Her fingers started retying bows, and Asher felt loss slicing keenly.
“Let me do that, Hannah.”
He brushed her hands aside and took over the task, lingering over each bow and enjoying thoroughly that she’d allow him to tend her this way.
“Is there a name for what just happened?”
“A name for it?” There were many, many names. Foolishness was one, self-torment another. Over a stout serving of whiskey, he could probably think up dozens, and most of them would involve recrimination and regret.
But not all.
“Inside my body, that… I don’t know how to describe it. An earthquake of pleasure.”
She would be the death of his self-restraint. “You’ve weathered earthquakes, that you can command such a term?”
“In Virginia,” she said, her tongue slipping over her upper lip. “Only the once. Everything shook and shook. Everything.”
“It’s called an orgasm, and you can bring it on yourself with a bit of practice. I practice frequently, as do, I’m convinced, most people with any sense.”
She wanted to ask him more questions, he could see that, though the moment was delicate, full of potential wrong turns and poorly chosen words for both of them.
He finished with the last bow and allowed himself to pat it where it lay at the juncture of her thighs. When he should have helped her off the counter and made some inane observation about the tea getting cold, he instead stepped back into the haven between her legs and slipped his arms around her.
“What happened to you is simply a woman’s pleasure. There are medical terms for it and vulgar terms for it, but if you choose properly, your husband will see to it as often as you ask it of him.”
She said nothing for a long moment then drew herself up and way from him.
“Was this simply a demonstration, then, of the wonders I can anticipate on the far side of the altar?”
Her question was chilly, as if she were bracing herself for Asher to admit that was exactly what he’d been up to.
As if she knew he’d tried to serve himself that very ration of twaddle.
He could not be so craven. Not with her.
“I was rather hoping, Hannah Cooper, this was a taste of what I might anticipate on the far side of the altar.”
***
“I foresee a problem, Husband.”
Ian patted the bed beside him. “Your husband is lonely, Augusta MacGregor. That is a problem, though one easily remedied.”
The deceptively prim set of her mouth quirked, and yet, she did not immediately hop onto the mattress. No, she finished tying off the long, dark braid snaking over her shoulder—a braid Ian often had unraveled well before morning—flipped it back over her dressing gown, and turned on her vanity stool to regard him.
“Do you know how distracting it is to be tending to my evening toilette while in the mirror I see I have earned the regard of a handsome man who sprawls on my bed wearing only his spectacles?”
“Our bed.” He took off his eyeglasses. “Our lonely bed.”
She rose and turned down the sconces on either side of that bed. “Your older brother is lonely, Ian. Perilously lonely.”
So Asher was to join them in bed, just as he’d haunted his entire family all the years of his absence.
“He sent for us, and we’ve presented ourselves accordingly, Wife. I considered dragging him into the parlor to sing with us this evening, but the man honestly isn’t used to having family about.”
She climbed onto the bed in darkness, a frisson of female fragrance—soap, starch, and summer flowers—accompanying the dipping of the mattress.
“He knows about having family underfoot. He was raised with you from the age of eleven, and from everything you’ve said, he had loving family in his early childhood.”
Ian waited while Augusta extricated herself from the voluminous billows of her nightclothes. Since the child’s birth, she’d been more modest than when they’d first married, an endearing contradiction when she’d eschewed a wet nurse for their son.
“I can’t gainsay your conclusions, Augusta.”
“There are things you aren’t telling me. Things about our Asher. I like him, you know, but there’s a bleakness…”
Augusta got situated along Ian’s side, tucking close under his arm.
Ian’s wife on the scent of some topic was a force of nature. He didn’t even try to change the subject. “Asher’s mother died in his infancy, which has to leave a mark on a boy. That his father remarried almost immediately can’t have sat well with him either.”
A warm female hand stroked over the planes and muscles of Ian’s belly. “I think it’s worse than that. I think it has to do with his father being willing to leave his mother, to return to Scotland without her, no matter it wasn’t meant as a one-way journey. Could you travel from Canada without me?”
God, no. “If you commanded me to, if you insisted I make peace with my family in Scotland, the question might become very different.”
The hand on Ian’s belly went still, which was damned frustrating when those warm, knowing fingers had been drifting ever lower.
“Asher’s mother was literate, Ian. She could have at least written and let the man know he had a son.”
The discussion came very close to violating the confidences Ian had sworn he’d keep, but he hadn’t yet crossed the line of fraternal loyalty. “I suspect Asher’s mother wanted her husband to make a choice freely, between her and his family in Scotland. She withheld news of her pregnancy because she didn’t want to take unfair advantage.”
“Or she was being an idiot, or maybe she didn’t want her Scottish husband back?”
A prudent husband would make no rejoinder to that comment. “So what is this problem you foresee, Wife? Let’s set it aside, because there’s another problem arising for which I need your intimate and undivided counsel.”
To emphasize his point, he wrapped her hand around his burgeoning shaft. Augusta gave him a wifely squeeze and a pat, but other than that withheld her counsel.
“I went down to the kitchen, thinking to warm up a mug of milk before we retired, and I found the room occupied.”
“Kitchens are generally warm. I’ve been known to occupy a few myself.” He occupied his hand with a luscious female fundament, which at least earned him a sigh in the darkness.
“Asher and Miss Cooper were engaged in a passionate embrace.”
Damn, not again. “How passionate?”
Rather than answer, Augusta shifted beside him so her derriere pressed against his hip. This was the marital signal to spoon himself around her, which Ian was abundantly willing to do.
“Your dear brother wore not a stitch, Ian, and Miss Cooper’s night clothing was in considerable disarray. Their embrace was intimately passionate. I cannot attest to the full extent of the improprieties they were engaged in, but suffice it to say I retreated without gaining their notice.”
With the English—Augusta was English by birth and breeding—a man had to listen not so much to their words as to their inflections, their tone, what they chose to keep unsaid. “You were not shocked.”
She took his hand and removed it from the pleasurable exploration of her hip and derriere to wrap it around her breast. “I’m married to you, Ian MacGregor. Shocking me has become a difficult undertaking. I was taken aback. Your brother’s eyes were closed, and the expression on his face—”
Ian let her have her pause, because for Augusta to have seen such a private moment would have been intensely uncomfortable, even if she hadn’t been precisely shocked. “Is he smitten, then?”
The selfsame question Ian had been asking since coming upon Asher and Miss Cooper kissing in the mews days ago. Augusta shifted again, nudging at his erect cock with her backside. “I think it’s worse than that. I think he’s in love with the woman and doesn’t even know it.”
“And Miss Cooper?”
Augusta rolled her hips, allowing Ian to gain the first incremen
t of penetration into damp female heaven. “I could not see her face, but she is determined to return to her grandmother in Boston without marrying.”
“And Asher is smitten with her. This is a problem, but not one we are going to solve tonight.”
Perhaps not ever. As Ian eased into his wife’s body and tasked himself with seeing to her pleasure, he spared his brother one final thought: if Asher was smitten with a woman, any woman at all, it was a problem—Asher being Asher, and having at least two continents worth of guilt stowed among his personal belongings.
It was also a bloody miracle.
***
Asher watched as Gilgallon—the Family Charmer, according to Hannah—led her in a promenade around the Moreland ballroom. Their Graces presided over the festivities, the duke by turns a green-eyed aging eagle and, when he beheld his duchess, a doting swain from an earlier time. Despite Moreland’s geniality on social occasions, he was rumored to be Victoria’s favorite confidante among the old guard now that Wellington had ascended to the rank of angel.
“She’ll be fine.” Ian handed Asher a cup of something noxious, the English being incapable of enjoying good spirits in mixed company.
“It’s not her I’m worried about.”
Though Asher was worried, or anxious. Further refining on the roiling sense of doom in Asher’s gut was not wise though, not when Ian was regarding him with that pensive frown.
“Shall we be worried about you, Brother?”
When a man left his family to shift for themselves, a younger brother could learn to serve as head of that family, and also, apparently, drop back into the role at will.
“Moreland himself has given me the nod, Ian. I’d say I’m settling in nicely.”
“Moreland’s duchess has given you the nod. Victoria no doubt put her up to it, or the duchess is scouting you as a prospect for one of her regiment of young, marriageable female relations.”
This observation was offered humorously, and yet it rankled. Asher had seen the looks from the mamas and chaperones, and felt more than a stirring of pity for Hannah, who was getting entirely different looks from the same quarters.
“I’ll marry eventually.”
Ian snorted and took a sip of his drink—or pretended to. “You will not remarry until you lay your late wife to rest, and that you have yet to do.”
One could not simply cock back his fist and use it on his brother’s handsome face in public. “You agreed not to broach that topic, much less in a venue such as this.”
“You are a fool, Asher MacGregor. Not one of your family would censure you for taking a bride of mixed blood. Of course you would take a bride, and of course such a woman would understand you and your circumstances better than most.”
Monique hadn’t understood him, not any better than any other wife might have, but she’d accepted him.
“And you are a fool if you think Monique’s heritage has anything to do with why I grieve for her privately.”
Across the ballroom, Connor was introducing Hannah to the duke. His Grace bowed over her hand and kept it in his, while the duchess smiled benignly at Connor. For an instant, Moreland aimed a look straight over the heads of the crowd—His Grace still boasted both height and excellent posture—and challenged Asher to something without a word.
“Moreland is old school, isn’t he?” Ian remarked. “You’d do well to take a leaf from his book. He’s patriarchal as hell and understands the value of family. You have family too, Asher, lots of it. They love you. They would share your burdens.”
The words were sincere, also misguided. “Ian, they do not know me. One cannot love a stranger.”
“One cannot love a ghost either.”
Marriage to Augusta had honed Ian’s ability to deliver such insights from a taut bow of loyalty and exasperation. Maybe Augusta nocked the arrows, in fact, and Ian only fired them at the target.
“My marriage was brief.” Brief and happy.
“And over several years ago.”
Asher put aside the drink, resisting the urge to douse his brother’s lectures with it. “I suppose I’ll have to lead Miss Hannah out for the first set?”
Ian lifted his glass to salute some old marquess twirling a young lady down the room. “Your rank will give her consequence. Your support will give her confidence.”
As if she needed either. Hannah had flirted shamelessly with the old duke, and now she was batting her eyes at Cousin Malcolm, sparkling her way around the ballroom in a gown of so many shades of green and gold, it hurt Asher’s eyes to behold her.
“The lift in her shoe gives her balance, and that’s a greater boon than either my title or my company.”
“Augusta says the Scots ought to hire out as professional martyrs, but my theory is that you’re letting Miss Hannah have her Season tormenting the bachelors and worrying the debutantes before you put your ring on her finger.”
Abruptly, the ballroom was too warm, the hour too late, the scent of wealth, perfumes, and overheated bodies too cloying. All that preliminary skirmishing over Mon—over the past had been merely the opening feint, for Ian had only now laid his true concern at his brother’s feet.
“Miss Hannah will return to Boston at the end of the Season, there to set up housekeeping with her aging granny, whom I’m given to believe is frail and much in need of cosseting.”
Ian’s gaze followed Hannah as she beamed at some relation of the Marquess of Spathfoy. Some wealthy, handsome English relation of marriageable age. Cousin Malcolm had his toothsome self glued to the side of her Connor did not occupy, and the looks from the chaperones had become venomous.
“No female related to Hannah Cooper could have the least patience for cosseting,” Ian replied.
Which had been Asher’s initial surmise too. “I’ve made some inquiries. Hannah’s stepfather is known for shrewd business practices, and for ruling his home with an iron hand.”
“I’m shrewd.” Ian’s observation held neither arrogance nor humor. “You’re shrewd.”
“I was trying to be delicate. My sources indicate the man’s commercial behaviors cross the line into sharp practice. He’s socially tolerated because of his Old World connections, upon which he trades at every opportunity. He has the sole care of Hannah’s paternal grandmother, whom Hannah characterizes as a poor relation.”
A poor relation who could manage to send her granddaughter only two brief letters in all the weeks Hannah had been from home.
“You’re not poor, Asher, and neither would you take advantage of a woman under your protection.” Something in the banked ferocity of Ian’s gaze suggested the comment did not allude to Hannah’s grandmother.
“Do we need to step outside, Ian?”
“We need to clarify what your intentions are toward Miss Hannah.”
Ian was shrewd, but he wasn’t prescient, nor could he read Asher’s thoughts. That he’d turn up as Hannah’s champion was something of a puzzle. “I have proposed marriage to the woman on more than one occasion.”
The satisfaction of having surprised his brother was bittersweet and short-lived, because Ian immediately reasoned to the logical conclusion. “She’s turned you down. What did you do, Asher? You’re passably good-looking, wealthy, you’ve the damned title, and your land marches with royal holdings. No woman in her right mind would turn down all that.”
“And yet… Twice, quite decisively. I didn’t get the impression she was dithering for show, either. She lectured me sincerely on my duty lying on this side of the Atlantic and hers on the other, and while a gentleman does not argue with a lady, even when she’s in error, in this case, the lady is right.” And all the while she’d lectured him, Hannah had fastened his waistcoat buttons and tidied his clothing and then his hair.
She’d smoothed her thumbs over his eyebrows too, which curious caress Asher was coming to crave.
Ian dumped his drink in a potted palm. “You own some of the fastest goddamned ships ever to carry freight. Why can’t she nip over to Boston e
very summer and check in on the granny, if the woman’s too frail to brave an ocean crossing?”
Yes, why couldn’t she?
Why wouldn’t she?
“My charms are apparently not sufficient to convince Hannah such an arrangement would serve, any more than I could manage the earldom by popping in for a few weeks every summer.”
“Get some more charms, then.”
Miss Hannah Cooper had fully inspected all but a few of Asher’s limited charms, though Ian hardly needed to be apprised of that. “Ian, Hannah may have the right of it. I do need to be in Scotland, and her grandmother may well need the protection Hannah can offer her.”
“Elders don’t live forever.”
Ian had an answer for everything, but his expression had taken on the same resigned exasperation Asher had felt since leaving Hannah in the kitchen three nights past. “Not forever, but how old is Fenimore?”
The soft swearing that ensued was virtuosic, encompassing English, Gaelic, and even a touch of French. Across the room, Cousin Malcolm had found some bloody polite pretext for kissing Hannah’s gloved fingers, while Asher occupied himself with calculating the earliest date he might have more answers to the questions he’d sent to his office in Boston.
Eleven
Malcolm Macallan was a flirt and a comfort.
The comfort came from his smile, which was sympathetic, conveying to Hannah that with Malcolm, she would never have to use her knee to good advantage in some dark corner. His height was reassuring too—just an inch over six feet, which made him merely tall—as were his sandy hair and blue eyes. Nothing about Malcolm held the sense of banked power and emotion common to his MacGregor relations.
Malcolm’s friendly smile was at variance with Asher’s version of the same expression, which had had a lot of teeth and more than a little challenge to it. That smile had gotten Hannah through the ordeal of her first public waltz.
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