“Of course.”
“How are you faring here?”
He crossed an ankle over his knee and sat back, his big body filling the chair with long limbs and excellent tailoring.
“Your household has done a great deal to make us comfortable and welcome, for which you have my thanks.” His maids, in particular, had Hannah’s gratitude, for much of Aunt’s carping and fretting had landed on their uncomplaining shoulders.
“Is there anything you need?” His gaze no longer reflected amusement. The question was polite, but the man was studying her, and Hannah bristled at his scrutiny. She’d come here to get away from the looks, the whispers, the gossip.
“I need to post my letter. When do we depart for London?”
He picked up an old-fashioned quill pen, making his hands look curiously elegant, as if he might render art with them, or music or delicate surgeries.
“Give me your letter, Miss Hannah. I maintain business interests in Boston and correspond frequently with my offices there. As for London, we’ll give Miss Enid Cooper another week or so to recuperate, and if the weather is promising, strike out for London then.” He paused, and the humor was again lurking in his eyes. “If that suits?”
She left off studying his hands, hands that sported neither a wedding ring nor a signet ring. What exactly was he asking?
“I am appreciative of your generosity, but I was not requesting that you mail my letter for me. I was asking how one goes about mailing a letter, any letter, bound for Boston.” Hannah disliked revealing her ignorance to Balfour, but if she was to go on with him as she intended, then his role was to show her how to manage for herself rather than to make her dependent upon him for something as simple as mailing letters.
He laughed, a low, warm sound that crinkled his eyes and had him uncrossing his legs to sit forward.
“Put up your guns, Boston. I know what it is to be a stranger in a strange land. I’ll walk you to the nearest posting inn and show you how we shuffle our mail around here. If you still want to wait for the HMS Next-to-Sail, you are welcome to, but I can assure you my ships will see your correspondence delivered sooner by a margin of days if not weeks.”
“Your ships?” Plural. Hannah made a surreptitious inspection of the library, seeing with new eyes hundreds of books, a dozen fragrant beeswax candles in addition to gas lamps, and thick, spotless Turkey carpets.
“When one is in trade with the New World, one should be in control of the means of distribution as well as the products, though you aren’t to mention to a soul that you know I’ve mercantile interests. Shall we find that posting inn?” He rose, something that apparently did not require her permission, and came around the desk to take her hand.
“I can stand without assistance,” she said, getting to her feet. “But thank you, some fresh air would be appreciated.”
“We should tell your aunt we’re leaving the premises.”
This was perhaps another rule, or his idea of what manners required. “She’s resting.” Aunt was sleeping off her latest headache remedy.
His earlship peered down at her—he was even taller up close—but Hannah did not return his gaze lest she see contempt—or worse, pity—in his eyes.
“We’ll leave a note, then. Fetch your cape and bonnet while I write the note.”
How easily he gave orders. Too easily, but Hannah wanted to be out of this quiet, cozy house of stout gray granite, and into the sunshine and fresh air. She met him in the vestibule, her half boots snugly laced, her gloves clutched in her hand.
“Perhaps you’ll want to wear your bonnet,” he said as a footman swung a greatcoat over his shoulders. Hannah counted multiple capes, which made wide shoulders even more impressive. Though how such a robust fellow tolerated being fussed was what Gran would call a fair puzzlement.
The bonnet had spontaneously migrated from whatever dark closet it deserved to rot in to the sideboard in the house’s entryway. “Why would I want to be seen in such an ugly thing?”
“I don’t know. Why would you?”
Propriety alone required a bonnet for most occasions, but she wouldn’t concede that, not when the only bonnet she’d packed was a milliner’s abomination. And yet, when they gained the street, she wished she had worn her ugly bonnet.
They’d had a dusting of snow the night before, though the sun had come out and the eaves were dripping. Just as in Boston, the new snow and the sunshine created a winter brightness more piercing than the summer sun.
“A gentleman would not comment on this,” her escort said as he tucked her hand over his arm, “but I notice you limp.”
That arm was not a mere courtesy, as it might have been from Hannah’s beaus in Boston, but rather, a masculine bulwark against losses of balance of the physical kind.
“A blind man could tell I limp from the cadence of my steps. You needn’t apologize.” The only people in Boston solicitous of Hannah’s limp were fellows equally solicitous of her unmarried state and private fortune, but the earl could not know that.
Silence stretched, while they meandered along walks shoveled clean of snow. Hannah knew she limped, but she forgot she knew most of the time. She forgot the ache in her hip that went with it, and forgot all the times her stepfather had told her to stand up straight lest her shoulders become as crooked as her leg.
“Does it pain you?” This handsome, wealthy man was to be Hannah’s escort for the next several months, for reasons she could not fathom. His tone was pleasant, his arm a sturdy support, and his question unexpectedly genuine.
Her reply was unexpectedly honest as a result. “It rarely hurts. Not unless I overdo.”
“We will have to see you do not overdo, then. Shall we sit? The sun is lovely, and the less time I spend cooped up behind stone walls, the happier I am.”
With that startling little revelation, he directed her to a bench in a widening in the walkway. Somebody had dusted the thing free of snow early enough that it was dry, or perhaps the February sun was that strong here in Edinburgh.
He seated her, then took a seat beside her—without asking permission. “Why are you in Great Britain, Miss Hannah Cooper?”
She’d wanted to resent Balfour, whose job it was to deliver her to London, like a federal marshal might deliver a felon for trial. And yet, she shared with the earl an appreciation for the out-of-doors, for plain speaking, and for a sunny bench. Hannah shouldn’t derive a sense of kinship with Balfour on such meager footing, and yet, she did.
“I am to find a husband,” she said, reciting the litany that had been shouted at her. “I am an American heiress and only a little long in the tooth, and it shouldn’t be too hard to find a willing baronet’s son or an aging knight.”
“I see.”
“What do you see?”
“You are a mendacious American heiress.” The amusement was back, and maybe a hint of approval.
“And you are an overly observant English gentleman.”
Another silence, while Hannah studied her bare hands and tried not to smile. Her escort wore soft kidskin gloves likely made to fit his big hands. Those gloves would feel heavenly next to the skin. Supple, warm, soft… she’d bet his were even lined with silk.
“I am not your enemy, Boston, and I am not English.” His tone was gentle, but not apologetic.
“You are the instrument of my enemy, though. You are to squire me about the ballrooms and so forth, and quietly let it be known I come with a fat dowry.”
He eyed her sidewise while Hannah pretended not to notice that the brilliant winter sun turned his dark hair nearly auburn.
“You honestly don’t want to find yourself some minor title and swan about on his arm for the next several decades? Have a few babies to show off to your friends and relations while casually flashing a vulgar diamond or two at them as well?”
“I have never swanned in my life and I hope to die without the experience befalling me.”
Swan, indeed. But the babies… Oh, damn him for mentioning the
babies.
“I see.”
“What do you think you see?”
“I see why the ugly bonnet,” he said, rising. “Come, the posting inn is several blocks off, and I promised to show you how we go about our mails here. We should stop at a grog shop too, so you can see how we do our toddies and rum buns.”
That was all he said, no lecture, no lambasting her for her unnatural inclinations, her ingratitude. The lack of resistance made Hannah uncertain, like the bright sunshine, and she leaned on him a little with the disorientation of his response. Perhaps he simply didn’t care what she was about—he’d get to fritter away his spring in any case, and she really didn’t intend to be a bother to him.
Not much of one, anyway.
As they walked the streets of the neighborhood, Hannah found differences between Edinburgh and Boston in the details, like tea with scones instead of bread and butter, and gas lamps taller than those at home. And were she home, she’d be accompanied by a maid and not this great, strapping man in his beautiful, warm clothing.
He walked slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, as if he hadn’t seen these streets over and over in all seasons.
“You are being patient with me,” Hannah said.
“I am avoiding the mountain of paperwork waiting for me back in the library. It’s a pleasure to share a pint of grog with somebody who hasn’t had the experience—also a bit naughty. Ladies do not usually partake of strong spirits, but cold weather provides the exception to the rule, and we’re not as mindful of strictest propriety here in the North. And truly, our rum buns are not to be missed.”
“A bit naughty” sounded fun when rendered in those soft, dark tones, as if the earl were as much in need of a treat as Hannah might be.
Or in need of a friend with whom to enjoy a bite of forbidden bun?
Two
To Hannah’s eye, the posting inn was similar to the posting inns in Boston, except it was three stories of stone, not two, the common was larger, and the stables huge, complete with fenced paddocks and enormous, steaming muck pits in the yard beside the establishment itself.
Once Hannah’s note to Gran had been posted, the earl escorted Hannah to a low-ceilinged, half-timbered establishment midway between the house and the posting inn. The place boasted a few customers; one held up his pipe and nodded to her escort.
“Morning to ye.”
“Will.” The earl nodded but kept Hannah moving toward the rear of the common where high-backed settles faced small tables. Every wood surface in the place was dark with age, from the floors to the timbers to the tables and settles. The room was long and narrow, so the windows at the front afforded scant light, and the few lit sconces added little to it.
“It’s like a cave,” she said, peering around. Though Edinburgh’s New Town boasted hundreds of gas lamps, gas lighting either hadn’t found this enclave or was disdained in favor of ambience.
“So a patron might forget the passage of time,” the earl replied. He lifted Hannah’s cape from her shoulders and hung it on a hook, then hung his own coat on top of hers.
The scent of the place was intriguing—yeasty, like an alehouse might be back home, and with the same cooking odors emanating from the kitchens, but the smell had something woolly about it, too.
“Do you come here often?”
“I do. The town house is too quiet, and they let me sit here as long as I need to. I bring my paperwork, they keep the toddies or teapots coming, and a few rum buns later, I’ve made some progress.”
To Hannah’s surprise, he seated himself directly beside her, but then, there were no chairs facing the settles, so where else would he have sat?
“If you’re not here to find a husband, why am I to haul you to Town for the Season, Miss Cooper?”
“You aren’t going to give this up, are you?”
“I can think of a dozen places I would rather be than London in springtime, mincing around the ballrooms and formal parlors.”
Hannah was heartened at the misery in his tone. “I can think of two-dozen places I’d rather be, and not a one of them would be on your list, I assure you.” For his list would be in Britain, while hers would be an ocean away.
“Where would you be, Hannah Cooper, if you had your choice?”
“Home, with my grandmother.” A pang of something rose up in her middle, not homesickness for the house she lived in, but a wretched, desolate longing for her grandmother’s love.
“It passes.” He patted her hand, his fingers stroking over her knuckles. His hand was warm, and she wished he’d do it again.
That little unexpected caress and thoughts of her grandmother had Hannah speaking aloud sentiments that could not interest the earl. “Gran is very old, and she hasn’t had an easy life. I do not appreciate being made to perform in this husband-hunting farce. She isn’t going to live forever.”
“Is she in good health?”
“She is.”
“She’ll probably live another few months then. Ah, our libation arrives.”
A serving maid unloaded two mugs and a plate of buns from a tray. The scents were heavenly. Rum, butter, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg…
“A toast.” The earl tapped his mug against hers. “To safe journeys and worthy destinations.” His comment about her grandmother had sounded offhand, a little callous, but his toast took the sting from it.
“Safe journeys,” Hannah echoed. “Worthy destinations.”
“Go slowly,” he cautioned, taking a sip of his drink.
Rum was a sailor’s drink, but Hannah was lulled into a false sense of pleasurable anticipation by the lovely bouquet of spicy, buttery scents filling her nose an instant before the spirits hit her tongue.
Those spirits bloomed, they blessed, and they burned all the way down.
She took a slightly larger sip and set the mug on the table.
“You don’t approve of a lady taking spirits?” her companion asked.
Was he teasing her? “I shouldn’t, but I approve of the medicinal tot to ward off the chill at least. New England winters are serious weather, and this is a lovely concoction.”
“I’ll make sure you have the recipe to take home with you. Try a bun.”
He talked of his first experience of rum, on his initial crossing. The sailors had gotten him drunk with it and dared him to climb to the crow’s nest. He’d made it, then fallen asleep, which meant he had to be roped down before the captain got wind of the day’s mischief.
“You might have died, trying to get down.”
“I might, but I didn’t, and it makes an adequate tale to share over a toddy, but Miss Hannah?”
“Earl?” She was not going to my-lord him, and a troop of redcoats would likely appear posthaste if she referred to him as Mr. Earl.
“My job this spring is to see to it you snare a husband, will you, nil you.” He took another sip of his drink then set the mug down beside hers.
“And if I don’t want a husband?”
“My uncle Fenimore has set me this task as a sort of penance for spending nearly seven years away from my post in Scotland, or perhaps because he owes your stepfather and hates any sort of indebtedness. And yet, I owe my uncle only so much duty. I’d need a damned good reason to go to all the bother of trotting around the social Season merely for the sake of wasting your papa’s money—pardon my language.”
“My money,” she corrected him, and his language was nothing compared to what Step-papa could unloose. “I’m an heiress, recall. My real father left me quite well off, and if I can manage to stay unwed another two years, the funds all become mine.”
She should not have told a stranger such a thing, but this stranger had understood why she needed to see her letter to Gran mailed herself, and this stranger was likely the only earl in captivity who loathed fashionable ballrooms as much as Hannah did.
“You can’t trust yourself to find a man who’ll take good care of both you and your money?”
His question was reasonable, and
yet, Hannah hadn’t heard it before.
“I notice you haven’t any Mrs. Earl.”
“Point for the lady,” he said, lips quirking. “I’m to hunt one up this spring, but alas, I’ve no more heart for the quest than you do.”
“So what’s your damned good reason for braving the ballrooms?” She took another sip of the lovely concoction, though the company was a bit lovely too. “Why squire me about and appear to look over the possibilities when you’re not going to make any offers?”
“Perhaps I’ll be proven wrong. Perhaps some enterprising little filly will snare me and lead me off to be put in double harness.”
“As if you’re a coach horse? Strong, sound of wind and limb, but not elegant enough for a hack or nimble enough for work over fences?”
He ran his finger in a slow circle around the rim of his mug. “An excellent question. Rum tends to bring out the imponderables. No doubt the Greeks invented it, and by rights the drink ought to be dubbed the Progenitor of Philosophy.” He fell silent for a moment, as if considering this profundity. “We seem to be contemplating similar exercises in futility for the coming Season.”
“Your secret is safe with me, sir.”
She reached for another bun just as he did, and their hands bumped.
“After you, miss.”
She took up a bun, broke it in half, and passed him the larger portion. “You’re supposed to say my secret is safe with you.”
“Bun-swearing,” he said, regarding his pastry. “A kind of alimentary fealty my mother’s family would have understood all too well, except you aren’t making any secret of your shameless intentions. You’re going to waste a great deal of good coin on dresses and dancing slippers, spend many nights out until dawn, leading the unsuspecting swains around by their noses, then laugh them to scorn and catch the next ship for Boston. Not very sporting of you.”
And yet, he sounded more impressed than envious.
“Not very sporting of my stepfather to send me away from everything and everyone I love to cross the Atlantic in winter, now was it?”
The MacGregor's Lady Page 2
