Page 78 of Hit Me With Your Best Scot
She laughed. “Mary Dairy? Oh, I’m so glad you weren’t about when I was looking for a faux name.”
“I amnae. Ye wouldnae have been alone if I’d been there.”
Her expression sobering, she reached over to brush his dark hair back from his temple. “My life would have beenso different,” she breathed. “But given what I’ve found now, I wouldn’t want to change anything.”
He understood that, even if he disliked the idea of not being there for eight years to keep her safe and to keep her from being alone. Imagining all of that, though, only made him frustrated and angry. She had the right of it; they were together now, and that was what mattered. “I’m glad for that, then.”
“Your sister wants to take me dress shopping today,” she went on, “to replace my wardrobe. I could go to the Saint Genesius for some of my costumes, but I’m not certain whether going about in Lady Macbeth’s robes would help your mother’s quest to stop all the gossip.”
Sitting up, he stretched. He’d known her for a week, and had been intimate with her for nearly that amount of time. In the past, he would never have thought himself as domesticated as to enjoy sharing a bed with the same woman every night and waking up beside her in the morning. There he was, though, looking forward to a long lifetime of it.
“Ye ken we’ve only jumped over one hurdle,” he said, catching her hand and bringing it to his lips. “Ye still have someone after ye, and I’ll nae tolerate that.”
She shivered a little. “I didn’t think it possible to be so happy and so frightened all at the same time. How certain are you that my cousin is to blame?”
“I cannae be certain until I get a look at him and we exchange some words, but who else has a damned thing to gain by getting rid of ye? Unless it could possibly be Jenny or one of the others after yer parts—but ye’ll nae even tolerate me saying that.”
“No, I will not. I’ve known Jenny and most of the rest of them for years. If she’d wanted me gone, she would have killed me well before now. Rosalind’s a much morepopular character than Lady Macbeth.” She sat up beside him. “Speaking of which, I still need to go to rehearsals.”
“Nae.”
“We open tomorrow. It’s not just about me. The other actors, the stagehands, Charlie—this is our livelihood.”
Swearing under his breath, he flung off the bedsheets and stood. “Then I’m going with ye. Seems I dunnae have to spend my time searching for a bride any longer.”
What hedidhave was a masked ball to attend that night. At least now that his family knew about Temperance’s identity, he could hopefully get Eloise or one of the other lasses to dance with Robert Hartwood and ask him a few pointed questions. He wanted to ask them himself, of course, and he wanted to beat the man senseless. Doing so without proof or an admission of guilt, though, wouldn’t go over well with the rest of the aristocracy.
That didn’t even matter all that much to him. What continued to trouble him was the thought that perhaps it wasn’t Temperance’s cousin. If he couldn’t find a potential killer, allowing her to go anywhere—much less onstage—made no damned sense, yet he wasn’t certain that even he, with his size and his muscles, would be able to stop her.
Something warm rubbed against his ankle. Bending down, he scratched Hades behind the ears. At least the cat was grateful to have his life saved. “Make certain ye close yer cat in here,” he said, reaching for his kilt and belting it around his hips. “Aden has a dog with five wee pups, and they’ve the run of the place.”
Once he’d pulled on his shirt, he walked back to the bed, put his hands around Temperance’s hips, and kissed her long and slow. “I’ll be down in the breakfast room in twenty minutes or so, if ye care to meet me there so I can tell ye good morning.”
“If you tell me good morning any more enthusiasticallythan you just did,” she said with a satisfied smile, “we’ll have to be naked again.”
“Dunnae tempt me. That’d be one way to keep ye indoors all day, except that I cannae be with ye and find a villain all at the same time.”
By the time he’d sorted who would watch over Temperance with him, who would check to see that Robert Hartwood remained on the guest list for Lady Fenster’s ball, and whether he could go to Canterbury for a special marriage license if he didn’t give the bride’s true name—and whether that was the least bit legal or not—most of the family, with the notable exception of Aden and Miranda, had crowded into the breakfast room alongside him.
“Do you need a gown for tonight?” Eloise asked Temperance over her cup of too-sweet tea. “You’re taller than I am, but I have several with generous hems we could let out.”
“Temperance isnae going,” Coll broke in. For God’s sake, the lass had been terrified by the idea of attending the party when he’d mentioned it to her, and so he’d promised her he would find another way. If the rest of them wanted to think he was being controlling, let them. “If Hartwood is the one after her, I’m nae giving him a chance at her.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Temperance said. “Someone else can ask questions, but I’m the one who knows him. Seeing me there might well surprise him into giving himself away.” She finished her own tea. “And then I can punch him.”
“Are ye certain?” Coll asked. “I thought ye didnae want to risk seeing yer parents there.”
He saw her shiver. He’d added two more Sassenachs to his list of people to punch back when she’d told him her story, but even more than her words, her reaction to speaking about them or even hearing they might be in thearea truly told him all he needed to know about Lord and Lady Bayton.
Blowing out her breath, she shook her head. “I am willing to risk it. I want to know who’s trying to kill me, and I want it stopped.”
“Ye and me both,mo chridhe.”
A tight smile touched her face. “Will someone tell me what that means?”
“’My heart,’” his father said around a mouthful of hard-boiled egg. “I used to call the lads’màthairthat.”
“Och, I dunnae want to hear that.” Coll scowled. “What happened to ye being on yer deathbed, anyway, Da?”
