Page 5 of Hit Me With Your Best Scot
“Aye. And if I’d caught the bastard who threatened my family, ye’d be telling a different tale about me, I reckon.” It had been a close race; even with Captain Robert Vale on horseback, Coll had nearly managed to take an ear off the vulture.
“I’m not one to judge. When you spend as much time around theater folk as I do, naked swordplay doesn’t seem all that scandalous. Or unusual.”
“Ah, you’re still here, Macbeth,” a voice came from in front of him in a soft lilt.
He refocused his attention on the lass dressed as a lad standing at the edge of the curtains as Huddle went to chat with his overly exuberant Duke Senior. “I’m still nae Macbeth, lass.”
“Duncan, then? Banquo?”
“MacTaggert will do. Or Coll. I’ll answer to either of those.” He wasn’t certain why he didn’t add Glendarril, except that the two rutting pigs whose arses he’d just kicked had been aristocracy, and they hadn’t shown very well. He wasn’tEnglisharistocracy, of course, but at this moment pointing out the difference just seemed petty.
“And I answer to Mrs. Jones.” She bowed with a flourish. “Or Persephone,” she said, her grin deepening as she straightened again. “Now that we’re acquainted, MacTaggert, whatever shall we do next?”
Chapter Two
“Give me your favor; my dull brain was wrought
With things forgotten.”
MACBETH,MACBETHACT I, SCENE III
Athing or two they could be doing together came to mind—and they would be naked while they did it. Lasses didn’t wear trousers where he came from, Coll reflected, but then he was in a kilt—which had been called scandalous and barbaric by more Sassenachs than he had fingers to count. Given that, he had no complaints at all about her appearance. Not a one.
With her long legs and slender waist, her bosom half-concealed beneath a superfine shirt, waistcoat, and a blue coat that sat just a bit too large across her shoulders, Persephone Jones looked like a well-dressed waif. A very attractive, brown-haired waif with large blue eyes and a grin that made them dance, but a waif nonetheless. “Before I answer that, I have to ask ye where Mr. Jones might be,” he said, already better than halfway to hating the man.
She gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “Oh, somewhere about. Why do you ask?”
“Because I’m nae a poacher.”
“Ah. A hunter, then. You’re assuming, though, that I can be caught.”
“I reckon I could make a good go of it.”
Her expression speculative, the lass approached him, lifting up on her toes to make herself taller. Even so, the top of her head barely reached his shoulder.
“What sort of hunter are you, MacTaggert? Do you hang your trophy up on the wall for everyone to admire? Or do you eat what you catch?”
Good Lord, she was going to have him poking out from under his kilt in another damned minute. “I’ve a healthy appetite,” he returned.
“Persephone,” a female voice whispered from behind him. “Five minutes.”
“Ah, excuse me, MacTaggert. I have another costume change, and no more time to chat.”
As she passed by Mr. Huddle, the wee man leaned in to whisper something into her ear. At that, she sent another appraising glance at Coll before she vanished into the dim backstage. Coll would have asked what the devil they were gossiping about, but a stone wall rolled in between them, followed by a banquet table, a set of chairs, a giant candelabra, and a throne.
By the time all the furniture had made it onto the stage and the men who’d moved the things had returned to the wings, Charlie Huddle had vanished. More significantly, Mrs. Persephone Jones was nowhere to be seen, either. At least he knew where to find her: on the stage. While the scenery lads marched back and forth, replacing the forest with a fortress, Coll shifted toward the main curtains and parted them with his fingers.
The audience seemed full to the rafters, which made sense now, given both the lass’s talent and the fact that this was the final night of her being Rosalind. Shifting a little sideways, he could just make out Lady Aldriss’s box. Francesca herself sat there, stone-faced, while his sister Eloise dabbed a handkerchief at her betrothed’s nose. The two lasses and their families who’d come to ambush himremained, one of them in tears and the other one’s mother weeping.
Christ on the cross. Aye, he needed to find a wife before Eloise’s wedding, and that date now loomed but four weeks away. But if a lass could weep over losing him after three minutes of conversation, it wasn’t him she was after; it was his damned title. And he wasn’t desperate enough yet to agree to his mother’s suggestions, anyway.
When he’d first realized there was no getting around his mother’s edict, he’d thought to find himself a lass he could wed, bed, and leave behind in London while he returned to Scotland and did as he pleased. While he’d never admit to changing his opinion aboutthat, his brothers’ success at finding women they loved—and who loved them in return—had turned his head a mite. He could tolerate an English lass if love were involved. If that didn’t happen, he could always fall back on his original scheme. Surely even a damned leper with a title could find a bride in four weeks.
In the meantime, he’d found a fine-looking lass to distract him from his bloody conundrum. And even if all he could do was watch her and indulge his imagination, that seemed a much more pleasant way to spend the evening than dodging marriage-minded goslings and the imperious goose in her well-positioned box.
“So, you’re the one who sent Waldring scurrying. Thanks for that,” a voice came from behind him in a very cultured Sassenach accent. “He tends to charm a lady onto her back before any of the rest of us can say hello. You’ve rendered him impotent—at least until that bruise heals.”
Coll stepped back from the curtains and turned his head. Sounding arrogant wasn’t an easy task when a fellow had to keep his voice pitched lower than a mouse’s squeak, but the tall, blond man standing in the shadows managed it, regardless. “And who might ye be?” he asked.
