Bridegroom Wore Plaid (24 page)

“Matthew, may I have a word with you?” She aimed a smile at the cousin who might have been her spouse and subtly twisted the tail of his conscience.

“Of course. Lady Mary Frances was good enough to show me the portrait gallery yesterday. Shall we walk there?”

He escorted her up through the house, considerate and careful with her, though she’d seen the brooding frown he’d aimed at Mary Fran before departing the library.

“Were you always such a gentleman?”

His eyebrows rose as he strolled along beside her. “I hope I was. I gather from your question there is some doubt.”

“Not doubt, just a failure of accurate recollection. Are you enjoying your stay here?”

She intended it as a polite, passing question, but Matthew’s lips quirked, and his gaze lit with humor as they perambulated past some dark paintings in heavy, gilded frames. “I’m enjoying it immeasurably. Far more than I’d intended.”

“You came on a holiday not intending to enjoy yourself?”

“I came to make sure Altsax didn’t force Genie into marriage with some old curmudgeon who thinks bathing unhealthful and a wife’s purpose to ensure the succession when she isn’t peeling potatoes in his root cellar.”

Interesting. She’d sold him short by not attributing such fraternal concern to him. “And you are satisfied on this point?”

“Balfour is not a curmudgeon.” It was half an answer. An intriguing half. “But what of you, Gus? Did you come on this outing expecting to enjoy yourself?”

Matthew had never been stupid. Augusta wondered what conclusions he’d drawn about her dealings with Ian, what he’d overheard, what he’d seen.

“I came expecting to provide some reinforcement to Julia as she tried to chaperone two girls in a strange household. I was not opposed to the idea of enjoying myself.”

He shook his head, pausing before a smaller work depicting three children playing with a brown-and-white spaniel. “When Altsax told me you’d decided to retire to the country rather than resume the social whirl, I was concerned for you. I didn’t think your parents would want you to make a shrine to their memories. I should have insisted you make at least one more try at finding your own spouse.”

“One more try?”
What
on
earth
had
Uncle
told
him?

“After Post-Williams went to Altsax and said he’d accept a quiet wedding out of respect for your loss, the baron explained to him you weren’t willing to be rushed. And thus the man left the field, concluding you were trying to tell him you didn’t suit. It fell to me to listen to Henry’s drunken ramblings on the matter. He truly was fond of you, but I didn’t see as he had much choice. I gather you regard the matter differently?”

Somehow, she manufactured a reply. “I don’t hold it against him.”
But
what
on
earth
was
Matthew
saying?

“He read me a letter he intended to send you. Pathetic, the things a man will say when he fancies his heart’s broken and there’s decent libation on hand. So why did you drag me up here?”

She could barely comprehend Matthew’s question, so thoroughly had his recitation disconcerted her. She cast back over her last discussion with Henry Post-Williams… He’d muttered things about having to speak with Uncle, their situation being very different from what he’d anticipated, and then he’d been gone, leaving it to Uncle and Aunt to explain his continued absence.

“Gus? Woolgathering?” Matthew was looking down at her, concern in his blue eyes.

“Your version of my distant past does not comport
at
all
with my own recollections.”

“It wasn’t that long ago.” His frown deepened, which meant he was applying his mind to the situation. Matthew had a formidable mind, so Augusta seized on a formidable distraction.

“Why are you hovering around Mary Fran?”

His eyebrows rose then crashed down. “I am not hovering around her so much as hovering in the vicinity of my father.”

“Uncle?”

“He made an inappropriate advance toward her earlier in our stay. She did not inform her brothers, or Genie’s chances at the earl would have been thoroughly queered by now.”

“And Uncle quite possibly called to task for his misstep.”

Just then, Augusta would not have minded seeing her uncle brought up short. What could he possibly have been about, to chase Henry off under false pretenses when the love and consideration of a devoted husband would have been such a comfort to her? She’d written Henry no letters—a proper young lady would not have corresponded with a young man not of her family. So what if they’d had to live humbly? She was living humbly and virtually
alone
in Oxford—alone with a pesky lot of chickens.

“Insulting your hostess, and an earl’s daughter at that is not a misstep, Gus. It comes closer to being a fatal error.”

“Nobody duels anymore. Her Majesty frowns on it.”

“This is Scotland, not the civilized confines of Kent. Nobody thinks it’s his right to prey on any female he sees, and yet Altsax easily could.”

There was a curious bitterness beneath Matthew’s observation.

“Why not let your father deal with the consequences of his actions and be on your merry way? You’ve seen that Balfour will not force Genie to the altar.”

Balfour would force
himself
to the altar though, and he’d woo Genie’s consent once he realized Genie’s life would be hell if she failed to marry the earl.

Matthew sighed and walked off a few paces to study a portrait of some fellow in bright blue-and-red tartan regalia. The figure in the portrait looked a little like Ian, but this older Scot’s fierceness was almost decorative compared to Ian’s. Ian’s ferociousness was kept leashed, kept buried only to surface in his devotion to his family—and in his kisses.

“I do not want any titles, Gus. I never have. The title was the stated reason I was jerked away from my regiment at a time when intelligent leadership would have made a difference in the fighting. The needless,
lunatic
bloodshed—”

He stopped and closed his eyes, then joined his hands behind his back and clasped them tightly.

“Matthew?”

“I digress.” He let out a pent-up breath and turned to face her. “I do not care for any titles, Gus. The Lords is mostly a waste of time. The common man is running this country more each day, the monarchy is becoming an anachronism, and the peerage with it.”

She stared at him, wondering at the man he’d become. “Why, Matthew. I do believe you are a radical. This is so… unexpected. And so heartening.”

“Heartening? I’m afraid Altsax wouldn’t agree with you. He scoffs at my interest in trade and considers agricultural science a contradiction in terms.”

“Uncle is old school. But, Matthew?”

“Cousin?”

“Why did you never come visit me in Oxford?”

Before this surprising exchange with him, she hadn’t realized it mattered, though it did. It mattered, and it
hurt
that her remaining family had shunned her, hurt in the way of a familiar ache for which no treatment had been availing.

He cocked his head in puzzlement. “You wanted your privacy. Mama and Altsax insisted I respect that. You never answered my letters or Genie’s. After a couple of years, we just gave up.”

She’d never received any letters, except a few from Hester, who would have been off at school. “I gave up too.”

Unease coiled low in her belly. It was one thing to conclude she’d had no understanding of her parents’ complicated financial estates, but Matthew’s words suggested her correspondence and her marital prospects had been tampered with as well.

And her uncle—Matthew’s own father—would have been in a position to do that tampering, but why would he have done such a thing?

Matthew considered her from closer range. “There’s more you’re not telling me. With Genie and Hester, I can winkle their confessions out of them, though Hester’s getting more stubborn. With you, I could never tell what you were thinking.”

“Sometimes, I hardly know what to think.”

“Are you trying to find a way to warn me off Lady Mary Fran? I won’t be offended if you are, but I’ll be disappointed.”

“Warn you off?” For pity’s sake, she’d been so absorbed in her own situation she’d hardly considered… “She’s a wonderful woman, Matthew. Don’t let anybody or anything warn you off, least of all Uncle’s fuming and carrying on.”

“We are agreed on that.”

The relief in his eyes was touching. Such a soldier he’d become, but he remained her cousin too. Still, it was with Ian she wanted to discuss these revelations, not with her own family.

Matthew went back to studying the Highlander. “I haven’t said anything to anybody yet about my interest in Mary Fran. I don’t intend to either, not until the lady gives me some encouragement.”

Ah. A proud soldier, the best and most determined kind. “Perhaps, Cousin, I can aid your cause.”

He shot a look over his shoulder that would have been hopeful had it not been so hesitant. “I am not in the habit of refusing aid, not in something that counts for so very much.”

“Then leave me the occasional moment alone with Mary Fran. She and I have things to discuss.”

And he was a prudent soldier too. He escorted Augusta back to the library and retreated without asking even one more question.

***

“No. Try again.” Mary Fran sat across Ian’s desk from Augusta, speaking very slowly and clearly in Gaelic. “Beloved of my heart.”

Augusta mimicked her, and Mary Fran grinned. “You’re getting there. It isn’t a prissy language, it’s a passionate language. You can’t be standing guard over every vowel and consonant. You must go by ear and by feeling. What’s next?”

For a spinster, Miss Augusta’s choice of vocabulary was odd: Please. Thank you. Thank you most graciously. I love you. All very prosaic, but then: I
desire
you. I need you. Love me—in the second person singular emphatic command form.

Shocking, really, but the woman had saved Fee’s life, and when asked for a few lessons in Gaelic, Mary Fran had hardly been in a position to refuse.

“You have to do me a small kindness,” Mary Fran said when Augusta had mastered her phrases for the day.

“Of course. Name it.” Augusta smiled as she spoke, making it hard to recall the woman was English. She didn’t look English, not with that lustrous black hair and those odd violet eyes. She didn’t smile English either.

“I like to make sure my guests are accommodated in all ways possible.” Mary Fran tidied up Ian’s stack of correspondence to give her hands something to do. “I was curious about some of Mr. Daniels’s preferences.”

Mary Fran felt her face heating while Augusta’s smile became a grin.

“I’ve known Matthew all my life. Ask away.”

“What is his favorite dessert?”

Miss Augusta was so generous with her replies, so detailed and thorough, that an hour later, Mary Fran was still taking notes.

***

After a morning of struggling for conversation with his intended, Ian was hardly inclined to humor her glowering older brother. What Ian wanted—what his soul shrieked at him to do—was to find Augusta and kiss the daylights out of her. And if he couldn’t do that, then he wanted simply to behold her. To feast his eyes on her female shape, to catch a hint of the lilac-and-meadow scent of her to hoard up in his memory against all the years they’d be apart.

He did
not
want to exchange pleasantries with Young Daniels or hear a lecture from the man about an earl’s responsibility to curb his widowed sister’s rapacious tendencies with the fellows.

“A word with you, my lord?”

“This way.” Ian gestured toward the gardens and purposely did not turn behind the privet hedge. “I trust you’re enjoying your stay?”

Best
give
the
man
a
broad
opening
and
get
it
over
with.

“Immensely. Your hospitality is superb and your family a delight.”

Ian glanced over sharply. Englishmen stole and cheated as if the world was owed to them in its entirety. They could lie too, but they didn’t lie well. They’d never had to learn the knack, when they could just pillage and plunder under legal decrees instead. Young Daniels was smiling a soft, genuine, introspective smile. He wasn’t even trying to lie.

Mary Fran hadn’t run him through yet, poor bastard.

“I’m pleased to hear you’re having a fine time. So how may I be of service to you?” Please God, don’t let the damned man be asking to court Mary Fran. Daniels was English, and she’d show him not one shred of mercy.