Page 52 of Hit Me With Your Best Scot
“Whither should I fly?
I have done no harm. But I remember now
I am in this earthly world—where to do harm
Is often laudable, to do good sometime
Accounted dangerous folly. Why then, alas,
Do I put up that womanly defense,
To say I have done no harm?”
LADY MACDUFF,MACBETHACT IV, SCENE II
Coll looked down into Temperance Hartwood’s pretty blue eyes, their bodies still intertwined, his heart still pounding, and his mind still very far from logical thinking. “Pleased to make yer acquaintance, my lady.”
Temperance Hartwood. He’d heard the name somewhere, and recently. Where the devil had it been? After weeks of speaking to lasses who knew how to discuss the weather, fashion, and the most innocent bits of gossip, he had so many pieces of information battering about in his brain that he could scarcely remember his own name.
With a short laugh that sounded bitter at the end, she put one hand over her eyes. “I shouldn’t have told you. I’ve managed for years to keep it to myself, and then you look at me with those… eyes of yours, and I begin blabbing like a baby.”
“These eyes of mine happen to like lookin’ at ye,” he returned, shifting off of her to turn on his back beside her. The lass needed some room to think; as a man with an appreciation for open spaces, he understood that. “And I’m nae a fool. I told ye that ye could trust me.”
“Yes, I know that, but I’ve done this on my own until now. I’ve been rather proud of that fact, actually.”
With her name still rolling about in his brain, he abruptly remembered where he’d heard it spoken. “My sister mentioned ye the other day,” he said slowly, attempting to piece together what had been a rather silly and inane conversation, a complaint about his harsh treatment of Matthew Harris’s beak. “Ye’re an heiress. There’s a wager in the book at White’s over whether ye’re deceased, or ye’ve run off to America, or ye’re somewhere in the countryside and wed to a butcher with a half dozen pudgy bairns.”
“I’ve heard that one myself,” she commented, her expression easing a little. “It’s rather flattering that no one has come close to guessing what I’ve actually done with my life.”
“Aye, but someone has, I reckon.” Bending an arm behind his head, he reached out with the other one to tug her up over his chest. “Are ye certain it’s nae the man ye ran from? Mayhap he saw ye at the theater and recognized ye. Some men would rather murder than be revealed to be a fool.”
Persephone—Temperance—lay her cheek over his heart, her fingers idly stroking his chest. “I’m still trying to decide whether I’d rather flee than find out who it might be,” she muttered.
“How many people want ye dead, lass?”
Snorting, she lifted her head briefly to look at him. “It’s not funny, truly, but at the same time it’s just so horrid that I’d rather laugh than cry.”
“I’m all for lying here with ye all night and giving ye all the comfort I can manage,” he responded, twining a mid-length, honey-colored strand of her hair around hisfinger, “but ye ken I’m a fighter. Give me names—point me at someone I can battle.”
What he didn’t say was that he wasn’t going to allow her to leave London. He wanted her there, with him. Not just to protect her, though that made for a damned fine excuse. He simply wasn’t prepared to part from her. This connection between them felt stronger than iron, but at the same time, as delicate as a butterfly’s wings. No, she wasn’t going anywhere. Not until… Well, just not.
The thing that he’d begun to pull out of this conversation, beyond the way it confirmed what he already knew—that she was a brave, bright, independent woman—was that while his mother might have made a sliver of sense in not wanting him to wed a commoner, at least for the sake of his sister and new sisters-in-law, Temperance Hartwood wasn’t a commoner. She even had “Lady” in front of her name, for the devil’s sake.
“I haven’t done anything wrong, have I?” she muttered, half to herself. “My parents would say I did, and I suppose I’ve shirked my obligation to improve the family lineage by marrying into an impressive title, but I’ve spent eight years away, six of them here in one small part of London, simply living my life.”
“Ye protected yerself,” he stated, whether her question had been rhetorical or not. “And ye’ve done well at it all. If disappointing a parent were grounds for murder, there’d be a lot fewer children in the world, I reckon. So right or wrong, ye dunnae deserve having someone trying to hurt ye.”
“Of course you’d say that; you make sense, Coll. You approve of anyone who stands on their own two feet.”
“Nae only do I make sense, lass, I’ve an affinity for sorting out things that dunnae make sense.” Coaxing information out of her would likely give him an apoplexy before he’d managed it, but clearly fists didn’t apply here.He needed to be someone she could trust and prove to her that her secrets were safe with him.
But there was also someone after her. He didn’t have all the time in the world to be patient—not that he’d ever much favored patience.
“I don’t want you entangled in this. I just… I wish we could go back to the night we first met, and just leave things as they were then.” She kissed his nipple, nearly sending his eyes rolling back in his head.
“I already knew what I wanted, the first time I set eyes on ye. And I mean to help ye, Temperance. If ye fear that obligates ye to me, it doesnae. I like ye, and I dunnae want ye hurt. There arenae enough people I truly like in the world, and I’m nae willing to lose one of them. So ye tell me who ye reckon is after ye.”
“Coll, th—”
