Page 60 of Hit Me With Your Best Scot
“This evening, we’ll go by an apothecary’s shop.”
“I’m hosting a dinner tonight. I’m not about to disappoint Flora.”
He frowned. “Lass, it’s nae a good idea to have people about yer house—aboutye—right now.”
“I’ve known these people much longer than I’ve known you, Coll, and you’ve been…” She glanced around them at the busy backstage. “You’ve been sharing mybed. You’re welcome to join us, and I’m not trying to be stubborn, but you and I both have lives. I will not stop mine and save someone else the trouble of doing so.”
“Stubborn,” he muttered under his breath. “I’ll join ye, then. We’ll go by the apothecary in the morning.”
“You have a wedding to attend in the morning. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a final fitting.”
“Aye. I’ve a few things to see to today. My men will be about. If ye need anything, feel a cool breeze ye dunnae like, ye tell one of ’em.”
“I will.” She wanted to ask where he might be headed, if he meant to look further into Dunhurst’s finances, or if this place he needed to go was to a young lady’s house tospeak with her parents about a marriage. She didn’t want him to do either, but she couldn’t argue against the first one, and she’d actually encouraged the second one.
He put his forefinger beneath her chin, tilted her head up, and kissed her. “I dunnae like leaving yer side, lass,” he murmured, then bent and pulled the knife from his boot. “Ye keep this with ye.”
“Macbeth is the one who sees the floating dagger,” she said, attempting to find some humor again.
“Promise me,” Coll pushed, his expression unchanged.
Blowing out her breath, she took the dagger. “I don’t know what I’m to do with it while I’m being fitted for Lady Macbeth’s gown.”
“Ye’ve a seamstress here. Find some cloth and strap it to yer leg.” Squatting, he ran his palm from her hip down one thigh, to just below her knee. “Hereabouts, so ye can reach it beneath yer skirts.”
Now he’d stirred up all kinds of naughty thoughts, and she was going to have a devil of a time remembering her lines. “I would still prefer to discover that no one is after me at all, you know.”
Straightening again, he took her hand. “Sorry to tell ye, lass, but ye’ve got one man after ye, regardless.”
With a final swift kiss, he released her hand, turned on his heel, and disappeared into the gloomy backstage. Temperance sat on the nearest stool. He thought knowing her background changed everything. He’d been tasked with finding a proper wife, and while Persephone Jones certainly wasn’t that, Lady Temperance Hartwood fulfilled all of his and his family’s requirements—in his mind, anyway.
Men. She loved her life—she loved acting and being onstage and hearing the roars of applause. When she’d run initially, it had been only with the thought of escaping amarriage to the Duke of Dunhurst. It had been weeks later, when her pocket money had begun to run out, that she’d made a choice between working in a shop for a man whose leer gave her the shakes, offering her personal wares on some street corner, and answering an advertisement looking for a young lady to assume the role of Maria, Olivia’s maid inTwelfth Nightfor a small theater troupe in Cornwall.
It had been a very fortuitous moment;Twelfth Nightwas her favorite play, one she’d nearly memorized while growing up, and it was a chance to don a disguise and become someone else entirely. No one would look for Temperance Hartwood on the stage. That had been the day Temperance had ceased to exist altogether, and she’d become Persephone Jones.
“Persie,” said Flora’s daughter, Beth, “Mr. Huddle finally agreed that three costume changes for you are enough for us all to manage. Let me get you in the last one again so I can have them ready in time for dress rehearsal.”
“Of course. I’m sorry; I was lost in thought.” Temperance stood, falling in behind the seamstress as they hurried over to the table overflowing with cloth, thread, beading, lace, and leather.
“I don’t blame you. That Lord Glendarril is rather spectacular.”
“Yes, he is,” she said. Truer words were never spoken. “He may join us for dinner tonight.”
Beth grinned. “A grand lord, condescending to dine with stagehands and seamstresses? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
Neither had Temperance. Once they’d finished with this mess of possible killers running about, she needed to part ways with him. He didn’t fit her life, and she certainly didn’t fit his. This just happened to be a perfect littlemoment in which they could be together. It wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. No matter how much she’d begun to wish that she hadn’t caused Lady Temperance to disappear so thoroughly.
Chapter Thirteen
“Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”
THE THREE WITCHES,MACBETHACT IV, SCENE I
“I don’t understand,” Eloise said, her tone exasperated. “First you want to know everyone who’s going to be attending Lady Fenster’s masked ball on Sunday, and then you ask me to describe half of them to you. Why not simply go and see for yourself?”
“They’ll be wearing masks.” Coll flipped through his notes again. “And I’m trying to find a wife,piuthar. I’d like to know with whom I’m entangling myself. Ye ken as well as anyone that a marriage isnae just two people. It’s two families.”
