Page 33 of Hit Me With Your Best Scot
“Nae.” Coll held up one hand. “Ye keep doing that, Eloise.” He took her arm, leading her down the hallway and through a door to what looked like a study. Shutting them in, he released her. “I’ll tell ye someaught. It’s to stay between ye and me, and I’m only telling ye because ye’re less than four weeks from marrying and we’ve made enough trouble for ye since we arrived.”
“But I’ve loved having you here. Please don’t think I want you gone.” A tear ran down one cheek. “You’re my brothers, and we’ve been apart for so long. I don’t—”
“Hush. I didnae think any such thing. Ye do have to admit, we’ve upended things a bit, though.”
“Yes, you have.” She wiped her cheek. “I haven’t minded it at all until now.”
“Well, between us, and us only, I’m nae marrying Persephone Jones. I only said that so ourmàthairwould occupy herself with spinning about instead of throwing lasses at me. I’ll find my own bride.”
The relief on her face was almost comical—or it would have been, if he hadn’t been the one to upset her so. “Oh, Coll. Thank you.” She sighed, sinking into a chair. “I wonder what Mrs. Jones would say if she knew you were telling your family you were marrying her? Good heavens.”
“She looked horrified and told me I was mad.”
Eloise blinked. “You talked to her? But she’s famous!”
Hell, he’d done more than talk to her. The taste of her mouth on his lingered still, but he pushed away the thought before something embarrassing happened. In a room with his sister, of all people. “Aye, we talked. I took her on a picnic today.”
“Mama said you were her protector.” She tilted her head. “I know what that means, but do you? Or are you literally just… protecting her?”
“I comprehend the meaning,” he returned dryly. Even his bairn of a sister thought him a muttonhead. “The rest isnae any of yer affair.”
She blushed. “Oh, of course not. I just—I’d love to meet her, if we can do so somewhere no one would be able to gossip about it.” Eloise put a hand over her mouth. “And nowhere Mother could ever find out. She would have an apoplexy.”
Coll grinned. “That riled up, is she? I did notice she barely spoke a word to me this evening. And Gavin swore she ran after us in the barouche for half a mile earlier today.”
“She’s…” Eloise trailed off. “You’ve definitely set her spinning. My goodness. I haven’t seen her so agitated since the morning before you three arrived here.”
Francesca Oswell-MacTaggert had been agitated about their arrival? Well, that was interesting. He’d begun to think she was carved of stone, until he’d mentioned marriage and Persephone in the same sentence. “A bit of agitation in exchange for me finding a lass I might care for. That’s all I’m asking, Eloise.”
She nodded, rising to throw her arms around his chest. “Very well. Some good may come of this, anyway.” Stepping backward, her color still high, she turned for the door. “You finding your own bride, I mean. The rest of us have been able to wed for love—or will be able to. You should be, as well.”
“Thank ye for that.”
“You know, my friend Li—”
“Nae. I dunnae want Lady Aldriss in the middle of this, and I dunnae want ye there, either. By now ye’ve dragged all yer most marriageable friends past me, and whoever ye think of now, I reckon, wouldnae be anyone I wish to marry.”
With a sigh, she wrapped her hand around his arm. “I can’t argue with that. It’s just that I’m running out of friends, and you’re nearly out of time. I want you to find someone you canlove, Coll. I know you’ll marry, because it’s what you need to do.”
And that was the damned rub. He didn’tneedto marry. Not with two fit heirs in his brothers and both of them well on the way to making heirs of their own. A piece of paper written up and signed when he’d been twelve because his mother hadn’t wanted to live in Scotland buthadwanted to keep a hold over her sons—that was what everyone needed him to obey.
He patted her hand. “Once more unto the breach, then,” he said, leading her back into the drawing room. He noted to himself that after a morning of listening to the Scottish play, he’d just quoted the wrong Shakespearean work, but no one else would care. According to Persephone Jones, he was Macbeth, and he could only hope his own quest didn’t end in a similar tragedy.
He found everyone divided into twos and threes, chatting about the weather and fashion and whatever else the Sassenachs discussed endlessly whenever they were together. For a moment, he looked at them, all apparently content with the world and their places in it.
Even Persephone seemed to be happy where she was, but she also approached her work—and her life—with a passion he admired and had shared before circumstances had forced him south of Hadrian’s Wall.
“Excuse me, Lord Glendarril?”
He turned around to see the lass with whom he’d been chatting earlier, Eliza Green, behind him. Her hands clasped at her waist and wearing a pink chiffon gown with sleeves of white lace, she looked like a black-haired angel of virtue. “Aye?”
“You said you liked to go riding. I was wondering if you might be about Hyde Park tomorrow morning at nine o’clock? My mare, Pepper, and I are there most mornings. She’s a bit spirited, but then that makes her more fun to ride.”
This was one of those things he was supposed to do—one of the very things Persephone had advised him about—and now Miss Green had actually walked into the clearing to nibble at the sweet grass he’d planted. A pretty lass, and one who liked to ride. And there he was, gazing at her and thinking of another lass entirely—and not just because he’d given his word that he would be at the other lass’s home in the morning to escort her to the theater.
“I’ve an obligation tomorrow morning,” he said. “Thank ye for asking me, though.”
“Oh. Of course.” Shifting her hands to fold them behind her back, she made an awkward, bobbing curtsy and hurried away.
