Page 4 of Hit Me With Your Best Scot
Brumley snorted. “I don’t give a damn what color hair she prefers. Claremont’s out of town, and that makes her available. She’s a magnificent toy, and I do like to tinker.”
“Gentlemen,” a short, stout man hissed as he appeared from the depths of the backstage maze, “I must ask you to keep your voices down.”
“Don’t fret,” the not-Brumley man said with a faint smile, “the audience isn’t here to hear the play. They’re here to see her. And you have to expect there to besomedisagreement over which gentleman spends the night in her company.”
“Which will be me,” Brumley responded. “Go away, Waldring. You have a wife to plow.”
Waldring made a face. “Only when it’s planting season. I prefer more delicate fruit.”
It didn’t sound as though either of the men meant to ask the lass with whomshepreferred to spend the night, or what her husband might have to say about it. “The lad asked ye to be quiet,” Coll pointed out in his lowest voice, facing them.
“Oh look, Waldring, it’s one of the Highlanders,” Brumley commented, his eyes narrowing.
“Has no one explained to you, Glendarril, that plays are generally watched from the seats out front?” the secondone, Waldring, put in. “I’m certain I saw Lady Aldriss in her box out there earlier. Are you lost?”
“Gentlemen,” the stout man repeated, putting his hands together in a prayer. “Please be silent, or you will have to leave.”
Out on the stage behind Coll, the lass was speaking again. He wanted to watch her, but he wasn’t about to turn his back on these two buffoons. “I’m nae lost. I’m right where I want to be. Now, that wee man there asked ye to be silent. I reckon ye should listen to him.”
“You know what I think, Brumley? I think this heathen has his own sights set on Mrs. Jones. The—”
“That’s ‘my laird heathen’ to ye,” Coll interrupted, his mouth curving in a grim smile.Ah, battle.
The bigger of the two men, Waldring, put a finger in the knot of his cravat to loosen it, a sure sign of a coming brawl. “I’ll have you know, sir, that I train at Gentleman Jackson’s,” he said, coiling his arms and making fists at the ends. “What say you, Brumley? Shall we?”
The dandy hopped from one foot to the other in a prancing half circle while Coll watched, amused. When Waldring finally lunged forward, Coll ducked the flailing swipe easily and flashed out with his own fist, catching the dandy with a solid punch to the jaw. Waldring dropped to the wooden floor with a puff of exhaled air. Cocking his head, Coll turned his attention to the other one. “Ye want the same, Sassenach? If ye do, then step up. If ye dunnae, then get this sack of potatoes out of my sight.”
“But—that it is to say—I didn’t arrive with Mr. Waldring,” Brumley sputtered.
“Well, he cannae stay there on the floor. Someone’ll trip over him. So drag him out of here and be glad ye showed more restraint than he did,” Coll suggested.
“I… yes.”
Facing the stage again, Coll folded his arms. The difficulty with using words as weapons was that words couldn’t knock a man on his arse.Thattook fists. He would have to point that out to his dialogue-preferring brothers the next chance he got. Of course, who the devil knew when that would be, what with Niall so occupied with bedding his wife, Amy, that the household practically had to remind the two of them to eat, and with Aden gone down to Canterbury for a special license so he could wed his Miranda before the lass found her common sense again and changed her mind.
“That was efficiently—and quietly—done, sir. Thank you.” The small man drew even with Coll, his own arms folded over his barrel chest.
“Ye look like ye could have held yer own.”
The man grinned briefly. “In my prime, perhaps. But I can’t go about punching theater patrons. That makes for very poor attendance and less patronage. So again, thank you.”
Coll shrugged. “I’ve punched two men tonight, and both deserved it. Ye dunnae need to thank me for that.”
“Even so, I’m glad this is Persephone’s last night playing a romantic lead. We always have more wolves at the door when we perform a romance. After tonight, we’ll see ten days relatively wolf-free before we openMacbeth. And I daresay most men wouldn’t dare even dream of bedding Lady Macbeth. Not if they value their lives.”
That seemed peculiar—Persephone Jones was an actress, not the actual murdering lass. But then he’d just seen her transform herself into a boy with but a few shifts in the way she held herself. If she could become Lady Macbeth as efficiently, bedding herwouldseem a mite dangerous. He did like dangerous things, though. And she… Well, he could admit to himself that this was the first time he’d found a lad desirable, knowing what lay beneath those trousers as he did.
“Those werenae wolves,” he said aloud, just remembering to whisper. “Ferrets, more like, scavenging for an easy meal.”
“If they think of Persephone Jones as an easy meal, they’re very stupid ferrets.” Unfolding his arms, the man stuck out one hand. “Huddle,” he whispered. “Charlie Huddle. I manage the madness that is the Saint Genesius.”
Coll gripped his hand. “Glendarril. Coll MacTaggert.”
“Ah. You’rethatScotsman.”
Lifting an eyebrow, Coll freed his fingers from the firm grip. “Which Scotsman would that be?”
“The one seen a few days ago running naked down Grosvenor Square with a large sword in his hands. Viscount Glendarril.”
