Three
“A bloody damned bit of snow isn’t going to keep me from leaving the house.”
Asher directed his foul language at no one in particular, for at this time of the morning the study was empty of living creatures save himself and a large black-and-orange house cat curled up on a hassock near the fire.
The specter of Uncle Fen’s disapproving presence hung close by though, as close as Asher’s elbow, where the baron’s latest epistle sat on the massive desk, its meek appearance belying its vituperative content.
“You will make all haste for London, the ladies being your responsibility to see suitably housed, attired, and introduced.”
The last word was the stinging tail of the lash: introduced… As if Asher himself had more than nominal and begrudging entrée among the baron’s titled peers and cronies. Asher and the Cooper women would be the socially blind leading the blind.
Or the lame. After two days in bed, Miss Hannah Cooper was much recovered from her injury, recovered enough he need not haul her about in his arms.
Asher was not recovered. Not from the sight of her helpless and in pain, not from the sense of having failed in so simple a task as escorting a lady, and not—God help him—from the realization that holding a woman’s foot could be intensely erotic when it wasn’t supposed to be.
He knew about women’s feet—phalanges and metatarsals, peroneous tertius, brevis, and longus—but he also knew about women purely in the sense a man appreciates the Creator’s more refined effort. Knew about their ears and napes and fingers and bellies, and all the luscious parts of them that could be turned to the service of their arousal and Asher’s pleasure. Yes, feet could be erotic, but they were supposed to mind their mundane business until Asher recruited them for the business of seduction.
Not even seduction, for he’d never had to seduce a woman, not since he’d turned fifteen and the ladies had started seducing him.
But here he was, haunted by the feel of a lady’s foot, soft and cool against the callused palms of his hands. He’d long since accepted that grief did not permanently inoculate a man against arousal, but this, this fascination for a woman who wanted no part of England, Scotland, and the fellows to be found there—
“Bah!”
The cat opened unblinking green eyes.
“I’m to haul them to London, weather be damned, and believe me, cat, the weather will be evil. Every God’s blessed aspect of this misadventure will bend to the baron’s need to see his heir suffering and miserable.”
The cat squeezed her eyes closed in a display of feline indifference.
“Maybe I should make you come with us.”
More indifference, reminding Asher of the elders among whom he’d been raised. They weren’t indifferent, though, so much as stoic. Anybody who could withstand sixty Canadian winters with nothing but a longhouse and a meager fire between them and the elements had stoicism running in their veins.
And those were his people too.
Asher leafed through the rest of the mail delivered that morning. One thin missive had crossed the Atlantic mere days after its intended recipient: Hannah Cooper had a letter from home, something bound to raise her spirits. Asher hooked his spectacles back around his ears and peered at the letter.
Many people still didn’t bother with the expense of an envelope, but Hannah came from money, from people with pretensions to class in so far as the United States boasted of same. Still, the man penning this letter hadn’t bothered to limit his sentiments to the inside of the folded paper, but rather, had scratched his message so the last of it could be read on the outside.
“You have disgraced your family, and the only solution remaining is to situate you where you might never again bring shame down upon my house, where you are firmly established as some other man’s problem. This is your last chance, Stepdaughter. I suggest you make the most of it.”
What had Hannah Cooper done to invite such an admonition? Smiled at some beamish farm boy? Leaned a little too closely on a widower’s arm? Cheered too loudly at a race meet? He could not see the woman now contentedly reading one floor above him disgracing herself in any meaningful sense.
Even if she did have the most erotically appealing feet it had ever been Asher’s torment to hold.
He stuffed that thought back into the dark closet from whence it had escaped, and took the little epistle to Miss Cooper’s sitting room.
She looked up at him, setting Copperfield face down in her lap. “To what do I owe the pleasure, sir?”
She had her feet up on a hassock, and an afghan swaddling both legs. Asher had the sense she’d taken to the comfort like the feline in his study, instinctively seeking warmth and ease to save against the times when there would be none.
“I bring you an epistle from home,” he said, making no move to pass her the letter. “Have you enough light to read it?”
“If it’s from Grandmother, she doesn’t write cursive, so yes, I have adequate light.”
He settled on the hearth, blocking some of that light.
“I gather it isn’t from your grandmother.” He passed her the letter and watched the eager light in her eyes wink out like a snuffed candle.
“Step-papa, then.” She took the letter and slit it open, glancing at the contents. “A little sermon, lest I forget his many attempts to guide me into the arms of the suitors of his choice.”
“You’re finicky. Somehow, one might guess this about you.” And she was bitterly disappointed not to hear from this old granny of hers.
“I’m female. We’re given to odd notions.” She set the letter aside unread—Asher suspected the missive would shortly end up in the fire—and made as if to resume disporting with Master Copperfield.
“Odd notions such as?”
She returned the book to her lap and gazed past him, into the fire. “I would like to be held in affection by my spouse, not merely tolerated for my fortune, for one thing.”
“Affection doesn’t strike me as too odd a notion.” Though affection for her? A fellow would have to scale the battlements of her disappointment and self-sufficiency, bare his soul, and place his heart entirely in her hands.
But what a lucky fellow he’d be, if she surrendered her heart in return.
“I would like my spouse to take me to wife whether I’ve a great fortune or only a modest dowry.”
“Many men marry women with modest dowries.” Many men with modest expectations, or personal fortunes of their own. Perhaps those were in short supply in Boston.
“Men generally only marry women of modest means when the fellow’s heart is engaged.”
“Affection and means of his own, then,” Asher said, and he wanted to add some deprecating little aside, except Boston wasn’t being unreasonable at all. Affection in a marriage would be… wonderful.
It had been wonderful.
“Does that smile suggest you are laughing at me, sir?”
“Was I smiling? I thought I was agreeing with you. Is your stepfather so easily disappointed that your modest requirements foiled his ambitions for you?”
“He presented me several choices, all of them beholden to him or deeply indebted to him or even in his employ. I considered each man and declined them one by one. He presented more, and more, until I realized he wasn’t going to stop.”
“What did you do?” Because clearly, she’d taken control of the situation somehow.
She used her peacock-feather bookmark to stroke her chin, the gesture distracting as hell. “I rejected those too.”
“You’ll have a whole crop of dandies to choose from when we reach London,” he said. Miss Hannah Cooper wasn’t being honest with him, not about her romantic past, in any case. “You will consider them too, I hope, and find at least one worthy of your hand.”
“What of you? Will you be considering the crop of ladies available to become Mrs. Lord Balfour?”
“Lady Balfour,” he corrected her, though he knew she was being Colonial on purpose, as he had often been Scottish on purpose, or even Mohawk. “And yes, I am specifically charged with that happy task.”
“You’re laughing at me again.” She picked up her book and ran her finger halfway down the page. “Not well done of you.”
He had to smile. Her choice of expression was British, the rebuke all the more effective for her crisp accent.
“Perhaps I’m laughing at myself. If you could spare me a few more minutes of your busy day?”
She did not put her book down but turned to gaze out the window. “It’s pouring snow out there, and you have a wonderful library. Forgive me for appreciating it—at your invitation.”
“Despite the snow, I am also charged with getting you and your aunt safely to London posthaste. My uncle the baron has suggested we depart several days hence.”
This time she batted her nose with the peacock feather, and Archer had to study the frigid weather lest he snatch the feather from her. “Aunt is not one to put up with discomforts silently.”
Unlike Miss Hannah Cooper, who had not once complained about her disability, nor had she complained about her stepfather, exactly. She’d answer Asher’s questions, albeit only up to a point.
“If we can’t take an express train, we’ll go in easy stages. The inns along the main routes boast decent accommodations, so your aunt should have no cause for complaint.”
“She will complain, though. Aunt has prodigious ability when it comes to manufacturing complaints.”
She studied her infernal feather, while Asher caught the ghost of a smile tilting her lips up.
A smile?
“You want us delayed,” he said. “You’re enjoying this storm, looking forward to the lousy roads, the delayed trains, hoping they mean you miss the start of the Season.”
“They can’t possibly,” she said. “It’s barely March. The Season won’t start until the second week of April this year.”
“But you’ll need a wardrobe.” He rose from the hearth to pace. “You’ll need mounts for riding in the park and driving at the fashionable hour. You’ll need calling cards printed up, and stationery for accepting or declining invitations. You’ll need to hire ladies’ maids for you and your aunt.”
And every one of those needs, Asher would have to see to.
He stopped and speared her with a look. “You plan on fighting me every step of the way, don’t you? You won’t like the clothing made to order for you. You won’t choose a maid until the very last minute. Your schedule won’t allow you to try out the horses I select for you, and it will all be in aid of thwarting a stepfather who has tried hard to see you well situated.”
And while Asher might commend the lady’s fighting spirit—he did commend her fighting spirit—he did not at all appreciate that she’d be making a hash of his efforts to endure a Season of Polite Society at the same time.
His brothers Ian, Connor, and Gilgallon, and his sister Mary Fran had all acquired English connections, and to the extent that Asher owed his family, good impressions in London were devoutly to be wished.
Miss Cooper rose as well, shedding her blankets to face him as he glared down at her.
“Were I to engage in such antics, sir, it would be in aid of maintaining my freedom. My stepfather didn’t try hard to see me situated, he tried hard to see my fortune situated under his fat, greedy thumb. I read the proposed settlements, and my prospective husbands were not to have control of my money. He controls me now, and he wants to control my money when I marry. He went to great lengths in the attempt. I’m prepared to go to greater lengths to see him thwarted.”
She believed what she was saying; Asher concluded that much from the fire in her eyes. “Is he wasting your fortune?”
“He can’t.” She turned away and went to the window, her limp barely noticeable. “Papa, my real papa, set it up so there are trustees, but they lose authority when I marry or turn six-and-twenty. Papa intended my husband to take over management of my funds, but the marriage settlements simply turn the husband’s authority over to Step-papa. He’s greedy, not stupid.”
“Or he’s prudent.”
“If he’s so prudent, why doesn’t he find me a fellow who isn’t beholden to anyone? A man who’s made his own fortune and will understand how to make the best use of mine? A man who will put that money in trust for our children, for our daughters especially?”
They were good questions, questions the lady’s mother should have been asking the stepfather at least. One of Asher’s first tasks upon returning to Scotland had been to read Mary Fran’s settlement with her English baron. Fortunately, Ian, who’d held the earldom at the time, was a canny negotiator, and Mary Fran and little Fiona were well set up.
“Your stepfather is an ocean away,” Asher said. “Nobody can make you marry a man against your will.”
“No, they can’t. It has already been attempted.” Her spine was ramrod straight at this disclosure.
“Did you cry off?”
She nodded once, back still turned.
Oh, Miss Cooper. “You left him literally at the altar?”
“Not alone.” She turned to face Asher, arms crossed over her chest. “When the minister asked if I took that man, I answered as loudly as I could in the negative, before the entire congregation. I said he was my stepfather’s choice, not mine, and if Step-papa was so in love with the man, then Step-papa could marry him, for I wanted no part of him. None.”
She was in utter, jaw-clenched earnest, and she’d humiliated both her stepfather and her intended as publicly as she possibly could.
“I see.” He saw she was expecting him to lecture or rebuke or perhaps—worse than either—to laugh. How he wished Mary Fran had exercised the same determination where her late first husband had been concerned. “Then you realize you can enjoy spring in Town, enjoy leading the callow swains around by their noses, enjoy all the female fripperies of fashionable Society, and leave a trail of broken hearts when you return to the wilds of Boston.”
“Boston hasn’t any wilds, though Massachusetts does.”
Half the Irish who’d survived the famine had ended up in Boston, and more than a few stray Highlanders too, making the place wild enough. Asher chose not to share that opinion.
“Boston has you,” he said, a reluctant smile blossoming. “That should suffice to introduce a complement of savagery to the place.”
“Yes.” Her chin came up, and she presented him a dazzling, toothy smile. “It most certainly should.”
***
Aunt Enid entertained herself with a number of games, one of which Hannah had dubbed “if only.” The object of “if only” was to remind Hannah obliquely, and with the very best intentions, of course, of what lay in wait at home should Hannah fail to snabble an English husband. Aunt had started the present round as the coach had pulled out of the mews in Edinburgh to take them to the Waverly station. Snow made the going difficult, and as the morning became colder and more grim, the game wore on.
“If only you hadn’t made such a public scene with young Mr. Widmore. He was in expectation of a barony, you know.”
“He was a third son sent to America to escape some scandal with a female, and he was entirely Step-papa’s creature. He deserved what befell him.” Hannah turned her face to the window, where the bleak expanse of the North Sea lay visible in the distance.
“No man deserves to be treated that way by a woman he has offered for.”
“He’s not a man,” Hannah said. “He’s an errand boy seeking to be richly rewarded for doing Step-papa’s bidding. I think it’s going to snow again.”
“If only you weren’t so stubborn, Hannah. My brother tries merely to see to your welfare.”
“If it snows enough, we’ll be stranded at some inn. That would serve nicely, because I brought some of Lord Balfour’s books along. He has the nicest selection of novels.”
“Novels, bah. If only you were more given to the pursuits of a normal girl, Hannah. You’d be content to do embroidery and read improving pamphlets.”
Hannah let that pass, for she’d never been exactly sure how much of the Widmore debacle Aunt understood. They didn’t discuss it, and Aunt Enid brought it up only when she was running perilously low on sermon topics or wandering mentally after a surfeit of some tonic or nostrum.
“If the trains aren’t running, do you suppose his lordship will force us to travel in this wretched weather?” Enid asked.
Now that was a first, for Aunt to criticize anything remotely British, and they hadn’t even boarded their southbound train.
“I suspect, one way or another, we’ll start our journey as long as we have light,” Hannah said. In truth, the traveling coach was a great, lumbering conveyance, but it was well sprung and cozy enough. They’d brought hot bricks for the floor and hot water bottles for the ladies’ muffs, and because they would stop to change horses every twelve to fifteen miles, the interior would stay fairly comfortable.
If stuffy.
“Dear, can you reach my traveling bag?”
“You just had a dose of your tincture, Aunt, right before we left the house.”
“But I have the most awful head, Hannah. If only you understood such pain, not that I’d wish it on my worst enemy.”
“You need to be using less, Aunt, not more. How will you keep up with the social calendar I’m expected to maintain if you’re sleeping off your headache remedies until midday every day?”
“Hannah, one does sleep until midday when the Season is at its height. One dances until dawn, then sleeps until noon, and barely has time for a few morning calls before going out again in the evening. It’s marvelous!”
As if Hannah would be dancing.
Black-gloved knuckles rapped on the window beside Hannah’s face. She swung the glass down, a lovely blast of chilly air hitting her.
“We’ll be going overland for the first part of the journey,” his lordship informed her. He was mounted on a black horse that looked big enough to pull a plow, the beast’s trot churning snow up with every step. Despite the cold, the earl didn’t wear a hat. He had a woolen scarf about his neck, the pattern a bright red and dark green plaid with a thin white strip mixed in.
Beside Hannah, Enid squeaked, “But that’s—we cannot—my lord, you must understand that is not to be borne.”
“There’s a breakdown on the tracks south of the city. We’ll pick up the train in Bairk,” the earl said. “And we’ll have to move smartly if we’re to make that distance by nightfall.” He sent Hannah a look, one that warned her delays would not be tolerated and complaints were futile.
“But an entire day in this stuffy old—”
Hannah closed the window before Enid could finish her first volley of protest.
“I did not see a town named Bairk on the map,” Hannah said. “Perhaps it isn’t so very far.”
“Ber-wick, you foolish girl. Berwick-on-Tweed. It’s nearly sixty miles!” From Enid’s tone, this might as well have been halfway to the North Pole.
“If we change teams regularly, and the roads are well traveled, we could easily be there by nightfall, as the earl suggested.” Provided Hannah did not first do away with her aunt and force the coach to stop so she might dispose of the remains.
They had changed teams twice when the great, lumbering coach went swaying off to the side of the road. Something snapped loudly underneath, and the conveyance swung wildly, bumping along the snowy ground for a good twenty yards before coming to a canted halt.
“Oh, my! My goodness! Dearest, my remedies, please. The headache and the nerve tonic both.”
“Ladies!” The earl’s voice cut through Aunt’s ranting. “Is everyone of a piece in there?”
His voice came from above, from the road, and Hannah felt an undignified spike of relief to know he was about and uninjured.
“We’re fine,” she said, unlatching the window and lowering it. “A little tossed about, but well enough. What happened?”
“Snapped a wheel,” he said. “Probably hit a rock hidden by the snow, and it will take some work to repair it. You’re likely as warm as you can be in there, so sit tight until we get the team unhitched.”
Except unhitching the team took a good deal of time and cursing and rocking the vehicle about. The wheelers grew frantic when the leaders were walked off and the weight of the coach had to be balanced by only two horses. Hannah could hear Balfour’s voice as he crooned to the horses, a soothing patter that belied the rising wind and dropping temperatures.
“This is awful,” Aunt pronounced. “Just awful, Hannah. If only we hadn’t arrived in the depths of winter.”
“We’ve arrived to take advantage of the social Season, Aunt, but had Step-papa considered our welfare, he might have bought us passage to London itself and allowed us a departure when spring was advanced.”
For once, Aunt had no reproof to make.
“Ladies?” Balfour, up on his enormous horse, spoke near the window. “We’re going to have to get you out of there now. The wheelers won’t be content to hold the thing when the leaders are gone, and it will be dark sooner than is convenient.”
“Gone?” Aunt Enid seized on the word. “Where are they going? Where are we going?”
“The coach can’t go anywhere,” Balfour said. “But we’re only about five miles from the last coaching inn. I propose to send the coachy back with the leaders for another conveyance. One of you can ride the second leader, and the groom will take the wheelers.”
“You go, Aunt.”
“We have four horses, though,” Aunt Enid said. “Five, if you count your mount, my lord. Why not put Hannah on one of the wheelers, or take her up with you?”
“The wheelers are green,” Balfour said. “In this footing, they aren’t safe for a lady to ride bareback astride, nor is it safe to ask a horse to carry a double burden.”
Aunt’s eyebrows rose. “Astride?” And then those same brows came crashing down. “That will leave you and Hannah…” Her voice trailed off, and Hannah saw the befuddled workings of her Aunt’s mind follow the situation to its conclusion. “It will be for only an hour or two, won’t it, dear? You’ll be all right?”
So much for the selfless devotion of a doting aunt. “I’ve dressed very warmly,” Hannah said. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
The coachy came up astride one of the sturdy beasts who normally pulled the carriage, the groom behind him on one curvetting wheeler while the other danced nervously on the end of its reins.
“We’ll have somebody back here for you before dark,” the coachman said. “Moonrise at the latest.”
Except a lowering layer of clouds would obscure any moonrise.
“We’ll manage,” Balfour said, glancing at the sky. “Best hurry. There’s snow waiting to come down.”
“Aye.” The coachy moved the horse along. Getting Aunt Enid situated aboard the second leader took a preventive tot of her nerve tonic and a great deal of patience on the part of both men and beasts. The coachman took the lead, letting both wheelers come behind him, with Aunt Enid bringing up the rear on the second leader.
“Isn’t it a shame the roads are so miserably inadequate to the challenge of keeping travelers from the ditch?” Enid’s voice trailed away in the bitter breeze as the horses trudged off in the direction of the last coaching inn.
“‘Isn’t It A Shame’ is her second-favorite game,” Hannah said. “Right after ‘If Only.’”
“If only I hadn’t forced you out of Edinburgh so early in the season?” Balfour asked. He sounded genuinely displeased with himself.
“She’s happy, Lord Balfour. Not a solid week on British soil and already I’m compromised.”
“Compro—” His dark eyebrows nearly met, so thunderous was his scowl. “They should be back in less than two hours. You’re not compromised.”
“If Aunt loses track of her discretion in some remedy-induced fog, I am compromised, and so are you.”
His gaze went to the horses making slow progress toward the horizon. “Then you’d best make sure she understands that I am a gentleman and you are a lady. We behave as such under all circumstances.”
“If you say so.” The landscape was bleak, the prospect of relying on Aunt’s discretion bleaker. “Is it too much to hope we could build a fire while we’re behaving so prettily?”
“Not a bad idea,” Balfour conceded. “I don’t like the look of that sky.”
He did more than build a fire. He used the lap robes and horse blankets to fashion a sort of lean-to over cut saplings—aspen poles, he’d called them, with an oilskin for their roof anchored by a thatch of Scots pine—while he set Hannah to collecting rocks from the wagon ruts to line a fire pit. He put the fire at the edge of their lean-to, and made them a floor layered with an oilskin, followed by more wool lap robes and horse blankets.
“By now, you’re probably longing for the necessary,” he said, kneeling in the snow to survey the little fire.
“Blunt speech, my lord.”
“I do believe that’s the first time you’ve my-lorded me.”
“The topic seemed to call for it. What next?” She was hungry and thirsty both, but despite the lowering sky, their isolation, and the occasional flurry, not the least bit afraid.
“Here.” He passed a sizable pocket flask to her. “I understand you don’t object to the occasional tot to ward off a chill.”
She tipped the flask to her mouth, his body heat having made the metal unexpectedly warm against her lips. “My thanks.”
“Next, we wait, though I advise you to first heed nature’s call, otherwise you’re going to get all cozy in the blankets there, and have to get up and face the cold.”
“You think we can stay cozy?”
“I know we can,” he said, taking a nip of the flask before slipping it into the folds of his greatcoat.
“Aren’t you worried about your horse?”
“He won’t go far, and he’ll come when I call him. For privacy, I suggest you avail yourself of those bushes, and I’ll take the opposite side. These are spindle bushes, so don’t touch. The berries are poisonous.”
Hannah considered making some sort of protest, but none came to mind on the topic before her—even poisonous bushes could provide privacy—so she slogged through the snow in the indicated direction.
“Do we have to worry about wolves?” she asked as she made her way around the stand of bushes. They were tall enough, but devoid of leaves. She could see Balfour’s shape moving through them thirty feet away. He turned his back to her, and she had to admit it was… comforting, to know he was there, to know he could sort the poisonous flora from its useful or innocuous kin.
“No wolves, not since my grandfather’s time. Wild dogs might roam on the heath, but they’ll be closer to town in this weather. You all right?”
“Dandy,” she said, gathering her skirts up in one hand and fishing for the slit in her drawers with the other. Her gloved fingers brushed against her intimate flesh, bringing a profound and novel chill with them.
Scotland was turning out to be more of an adventure than she’d foreseen.
“You about done?”
“In a minute.”
She turned her back to the bushes as he had, tended to business much to the relief of her innards, and sacrificed a handkerchief in the interests of hygiene. She kicked snow over the handkerchief, wondering if Balfour had done the same, and if wild dogs could scent it through the snow.
“Come along.” He came around the stand of bushes, the snow not slowing him down one bit. “These flurries are soon going to thicken into something serious, unless I miss my guess.”
How and when he’d found time to set snares, Hannah did not know. A hare and a fat grouse were roasting on spits over the fire an hour later, the aroma enough to turn Hannah herself into a wild dog. He basted the meat in some spirits taken from the boot of the coach, and used a knife to slice Hannah generous servings of both hare and fowl. Bread and butter were produced from the coachy’s stash.
“I cannot recall enjoying a meal this much in ages,” she said. “It’s like a picnic, only better.”
He gave her an odd look over the last of his bread and butter. “A bit cold for a picnic.”
“And getting a bit dark.” Everything here was a bit, a trifle, a touch. Hannah sat on the blankets under the lean-to, as the flurries thickened into a bit of real snow. “Will your little structure keep us dry?”
“If you don’t poke at it, it should. And it will be warmer here than in the coach, provided the wind doesn’t shift.”
“What has that to do with anything?”
She’d had a few more medicinal tots of his whiskey, and it was to them Hannah attributed an incongruous, rosy sense of well-being.
“We don’t want the smoke joining us under here,” he said. “If we have to move the tent, or the fire, we’ll be less comfortable. More bread?”
“Couldn’t hold another bite.”
“Then we’ll save it for morning.”
“Morning?” A trickle of cold seeped past Hannah’s rosy glow. “We can’t be here much longer. It’s one thing to manage two hours in broad daylight on the plain, Mr. Lordship, but quite another to spend a night unchaperoned under the same, somewhat flimsy roof. I’ll have you—”
He reached over from his side of the lean-to and put a bare finger on her lips. His hands weren’t even cool.
“I do know,” he said. “But attempting to walk back to the inn now would be folly. The wind has drifted snow over the horses’ trail, darkness is falling, and the temperature is dropping. Then too, the snow has started.”
“Oh.”
Something in what he said wanted arguing with, but Hannah was unable to get her mind wrapped around it. For her to navigate five miles of slippery terrain was not well-advised, though he’d mercifully left her limitations off his list of reasons. She had no doubt were he not burdened with her, he could have marched back to the inn without breaking a sweat.
His lordship was a good man. A gentleman. A pity his ilk did not abound in Boston.
“Shall I escort you to the bushes again before we lose the light entirely?”
And he was a blunt man—a trait of which she had to approve, for he was essentially offering to escort her to the privy. Good heavens. What did one say? Hannah lifted her face to the sky, to the flakes drifting down from the heavens in a thickening swirl of small, frigid kisses to her nose, eyelashes, cheeks, and chin.
“Yes.”