Page 12 of The Devil Wears Kilts
“Is Lady Jane selecting a gown for Almack’s?” Lady Breckett asked, joining her daughter in glancing past Charlotte at the hard, shadowed mountain in the corner. She should likely introduce him, but abruptly she didn’t want to.
She told herself that her reluctance was entirely logical. All she needed was to begin tongues wagging that she traveled in the company of Scottish brutes and devils. Heaven forfend if he began a brawl with the fainthearted Lady Breckett. Or even an argument.
“Jane has hers already,” Charlotte said aloud. “My mother is also sponsoring a dear family friend. Are you attending the assembly this Wednesday, Miss Florence?”
“Oh, yes.” Florence bounced on her toes. “I’ve been practicing every dance, and most especially the waltz. It will be so very exciting.”
The trio of Hunsacker girls were now all openly staring at Glengask behind her, muttering and giggling and batting their lashes behind their hands. She supposed if she didn’t say something now, it would cause more of a stir than if she simply introduced him.Damnation.With a tight smile, hoping he wouldn’t discuss walloping in front of four impressionable young women, she gestured at him.
“My apologies. Lady Breckett, Miss Florence, Miss Elizabeth, Miss Victoria, Miss Lucille, may I present Lord Glengask? It’s his sister, Lady Rowena, making her debut.”
They curtsied in a ragged wave. “I don’t recall seeing you in London before, my lord,” Viscountess Breckett commented.
“I’ve nae been here,” he returned in his low, rumbling brogue.
“Oh, you’re Scottish,” one of the Hunsackers exclaimed, in the same tone she might have noted that he’d jumped down from the moon.
“Aye. I am.”
“We’ve been to Edinburgh,” the Hunsacker girl went on, while the other two blushed and nodded. “With our papa and mama. Papa has a baronetcy there. He’s Lord Terrill. He says his side of the family started out Scottish, but saw…” She trailed off, her pink cheeks paling.
Charlotte couldn’t see Glengask’s expression from where he stood at her shoulder, but she could almost feel it.Oh, dear. Under cover of shifting her reticule she elbowed him in the ribs. She might as well have been shoving at Gibraltar, but then he stirred.
“Is it only Miss Florence here being presented at Almack’s?” he asked in a surprisingly mild tone.
“Oh, yes. I debuted last year, Lucille’s nearly twenty, and Elizabeth won’t be able to attend until next year,” the shortest of the trio—Victoria, by process of elimination—explained. “Lucille and I will be there to dance, though.” She lowered her head, eyeing the marquis through her lashes.
Glengask nodded, then turned his attention to the stiff statues by the door. “Keep an eye on Rowena,” he ordered, then offered his arm to Charlotte. “Will ye show me where that boot shop is now, Lady Charlotte?” he drawled.
Half by reflex she put her hand on his sleeve. His arm beneath felt like iron. “Certainly,” she heard herself say.
“Ladies,” he continued with a very slight nod, and walked past them to pull open the shop’s door. “Fergus, Una, come along.”
Outside he began walking with a long, ground-eating stride that had the deerhounds trotting. Charlotte kept up for a block or so, then tightened her grip on his sleeve and pulled. For a heartbeat she thought he might simply drag her off her feet, but then he came to an abrupt stop.
“Where are we going?” she asked, keeping hold of him so he couldn’t walk off and leave her standing there, mouth agape.
He faced her, six feet four inches of annoyed Highlander. “So in this polite Society of yers,” he murmured, his voice a low growl, “the polished, schooled lass is permitted to insult nae just me, but all of Scotland—and I’m the one asked to pretend all’s right with the world?”
“She didn’t insult you. Well, she very nearly did, but then she stopped herself. And the reason you have to be polite about it is because your sister knows no one in London but Jane, my mother, and me. If you begin walloping people, verbally or otherwise, you’ll only make things difficult for her.”
His gaze became more speculative. “Ye’re to be my conscience then, are ye?”
Charlotte offered him a smile, though she was fairly certain she wasn’t at all capable of assuming that tremendous responsibility. “A guide, perhaps. When you wish one.”
“Or when ye feel I need one. You were certain I was aboot to blast that lass, or ye wouldnae have knocked me in the ribs.”
Other shoppers were beginning to eye them—or rather, him—curiously, but no one complained about having to move around the two of them as they blocked the way. She couldn’t imagine, though, that many of them would dare challenge such a formidable-looking man. Not directly, anyway.
“I think you know what’s polite and acceptable, whether you choose to behave in that manner or not—which is why you left the shop when you did.” She grimaced. “The Hunsacker girls know better as well, silly things. What I didn’t know was whether you would take your sister’s situation into account.”
She half expected that to spark another argument, but when his gaze met hers again she saw a fair degree of amusement in them. The sight made her forget for a moment what they’d been discussing. Charlotte had seen paintings of some of the Scottish lakes, and his eyes were precisely the color she imagined one of the those deep, still lochs would be under a Scottish summer sun.
After a moment he gestured down the street with his free hand, and they set off at a much more sedate pace. “I’ve a question for ye,” he asked conversationally.
“I’m listening.”
“Ye’re what, three-and-twenty?”
