Bridegroom Wore Plaid (2 page)

And then they were leaving the crowded surrounds of the Ballater train station, leaving the sound of steam belched from the train, the hubbub of greeting and parting in the station yard, the stomping and tail swishing of coach horses impatient—as Ian was impatient—to be away from the noise.

“What can you tell me?” Ian asked his brothers as they slowed their horses to a walk. The coach had fallen hundreds of yards behind, the aging team needing a modest pace on the many inclines on the road to Balfour House.

“The younger daughter, Hester, is harmless, but not stupid,” Connor said. “My guess is she knows she has to wait until the older one is wed before she herself goes on the block. She won’t be a problem.”

“See that she isn’t.”

Connor nodded, no doubt resigned to having to dance and flirt—as best he could—with yet another English miss.

“Gil, what about my prospective bride?”

Gil fiddled with his reins, adjusting the balance of curb and snaffle. “Pretty, which should make married life a little easier, at least during daylight hours.”

“What does that mean?”

Gil’s lips flattened. “She’s… nervous. Anxious, but many women are not pleased to be making long trips by train. I can’t say in five minutes of her company I came to any significant conclusions about Miss Daniels.”

Gil had gotten a generous helping of the family charm along with his blond good looks. If there was more intelligence to gain regarding Miss Daniels, he was the best man to gather it.

Con glowered at nothing in particular. “It was
Mac
Daniels until a few generations ago.”

“It’s Daniels now,” Ian said. “Well, keep your eyes and ears open. The shorter chaperone strikes me as pleasant enough, though those types are easy to underestimate. The taller one is decidedly lacking in cheer.”

Con’s mouth quirked up. “Serves you right.”

“She could be an ally,” Ian said. “If she’s willing to see her cousin matched to a Scottish earldom, then a fat English dowry is that much closer to our dirty, grasping hands.”

Con’s smile disappeared as he glared at his horse’s mane. “There has to be another way.”

“There isn’t.” Gil’s tone was weary. “Thank God that Her Majesty has made all things Scottish fashionable, particularly strutting about the Highlands in summer. The paying guests get us from year to year, from crop to crop, and shearing to shearing. We’d be on the boat to Nova Scotia without them. They will not keep Balfour in any sort of repair, though, and they leave us precious little to send along to the others.”

“We’re doing all right,” Ian said. But just all right. Another blight on the crops, a sickness in the flocks, a new tax from London, and all right would not be good enough. As much coin as they sent to their myriad relations in the New World, there was always a need for more.

“We’re waltzing and flirting our lives away,” Con said. “It’s enough to make that boat to Canada look very, very good.”

He’d let his diction lapse: verra, verra guid. As the youngest, Con had come down from the mountains most recently, but it was more than that. This charade took a toll on them all, but on Con worse than Ian or Gil. Con was their horsemaster, a man more comfortable out-of-doors among the beasts than swilling tea in his dress kilt.

“Race you!” Gil drove his heels into his horse’s sides, shooting out from between his brothers like a blond streak. Con thundered after, while Ian held Hannibal back through a series of impatient crow hops and props.

“Settle, you. A fellow of your dignified years has no business disporting like a cocktail lad of three.”

At the sound of Ian’s voice, the gelding ceased his antics. They were both getting too old to caper around for the sheer hell of it, but as Ian watched the coach come lumbering up the hill behind him, he wheeled his horse and shot off after his brothers.

***

“My goodness, the men here are certainly
tall
!” Hester offered this observation to the coach at large.

“And… substantial,” Julia concurred, wiggling her eyebrows in an unwidow-like manner. “Verra, verra substantial.”

“Naughty, Aunt, mimicking the locals.” Eugenia was smiling. Not the bored, arch expression Augusta saw on her so often, but a genuine, affectionate smile.

“Sometimes being a saint grows tiresome,” Julia said. “Gus, the Scottish air has put roses in your cheeks. Surely this bodes well for our stay in Aberdeenshire.”

“One need not travel this far from the good air of Oxford to acquire roses in one’s cheeks,” Augusta replied. “I will be surprised if that wretched trip didn’t leave the lot of us with permanent aches in unmentionable locations.”

This remark occasioned much drollery, which Julia abetted shamelessly while Augusta watched the passing countryside. In its craggy majesty and bleakness—the mountains here sported no trees above a certain altitude—the landscape bore a resemblance to the strapping specimens of Scottish manhood who’d met their train.

This trip had not been Augusta’s idea—she’d been dead set against it, in fact—but there was pleasure in spending time with her female cousins. Willard and Matthew, thank the angels, had seen fit to spend this leg of the journey up on the box with the coachman, meaning Augusta could relax just a bit.

Mentally, anyway. The stays biting into her hips and sides made physical relaxation impossible.

“Pretty country,” Genie remarked from her place beside Augusta. “One can see why Her Majesty chose it for her private residence.”

Austere, perhaps. Not pretty. “Attractive in its way, but so is Kent.”

Something passed through Genie’s blue eyes, something that marred the classic English beauty of her features. If Augusta had been forced to name it, she might have called it despair.

And what would such a lovely young lady, the world at her feet after three very successful Seasons, have to despair over?

“You aren’t the one being paraded before every title with pockets to let, Cousin.” Genie turned her head to look out the other window. “I appreciate that you’ve abandoned your rose gardens to chaperone Hester and me, but is the duty really so onerous when all you’ll be doing is walking in Lord Balfour’s woods and dancing with his brothers?”

“Not… onerous, though you know I do not dance.”

“You did.” That from Julia, the traitor. “When you came out you danced quite often, Gussie.”

“Nearly a decade ago, when there was no choice but to dance.”

A little silence fell, while Augusta felt a despair of her own. This was her lot in life now, to kill confidences from her younger cousins, to leave little clouds of awkwardness and disapproval in her conversational wake. But really, for Julia to bring up Augusta’s come-out…

“Did you fancy Lord Balfour, Genie?” Hester put the question quietly. Because Augusta was sitting beside Genie, she saw the girl’s mouth tighten.

“Cousin Augusta doesn’t dance,” Genie said. “I do not seek marriage to a stranger sporting a title. I’m sure Lord Balfour is a very amiable gentleman, but I’m not here to become his countess.”

Her tone consigned all amiable gentlemen to the jungles of darkest Peru.

“Papa mightn’t agree with you.” Hester’s tone bore no malice. “We’re both for titles, Genie. You’ve heard him lecturing Mama about it incessantly.”

“Then you marry the Scottish earl.”

Hester, with characteristic good cheer, appeared to consider the notion. “He’s handsome, if tall.”

“And substantial,” Julia added. “Don’t forget that. I like his eyes.”

“Maybe you should marry him, Aunt,” Hester suggested, lips curving. “I hadn’t noticed his eyes.”

“They’re kind,” Julia said. “I find that very attractive on a man.”

Oh, for pity’s sake. The man’s eyes were
green
. A startling, emerald green, probably made more striking by his somewhat dark complexion and the thick fringe of dark lashes around them. They were also tired, those eyes. They had a weariness that contrasted subtly with his flashing white teeth, easy grin, and comfortable manners.

“The one with brown hair struck me as serious,” Julia said, egging on her charges. “Maybe he’d be a better match for you, Genie. If he’s the spare, he’ll at least have a courtesy title.”

“Connor has the brown hair,” Hester supplied. “He has the best nose. Gilgallon looks like he laughs more, and I like his blond hair, but his mouth is stubborn. I’d put my money on him as the spare.”

Lord Balfour’s mouth wasn’t stubborn. Augusta frowned, picturing him grinning as he’d swung up on his horse and patted the beast soundly on the neck. His mouth was wide, the lips a trifle full, and on the left side, he had a dimple that flashed when he smiled. With thick, dark hair ruffled by the breeze, he made an attractive picture.

Julia untied her bonnet and set it in her lap. “What constitutes a good nose, Hester?”

“Proud,” Hester said. “Connor has a proud nose, a conqueror’s nose. Not a narrow little whining thing like Richard Comstock-Simms has.”

“My sister has taken up reading noses,” Genie said, her smile back in place now that impending marriage was no longer the subject. “You can make pots of money predicting men’s futures by assessing their noses.”

“We already have pots of money,” Hester retorted. “Which is why Lord Balfour will offer for you. I wouldn’t mind having a Scottish brother-in-law, Genie.”

“Why not a Scottish husband?” Julia asked, deflecting the temper flaring in Genie’s eyes.

“Because Mama will not allow me to marry until Genie is at least engaged. Besides, Genie has had three Seasons, and I’ve had only one.”

Augusta let their combination of banter and bickering wash over her, while she considered Ian MacGregor’s nose.

There was nothing subtle about
his
nose. Proud applied, but also, perhaps, aristocratic. His nose occupied the middle of his face as a nose ought, but was a little more grand than the standard nose, having the slightest tendency to hook toward the bottom. She knew this because she’d studied the man in profile when he’d offered his arm the second time.

He’d smiled down at her, offering a polite, even friendly smile to a woman whom he could safely dismiss as a nonentity, which was exactly how Augusta intended he view her. Why his willingness to do so should leave her disgruntled, she did not know, nor was she going to waste time pondering it.

The coach rattled along roads likely improved in honor of Her Majesty’s decision to make her private residence at nearby Balmoral. Lord Balfour’s proximity to the royal household had figured prominently in the Daniels’s campaign to have the girls spend much of their summer here in Aberdeenshire.

As if Queen Victoria would pop out from behind a tree and declare herself thrilled to be making the acquaintance of Hester and Eugenia Daniels.

Julia put her bonnet back on twenty minutes later and tied the ribbons beneath her chin. “At long last, our destination. What a lovely, lovely facade.”

Pale gray stone caught bright summer sun, ivy blanketed the northern face, and topiary dragons frolicked along the wings spreading from either side of the main entrance. The house looked comfortable in its setting, secure, affluent, and pretty without being pretentious.

Julia was first to leave the coach, owing to her senior status, but then Augusta motioned for her cousins to leave next. Those oversized, smiling Scotsmen were out there, offering their arms, exuding charm, and generally creating the sort of impression intended to make the ladies forget they were paying a great deal for the privilege of being Lord Balfour’s “guests.”

“Madam?”

She had expected her uncle or perhaps her cousin Matthew to be the last available escort, but Lord Balfour himself loomed in the coach doorway, his hand extended to offer her assistance.

His bare hand. He’d taken off his riding gloves, allowing Augusta to notice that even the backs of his hands were of a darker complexion than an Englishman would feel comfortable exposing socially.

She placed her gloved fingertips on his palm and suffered him to assist her from the coach. All went well as she stepped down, but as luck would have it, her foot landed on a pebble that rolled beneath her weight as she descended.

Leaving her careening into Lord Balfour.

“Steady there.”

She’d pitched ignominiously against his chest, finding him as immovable as a slab of rock.

He smelled better than a rock, though. Leaning against him, Augusta took one half breath to find her balance, enough for her nose to gather the scents of soap, lavender, and something fresh and spicy—heather?—underlain with a hint of horse.

Good smells, clean and bracing. She straightened lest he think her daft. “My thanks, your lordship.”

“Surely Balfour will do? It’s summertime, and we’re far, far from London, Miss Merrick.”

She nodded noncommittally. Calling the man by his title little more than an hour after meeting him was not something Miss Augusta Merrick should be comfortable doing, regardless of the season. She had to like him for offering, though. It suggested some of the warmth in those smiles he tossed around so carelessly might be real.