The MacGregor's Lady by Grace Burrowes Page B

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.”

Four
    The lady was half-tipsy, or perhaps a quarter. Asher usually avoided tipsy women, but Hannah Cooper wasn’t silly or giddy with it. She was more like a man who’d imbibed a wee dram at the end of a taxing day: relaxed, her sense of humor closer to the surface, her dignity not quite so tiresomely evident.
    The liquor was the