Page 85 of Hit Me With Your Best Scot
Reaching for his face, she cupped his cheek with its beginnings of evening stubble. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted someone who simply valued… me,” she whispered. “I’d almost forgotten who that person was.”
He smiled, kissing her palm. “I’d have known ye anywhere,mo chridhe. Now tell me, did he say anything at all of interest?”
“He did see a performance ofAs You Like It, but had no idea it was me onstage.” She took a breath, wishing she could simply sink to the floor with Coll and let everything else go away. “My parents and his fiancée were there, as well.”
“Ye still reckon yer folks have nae reason to harm ye?”
“I suppose if I was enough of an embarrassment, they might wish me dead, but killing Persephone Jones would more than likely cause the truth about my identity to emerge. They certainly wouldn’t want that.”
“I agree. It’d make less of a stink if they quietly disowned ye or paid ye a sum in exchange for allowing them to declare ye dead.”
“Yes.”
“What about Miss Caroline Rilence, then? Ye said ye went to school with her.”
She was past being surprised that he’d remembered Caroline’s name and where she first made her schoolmate’s acquaintance. “Finishing school. I didn’t know her well. Just well enough to remember the name, I suppose.”
Coll tilted his head a little. “Was she an ambitious lass?”
“I don’t really know.” She closed her eyes for a moment, attempting to ignore both her cousin crumpled on the floor and Coll’s assessing gaze on her. Mrs. Paulton’s Finishing School for Ladies of Good Breeding had been twelve years ago. When she summoned Caroline’s name, she recalled a thin, blonde girl with a hesitant smile and a tolerable singing voice. “She’s just… there,” she finally said, opening her eyes again. “I certainly don’t think we were well-enough acquainted for her to wish me dead.”
“And yet she was at the theater. Is she here tonight?” Despite his easy tone, the steel beneath his words reminded her that he was not a man with whom one trifled.
“Yes. She’s a duck—a white one with green beading.”
He stuck out his hand. “I cannae leave ye here. I’ll send Niall back to wake yer cousin and tell him that he hit his head on someaught. And that if he doesnae wish to hit his head again, he’ll be keeping his gobber shut about seeing ye tonight.”
Coll helped her step over her groaning cousin as they made for the hallway again. “I’ve nae hit a woman in my life, but if this Caroline Rilence has been trying to harm ye, I mean to make certain she stops. Whatever that takes.”
Back in the ballroom, Coll found his brothers and caught them up, sending Niall back to threaten Robert and Aden to watch the front doors for a female duck’s departure. He handed Temperance over to Amy and Miranda, who each took a hand to lead her to where Lord and Lady Aldriss stood.
“Caroline Rilence,” the older of the two, Miranda, said in a musing tone. “I know her, but only slightly. She always seemed rather timid. Seeing her as a killer… It seems so odd.”
“We can’t be certain it’s her,” Temperance countered. “Simply because we know she was at the theater doesn’t mean anything. A half dozen people I’ve seen here tonight would know me as Temperance, if they thought to look for me.”
But no one other than Robert and the MacTaggerts knew her as Temperance Hartwood tonight. People were beginning to whisper behind their masks at each other, though, sending her glances or outright staring. They’d begun to recognize Persephone Jones. This wouldn’t end well—not if she continued trying to be incognito.
As another country dance ended, a plump woman clothed in white and pink marched forward, a unicorn’s head with a towering horn perched above her graying black hair, a half dozen other masked ladies behind her. Yes, it was always the women who didn’t like seeing her about, as if they all expected her to cast some sort of spell on their husbands.
“Perhaps we should depart,” Lady Aldriss murmured, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“Just a moment,” Temperance countered. “I think I can be of some help to Coll.”
Walking forward to meet their hostess, she sketched an elegant curtsy to Lady Fenster. “My lady,” she said grandly, “I thank you for your indulgence. Gentle people, tomorrow the Saint Genesius Theatre will premiere our first ever rendition of the Scottish play, otherwise known as”—she leaned forward a little, cupping a hand to her mouth as she conspiratorially lowered her voice—“Macbeth.”
Her name—her faux name—began echoing through the ballroom, and she made a broad, beckoning gesture. “Might I further indulge you, my lady, and your radiant guests? Perhaps a portion of Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking soliloquy? Something to cast a few shadows and make the ladies long for a husband’s arm to protect them?”
The exaggerated shivers and muttered approvals from the gathering crowd answered her well enough, but she didn’t move until Lady Fenster nodded her approval. Taking a deep breath, Temperance blew out the nearest set of candles and turned her back, then slowly faced forward again. With the mask on, she would have to rely more on her tone than her facial expressions, but she was accustomed to that. The audience in the rear seats of the Saint Genesius could barely see the stage, after all.
Lifting her hands, she slowly rubbed them together as if washing them over a basin.
Out, damned spot! Out, I say!—One: two: why,
then, ’tis time to do’t.—Hell is murky!—Fie, my
lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we
fear who knows it, when none can call our power
