Page 55 of Hit Me With Your Best Scot
She shook her head, pausing to settle a pretty green and brown muslin gown over her shoulders. “I owe a great deal to Charlie. I will speak with him myself.”
“Temp—”
“Persephone, for heaven’s sake,” she broke in. “Temperance Hartwood was a long time ago, from a life I don’t want.”
“But I like knowing who ye are beneath everything else.”
“I’m the same woman I was before you knew I had another name, Coll. I don’t want you forgetting and calling me… that other name in front of people.”
She didn’t have an objection to being seen with him, then. That, of course, wasn’t at all the point of her argument, but it felt significant. “I’ll nae forget.” Stepping forward, he fastened the quartet of buttons running up her back, then closed his hand around her shoulder, turned her around, and kissed her.
Her arms crept up to grasp his shoulders as she returned the embrace, sinking along his chest. “What I’ve told you doesn’t change anything, you know,” she whispered against his mouth.
“It changes everything,” he countered. It changed the entire architecture of his world, but only as far as she would allow it. Any final decision rested with her. After what she’d been through, he wouldn’t have it any other way. Thankfully, he could be far more persuasive than people generally realized. “Have it as ye will, though,” he went on, to avoid another round of arguments. “Paper. I need paper.”
He pulled his shirt over his head and followed her out of the bedchamber. As soon as they trotted down thesteep, narrow stairs to the wee dining room, he wrote a note to Aden, requesting a handful of the Highlanders they’d brought south with them. The rest of the staff of Oswell House could likely be trusted, but they owed their loyalty to Francesca, not to him.
Flora the maid wasn’t a grand cook like Mrs. Gordon at Oswell House, but with a small household like this one, he had to admire her skill. She’d made the dress Temperance currently wore, and several of the others in which he’d seen the lass. And though the bread and ham with gravy wasn’t anything fancy, it felt closer to a true Highlands breakfast than anything he’d eaten since he’d left home.
“Is there something I need to know, Miss Persie?” Gregory asked, stacking dishes to return to the kitchen. “That Gavin last night with all his talk of locking the door and finding a weapon had me awake sitting in the front room with my musket across my knees until dawn.”
Flora appeared in the dining room doorway on the tail of that comment. “And I nearly threw a pot at the milkman when he knocked at the back door. Miss Persie, I know something’s wrong. Please let us help.”
“It’s nothing,” Temperance said, sipping at a cup of tea Coll knew had long ago gone cold. “A bit of trouble with an old beau.” She sent a glance at Coll. “Isn’t that right?”
Damn it all; he didn’t like lying. But in a sense, she was correct, since as far as they knew, thiswasabout her previous life—though it could just as easily have been about some madman disapproving of her performance as Juliet Capulet. “We think so, aye. I reckon I’ll get it sorted today.”
“Good,” Flora said, fanning at her face with a cloth. “My nerves haven’t been so rattled since that banker tried to follow you home for three nights in a row after you played Ophelia.”
Temperance grimaced at Coll’s sideways glance. “He was quite mad, I’m afraid, and was convinced thatIshould be placed in Bedlam for my own good.”
“Well, that’s nae at all worrying,” he muttered, mentally moving his low ranking for enraptured onlookers several rungs higher on his ladder of suspects.
“That sort of thing doesn’t happen often. Usually it’s men enamored of the character I’m playing and wanting to romance me.”
He liked that even less. How many men had attempted to woo, buy, or charm her since she’d begun acting? And how many of them had succeeded, if only for a night or two? Was he being an idiot for refusing to count himself in that number? Was it only because, by chance, he’d seen her first as herself backstage?
He’d never been foolish with women. Aye, he’d bedded his share, but he’d never given one enough of his heart to feel regret when they parted company. There had always been a more important obligation—to Clan Ross, to the MacTaggerts, and to Aldriss Park. Now, though, just the idea of her in another man’s arms was enough to make his jaw clench and his muscles bellow for battle. What it all meant, he didn’t know—or rather, he thought hedidknow, but given the lass’s reaction to the idea of forevers, he meant to keep it to himself. For now.
“I need ye to make me a list,” he said quietly, when the footman and maid returned to the kitchen. “All yer family, everyone ye’ve been… close to, anyone with whom ye’ve had an argument.”
“That’s quite a bit of my personal life, sir,” she stated, her cheeks growing pink. “I’m not certain I wish you to know all of that.”
“I ken, Persephone,” he commented, using her faux name deliberately, to remind her that he could be trusted. “Ye’ve done this on yer own until now. I can do more looking about than ye can, and me blundering my way through Society will cause less of a stir than if ye attempted it.”
“I don’t like that, Coll. You blundering, I mean. I have the feeling that if you truly wished to, you could have half a hundred women ready to wed you by now.”
“Aye?” He snorted. “Why have I nae, then? I could certainly use a bride.”
“Because you are as stubborn as the rain, and because I don’t think you generally doanythingyou’ve been ordered to do.”
That sounded fairly accurate, actually. “I’m nae a man to follow other people, I’ll admit. I’ll also admit that until a week or so ago, I wasnae hoping to find anyone with whom I’d care to spend my life. But then Aden went and agreed to wed Miranda, and my chances of getting that agreement changed went from fair to miserable.”
“‘Agreed to wed?’” she repeated, furrowing her brow. “Was it arranged, then?”
“Nae. She proposed to him.” He grinned. “Aden doesnae think he’s very honorable, but he got himself wrapped up in being proper toward her and then couldnae see a way out. Miranda solved it for him.”
She played with her fork for a bit. “You seem happy for him.”
