Page 62 of To Wed an Heiress
“Would you like me to come with you?”
Mercy shook her head. “No, that’s not necessary.” She gave Ruthie a quick hug and entered the house.
McNaughton was in the hallway outside the kitchen. No doubt he’d been waiting for her to appear.
“Mr. Hamilton is in the Green Parlor,” he said, all stiff and frosty.
He probably approved of Gregory because he never noticed servants. McNaughton wouldn’t have intimidated him. On the contrary, Gregory could freeze anyone to the spot with a simple look.
How odd that she’d never realized that McNaughton and Gregory had some traits in common.
By the time she made it to the parlor, her heart had started beating thunderously. She stopped more than once and placed both hands against her midriff, trying to quell the fluttering sensation inside her stomach.
She hadn’t expected Gregory to come to Scotland, but perhaps she should have. He was a determined person, the reason her father was so impressed with him. Gregory had started as a junior executive in one of her father’s companies and had advanced at a startling pace to upper management. His meteoric rise was duplicated in the army. He had left for war as a lieutenant and returned a colonel.
Gregory never saw obstacles. Nor did he ever change his mind. She knew that firsthand from his refusal to accept her decision about breaking their engagement.
She entered the room to find him sitting in a chair beside the fireplace. Aunt Elizabeth was sitting opposite him on the settee. Neither of them was talking. Each was studiously avoiding looking at the other.
It couldn’t be easy for her aunt to greet a man who’d been a colonel in the Union army. The minute Gregory heard her speak he would know that Elizabeth was from the South. Two adversaries from a war that was just barely over.
At her entrance, Gregory stood, advancing on her as if he were a hunter and she the prey he’d been stalking.
He was a foot taller than she, but so was Lennox. Gregory, however, had a habit of looming over her as if to take advantage of his height, with his broad chest and shoulders. He was a handsome man with light brown hair, blue eyes, and a smile that he used when he got his way. Otherwise, he rarely appeared genial. Instead, he was a watchful man, studying people as if to learn their weaknesses.
He was doing that now, looking for changes that might have occurred in the past few weeks. Could he tell that she’d been kissed? Or that she had participated wholeheartedly?
“Mercy,” he said, stretching out both hands toward her.
Reluctantly, she put her hands in his, allowing him to pull her forward.
When he hugged her, she kept her hands at her sides, her chin hitting his chest.
He pulled back, his hands still on her upper arms, and examined her. She probably failed his inspection. Her shoes were scuffed and she hadn’t asked that they be polished. The hem of her skirt was damp. She’d spilled a few droplets of Lennox’s formula on her left sleeve and it had hardened into dark yellow spots. Her hair was mussed from the wind.
If she were the person she’d been only short weeks ago, she might’ve apologized for her appearance and made a self-deprecating remark.
Instead, she raised her head and returned Gregory’s look steadily.
He dropped his hands, glanced at Elizabeth, and said, “Is there somewhere we can talk, Mercy?”
Aunt Elizabeth startled her by standing. “You can talk here.” Without another word, she left the room.
“She’s an odd woman,” Gregory said.
Although Mercy hadn’t felt all that amenable toward her aunt recently, Gregory’s comment rankled.
“She’s not odd at all, Gregory.”
The antipathy Elizabeth felt was easy to understand. Elizabeth’s fiancé had fought and died for the South. Mercy chose not to explain that to Gregory, hoping to avoid yet another lecture on how the South had been shortsighted and idiotic to secede.
She’d felt torn from the first. Her mother had been born and raised in North Carolina. Mercy had visited the state often enough to love the beauty of it. She had friends there and that hadn’t changed due to the war.
Because of her reading and the conversations around the dinner table, she understood the complexities that had led to war, hating that the impasse meant men would be killed and life would change. It was more complicated than Gregory made it sound. Yet because he’d fought, because he’d been a soldier, his opinion was given greater weight than anything she might say.
She moved to sit on the end of the settee, hoping that Gregory wouldn’t join her. A moment later he sat on the adjoining cushion.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
