Page 92 of Hit Me With Your Best Scot
“She helped us, Coll. And she accepted me even before she knew I wasn’t Persephone Jones.”
Aye, she had. And she’d told him some things that bore thinking about—and a few questions he wanted his father to answer. If he’d discovered one thing through falling for Temperance, it was that when two strong people met, one of them had to bend. And bending didn’t mean losing. It only meant finding a different path.
“Let’s find some food, then,” he drawled, helping her to her feet and settling the skirt back around her ankles.
When they reached the breakfast room, though, neither of his parents were inside. The rest of the family, though, stood huddled about the countess’s carefully ironed edition of theLondon Times.
“Did you see this?” Eloise asked, shaking the newspaper. “‘The audience could only sit, transfixed, while Lady Aldriss’s box spewed Scotsmen over the side and another Highlander, Lord Glendarril himself, charged onto the stage, kilt akimbo, to fling actors about like chess pieces.”
“I barely flung anyone,” Coll retorted. “I shoved Montrose aside, mayhap.”
“Hush. ‘And then the Queen of Scotland revealed herself to be not one Mrs. Persephone Jones, but Lady Temperance Hartwood! This witness was heartily entrancedby the magnificence of it all. The only shame was that Macbeth was prevented from uttering his famed closing soliloquy. Perhaps, though, tomorrow.’”
“We were magnificent,” Niall echoed with a loose grin. “I wouldnae say we spewed from the box, but Aden and I did vault over the side. I nearly landed on Lady Darlington’s hat.”
“I am so sorry I ever had a single uncharitable thought about you, Temperance,” Eloise said, setting aside the paper to throw her arms around Coll’s betrothed. “My brothers spent the evening vaulting over things while wearing kilts, and I’ve already been invited to two additional parties this morning.”
“Just ye keep in mind we’re nae going to be so acrobatic every time we go somewhere,” Aden cautioned, laughing.
“I’ve been thinking,” Coll’s sister went on. “You could marry at the same ceremony with Matthew and me, Coll. As long as you say your ‘I do’s’ first, the agreement will have been honored.”
He flung some food on a pair of plates and sat beside his sister, his lass on his other side. “I dunnae—”
“We wouldn’t dream of it,” Temperance answered before he could. “That isyourday. And for heaven’s sake, you’ve had the longest engagement I can remember.”
“We had to make it long enough to give my brothers a chance to find English wives and marry,” his sister returned with a cheeky grin. “In return, I’ve been promised a grand wedding ball, so I am appeased.”
“I’m marrying Temperance as soon as I can ride down to Canterbury and back,” Coll put in. “Tonight, more than likely.”
Lady Aldriss walked into the room. “Weddings are generally performed on Saturdays.”
“Nae mine.”
Temperance cleared her throat. “Charlie’s put off tonight’s performance so he can find someone to learn Clive’s lines,” she said, her gaze on Coll. “So… I’m available.”
Lady Aldriss sighed. “I’ll send word to Father Thomas, then.” She put her hands behind her back, then around to the front, twisting them a bit. Something was biting at her.
“What did ye want to tell us?” he prompted.
“Yes, that.” She took another breath. “Forgive the timing, but your father has something to say to all of you.”
With a heavy-looking wooden box in his hands, Angus MacTaggert followed her into the breakfast room. “Lads, I did what I did so ye’d grow up strong and independent and nae willing to bow to any lass and her opinions,” he said without preamble.
The countess cleared her throat.
“That being said,” he went on, “I reckon I overreacted to yermàthairleaving us behind. The letters ye wrote her, begging her to return, I didnae send them on to her.” Opening the box, he removed a stack of letters bound with twine, and set them on the table.
Coll scowled. She’d said as much, but he hadn’t quite believed her. Or rather, he’d preferred to believe the version with which he’d grown up—that she had a cold heart and had happily left them all behind, never to return. “Ye lied to us.”
“Aye, I did. For yer own good. Or so I reckoned.” The earl drummed his fingers on the lid of the wooden box. “And she sent ye a letter or two, and I didnae pass them on to ye, for the same reasons.”
“‘A letter or two?’” Lady Aldriss quoted, lifting an eyebrow, her arms folded across her chest.
“Bah.” Lifting up the box, he dumped out its contents. Letters fell to the table. A hundred, if not more, covered the surface and spilled to the floor. “There. It was me andmy damned pride. Make of it what ye will. I’m nae going to apologize for making ye grow up to be who ye are, three lads of whom any man would be proud.” With that, he put the box beneath his arm, turned on his heel, and left the room.
Aden leaned out of his chair to pick up a letter from the floor beside him. “Niall, this one’s for ye,” he said, flipping it at their youngest brother, who caught it against his chest.
“Those letters don’t excuse one thing,” Francesca said quietly, lowering her arms again. “I waited for your father to invite me to return, to visit you—or better yet, to announce that he couldn’t manage raising the three of you and that he needed me back. I should simply have gone. I should have gone to see my sons, and I didn’t, because as proud as Angus is, I am just as guilty.” She gestured at the sliding stack of correspondence. “As your father said, make of this what you will. I just wanted you to know that for all those years we were apart, I did—and I do—love you. All four of you, all seven of you, all soon-to-be eight of you.”
