Page 84 of Hit Me With Your Best Scot
“What are you talking about?” Robert whispered. “Were you at the theater? I thought… I thought you’d run off to America or somewhere. I’m sorry, but after all this time you can hardly blame me for not noticing you in the middle of a crowd while I was watching a performance, especially when I thought you to be halfway across the world.”
Temperance blinked. Was he saying he thought she’d been watching the same performance he’d attended? “You were at the Saint Genesius, then. I knew you’d recognized me.”
“I did not see you at the Saint Genesius, Temp. I would have told your parents if I had, and they would stop holding your idiotic inheritance over my head every time I mentioned wanting to live in Devonshire instead of damned Cumbria. God, I hate it there.”
“You’re living in Devon?”
“I’m trying to. My mother’s brother, my uncle William, had an estate there. It’s mine now, but your father keeps telling me that the Bayton title belongs in Cumbria, and if I want him to disown you so I get your blunt, I’d best remain there.”
“But you’ve relocated anyway?” None of this made any blasted sense now.
“A year ago. I’d tell him to his face that I don’t want the money if it means living in that drafty old hall, but that inheritance has to go somewhere, doesn’t it? After you left, I figured I would end up living there eventually, because they’d make me agree to it—and a million other things, more than likely—before they’d hand over the blunt. Now that you’re back, though, they’ll stop torturing me with it and I can finally settle where I want to.” He frowned. “But what does that have to do with going to the theater?”
“Nothing, apparently.” For heaven’s sake. But hehadbeen there. And someonewastrying to kill her. “With whom did you attend?”
“Your parents and Carolyn. You know, maybe Carolyn saw you there. She was very quiet afterward, but I thought it was because she was angry with me for not pressing your father about having you declared dead. No offense, of course, but eventually they would have had to realize that Bayton will belong to me whether I live there or not, and the only difference would be that with the blunt to hand I could actually renovate it. If it’s so precious to them, you’d think they would at least wish for it to be maintained properly.” He sighed. “No hope of that now, unless you did marry a butcher and have a litter of pudgy butcher’s children. Did you? You’re not dressed like a butcher’s wife.”
“I’m not married,” she said slowly, the exchange swirling about in her head as she tried to make sense of it. To make sense of anything, really.
“That’s that, then. If I were you, I’d make them promise me the blunt in writing in exchange for you marrying someone of whom they approve. Though that didn’t work out for you before. Why’d you run, anyway? All you had to do was keep Dunhurst happy in his doddering old age.”
“Because I didn’t want to marry a doddering old man forty years my senior. And he wasn’t doddering. He was cruel.”
“I don’t like him much, I’ll admit, but that’s no real business of mine.”
The music stopped, and so did they. While the other couples separated to applaud, Coll was abruptly there beside her. “Well?” he prompted, his very level gaze on Robert. “Do I get to kill him?”
Robert blanched. “I say, you’re that large Scotsman, theone who’s taken Persephone Jones as a lov—” He trailed off, his white face taking on a gray tinge. “Good God, Temperance. You’re—”
Grabbing her cousin’s hand, she towed him toward the doorway. With Coll falling in behind and shoving Robert from behind, they sped down the hallway and through the first closed door she found. Only then did she release Robert, turning to glare at him. “Keep your voice down,” she ordered.
“You’reher!” he exclaimed in a hushed, husky voice tinged with excitement. “You’re Persephone Jones!”
Behind him, Coll lifted an eyebrow. “What the devil?”
She waved her hand. “He’s an idiot.”
“Who is?” both men said in ragged unison.
“Him.” She jabbed a finger at her cousin. “You.”
“Why? Because I didn’t happen to recognize my cousin, whom I haven’t seen in eight years, when she reappeared as a famous actress three hundred miles from her home?” He put a hand over his mouth. “Definitely have your parents put in writing that you’re to inheritbeforeyou tell them what you’ve been up to.”
Temperance wanted to cover her eyes and her ears all at the same time. For Robert’s immediate conclusion after not seeing her for eight years to be that she would simply resume her life from the point where she’d left off, as if she’d never had any cause to leave in the first place… “I need a moment to think,” she said, taking a seat and bending her head over her knees.
“And keephimaway from you,” Robert went on. “If Uncle Michael and Aunt Georgiana realize you’ve been fucked by a Scotsman, they’ll never forgi—”
His voice stopped, followed by a dull thudding sound and something heavy hitting the floor. Temperance lifted her head to see cousin Robert crumpled on the carpet. “Coll!”
He shrugged, uncoiling his fist. “He wouldnae shut up. And he insulted ye.”
“He didn’t say anything untrue.”
“I still didnae like it.” Stepping over him, Coll approached to crouch beside her chair. “I’m guessing ye dunnae think cousin Robert is the one who tried to kill ye.”
“No. He was surprised to see me, only wants my supposed inheritance because it needs to go to him if it doesn’t go to me, and only figured out that I’m Persephone Jones after he saw you.”
“I hoped it was him. I’ve a need to see ye safe, Temperance. And a need to know that now I’ve found ye, nae a man will be able to take ye from me.”
