Chapter 12
Twelve
Augusta ventured into the library only after she’d taken trays for both breakfast and luncheon. She hadn’t hidden. She’d spent the morning wandering the woods with Fiona, searching out fairy rings and finding a small dance of stones Fiona promised her was full of good magic.
Maybe it was. Soaking in the beauty of Balfour, spending time with the child, Augusta gradually found some sort of balance. Enough to risk running into Ian in the library, enough to be relieved when he wasn’t there.
“Will I disturb you if I read here for a bit, Mr. MacGregor?”
Gilgallon rose from the desk, a blond, tired, sleeker version of his older brother. “I’ll be glad for the company, Miss Augusta. What are you reading?”
“It’s a grammar for the Gaelic, though Mary Fran says this is for the Irish version.”
“Irish and Scottish aren’t that different. Even an English grammar would be better than trying to plow through these marriage settlements. Ian doesn’t believe in leaving details to sort themselves out.”
“Marriage is a complicated undertaking,” Augusta said, eyeing the thick sheaf of documents in Gil’s hand. She wanted to burn them, as if without executed documents, there could be no wedding.
Which, come to think of it, there wouldn’t be.
“It shouldn’t be this complicated.” Gil set the papers down on the desk and paced to the window. “It feels like this is just one more way the English are conquering us.”
He spoke with his back half to her, his tone bleak.
“I’m very sure Genie is the one feeling seized and carried off, Mr. MacGregor.” Augusta winced a little at her word choice: To “seize and carry off” was the genteel translation for the Latin verb rapio.
“I’m not trying to be rude.” He smiled over his shoulder, though his eyes remained bleak.
“It just seems to me that when much has been taken from a man—most of his family, the best of his lands, two hundred years of being a clan, his older brother—that choosing a mate ought to remain to him for his own pleasure. It shouldn’t be a matter of marrying for coin. ”
Disjointed images—of Gil watching Genie, Gil carrying Genie from the woods, Gil faithfully taking the place beside Genie each morning at breakfast—coalesced in Augusta’s mind.
“You’re in love with my cousin, aren’t you, Gilgallon?”
He said nothing for a long moment, while Augusta reeled with the irony of it. Was this why Genie was so reluctant to marry Ian?
Gil’s smile was a sad echo of his brother’s. “I care for them both, Miss Augusta, or I hope I do. I hope I’m honorable enough to wish this marriage didn’t have to be, for both of their sakes rather than for mine.”
Augusta studied the lean planes of his face while wheels turned in her mind. “If there were a way to spare them, a way that protected Genie from her father and left your family without financial obligations to hers, would you take it?”
“There isn’t a way, and even if there were, Ian is convinced his title is all we have left to sell for a cushion between us and the next disaster.”
“He doesn’t even have the title yet himself.”
“Yes, he does.” Gil glanced over at her, clearly measuring how much to tell an outsider.
“Asher has been declared dead. We got that word yesterday, which means Ian is Balfour in truth, though the formalities yet remain. We agreed to keep that much from the baron. If he thinks we’re waiting for word on Asher’s death, then we have another reason to stall negotiations. ”
“I think Ian will have done dragging his feet now, Gilgallon.”
He studied her with an intensity that put Augusta in mind of his older brother. “You call him Ian now?”
She nodded, finding it necessary to stare out the window across the beauty of the gardens stretching out behind the house.
“We’re a pair, aren’t we?” His green eyes were full of understanding and commiseration.
“At least you can scurry back south and never set eyes on them again. Until they have some sons, I’m doomed to stay close at hand, being the spare and Ian’s henchman.
I’m not sure there’s enough whisky left in Scotland to make that prospect bearable. ”
Scurrying. She loathed the notion, but comparing miseries with Gilgallon would get them nowhere. “You’ve read the settlements in their entirety?”
“I’m on my second trip through. Ian is a careful draftsman. It’s heavy going.”
Augusta marched to the desk, found a pair of reading spectacles there, and hooked them around her ears.
“My father used to make a game out of explaining contract clauses to me and quizzing me on the legal language. My impression is that lawyers delight in creating heavy going. Sooner begun is sooner done.”
His smile was slow to bloom, starting in his eyes then drifting down over his face like summer sun filling a valley from up over a high, cold tor. That smile lightened his countenance, taking away years and worries and woes as it cascaded down his features.
“Genie said you were formidable.”
“She did?” Augusta picked up the sheaf of papers and passed half to Gilgallon. “One wonders how she came to such an odd conclusion.”
· · ·
“I am concerned for you.”
Augusta looked up to find Matthew peering down at her where she sat at the big estate desk in Ian’s library.
“Why would you be concerned for me, Matthew?” She tucked the settlement documents under a pile of letters and blinked up at him in what she hoped was convincing innocence.
“Gilgallon told me you’d been in here all afternoon, noodling away at some dusty old grammar. I find you with ink stains on both hands, circles under your eyes, and your usually tidy coiffure attempting disarray before sunset.”
“Sunset is quite late in these surrounds.” Still, Matthew had a point. She’d been in here for hours, absorbed in the minutiae of legalities that should not concern her in the least.
“We have an hour before we must dress for dinner, cousin. I was hoping for a game of chess on the terrace.”
Confidences, then. He wanted to pry them from her, or alert her to some situation that might devolve to her discredit—such as Genie falling in love with the wrong brother.
“A change of scene appeals,” Augusta said, getting to her feet. Matthew led her directly to the terrace from the library, pausing only to get a chess set down from the shelves. They’d no sooner started setting up pieces than a footman appeared with a tea service.
“Mary Fran has spies everywhere,” Matthew said, and this put a rare smile on his face. “No guest will go hungry or thirsty on her watch.”
“You’re enjoying your stay here, then?”
Matthew paused with the black queen in his hand. The set was old, ivory and onyx, gorgeous little carvings so detailed the pieces had ferocious, bellicose expressions on their faces—all save the queens. The one in Matthew’s hand was smiling.
“I did not expect to make a friend of an earl’s widowed daughter,” he said, putting the queen on the board. “Mary Fran got me talking about… the past.”
Augusta abruptly understood the sadness in Matthew’s smile.
He’d finally chosen somebody to confide in about his wife, who had not survived the posting to the Crimea, while Matthew had.
Mary Fran, being widowed herself, would be a sympathetic ear.
“I’m guessing Mary Fran makes as impressive a friend as she would an enemy,” she said carefully.
Matthew looked up, the smile reaching his eyes. “Exactly so, as do I. I need to know, should I have to depart temporarily to deal with the press of business, that you will be all right here.”
Depart temporarily…? “Matthew, if you’ve finally found a lady with whom you are congenial, then now is not the time to depart, temporarily or otherwise.”
“I’m investigating options, Gus, not blowing full retreat, and yet I don’t like the idea of leaving you here without anybody to keep an eye on Altsax.”
“I can handle Uncle.” Brave words, brave, untrue words.
“If this business with Genie and the earl doesn’t come off according to the baron’s plans, he’s going to blame you, Gus, at least in part.” Matthew spoke very quietly as he started lining up his pawns.
“I know this. He’ll blame me, Julia, Genie, Balfour—everybody but himself. Julia has the resources to deal with him, and there’s a limit to what he’ll do to his own daughter if he wants her to remain marriageable in the eyes of Polite Society.”
The pieces were set up, but Matthew was studying Augusta, not the board.
“When did you learn to give nothing away, Gus? I used to be able to tell what sort of game we’d have by the way you set up your men.
I can’t tell if you’re in the mood to trounce me or if you’re just humoring my request for a game. ”
“I’m considering options too, Matthew.” She opened with the white queen’s knight, which had her cousin frowning in consternation.
“I have money, Gus. Altsax scoffs and mutters about my dabbling in trade, but I’m good at it. You’re not to consider yourself on his charity any longer.”
She lifted her gaze from the board to regard a cousin she’d stopped seeing years ago. “Could you invest a sum for me?”
“If that’s all you’ll let me do, then yes.
I should not have let him remove you to Oxford without making sure myself you were content to be removed.
Allow me to make amends. I own properties as well, Gus.
You need not rusticate in Oxford, not when I have handsome farms to let in Surrey and Hampshire. ”
Augusta sat back, utterly flummoxed by the conversation. “I may have need of one of those farms, Matthew, at least for a time.”
He pursed his lips and studied the board for a long moment. “You’ll be careful, Gus. I don’t trust Altsax farther than I could throw him.” He put his hand on a pawn, withdrew it, then made the move.
“Neither do I, Matthew. Not any longer.”