Chapter 7 #2
“You’re squashing me, Miss Augusta.”
She also loosened her hold on the child. “Apologies. I am discommoded by our adventure. A hot cup of tea is in order, I think. Will you join me?”
Fiona squirmed around to peer at Augusta. “You want me to join you for tea?”
“A private tea, with a whole tray of tea cakes. My favorites have chocolate icing and crème in the center.”
“I like the ones that are chocolate everywhere. Inside, outside, and on top. So does Uncle Ian.”
Augusta smoothed a hand over the girl’s silky crown and looked down to find Ian staring up at them with an odd expression on his face.
“You ladies stay right where you are. We’ll send a groom for your things and get you back to the house.” He lifted the horse’s reins over the beast’s neck and led the gelding from the pasture.
“Uncle Ian?”
He didn’t even look back. “I’m going to have to tell her, Fee. She’s your mama, and I don’t lie to my family.”
“But then she’ll try to watch me again, and I hate it when she tries to watch me. I don’t want to dust and polish and trot around the house all day. We’ve company and I’m not supposed to let them see me and it’s boring.”
“Boring?” Augusta knew a reaction in a child when she heard it gathering steam.
“How could it be boring to hold court for a little while in your castle after having such a brush with disaster, Fiona? Your uncles Gil and Con will want to hear exactly what happened from you and you alone. They’ll wish they’d been the ones to come to the rescue, and they’ll try to steal some tea cakes while you tell your tale.
You can scold them for their sorry manners. What is the Gaelic word for scold?”
Fiona had a little dialogue on the topic with Ian in their mother tongue while Augusta caught the occasional sentence or phrase. As relief replaced her earlier upset, she let the sound wash over her.
Ian should always speak his first language, she decided. The music of it rumbled from him in a natural flow, more lyrical than the hard edges and clipped intonation of his public-school English, more resonant.
Augusta tugged his jacket closely around her, taking a deep inhale of the scent of Ian and safety: his beautiful voice, his lovely scent, the sight of his muscular shoulders moving under his clothes as he walked the horse along and kept up a conversation to soothe his rattled little niece.
As Augusta had been standing in that pasture, heart pounding, certain her own death was imminent, she’d had the thought she was going to die in Scotland.
And now she’d died and gone to heaven, if only for a few guilty moments.
· · ·
Augusta and Fiona would have their little tea party—a great kindness on the part of the adult toward the child who should have been more alert to pastoral dangers—but Ian was going to have a goddamned dram of the good stuff. Several drams.
And not just because the bull had damned near trampled two defenseless females.
Bloody damn…
Ian’s heart had almost pounded out of his chest when he’d topped the rise and seen Augusta Merrick standing ramrod straight, staring that bull in his bovine face, putting herself squarely in danger for the sake of the child.
And if anything had happened to Fee… She was their heart. She was their hope for a happier future, a more secure future where children had enough to eat and felt safe in the love and protection of family.
The third blow to his composure had come when he’d gathered up their hamper, blanket, and sketch pad, and seen what Augusta Merrick had drawn. He’d barely had time to riffle through the pages, but what she’d rendered had trampled him as surely as any bull could have.
She was a talented artist, better even than Con, whose accuracy brought to mind daguerreotypes. She had an ability Con lacked to render emotions incisively, even in inanimate objects.
Balfour House was sketched on its rise, majestic and inviting all at once.
A fortress and a refuge, a home of dignity and warmth.
She saw it the way Ian felt it, not the gutters threatening to sag, the myriad chimneys to keep unclogged, the windows in need of a thorough glazing, but the home where his family loved and lived out their lives.
She’d drawn Con and Gil, catching both their humor and a lurking sort of despair, a restlessness overlaid with determination and sheer healthy Scottish male good looks.
Mary Fran was a different sort of study, in humor and in fatigue not just of the body, but also of the… heart. And pretty. There was lavish female beauty unstintingly portrayed, enough to make Ian see his own sister in a different and more honest light.
Mary Fran was going to waste, frittering away her best years with a broom in one hand and a tot of whisky in the other.
Augusta Merrick, whose own youth was slipping behind her, saw Mary Fran’s life clearly, while Ian—the man responsible for Mary Fran’s well-being and happiness—had not.
And then the final page.
Him. Ian, but not any version of Ian MacGregor ever seen in his own mirror.
This man was smiling slightly, a warmth in his eyes that belied fatigue and disillusionment, though both were there as well.
She’d gotten his nose right too, and yet in her eyes he was a handsome devil, full of mischief and possessed of some wisdom too.
He was a leader a family could be proud of, eager for challenges, but patient when needs must, and willing to take on any burden for those he loved.
As he led his horse into the stable yard, Ian realized Miss Augusta Merrick was a romantic. She was a woman who could have argued poetry with him all morning, probably in several languages, and she was a woman selfless enough to protect another’s child when children had been denied her.
“Do you have to tell Ma right now?” Fiona sat on the horse, looking perfectly miserable, probably just to twist Ian’s heartstrings.
“I’ll tell her.” Miss Augusta brushed a kiss to the girl’s crown that Ian felt in the center of his chest. “I’ll tell her after dinner, over tea with the ladies. I’d like it if you could join us, Fiona.”
Ian watched as Fiona weighed the options. “I want it over with before bedtime, but if all the ladies are there, Ma won’t yell as much.”
Ian reached up and lifted the child from the saddle. “Down you go and off to the kitchen. Tell Cook you were out riding with me, and she’ll make you a tray.” He patted the child’s bottom as she scooted off, not exactly gently, which had Fee grinning at him over her shoulder.
“See you at teatime, Miss Augusta!”
“You next.” Ian reached up, wondering why—when he’d helped any number of ladies from the saddle—he was tempted to catch this one to him when she put her hands on his shoulders and slid to the ground.
Except he knew why. “Steady?”
She nodded, and he stepped back but let himself take her hand as he led her toward the gardens.
When he closed his fingers over hers, he noted two things.
First: Her hand was cold in the middle of a bright summer day.
Second: She was wiser than he, sensing an attraction Ian hadn’t wanted to admit, much less name.
Why else had she silently been putting distance between them ever since their chat on the moonlit terrace?
“You don’t need to avoid me,” he said. He meant the words too. Meant them sincerely.
“Avoid you?” She didn’t withdraw her hand, and yet he felt her withdrawing in some intangible way.
“I’m a gentleman, Miss Merrick, and one attempting to court your cousin.
I would not trespass… I wouldn’t presume…
” He fell silent and led her to a bench they’d occupied before.
It sat behind a high privet hedge, shaded and secluded.
When she’d gingerly lowered herself to the bench, Ian took the place beside her without asking her permission.
He also took her hand again, lest she stalk off after she’d slapped him.
“I like you, Augusta Merrick. I like you, and I respect you, and what you just did for my niece puts my entire family in debt to you.”
It wasn’t what he’d meant to say. The two things were separate, the liking her and being in her debt. He’d never been good at delicate innuendo, never would be, but he’d seen those sketches, and they made him a little reckless.
“I like you too, Ian MacGregor.” She smiled as she said this, a soft, secret female smile that lit up those violet eyes with some joy known only to her. You’d think she’d never liked a fellow before.
Maybe she hadn’t, which was an inordinately cheering thought.
“If you like me, then why haven’t you let me show you any more of the woods?
Why do you move your place at the table every morning so we no longer converse over breakfast?
Why are you from the house for most of every day unless it’s pouring?
You are my only ally in this endeavor with your cousin. I look to you for guidance, you know.”
It was true, in a manner of speaking, but the real truth—the truth a man could tell a friend—popped into his mind as a whole thought: “I’ve missed you, Augusta Merrick.
It has been a very long week, trying to be agreeable to everybody, to fathom the undercurrents in your family and mine, to keep the estate business running smoothly while being the devoted suitor and the charming host.”
She was still smiling to herself, her gaze on their joined hands. Her fingers were gradually warming.
“I’ve… not wanted to impose. Not wanted to overstep. You’re the earl.”
“I’m Ian to you, if you’ll recall.”
“Ian.”
And God bless her, she said it the way Fiona or Mary Fran might. Not E-an, but nearly one syllable and almost rhyming with rain.
“Augusta.” It felt good to say her name, but he didn’t let himself dwell on that. “You bring your sketchbook when we go on our walk.”
“Tomorrow morning?”