Chapter 15 #2
“Fiona.” Ian stood at the door to the terrace, still attired in his Highland finery minus the bonnet.
As much as it was a relief to see him, his sudden appearance—looking so stern and regal in his formal attire—was disquieting too.
“You should be in bed, child, but you’ll want to wish your mother good night. ”
“She won’t yell at me for staying up so late?”
“She might, but only a little. Tonight is for celebrating, not scolding.”
Augusta was relieved to hear that, because Ian’s expression was oddly solemn for a man who had much to celebrate.
“Good night, Miss Augusta.” Fee hugged Augusta briefly, treated her uncle to the same affection, and skipped out the door.
“She’s happy,” Ian said, crossing the room to lock the door. “But what about you, Augusta Merrick?”
“All it takes to make Fiona happy is the hope of a pony some day.” Augusta resisted the urge to get to her feet as Ian stalked back across the room. “My needs are a little more complicated. I take it Gil and Genie are betrothed?”
“You know they are.” He glowered down at her, plucked the hairbrush from her hand, and moved to stand behind her. “I’m grateful to you, Augusta, for taking an interest in my family’s welfare, but the baron will get wind of your hand in things.”
“I told him the contracts had been signed. I’m sure he’s figured out I saw it done.”
Ian’s arms folded around her shoulders. “You took a very great risk.”
He sounded… worried, exasperated. He did not sound pleased, and yet the scent of him as he curled against her neck was making it difficult for Augusta to think.
“I could not see any legal risk, Ian. The contracts were written so Gil could sign them.”
“So you divined, but I wrote them, and I did not realize they could be interpreted that way. When Matthew told me he was haring south to procure a special license for Con and Julia, I charged him with getting one for Gil and Genie as well. You trumped my simple schemes beautifully, Augusta.”
“Are you angry with me?”
He straightened, looking very tall in Augusta’s vanity mirror.
“I am worried for you, Augusta. The baron will take out his ire on somebody. I’m thinking Hester had best bide with her brother at some length—Altsax could use his youngest in some scheme to torment Genie and Gil.
” He started brushing her hair, making long, slow strokes from her crown to her hips.
“I enjoyed dancing with you tonight, Augusta Merrick.”
“You made a spectacle of me, opening the dancing that way.” She closed her eyes against a growing lassitude.
“You were cheated out of years of dances, and the MacGregor plaid has never been worn to such graceful advantage.”
She opened her eyes to see he was at least half smiling at her in the mirror. “Flummery, MacGregor. Arrant flummery.”
“Promise me something, Augusta.” He set the brush aside and crouched beside her chair so their eyes met.
“Promise me when you go south, you’ll take utmost care.
Stay with Gil and Genie in the London townhouse, bide with Con and Julia at her residence in Northumbria.
Matthew assures me he has any number of places for you to stay where Altsax won’t be able to find you. Your safety matters to me, my heart.”
Augusta leaned forward to bury her face against his neck. The look in his eye could not have been more concerned. His voice was low, urgent, and sincere, but what he wasn’t saying…
He expected her to go south, to put this summer idyll behind them, and really, why should he expect otherwise? He still needed to marry money, and she was still a poor relation. She’d wanted him free of Altsax’s schemes, and her wish had been granted in that regard. Spectacularly, wonderfully.
Though abruptly, it felt like the wrong wish.
“I’ll be careful, Ian. Matthew has assured me I need not go back to Oxfordshire.”
“That’s… good.” His arms came around her. “I’ll rest easier knowing you’re safe.”
He was silent a long moment, while Augusta was at a loss to know what he waited for.
“I’ll just be going then.” He said the words, but still he did not rise, and Augusta tightened her arms around his shoulders. She shook her head, words clogging in her throat.
“What, my heart? I canna divine your thoughts.”
“Don’t…” She drew in a ragged breath. “Don’t go, Ian.”
“All right then.” His voice was a little unsteady as he stroked his hand over her hair. “I’ll not leave you just yet, and you’ll not leave me.”
· · ·
What did a man say who had nothing to offer the woman who’d risked everything she had to see him and his family happy? What did he say to the woman he loved?
There were no words worthy of the moment, so Ian let his hands speak for him.
“Let me finish with your hair, my heart. You should always wear it down, like the pagan queens of old.” He resumed brushing her hair, though it seemed to him her arms slid from his neck reluctantly.
He made love to her hair, one slow, sweet stroke at a time, until it gleamed in a midnight cascade from her crown to her waist. When she’d said nothing for a long moment, he started braiding it, slowly, carefully.
Not too snug, not too loose. If ever there was a perfect braid, Ian created it for Augusta.
“You’re for bed then?” He planted a kiss on that shining crown as he spoke.
“I don’t want you to go.”
The first words she’d spoken in perhaps twenty minutes, and they comforted.
“You want me to stay with you tonight, Augusta? You need your sleep after such a day.”
She rose and faced him, her eyes impossible to read. “I am still indisposed, but yes, I want you to stay with me.”
He searched her face for clues. No woman but Augusta had ever sought his company through the night without a thought for her own pleasure. “I’ll stay.”
Of course he’d stay. If it broke his heart, if it tore his soul to shreds, if it drove him mad, he’d stay with her as long as he could.
She helped him undress, asking him about each piece of his formal Highland attire, examining it closely before hanging it in the wardrobe. The sight of her hands stroking over the wool did things to Ian’s insides. Not even purely erotic things, but tender, personal things.
He washed off by the hearth, while she sat at her escritoire in her night rail and wrapper and watched him. Candlelight made her hair shine with fiery red–and-gold highlights; the shadows and hollows on her features made him think of wanton angels.
When his person was clean—he’d been slow and thorough for her sake—she came to him and put her arms around his waist. “Come to bed, Ian.”
Wifely words, considering they were not to make love. He put that thought aside and let her lead him by the hand to the bed. When they lay down side by side, Ian wondered if that’s all it was to be—a shared bed—when Augusta shifted to lay along his side.
“Hold me.”
“If I could, I’d hold you forever.” Gaelic, to preserve just a little of his dignity, for there was no longer any hope to preserve.
The worst of his financial worries were gone, thanks to Julia’s and Genie’s proffered generosity, but Augusta’s cousins would see to her welfare now, and her former suitor would make good on the offer the baron had snatched away.
The man’s letter had been a pathetic monument to regret.
And a woman never got over her first lover.
“Ian?”
“Here, love.”
“I wasn’t trying to interfere when I had Gil sign those contracts. I shouldn’t have doubted you, but I couldn’t just… I couldn’t passively accept what fate handed out, not again.”
“You saw the better solution,” Ian said, stroking his hand over her bare arm.
“I’m not angry, Augusta. I am in awe.” He kissed her to stop himself from saying anything more, and she kissed him back.
They composed a symphony of kisses—warm, tender, intimate, and even playful, but for Ian, every single kiss also bore the taste of good-bye.
· · ·
Augusta awoke alone, which she tried to tell herself was not entirely a bad thing. She assayed her emotions and found her heart was at once too empty and too full for tears. She had preserved Ian from having to marry Genie, and that had been her goal.
Except he hadn’t needed her help or her interference, though he didn’t seem perturbed with her over it. He’d even been willing to indulge her sentimental request to spend another night with him—a night of kisses, touches, sighs, and warmth, a night of the kindest farewell she would ever know.
Outside her window, in the golden glow of the summer dawn, a rifle shot exploded. A gun large enough to take down a deer.
Somebody was likely sighting in his weapon, using a target to ensure the aim was accurate. Augusta’s father had been an avid hunter, and once told her half the pleasure of sighting in a new weapon lay simply in all the racket it created.
“You’re awake!” Fiona slipped in the door, grinning hugely. “The shoot will start soon, and that means we set up the picnic next. Have you ever eaten dessert in a tree?”
Augusta mustered a smile for the child. “I have not. You will remedy this oversight with me, won’t you?”
“I will, but you have to wear clothes that won’t catch Mama’s eye. The men are in their hunting plaids. I chose a brown smock and a green pinny.”
“Let’s see what I can find for camouflage.”
Fiona chattered on, about the ball, about her cousin Doungal letting her conduct the orchestra someday if she practiced her piano, about her mama not yelling at her because Matthew—“He’s going to be my papa!”—kept kissing Mama’s cheek.
Augusta paused with her hair half-pinned up. “Fiona, may I tell you something?”
“Of course. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“We are, and all I wanted to say is that I’m very, very glad you’re my friend. I hadn’t made any new friends for quite some time before I came on this holiday. It’s wonderful to have you for a friend.”
This smile was bashful, hinting at a mature beauty that would emerge in just a few years.