Chapter 2 #2
“Poor?” Ian argued, with a lifted brow. “That poor man burned down my house—very nearly with my invalid mother inside it.” The very fact that Fiona wasn’t precisely the invalid they had believed her to be didn’t matter.
After so long in that chair, his mother’s limbs had been weak, and she could never have gotten out on her own.
Were it not for his brother’s quick response, she might be naught more than ash and bone.
So then, if indeed, Edward was so very accommodating as to be occupying Hell this very instant, it was precisely what he deserved.
Not only had Glen Abbey’s steward endangered the lives of many, but he’d embezzled enough money to put Glen Abbey and its denizens in peril for years, and Ian had been forced to resort to a somewhat less than legitimate means to support them.
Thankfully, that entire ordeal was over, though in the absence of a proper home in Scotland, they were now forced to lease an estate from one of his father’s associates—one General James Moore, equerry of the late Duke of Kent.
But, in fact, the man wouldn’t accept a penny for the rental.
He’d donated the use of his estate as a wedding gift, and that was fine with Ian.
He’d take every bloody penny his father allowed them and donate it to the residents of Glen Abbey so they too might have a bounteous Christmas.
The thought of Rusty Broun and his brood dining on ham and venison made his heart gleeful.
And really, the only reason Ian had accepted the crown in his brother’s stead was so he could make dead certain Glen Abbey’s coffers remained full enough to care for the people who depended upon it most. “Hawk” was dead and gone. And that, too, was well and good.
“So, it’s official, then. Fiona will not join us?”
“She will not,” said Ian. “She didn’t wish to travel, though that seems odd—quite, in fact, considering the circumstances.”
The circumstances being that Fiona had one son preparing to depart England for the foreseeable future, and another whose firstborn child was imminent—regardless of the date given, a Christmas babe was entirely possible.
Thoughtfully, Claire tore a bite from her biscuit. “I would think Fiona would wish to come spend the holidays with her son before he quit London?”
Ian sighed as he plucked up a bit of her bacon. “As would I,” he said, “but I believe it’s making her glum… else she’s gotten close to Tolly and doesn’t wish to leave him. But I don’t know. In either case, my father has his job cut out for him.”
Claire sighed as well. “Alas… that makes two glum folks amidst our loved ones. What shall we do?”
“About Ben?” he asked.
Claire peeked out of the dining room door to be certain her brother wasn’t loitering, and then she nodded, but then tilted her fiancé a beautiful green-eyed glance, betraying a twinkle of mischief. “But I have a plan,” she confessed.
“Claire,” Ian protested. “Really, love. Don’t you believe you’ve enough to deal with already? It’s not as though you don’t have enough to contend with.”
Claire shrugged, unfazed. “It’s only a bit of nothing,” she declared, and waved away the notion with a hand.
“Nothing?” he asked. But then, he too cast up a hand.
His bride-to-be was a wise little bird; he knew better than to assert himself against her.
He had more than enough experience with strong-headed ladies to know he daren’t get in their way.
It was enough to keep up with his own affairs—a mountain of changes that would put an entire nation under his care.
“Never mind,” he said. “I don’t want to know. Please, pass the butter.”
With a lovely curl to her beautiful lips, his fiancée reached over to take a small plate of creamy butter and handed it to him, smiling with the light of love in her eyes.
“We should be away after breakfast,” she said giddily. “There’s so much to do, and I’d dearly love to arrive before our guests do.” She grinned. “I have holiday decorations to hang.”
“As you wish, love.”
She laughed quickly. “Will you always be so accommodating, Majesty?”
He grinned. “Always for you, Majesty.”
Her blush crept down from her cheeks into her décolletage—a lovely, delectable flush that tempted Ian’s lips, because he knew her sweet skin would be warm to the touch.
Ever since her brother’s return, they’d been forced to sleep apart, if only for the sake of propriety.
Only the two of them knew the secret they shared—that he had already tasted her in the most shocking of places.
“You will ever be my queen,” he said, “with or without a crown.” And he couldn’t help himself. Far hungrier for the taste of his beautiful wife than he was for the spread on the table, he bent to kiss the sweet temptation of her bosom.
“Ian!” she exclaimed. “What would my brother say?”
“Damn, that miserable fool,” he muttered, but without any rancor, because, in truth, he liked Ben, and he hoped to Hell that whatever his bride had planned, it would drag the fool out of his doldrums once and for all.