The baron gestured toward the drinking pitcher on the escritoire, while Mary Fran lingered at the threshold. “This water is not chilled, I’ve yet to see a tea service, and prolonged travel by train can leave a man in need of something to wash the dust from his throat.”
He arched one supercilious eyebrow, as if it took some subtle instinct to divine when an Englishman was whining for his whisky.
“The maids will be along shortly with the tea service, my lord. You’ll find a decanter with some of our best libation on the nightstand, and I can send up some chilled water.” Because they at least had ice to spare in the Highlands.
“See that you do.”
Mary Fran tossed him a hint of a curtsy and left before he could make up more excuses to lure her into his room.
The paying guests were a source of much-needed coin, but the summers were too short, and the expenses of running Balfour too great for paying guests alone to reverse the MacGregor family fortunes. The benefit of this situation was that no coin was on hand to dower Mary Fran, should some fool—brother, guest, or distant relation— take a notion she was again in want of a husband.
“Mary Fran, for God’s sake, slow down.” She’d been so lost in thought she hadn’t realized her brother Ian had approached her from the top of the stairs. “Where are you churning off to in such high dudgeon? Con and Gil sent me to fetch you to the family parlor for a wee dram.”
Ian’s gaze was weary and concerned, the same as Con or Gil’s would have been, though Ian, as the oldest, was the weariest and the most concerned—also the one willing to marry Altsax’s featherbrained daughter just so Fiona might someday have a decent dowry.
“I have to check on the kitchens, Ian, and make sure that dim-witted Hetta McKinley didn’t forget the butter dishes again, and Eustace Miller has been lurking on the maids’ stairway so he can make calf eyes at—”
“Come, you.” Ian tucked her hand over his arm. “You deserve a few minutes with family more than the maids need to be protected from Eustace Miller’s calf eyes. Let the maids have some fun, and let yourself take five minutes to catch your breath. Go change into your finery and meet us in the family parlor. I’ll need your feminine perspective if I’m to coax Altsax’s daughter up the church aisle.”
Ian had typical MacGregor height and green eyes to go with dark hair and a handsome smile—none of which was worth a single groat. In Asher’s continued absence, Ian was also the laird, and well on his way to being officially recognized as the earl. While neither honor generated coin, the earldom allowed him the prospect of marrying an heiress with a title-hungry papa.
Mary Fran did not bustle off to change her dress for any of those reasons, or even because she needed to stay abreast of whatever her three brothers were thinking regarding Ian’s scheme to marry wealth.
She heeded her brother’s direction because she wanted that wee dram—wanted it far too much.
***
Matthew enjoyed a leisurely soak in a marble bathing chamber that boasted every modern convenience, then dressed and prepared to find his way down to the formal parlor. As he moved through the house, he noted the signs of good care: a faint odor of beeswax and lemon oil rising from the gleaming woodwork, sparkling clean windows, fresh flowers in each corridor, an absence of fingerprints on the walls and mirrors.
Lady Mary Frances, or her minions, took the care of Balfour House seriously. A swift drum of heels from around the next corner had Matthew stopping and cocking an ear. A man did not lose the habit of stealth simply because he was no longer billeted to a brewing war zone.
The hint of acrid cigar smoke warned Matthew that his father was in the vicinity.
“Miss MacGregor, perhaps you’d allow me to provide you an escort down to the parlor?” Altsax spoke in the unctuous tones of a man condescending to an inferior, though Lady Mary Frances was arguably the baron’s social superior.
Matthew eased far enough down the corridor to see that the lady was attired in a dinner gown of green- and-white plaid that did marvelous things for her eyes—and riveted the baron’s attention on her decolletage.
“That’s gracious of you, Baron.” Her smile was beautiful, though it did not reach her eyes. “I hope Mr. Daniels will escort your womenfolk?”
The baron winged his arm. “I’m sure Matthew or your own brothers will see to that duty.”
As the lady tucked her fingers around the baron’s elbow, Matthew’s gut began to churn. Altsax was never polite to anybody, much less to pretty young women, unless he was maneuvering toward his own ends.
“So why aren’t you married, Miss MacGregor?” Altsax stroked his fingers over her hand. “You’re comely enough, wellborn, and intended for better than spinsterhood as your brothers’ household drudge.”
The observation was Altsax’s version of flattery, no doubt. Matthew felt a familiar urge to scream, or find a fast horse and gallop straight back to the Crimea.
“Marriage seems to be the topic of the day, my lord.” While Matthew watched in a conveniently positioned mirror, Lady Mary Frances smiled back at her escort, revealing a number of strong white teeth. “You are blessed with two comely daughters. It’s a pity your baroness could not accompany them on this journey.”
As if Altsax would have allowed
“My wife and I have been married for thirty-some years, my dear. I hardly need to keep her underfoot at all times. Marriage is, after all, still a business undertaking among the better classes. I’m sure you’d agree.”
Altsax walked with her toward the sweeping main staircase, a monument to carved oak that suggested at some bygone point in the MacGregor family history, coin had been abundant.
Matthew had an instant’s premonition of the baron’s intent, a gut-clenching moment of knowing what was about to take place. The baron took his opportunity at the turn in the hallway where carpet gave way to gleaming bare floor. He made a show of catching his toe on the carpet and jostling his companion sideways with enough force that she fetched up against the wall.
This allowed Altsax to mash into her bodily, and his hand—like one of the big, hairy spiders common to the tropics—to land squarely on the lady’s generous, fashionably exposed bosom.
“I beg your pardon, Miss MacGregor.” Altsax made an effort to right himself which of course involved clumsily, almost roughly, groping the lady. Matthew was about to reveal himself to his disgrace of a father, when the baron flew across the hallway as if propelled out of a cannon.
“Baron, do forgive me!” Lady Mary Frances was standing upright and looking creditably dismayed. “I did not mean to step on your foot, I sincerely did not. Are you all right, my lord?”
Her strategy left Altsax trying to look dignified and innocent of his crimes while not putting much weight on one foot. “The fault is mine, Miss MacGregor. I beg your pardon most sincerely. Shall we join your family downstairs?”
“Of course.”
As they moved toward the stairs, Matthew noted that this time, Altsax did not offer the lady his arm.
First skirmish to Lady Mary Frances, though as Matthew waited for a silent moment at the top of the stairs, it occurred to him that rising to the lady’s defense would have been enjoyable.
Tricky, given that he’d be defending her from his own father, but enjoyable.
***
“A word with you, if you please, Lady Mary Frances.”
Mary Fran tore off a bite of scone and regarded Mr. Matthew Daniels where he stood next to her place at the breakfast table. The baron had taken a tray out to the terrace, there to read his newspaper as he let a perfectly lovely repast grow cold at his elbow, while Ian and Miss Augusta Merrick, the younger of the two chaperones, had disappeared to the library.
And now Mary Fran’s favorite meal of the day—sometimes her only decent meal of the day—was going to be disturbed by this serious gentleman waiting to assist her to her feet. No doubt Mr. Daniels’s shaving water had been too hot, or not hot enough. Perhaps he objected to the scent of heather on his linen, or he’d found a footman using the maids’ staircase.
Mary Fran folded a napkin around the last of her scone and put it in her pocket, then placed her hand in Daniels’s and let him assist her to her feet. Thank God her brothers weren’t on hand to see such a farce.
“In private.” The gentleman kept his eyes front as he appended that requirement, as if admitting such a thing
