It's Getting Scot in Here

by Suzanne Enoch

  “I have had four other proposals, my lady.”

  “Yes, which your mother rejected because of their status.” The countess sat forward. “My son seems to adore you. I have no objection to a match—as long as you are not encouraging him because you fear being pushed into marrying some old stick with a title. So tell me it is not his convenience and affability and availability you prize, rather than the man himself.”

  Amelia-Rose considered all that for a moment. After all the emotion of last night and then today, it felt like a great wave, getting ready to drag her to the bottom of the sea and drown her. “Niall is not convenient,” she stated. “Not in the least. He is good-humored, and witty, and warmhearted, and makes me feel … safe. He is a dream—my dream, Lady Aldriss—and I’m afraid if I fall for him he will simply vanish. And then if I consider it too closely I realize that I have fallen—quite hard—and I know something will go wrong now, and—”

  “Hush,” Lady Aldriss said, and hugged her.

  Amelia-Rose gulped a sob, and then another one. “I’m sorry,” she managed, hiccuping. “I’m not a watering pot. I’m just so worried. I think he is, too, even though he won’t say it.”

  The countess produced a handkerchief from somewhere and gave it to her. “Dry your eyes, my dear. I was raised by indulgent parents, as was my daughter and, I daresay, my sons. A parent … Well, you don’t need to hear my lecture, but I do believe it to be a parent’s duty to help their offspring find the best path and then step aside. Within reason, of course.”

  Amelia-Rose blotted at her face. “I have no argument with reason, my lady.”

  Lady Aldriss smiled. “Then know that I will help, however I may.”

  Someone rapped at the door. “I need to return the lass home,” Niall’s voice came.

  “Enter.”

  He turned and knob and stepped inside. “I hope ye didnae … Why are ye crying?” Immediately he strode forward and knelt beside her, his kilt settling carelessly around his knees. Niall sent his mother a glare.

  “Yes, I made her cry,” Lady Aldriss said, walking over to ring for a servant, “but it was an accident.”

  Far from looking appeased, Niall pulled a handkerchief from one of his coat pockets and wiped at Amelia-Rose’s cheek. “Give me someone to fight, lass. Anyone.”

  She mustered a smile. Affable, yes, he was. And he was also fierce. And for the moment, hers. “Oh, yes, let’s wallop my parents and lock them in a wardrobe so they can’t frown at me any longer.”

  He climbed to his feet. “Aye. Ye wait here, th—”

  Alarmed, Amelia-Rose grabbed his arm. “Niall! You know I was only jesting.”

  Niall pulled her upright. “That’s better.”

  “You’re not supposed to aggravate me just to stop me from crying,” she pointed out.

  With a slow grin that quite stopped her heart he brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear. “Ye’re assuming I was jesting.”

  “Do not lock my parents in a wardrobe.”

  He tucked her hand around his arm, heading them back to the loud morning room. “Tomorrow I mean to fetch some posies and a box of cigars and try to convince yer ma and da that I’m a reasonable lad. Then we’ll see who’s more stubborn, because I reckon it’s me.”

  “It sounds promising,” she hedged, “but they may throw you out.”

  His grin deepened. “I’m persistent as the devil.” If he was as worried as she was, he did a better job of hiding it. If he wasn’t worried, then he would be after tomorrow.

  By the time they returned to the carriage she felt so full of hugs and handshakes and laughter, she worried she might burst. Even Jane had color in her cheeks, but Amelia-Rose figured that had more to do with her reading selection than the MacTaggerts, themselves.

  The rain had stopped, so she was surprised when the coach continued past Wigmore Street and up to Baxter House. “You can’t stop here,” she said, ducking behind the curtain. “I’ll end up locked in a wardrobe.”

  “I told Robert to walk us by, and I’ll let ye out just past here. But while ye are in here…” He leaned in with a soft, yearning kiss that quite heated her insides.

  Jane sat bolt-upright. “Stop that at once, you … you chaw bacon!”

  He lifted both eyebrows. “I’m a what, now?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I’ll have to go look that one up in Aden’s book.”

  The coach stopped, and he pushed open the door as the driver flipped down the steps. “Where can I see ye tomorrow, Amelia-Rose?” he asked, lowering his gaze to her mouth again.

  “No, you don’t,” Jane countered, putting her shoulder between them and pushing Amelia-Rose toward the door. “Out you go, cousin.”

  “I’ll be shopping on Bond Street at two o’clock,” she returned, stepping down to the ground. “In case the morning doesn’t go as you hope.”

  “I could use a new hat, I reckon,” he returned. “And it’s nae hope. It’s destiny.”

  That word lingered with her as the coach trundled off again, and she and Jane turned back up the street. This connection between them felt too delicate, too fragile and too new, for such a strong word. If he was that certain, though, perhaps she needed to see it the same way. Destiny. That meant they would find a way to persuade her parents. She would be able to marry him, to share a life with him. “Destiny” was a very good word.

  It wasn’t Hughes who pulled open the Baxter House front door as they arrived back home. “There you are,” her mother exclaimed, a bright smile on her face. “Where in the world have you been?”

  “We went for a wal—”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” Victoria interrupted. “You’re here now, and darling, I have the most wonderful news.”

  Something in Amelia-Rose’s chest clenched, and she put a hand against the foyer wall to steady herself. Wonderful news to her mother could only be a very limited number of things. She shut her eyes for a moment and straightened. Destiny, she told herself. Perhaps her mother had finally relented and allowed her father to acquire a dog. He’d wanted one for years.

  “Take off that bonnet and come along,” her mother was still chattering, unknotting the ribbons herself and casting the hat into the corner. “At least your cheeks are pink. This way.”

  She half shoved Amelia-Rose into the downstairs sitting room. Twenty minutes ago she’d been in a similar room, one filled with smiles and warmth. This one was also filled with smiles, but it felt … cold. As she recognized faces, the chill climbed up her spine, rendering her insides frozen and numb.

  “Curtsy,” her mother hissed from directly behind her.

  Amelia-Rose curtsied. “Lord Durst, my lady, Lord Phillip,” she creaked out, hearing Jane’s very faint gasp behind her. She wondered if her companion had learned any appropriate words for this in that vulgar dictionary.

  Lionel West, the beautiful, soulful Marquis of Durst, stepped forward to take both her hands in his. “Miss Baxter. It seems my mother and your mother have been plotting.” He smiled, his deep-brown eyes shifting to the dowager marchioness on the couch and then back to her again. “And they have come to an agreement I feel compelled to accept both for my honor and for my heart. It seems we are to be married.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Niall didn’t know much about flower language, which according to Eloise wasn’t a jest, but he figured that white and yellow roses would suffice for Mrs. Baxter, while the expensive box of American cigars he’d purchased for Charles Baxter had nearly cost him an arm in getting them away from Coll.

  They knew what he was up to this morning, and despite the words of encouragement and the comments on his eagerness to let go of bachelorhood, he heard the concern in their voices. He had his own worries. The lass—his lass—wanted to please her parents, if only because she didn’t think she’d ever managed it before. Pleasing them, though, meant marrying a title. And he didn’t have one.

  What he did have was a wealthy and influential family on the Oswell
side, and a powerful one on the MacTaggert side. He’d never relied much on the Sassenach blood he carried, but it mattered here. His grandfather and the fathers before him had been viscounts for more than two centuries until the last one died with only a daughter—his mother—for an heir. On his father’s side, the earldom went back three hundred years, made aristocracy by the decree of fat Henry VIII, himself. That had to matter for something, because it was all he had.

  He swung down from Kelpie as one of the Baxter House grooms appeared. Fluffing up the roses a bit with his fingers, Niall approached the door. The butler opened it as he topped the single step. “Good morning, Hughes,” he said, nodding. “I’d like a word with Mr. and Mrs. Baxter this morning, if ye please.”

  The butler lifted an eyebrow. “You would?”

  “Aye. I’ve someaught to discuss with ’em. Now do I wait on the step, or in the house?”

  “May I ask what this is regarding? Unless you have a card now and can describe it there.”

  “I dunnae have a card, and I’d prefer to discuss it with the Baxters.”

  As he spoke, a lad trotted up to the house, a large bouquet of red roses in his hands. “These are for Miss Baxter,” he said, handing them up to the butler before he bounded away again.

  Niall looked from the roses to his own posies. “Who’s sending Amelia-Rose flowers this morning?” he asked, keeping his tone level.

  “I would imagine they are from Lord Hurst,” Hughes returned. “Her fiancé.”

  Some unseen force punched Niall in the chest. He abruptly couldn’t breathe. The words the butler spoke seemed to fly right past him, gibberish, but at the same time he knew exactly—exactly—what it all meant. Moments flitted through his mind, reminding him that she’d never told him that she loved him. That he’d wondered initially if he might simply have been the most convenient escape from a household she detested.

  His first instinct was to charge into the house, find Amelia-Rose, and drag her away from there. His second was to find her parents and make certain they stopped whatever this new hell was and let their daughter be. First, though, first he needed information. Words. Facts. They would be important, so he could fix this. And he would fix it. He had to.

  “When did this happen?” he asked aloud.

  He thought he’d managed an admirable degree of restraint, but even so the butler took a half-step backward, into the shadow of the foyer. “I’m certain it will all appear in the announcement tomorrow, Mr. MacTaggert. In the meantime, I’ll—”

  “When did it happen?” Niall repeated in the same tone, centering his gaze on Hughes.

  The servant cleared his throat. “Last evening.”

  After he’d returned her home. He knew he should have kept hold of her, should never have trusted that her parents wouldn’t immediately track down another title and sell her off for respectability. “Who’s Lord Hurst?”

  “I shouldn’t be—”

  “Hughes.”

  “Lionel West, the Marquis of Hurst. Brother to Lord Phillip West, and son to Mary, Lady Hurst.”

  Niall knew Phillip. They’d met at least twice. Doe-eyed lad who seemed to like horses. Whoever this Lionel was, he’d swooped in like a damned vulture. And a marquis, damn it all. “Did she say aye?”

  The butler frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Did Amelia-Rose say aye to Lord Hurst? Did he ask her the question, or did they just have her sign her name on a paper? Or shake hands? Did she smile?”

  Something that might have been sympathy briefly touched the older man’s face. “I wasn’t in the room, Mr. MacTaggert.”

  Nodding, Niall held out the flowers and the cigars. “With my compliments to the Baxters,” he said. He bloody well didn’t want the things. Abruptly they felt like poison, like something he’d been tricked into toting about.

  The butler took them. “I will pass them along, sir.”

  Looking down, Niall moved off the step and back toward where Kelpie still stood. He needed to think. He needed to drink. And he needed to figure out what the devil he meant to do about this—when he hadn’t the slightest idea where to begin. In the Highlands if one man took another man’s woman, there would be a damned fight at best, and a shooting at worst. Here he was fairly certain he wasn’t supposed to shoot a marquis.

  “Mr. MacTaggert?”

  He faced the butler and the half-closed door again. “Aye?”

  “Miss Baxter has gone out, but she did make a point of telling me that she would be observing her usual schedule today.” He grimaced briefly. “Whatever that might be. She’s never had one that I—”

  “Thank ye, Hughes.” She would be shopping on Bond Street at two o’clock. And she’d left that message for him. Hope blazed through him again, heating the dead chill growing around his heart. This hadn’t been her doing. “Thank ye.”

  “Mr. MacTaggert.” The door shut.

  Heading out immediately to chase Amelia-Rose across Mayfair appealed to him, but it would be useless. She knew far more people there than he did, and could damned well be anywhere. Four hours. He had four hours until he knew where she’d be. Four hours to come up with more information and a plan. And he did know someone who could help him with at least part of that.

  He kicked out of the saddle in front of Oswell House, handed Kelpie over to Gavin, and stalked into the house. “That was fast,” Aden observed from up on the stair landing, where he stood draping a gown around Rory’s midsection. “Did ye get tossed out on yer arse?”

  “Where’s Eloise?” Niall asked.

  Aden’s eyes narrowed a little. “In the music room. Should we be worried over someaught?”

  Ignoring the question, Niall headed up to the first floor past his brother and followed the sound of a pianoforte until he found his sister seated alone in the plain-walled music room. “I need a moment,” he said, shutting the door behind him.

  She looked up, her light-green eyes startled. “You shouldn’t be back already,” she said, rising and hurrying toward him. “Was it horrid?”

  He didn’t want to talk about it, and she wouldn’t want to hear the stream of profanity that would come with the tale if he did tell her. In fact, the fewer words he spoke, the less likely he was to start bellowing and breaking things like a mad, wounded bear. And he felt wounded. Mortally. “Ye’re acquainted with Laird Phillip West, aye?”

  “Phillip? Yes. Why? Has some—”

  “Tell me about his brother.”

  His sister scowled, reaching a hand out toward him and then evidently thinking better of touching him. Smart lass. “The Marquis of Hurst?”

  “Aye.”

  Her light-green eyes abruptly filled with tears and overflowed down her fair cheeks. Gulping air, Eloise put her hands over her chest, her fists clenched.

  That hurt more than anything she might possibly have said. Those tears told him that he’d very likely lost. That whoever this damned Hurst was, his sister reckoned the marquis was a better fit for Amelia-Rose than Niall was.

  But his adae had sent him a message. She’d made certain he knew where she’d be. And she had a good idea of what sort of man he was. Not the quiet, subdued type, for certain. Not the type who’d let another man take his woman without a word or a fight.

  He nodded. If Eloise had doubts, then he wouldn’t include her. “That answers that, then.”

  As he turned, she grabbed onto his sleeve. “Is it settled? Did she—”

  “Naught’s settled,” Niall snapped, pulling free of her grip.

  Whatever the devil had happened between last afternoon and this morning, Hughes the butler had still referred to Amelia-Rose as Miss Baxter. That, as far as he was concerned, was all he truly needed to know. She might have been pushed or fallen into an engagement, but she wasn’t married. That meant he could still fix this—if she still wanted him. If the Marquis of Hurst wasn’t everything she’d been waiting for when she’d decided to settle for him.

  * * *

  Victoria Baxter let the cur
tain slip from her fingers. “He’s gone, thank goodness. For a moment I feared he might charge the house yelling ‘For the Bruce!’ or something.”

  Seated at her dressing table, Amelia-Rose tightened her grip on the handle of her hairbrush. Niall had come calling just as he said he would, prepared to accept her parents’ ridicule and insults in order to eventually convince them to see reason. Why hadn’t he charged the house? If he’d attempted to make off with her, she was fairly certain she would have gone. “Does it mean nothing to you that I care for him?”

  “Of course it doesn’t. If the MacTaggerts hadn’t been attempting to sneak out from beneath their agreement with us all along, you would never have done more than exchange pleasantries with him. Aside from the fact that the Honorable Niall MacTaggert had no business pursuing you for himself, he’s Scottish, untitled, unmannered, and would no doubt whisk you away to live in a house filled with sheep.”

  That had been precisely what she’d originally thought about Coll—except for the title, of course. Now she was glad she hadn’t seen Niall from the window. A glimpse of his face would have broken her. As it was, she had no idea what Hughes might have said, or if the butler had delivered the message she’d requested. Did Niall hate her? Did he think she’d betrayed him? That she’d cast him aside without a second thought?

  “What now?” her mother prompted into the silence. “Do you mean to stomp your feet? Shout that you won’t go along with this? Run away and join a nunnery? A brothel? Because I have no idea how else you might support yourself when your father and I cut you off for your belligerence.”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” Amelia-Rose snapped, tears streaking down her cheeks again. “All of them, perhaps.”

  “And yet I would recommend that you consider thanking me.”

  Finally Amelia-Rose turned to face her mother. “I am not thanking you for anything.”

  “Ungrateful child. Not a year ago you were mooning over Lord Hurst. ‘Oh, he’s so handsome,’ you said. ‘His golden hair and his soulful eyes, I could just swoon.’ Well, now you have him. Golden hair, soulful eyes, and a title. You have nothing about which to complain. I’ve answered all your prayers. Hurst Abbey is only twelve miles from London. You will never be more than a day away from Town.”