Grace pressed her forehead against the palm of one of her hands. “You know her as well as anyone, milord.” She lifted her eyes to his face and pleaded with him. “Would you talk to her? Could you…perhaps suggest she might be happier with your friend, Major MacKenzie?”
Hugh nearly banged his head against the heavy marble mantel as he straightened from building the fire. “Me? You want me to play the matchmaker and suggest to Lucy she ought to marry a man nearly twice her age?”
“But…but don’t you see? She could help him with his disability, and he could be a steadying influence on her. She’s been entirely too wrapped up in her addle-pated ‘experiments.’I never know when she’ll do something that might blow up the academy quarters.”
Hugh threw her a wry grin. “You do know Major Mackenzie is a munitions expert. Perhaps you ought to re-think throwing the two of them together.”
3
WESTMONT MANOR
FAMILY PARLOR
In a show of examining the state of the crumbling ceiling in the earl’s sitting room, Major Duncan MacKenzie stared upward for as long as he dared before returning to polite conversation with Hugh’s other guests. He made to pull at his cravat, but realized too late there was little left of the tattered item which could endanger his windpipe.
To be honest, he engaged in polite conversation only by inserting the occasional “Is that so?” or, “Yes, indeed.” The truth was, he had no idea what the hell the young woman and her devilishly intoxicating aunt were saying. When he’d resorted to his usual tactic of trying to decipher what was being said by studying lips, he’d been totally undone by Grace Phippen’s lips. They were plump, glistening from her incessant licking with her tongue. And of course, the tongue, pink and glistening as well, making a man wonder…
When she turned her head toward him and those lush lips opened to speak, all Duncan heard was the sound of a summer’s eve with thousands of insects buzzing. Damn munitions work to hell. He wished he’d ended up bloody and sightless in the mud like so many of his friends that day at Badajoz. The French gunshad been relentless, hour after hour, until you couldn’t even hear the sounds inside your own head. He’d shouted himself hoarse to make his men hear him above the relentless thump of the godless frogs’ cannons.
He’d been one of the Royal Engineers in charge of the artificers digging trenches for the third and final siege of Badajoz, which finally drove the French out of the Spanish city. Wellington’s troops had succeeded despite the incessant thumping of the damned French guns. All of the field surgeons and physicians at the military hospitals since then had been unable to give him a satisfactory reason as to why many men came through much worse battles with their hearing intact. But not him. They’d all assured Duncan his fate could have been much worse and never failed to point out he’d emerged from his many years of service with all of his limbs, and his sanity, intact.
He’d still like to be able to settle in at a tavern and have a simple conversation without all the frustration that unfortunately often ended in him resorting to fists after several tankards of ale. Perhaps he ought to change his drinking habits to solitary ventures in the safety of his rooms in London, or in his quarters at Westmont where he’d be spending the next year or so helping the earl rebuild his crumbling estate. That is, unless he wasn’t called back into active service sooner than that. A man could hope.
The delectable Mrs. Phippen had arisen from her chair and was tapping on his shoulder while asking a question, or so he suspected from the upward lilt of her voice at the end of whatever she was saying. When he whipped his head around, her keen eyes bored into his.
“I’m so sorry. Could you repeat what you said?” He hoped he could read her lips without losing his way and wondering how she tasted. Puzzling out what someone said while looking at their lips required total concentration. Unfortunately, focusinghis full attention on what Mrs. Phippen was saying was impossible while watching the movement of her pink, glistening lips.
He was fairly sure the first few words were “I know what…” After that, he was lost, but she was intent of pulling an answer from him. His face heated, and he hung his head, hoping she’d leave him in his misery. Suddenly, she shoved a piece of paper into his hands. She’d hurriedly scrawled a terse message across the scrap of foolscap: “I know what you’re hiding, and I can help.”
Grace’s stomach lurched.The man on whom she’d thought to wager all of her hopes for Lucy was nearly stone deaf, not just hard of hearing, as Hugh had explained. He was still a bright, capable man, a major in the king’s army and an engineer for heaven’s sakes. But he wouldn’t go far denying he had a problem and refusing to take the initiative to do something about the chink in his armor. Drowning his sorrows in ale and engaging in fights at taverns would not end well. She had to do something, strictly for Lucy’s sake, of course.
The flush of embarrassment on his face gave him away. She wasn’t telling him something he didn’t already know. As a teacher and the owner of a young women’s academy, she’d met a woman who was carrying on her father’s methods of teaching hand signs to the deaf. She wondered, though, if that would be of any help to someone like Major MacKenzie who might have to return to the ranks of the army at some point where no one would be able to understand the code of signs created by various positions of one’s hands. Perhaps she should help him learn the art of reading lips. Suddenly, the idea of having the major studyher lips caused her own face to flush. She covered the moment by bending to scratch out another note for him: “Perhaps I could help you practice reading lips.”
After she’d written the last message, passed it to Major MacKenzie, and turned back to Hugh and Lucy, both of them were giving her odd looks. “I was just writing some suggestions for Major MacKenzie to help with his, um, hearing situation.”
Hugh’s wide grin and the skeptical expression on Lucy’s face made Grace’s face flush even hotter. She didn’t dare look directly at Major Mackenzie, but he silently handed her a message of his own on the back of her original missive: “I would be eternally grateful for as many lessons as necessary in studying your lips.”
Lucy could barely containher laughter. She knew her Aunt Grace was trying entirely too hard to guide the major’s interest toward herself, but it was apparent even to Lucy that the man was smitten with her aunt. The smile Hugh was trying to hide meant the man’s attraction was apparent to him as well.
She had to abstain from rubbing her hands together in glee. When they returned to Montcliffe Abbey in the morning, she knew there would be ample opportunities to maneuver her aunt and the major together. Foraging out in the vast woodlands at the Abbey for just the right yule log would be the perfect way to throw the two of them together for a long, cold afternoon. All the more excuse later to snuggle before a roaring fire.
Hugh leaned close to Lucy whilst her aunt and the major were engaged in frantic note-writing. “What do you think?” he whispered.
Lucy turned her head toward him only to realize his lips were within kissing distance. If only… “What do I think about what?”
“Does she know?”
Lucy wrinkled her nose and gave him a puzzled look. “You mean does she know he’s hiding his hearing impairment?”
Hugh grinned like a naughty school boy. “No, silly girl. Does your aunt know the major’s cow-simple about her?”
The next morningdawned bone-barking cold, and Hugh helped Mrs. White ravage all the chests throughout Westmont’s many empty bedchambers for spare, clean blankets for his guests to wrap up in and fend off the cold on their trip to Montcliffe Abbey. Although the Marquess of Rumford’s carriage was roomy and comfortable, it was also damnably drafty.
Hugh had tied on his roan Bess to the rear of the carriage as well as a gentle gray for Duncan. He wanted to be able to return to Westmont in case the 12thNight festivities became interminably boring. There was so much work to be done on his family estate, he resented even a little time spent away in frivolous pursuits.
He was even more concerned for the major. Who knew what madness the man would get up to when assailed by a veritable army of young misses overwhelmed by the Scotsman’s, erm, burly charms? All of their chittering chatter the maddening engineer would not be able to hear, but would make up whatever he thought they might be saying. God help them all if he got on the wrong side of one of their suitors. His old friend Rummy, the viscount, would never forgive him if a full blown shindy broke out at his 12thNight festivities.
At that moment he was distracted by a flash of crimson. It was Lucy racing down his rickety staircase (that was first on the list of must-fixes) in a bright red carriage dress, her cheeksrosy from undoubtedly having stood close to the fireplace in her bedchamber to warm up, he’d wager. She looked the very picture of a Christmas surprise awaiting a man craving a sweet on a cold December morning. He had to haul himself up short from going any further with that fantasy. Lucy was not his to think about and crave.
