper would have been more comfortable marching about the wilds of Canada than taking on the challenge of a London social Season. Northern winters were cold, but the lack of welcome in a London ballroom for those who were different, foreign, and strange could be by far colder.
***
Hannah had been desperate to write to Gran, but three attempts at correspondence lay crumpled in the bottom of the library waste bin, rather like Hannah’s spirits.
The first letter had degenerated into a description of their host, the Earl of Balfour. Or Asher, Mr. Lord Balfour. Or whatever. Aunt had waited until after Hannah had met the fellow to pass along a whole taxonomy of ways to refer to a titled gentleman, depending on social standing and the situation.
The Englishmen favored by Step-papa were blond, skinny, pale, blue-eyed, and possessed of narrow chests. They spoke in haughty accents and weren’t the least concerned about surrendering rights to their monarch, be it a king who had lost his reason or a queen rumored to be more comfortable with German than English.
Balfour was neither blond nor skinny nor narrow-chested. He was quite tall, and as muscular and rangy as any backwoodsman. He did not declaim his pronouncements, but rather, his speech had a growl to it, as if he were part bear.
When that observation had found its way onto the page, Hannah had started over.
The second draft had made a valiant attempt to compare Boston’s docks with those of Edinburgh, but had then doubled back to observe that Hannah had never seen such a dramatic countenance done in such a dark palette as she had beheld on Balfour. She’d put the pen down before prosing on about his nose. No Englishman ever sported such a noble feature, or at least not the Englishmen whom Step-papa forever paraded through the parlor.
The th
ird draft had nearly admitted that she’d wanted to hate everything about this journey, and yet, in his hospitality, and in his failure to measure down to Hannah’s expectations, Balfour and his household hinted that instead of banishment, a sojourn in Britain might have a bit of respite about it too.
Rather than admit that in writing—even to Gran—that draft had followed its predecessors into the waste bin. What Hannah could convey was that Aunt had not fared well on the crossing. Confined and bored on the ship, Enid had been prone to frequent megrims and bellyaches and to absorbing her every waking hour with supervision of the care of her wardrobe.
Leaving Hannah no time to see to her own—not that she’d be trying to impress anybody with her wardrobe, her fashion sense, or her eligibility for the state of holy matrimony.
Her mission was, in fact, the very opposite.
Hannah eventually sanded and sealed a short note confirming their safe arrival, but how was one to post it?
Were she in Boston, she’d know such a simple thing as how to post a letter, where to fetch more tincture of opium for her aunt, what money was needful for which purchases.
“Excuse me.” The earl paused in the open doorway, then walked into the room. He had a sauntering quality to his gait, as if his hips were loose joints, his spine supple like a cat’s, and his time entirely his own. Even his walk lacked the military bearing of the Englishmen whom Hannah had met.
Which was both subtly unnerving and… attractive.
“I’m finished with your desk, sir.” My lord was probably the preferred form of address—though perhaps not preferred by him. “I’ve a letter to post to my grandmother, if you’ll tell me how to accomplish such a thing?”
“You have to give me permission to sit.” He did not smile, but something in his eyes suggested he was amused.
“You’re not a child to need an adult’s permission.” Though even as a boy, those green eyes of his would have been arresting.
“I’m a gentleman, and you’re a lady, so I do need your permission.” He gestured to a chair on the other side of a desk. “May I?”
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