Page 26 of Hit Me With Your Best Scot
“Well, I’m not a proper lass.” She took his face in her hands and kissed him.
She tasted his surprise, swiftly followed by something more heated and heady. A low sound rising from her chest, she opened to his teasing tongue.Good glory. If he led all his conversations with a kiss like this, he would have had fifty brides knocking at his door by now. And there she was, her feet literally not touching the ground.
But they needed to find the floor again—at once—because she could not afford flights of fancy. Not now, and not ever.
Chapter Six
“Why do you dress me in borrowed robes?”
MACBETH,MACBETHACT I, SCENE III
The lass’s fan slapped Coll across the shoulders. He ignored it, too involved with kissing Persephone Jones and the things the embrace was doing to his nether regions to pay any attention. Another slap, this one harder, across the back of the skull.
He lifted his head to see Gavin cocking his arm back for another blow. “That’s enough, ye heathen,” he grumbled.
“If any of the lasses ye mean to wed were to see ye here now,” the groom muttered, “I dunnae think they’d look on ye kindly.”
Nearly empty or not, they were in the middle of a park where anyone could take a stroll. Reluctantly, Coll set Persephone down onto her feet before he took a step backward. “Ye’re making me think I’d prefer a marriage to an improper lass over a proper one,” he quipped.
She cleared her throat and smoothed her skirt before gracefully seating herself again while Gavin retreated to the safety of the barouche. “Be that as it may, you’ve told me that you require a lady.”
Strictly speaking, it was his mother who demanded he wed a proper female, but he did know what the repercussions would be if he went and married someone who didn’t travel in the same prestigious circles as the Oswells and MacTaggerts. He was looking for a lass to help him lead a part of Clan Ross, after all.
“Aye. But as I said, I cannae wait for a week while every lass decides if I’ve earned a dance or nae.”
“There’s a risk in putting all your eggs in one basket.” With dainty fingers, she gripped her glass of Madeira again and downed it all. “You might try several strategies at once.”
He poured her another glass, ignoring his own. Even if he still drank, it wouldn’t be Madeira. But Mrs. Gordon, the cook, had said that ladies liked Madeira, so he’d deferred to her knowledge. She’d had the right of it, evidently. “Ask lasses if they’ll dance with me at the next ball or two and what else, then?”
“You said you enjoy riding. Go riding in the morning, when ladies who also enjoy being on horseback might be found in Hyde Park. Ask them about their mounts, where the best riding trails are, if they like to hunt, that sort of thing. You could suggest you’ll be at Hyde Park at eight o’clock the next morning, if they’d care to try their paces in your company.”
“So—asking a lass to ride is safer than suggesting a dance? That doesnae make any damned sense.”
“A lady on horseback may escape. Or not make an appearance at all.”
She may have accused him of playing a part, of behaving like a thick-headed, countrified squire to set people at ease, but she’d gone along easily enough with that narrative. It was the one that made him the most comfortable, even if he did have some idea what he was about. It was his anger that had gotten in the way of his logic when he’d first arrived in London, and so if it took a bit morepatience than he would’ve liked to smooth over his reputation again, he would put up with it.
Aside from that, he’d just learned a few more things about the intriguing Persephone Jones. She avoided Hyde Park and all the places proper ladies frequented, which wasn’t so odd, he supposed, but she seemed almost… calculating about it. She knew what time of day the aristocracy went riding, which dances signified which level of matrimonial interest, and actress or not, she’d played the most perfect, dainty English lass he could have imagined.
Of course, shewasan actress. A fine one, according to all of London. And perhaps she was curious about the blue bloods of Mayfair and read the Society pages and listened to the gossip and stories. Perhaps she was jealous of them, though that didn’t come across at all, even when she pretended to be one of them for a few minutes.
“Have ye ever been to a Society fete?” he asked. “Surely ye’ve been invited.”
“Certainly, I’ve been invited,” she echoed, choosing another strawberry. “I’m a curiosity. But no, I’ve never attended a Society party. My status rests on the ladies enjoying my performances as much as it does the gentlemen doing so. I don’t wish to anger, threaten, or annoy either sex.”
“But ye just kissed me out here in the middle of a park.”
“No, I kissed you out here in the middle of nowhere. Just as I’m picnicking with you in the middle of nowhere. The odds of anyone who could ruin me by seeing us right now are almost nil.” She smiled at him. “Not to disappoint you, but you aren’t my first protector.”
“About that. Ye balked at allowing Claremont into yer bedchamber, shall we say.”
“Ah.” This time, she downed half her glass of Madeira. “I didn’t like Claremont. He was pretty enough and served to keep the rest of the interested aristocrats awayfrom me, but he was supremely condescending in that very polite way the elite tend to have.”
“Did he kiss ye?”
She lifted her chin a little. “Yes.”
“Did ye kiss him?”
