Chapter 6
Abby tells me that Harry has not come to Edinburgh on business at all this time but specifically to court Moira instead!
How can it be that I am to lose the only gentleman I have ever taken a care for to a woman who is like a sister to me? And I know I shall lose him, for how can I—just a schoolgirl really—compete with someone like Moira?
I cannot provide a viable challenge against her experience or her panache...nor can I offer a satisfactory comparison to her hourglass figure and truly enviable décolletage...
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The Glenrothes Townhouse
117 Eaton Square
Belgravia, London, England
Not long after Fiona’s departure
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“My lady,” Hobbes addressed his mistress with a characteristic disregard for any other occupant of the room. “You have a caller.”
Eve glanced at the large clock on the mantel, noting the time was well before the noon hour, and back at Hobbes with a raised brow. It was quite unlike her ever-so-proper butler to admit—much less announce—a visitor so unfashionably early.
Whoever it was, the person must stand highly in Hobbes’ favor. Since so few did, Eve’s curiosity was justly caught. “Who is it?”
Though his facial expression never altered from its usual solemnity, the butler’s eyes shined brightly. “It is the Marquis of Aylesbury, my lady, who graces us with his most welcome company. Might I do us all the favor of showing him in?”
Eve looked with some surprise at the other occupants of the room, not only her sister, Kitty, but her sisters-in-law, Coline, Abby, and Moira MacKintosh—the latter two who the marquis had courted both in the past. Not surprisingly, they were smiling in delight, as was she, since Harrison Brudenall was well known for his—as Hobbes put it—most welcome company, and she had not spoken with him long the previous night.
It would be wonderful to have a longer chat and catch up.
Unfortunately, the five ladies were not the only occupants of the room.
Nor were they in any state to receive company, as they were all casually garbed in simple skirts and blouses and playing on the parlor floor with their many offspring.
Appearances aside, children were not conducive to formal entertaining.
Especially when one was expected to host a marquis.
Eve wavered uncertainly, but Hobbes was clearly not to be denied the presence of someone he considered so congenial.
“Might I suggest, my lady, that a gentleman once so...acclimatized to the goings-on of this particular household would hardly be put off by being subjected to such a familial display?”
The other ladies rolled their eyes merrily at that. “Do let him in, Evie,” Moira cajoled, already rising awkwardly to her feet. “I haven’t seen Harry in an age!”
Concurrences were chimed in and Eve nodded her ascent to the butler, who disappeared through the door, leaving the ladies to eagerly await Aylesbury’s vaunted company.
* * *
Aylesbury left his stepmother’s townhouse in Victoria Square in long, agitated strides, scorning the services of his carriage in favor of walking off the agitation that always clung to him upon passing her doors.
The woman’s senseless chatter would set him on edge even on a normal day.
Her evasion of any serious topic of conversation or query—and there were many, many!
to be had—picked away at his impatience like a miner doggedly intent on a vein of gold.
This morning’s visit had been worse than usual.
He could not bear it any longer. His questions, always the same yet so wretchedly unanswered, were seemingly destined to remain so.
It was as if she didn’t even care.
With so little hope left, Aylesbury did not know where to turn.
That his troubled footsteps had led him to the stoop of the Glenrothes townhouse blocks away from Victoria Square, hovered on the edge of his conscious thought somewhere between providence and misfortune.
There were equal enough troubles behind those doors to torment him even more, but more likely, there was a welcoming ear, if not solace, for his worries. Down to the last, the ladies of the MacKintosh clan were diverting, if nothing else.
So, when Hobbes showed him into such an astonishingly domestic scenario, and he was blessed by the smiling faces of five lovely ladies, Aylesbury was promptly and gladly diverted.
“Harry! I’m so sorry we missed you last night.”
Abby Merrill, now MacKintosh, approached with hands outstretched in welcome.
Aylesbury took them in his own with a welcome jolt of gladness, pressing a kiss to each of them and then to her cheek.
Ah, Abby! He’d once thought to marry this petite, blonde angel many years before.
Her beauty and courage had been captivating, and he had briefly believed he loved her.
Nevertheless, when her heart turned to another, his had not been broken nor overly bruised. “Abby.”
Nor had the vibrant redhead at her side broken it even fewer years before when she spurned his suit for another of the MacKintosh brothers. “Moira,” he greeted her with a kiss as well, squeezing her proffered hand affectionately. “You are positively blooming.”
“Outwardly, at least,” Moira agreed with a chuckle, running a caressing palm over the gentle swell of her abdomen. “This is our second already.”
Second? Aylesbury thought with some surprise as he stared with unseemly focus on Moira’s belly before lifting his head to survey the gaggle of infants and small children in the room beyond. Had it been so long? Had she been gone so long?
Aylesbury shook away the thought and greeted his hostess, Lady Glenrothes; her sister, the Countess of Haddington; and Mrs. Sean MacKintosh with affection, though an affection more subdued for those ladies he hadn’t once considered taking for his wife.
“Come in, Harry,” Moira waved him further into the room cheerfully. “Come and meet my wee lass! Can I get you something to drink?”
“My apologies for greeting you so...en famille, Lord Aylesbury,” Eve apparently couldn’t resist adding, worried to give offense.
But Eve didn’t know Harry as well as Moira did. Moira scooped up her one-year-old and bounced her daughter on her hip with a broad grin, lifting the toddler’s hand to wave it at her old beau. “This is Aurora. Say ‘hello’ to the nice marquis, lovey,” she cooed in the baby’s ear.
Aylesbury took the baby’s hand in his large one and brushed his thumb across her downy soft wrist. Aurora, he thought with a slight smile.
That bright red head of curls certainly did give one the impression of a fiery sunrise.
“Greetings, Miss Aurora,” he said softly and was rewarded by a broad grin that showed off a charming set of dimples and eight nubby teeth.
One couldn’t help but be charmed by such a sight, and Aylesbury flashed his own dimple and a broader smile in return.
“She is a lovely little lady, Moira. Congratulations to both you and Vin. And another on the way, you say?” he asked with a shocking familiarity that widened Eve’s eyes.
“In September, I think,” Moira casually returned, ignoring her friend’s disapproval of such a delicate subject. “Perhaps this time, it will be an heir for my lord and for my father and grandfather as well. Come, meet the rest of the new additions.”
Aylesbury greeted the children he had previously been acquainted with: Abby’s three, Tristram, Bryn, and Corri; Evelyn’s son by her first marriage to the Earl of Shaftesbury, Lawrence, and her son, Preston, who had been a babe-in-arms at his last encounter but was now an active toddler of more than two years, as was Kitty’s son, Montgomery.
Kitty’s daughter, Hannah, now nearly seven, greeted him with a polished curtsey that Aylesbury returned with a flamboyant bow, prompting a fit of giggles from the little girl before she tugged him across the room to meet the newcomers.
In addition to Moira’s charming daughter, the previous spring had also delivered another son for Haddington named Henry; a son, Alexander, for the newlyweds Sean and Coline, and a daughter for the earl of Glenrothes, Lela, who had been rather expeditiously followed by another daughter, Alice, just two months past.
So many children. Babes to mark the passage of time and the growth of family. Sisters and brothers who were kissed and coddled with evident affection by their elder siblings and cousins.
Aylesbury felt a lump forming in his throat and tried discreetly to clear it away. This, in so many ways, was what his life had been missing. Family.
An ache of longing and regrets scorched his heart and set his chest aflame. He coughed uncomfortably and shifted from one foot to another, aware that an expectant silence hovered in the room, awaiting his reaction.
“How...industrious of you all,” he said at last, and the ladies fell into gales of laughter, not at all offended by his words or tongue-in-cheek tone.
“Would you like to hold my newest cousin?” young Hannah asked, lifting the tiny babe from her cradle with tender care and coming to his knee as he took a chair with the four ladies scooping up toddlers and babes as they, too, sat.
Aylesbury eyed the smallest of the babes warily.
Alice was her name, a fragile confection of white lace and linen if he had ever seen one.
His gaze shifted to Eve in hopes of rescue, but the countess only smiled in encouragement, keeping her one-year-old, Lela clasped firmly in her lap.
Though Aylesbury was surprised by her casual acquiescence, he could only surmise that by the time a fourth child made its way into the world, a mother was far more incautious with its welfare. She would have to be, to risk his holding the child.
Blinking, he turned back to Hannah, meeting her wide, adoring blue gaze. How did one say no to such a face, he wondered.
How had he ever in his life been able to say no to a pleading pair of blue eyes?
Regrets. So many regrets.
Hesitantly, he reached out and took the infant, studiously minding Hannah’s instruction on the proper handling and management of such a newborn as wee Alice.
Once ensconced snuggly in his arms, the baby looked up at him solemnly—again with compelling blue eyes!
—and clasped his proffered finger in one surprisingly tight fist.
He had come here in hopes of consolation, for friendship. Not for a further reminder everywhere he looked of his plight. Bloody hell, but he needed to be saved from this den of domesticity!
But there was no escape. None at all, he knew for certain when Moira’s soft burr cut through the low din of the children as they returned to their playtime. “So, Harry, what has you so troubled?”
“Troubled?” he parroted as innocently as possible.
But Moira was no fool. She’d sensed that something was troubling her dear old friend immediately but was determined to set him at ease until she could determine what was the matter.
Harry wasn’t typically one to be beset by a case of the doldrums, but she knew from experience that when he was, only time, comfort, and a stiff drink would encourage him to talk.
Abby knew it as well and rose, moving to the sideboard where she poured a healthy snifter of brandy despite the early hour and returned, pressing it into his free hand. “You fairly reek of troubles, Harry.”
“Despair, even,” Moira chimed in.
“I thought it more an aura of despondency,” Kitty remarked helpfully.
“The afterglow of a scandalous evening?” Eve added, effectively informing him that they had heard about his hotheaded behavior the previous night.
All five women turned their eyes to him, and it was all Aylesbury—a peer of the realm—could do not to squirm in his seat. He looked from one lady to the next and around at the multitude of children dotting the carpet.
“Perhaps, I might speak to Moira more privately?” he asked hopefully but quickly deflated at their stalwart stares. He shrugged. “I thought not. Well, in truth, it is no secret really...”