A Question for Harry (7 page)

“I’m not grasping at straws!” Fiona gaped
, her good humor fleeing quicker than the seeds on the wind. “Just because I want a marriage of my own? A home of my own? I’m not grasping for anything more than any lady hopes for.”

Her sister-in-law looked doubtful.
“The straws I think you are grasping for are not the goals themselves, Fiona. Only your means of achieving them. You admit you have no true affection for this Ramsay fellow.”

“Yet,” Fiona insisted, glancing again at Ramsay, who was now pacing
the bank of the Serpentine angrily, as if that would solve anything. “I am well aware of the price I will pay to get what I want, Ilona. But the payment will be made on my terms.”

“You would have it no other way.” Ilona inclined her head
. “But there might be other avenues available to you at a lesser cost that I hope you will take the time to consider. Lord Temple perhaps? Though you might consider him too serious a gentleman.”

“He asked me to go bicycling with him this afternoon.”

“There you are then! Opportunity knocking without you having to reach too hard. It is a good thing the weather has turned in your favor,” Ilona enthused, drawing a deep breath and lifting her face to the sun. She gave the impression of being completely relaxed though her posture never slumped. “And mine. A week of gloomy weather had begun to weigh on my mood as well.”

Fiona snorted lightly at that
. As far as she had seen in all the years she had known Ilona, there was very little that could dim her spirits.

“Is that
Lord Ramsay then, across the lake?” Ilona asked, her eyes still closed and a smile playing at her lips. “He’s fairly handsome at least,” she went on as if Fiona had answered. “Dark and tall. I know you like that. He reminds me of that gentleman … I cannot recall his name. Lord Something. You know, the one who was courting Moira before she wed Vin?”

Fiona stiffened in surprise and
looked at Ramsay again. He was tall, but lanky rather than muscular. His hair
was
black and his eyes a pale blue but surely that was just a coincidence? Had such a slight resemblance played into her decision?

She stifled a groan but Ilona seemed to hear her and opened one eye
. “He seems to be waiting for you. Would you like to speak with him? I don’t mind resting alone for a bit.”

“I should, I suppose
.” Fiona rose slowly, shaking out her skirts.

“Extend my apologies for disrupting your meeting.”

Fiona laughed at her blatant insincerity as she walked the short distance to Ramsay, studying him as she went. Ahh, damn!

He didn’t look any happier than Fiona felt by the time she reached him. Without even bothering with a polite greeting, Ramsay said irritably, “It’s about time you came over. Who is that?”

Fiona looked back
. Iona’s eyes were still closed and she looked utterly content where she was. Fiona couldn’t help but wish she was there as well. “My sister-in-law. She saw that I was going out and asked to come along. It would have been rude to put her off.”

“But I wanted to see you alone.”

There was a vaguely plaintive note in his voice that rubbed Fiona wrong and she couldn’t help but snap, “I am the lone unmarried female living in a house with six married couples and four more brothers to boot. I haven’t hardly a chance of even breathing by myself.” Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to relax. Reminded herself of what she really wanted. “If you would simply call at the house, we wouldn’t have to resort to such subterfuge. If you won’t, you’ll have to settle for the little time I can carve out alone.”

“Call at the house?” he asked
. “And be turned off like a beggar?”

“I have spoken to Hobbes
. It won’t happen again,” Fiona assured him, hoping she was right. “Come spend time with my family.”

Ramsay only laughed
. “How awkward for us all. Run away with me, Fiona,” he urged. “Come with me and be my wife. Let us get away from all this, from your family and start a life for ourselves.”

With little to consider, she shook her head automatically
. “I love my family, Donovan. I want their approval.”

“Ah, darling,” he sighed
, taking her hands in his. “I want it too. I’m sorry for my impatience. It’s just that I love you so. I adore you and want to spend my days making you happy, not watching from the outskirts of your life. If it weren’t for all of this, we could be honeymooning abroad already and discovering all the best courses for you to play on. Doesn’t that sound lovely?”

It did
. In his efforts to please her, Ramsay often said the most delightful things. And there was absolutely nothing about him that resembled Aylesbury. Nothing at all! “Just a few more months, my lord. While I am not any more pleased with the situation than you are, I know my brothers. In the end, it will all go our way.”

“I hope so,” he grumbled
. “The sooner the better.”

Fiona only nodded
. He would get no argument from her there.

Chapter
Six

From the diary of Lady Fiona MacKintosh – Jan 1893

Abby tells me that Harry has not come to Edinburgh on business at all this time but specifically to court Moira instead!

How can it be that I am to lose the only gentleman I have ever taken a care for to a woman who is like a sister to me
? And I know that I shall lose him for how can I – just a schoolgirl really – compete with someone like Moira?

I cannot provide a viable challenge against her experience or her panache
… nor can I offer a satisfactory comparison to her hourglass figure and truly enviable décolletage …

The Glenrothes Townhouse

117 Eaton Square

Belgravia, London, England

Not long after Fiona’s departure

“
My lady,” Hobbes addressed his mistress with a characteristic disregard for any other occupant of the room. “You have a caller.”

Eve glanced at the large clock on t
he mantel, noting the time, which was well before the noon hour, and back at Hobbes with a raised brow. It was quite unlike her ever-so-proper butler to admit – much less announce – a visitor so unfashionably early.

Whoever it was, the person must stand highly in Hobbes’ favor
. Since so few did, Eve’s curiosity was justly caught. “Who is it?”

Though his facial expression never altered from its usual solemnity, the butler’s eyes shined brightly
. “It is the Marquis of Aylesbury, my lady, who graces us with his most welcome company. Might I do us all the favor of showing him in?”

Eve looked with some surprise at the
other occupants of the room, not only her sister, Kitty, but her sisters-in-law, Coline, Abby, and Moira MacKintosh – the latter two who both had been courted by the marquis in the past. Not surprisingly, they were smiling in delight, as was she, since Harrison Brudenall was well known for his – as Hobbes put it – most welcome company, and she had not spoken with him long the previous night.

It would be
wonderful to have a longer chat and catch up.

Unfortunately, the
five ladies were not the only occupants of the room. Nor were they in any state to receive company, as they were all casually garbed in simple skirts and blouses and playing on the floor of the parlor with their many offspring. Appearances aside, children were not conducive to formal entertaining. Especially when one was expected to host a marquis.

Eve wavered uncertainly but Hobbes was clearly not to be denied the presence of one he considered so congenial
. “Might I suggest, my lady, that a gentleman once so…
acclimatized
to the goings-on of this particular household would hardly be put off by being subjected to such a familial display?”

The other ladies rolled their eyes merrily at that
. “Do let him in, Evie,” Moira cajoled, already rising awkwardly to her feet. “I haven’t seen Harry in an age!”

Concurrences were chimed in and Eve nodded her ascent to the butler, who disappeared through the door, leaving the ladies to eagerly await Aylesbury’s vaunted company.

Aylesbury left his stepmother’s townhouse in Victoria Square in long, agitated strides, scorning the services of his carriage in favor of walking off the agitation that always clung to him upon passing her doors.

Even on a normal day
, the woman’s senseless chatter would set him on edge. Her evasion of any serious topic of conversation or query – and there were many,
many!
to be had – picked away at his impatience like a miner doggedly intent on a vein of gold. This morning’s visit had been worse than normal. He could not bear it any longer. His questions, always the same yet so wretchedly unanswered, were seemingly destined to remain so.

It was as if she didn’t even care.

With so little hope left, Aylesbury did not know where to turn.

That his troubled footsteps had led him to the stoop of the Glenrothes townhouse blocks awa
y from Victoria Square hovered on the edge of his conscious thought somewhere between providence and misfortune.

There were equal enough troubles behind those doors to torment him even more, but more likely, there was a welcoming ear if not solace for his worries
. The ladies of the MacKintosh clan, down to the last, were diverting, if nothing else.

S
o when he was shown into such an astonishingly domestic scenario by Hobbes and blessed by the smiling faces of five lovely ladies, Aylesbury was promptly and gladly diverted.

“Harry
! I’m so sorry we missed you last night!”

Abby
Merrill, now MacKintosh, approached with hands outstretched to welcome him and Aylesbury took them in his own with a welcome jolt of gladness, pressing a kiss to each of them and then to her cheek. Ah, Abby! He had once planned to marry this petite, blonde angel many years before. Her beauty and courage had been captivating and he had briefly believed that he loved her. Nevertheless when her heart turned to another, his had not been broken nor overly bruised. “Abby.”

Nor had the vibrant redhead at her side broken it even fewer years before when she had
spurned his suit for another of the MacKintosh brothers. “Moira,” he greeted her with a kiss as well, squeezing her proffered hand affectionately. “You are positively blooming.”

“Out
wardly, at least,” Moira agreed with a chuckle, running a caressing palm over the gentle swell of her abdomen. “This is our second already.”

Second? Aylesbury thought with some surprise
as he stared with unseemly focus on Moira’s belly before lifting his head to survey the gaggle of infants and small children in the room beyond. Had it been so long? Had
she
been gone so long?

Aylesbury shook away the thought and greeted h
is hostess, Lady Glenrothes; her sister, the Countess of Haddington; and Mrs. Sean MacKintosh with affection, though an affection more subdued for those ladies he hadn’t once considered taking for his wife.

“Come in, Harry,” Moira waved him further into the room
cheerfully. “Come and meet my wee lass! Can I get you something to drink?”

“My apologies for greeting you so
…
en famille
, Lord Aylesbury,” Eve apparently couldn’t resist adding, worried to give offense.

But Eve didn’t know Harry as well as
Moira did. Moira scooped up her one-year-old and bounced her daughter on her hip with a broad grin, lifting the toddler’s hand to wave it at her old beau. “This is Aurora. Say ‘hello’ to the nice marquis, lovey,” she cooed in the baby’s ear.

Aylesbury
took the baby’s hand in his large one and brushed his thumb across her downy soft wrist. Aurora, he thought with a slight smile. That bright red head of curls certainly did give one the impression of a fiery sunrise. “Greetings, Miss Aurora,” he said softly and was rewarded by a broad grin that showed off a charming set of dimples and eight nubby teeth. One couldn’t help but be charmed by such a sight, and Aylesbury flashed his own dimple and a wider smile in return. “She is a lovely little lady, Moira. Congratulations to both you and Vin. And another on the way, you say?” he asked with a shocking familiarity that widened Eve’s eyes.

“In September, I think,” Moira
casually returned, ignoring her friend’s disapproval of such a delicate subject. “Perhaps this time it will be an heir for my lord and for my father and grandfather as well. Come, meet the rest of the new additions.”

Aylesbury greeted the children he had previously been acquainted with
:  Abby’s three, Tristram, Bryn and Corri; Evelyn’s son by her first marriage to the Earl of Shaftesbury, Lawrence, and her son, Preston, who had been a babe-in-arms at his last encounter but was now an active toddler of more than two years, as was Kitty’s son, Montgomery. Kitty’s daughter, Hannah, now nearly seven, greeted him with a polished curtsey that Aylesbury returned with a flamboyant bow prompting a fit of giggles from the little girl before she tugged him across the room to meet the newcomers.

In addition to Moira’s charming daughter, the previous spring had also delivered an
other son for Haddington named Henry; a son, Alexander, for the newlyweds Sean and Coline, and a daughter for the earl of Glenrothes, Lela, who had been rather expeditiously followed by another daughter, Alice, just two months past.

So many children
. Babes to mark the passage of time and the growth of family. Sisters and brothers who were kissed and coddled with evident affection by their elder siblings and cousins.

Aylesbury felt a
lump forming in his throat and tried discreetly to clear it away. This, in so many ways, was what his life had been missing. Family.

An ache of longing and regrets scorched his heart and set his chest aflame
. He coughed uncomfortably and shifted from one foot to another, aware that an expectant silence hovered in the room awaiting his reaction. “How …
industrious
of you all,” he said at last and the ladies fell into gales of laughter, not at all offended by his words or tongue-in-cheek tone.

“Would you like to hold my new
est cousin?” young Hannah asked, lifting the tiny babe from her cradle with tender care and coming to his knee as he took a chair with the four ladies scooping up toddlers and babes as they, too, sat. Aylesbury eyed the smallest of the babes warily. Alice was her name, a fragile confection of white lace and linen if he had ever seen one. His gaze shifted to Eve in hopes of rescue but the countess only smiled in encouragement, keeping her one-year-old, Lela, clasped firmly in her lap.

Though
Aylesbury was surprised by her casual acquiescence, he could only surmise that by the time a fourth child made its way into the world, a mother was far more incautious with its welfare. She would have to be, to risk his holding the child.

Blinking, he turned back to Hannah, meeting her wide, adoring blue gaze
. How did one say “no” to such a face, he wondered.

How had he ever in his life been able to say
“no” to a pleading pair of blue eyes?

Regrets
. So many regrets.

Hesitantly, he reached out and took the infant, studiously minding Hannah’s instruction on the proper handling and management of such a newborn as wee Alice
. Once ensconced snuggly in his arms, the baby looked up at him solemnly – again with compelling blue eyes! – and clasped his proffered finger in one surprisingly tight fist.

He had come here in hopes of consolation, for friendship
. Not for a further reminder everywhere he looked of his plight. Bloody hell, but he needed to be saved from this den of domesticity!

But there was no escape
. None at all, he knew for certain when Moira’s soft burr cut through the low din of the children as they returned to their playtime. “So, Harry, what has you so troubled?”

“
Troubled?” he parroted as innocently as possible.

But Moira was no fool
. She had sensed that something was troubling her dear old friend straight away, but was determined to set him at ease until she could determine what was the matter. Harry wasn’t normally one to be beset by a case of the doldrums, but she knew from experience that when he was, only time, comfort, and a stiff drink would encourage him to talk.