Too Scot to Handle

by Grace Burrowes

  “Orphanages are not profitable.”

  Lord Colin turned the phaeton onto a less crowded path, and the relative quiet was bliss. Anwen loved the boys, loved taking a hand in running the House of Urchins, but her time there today had left her frustrated.

  And worried.

  “Regarding profitable enterprises, I am in favor of wee hands doing wee tasks,” Lord Colin said, “but using children for the production of coin on a significant scale will never meet with my approval.”

  His burr thickened when he spoke in earnest. When he and his brother had a difference of opinion, Anwen could hardly understand them.

  “You don’t employ children?”

  “Of course I employ children. The tiger, the boot boy, the scullery maid—”

  “No, I mean in your whisky-making business. Do you employ children in your business?”

  “Nobody under the age of fourteen, and not in quantity. Why?”

  Drat the luck. “One doesn’t speak of financial matters.”

  Lord Colin laughed, a hearty sound at variance with the stillness and greenery around them. In two hours, the park would be as busy as the surrounding streets, but the fashionable hour had yet to arrive.

  “Financial matters are what make the world go ’round, Miss Anwen. You can bet that your uncle the duke and his duchess discuss financial matters, everything from the news on ’Change, to the budget for candles, to the latest attempt by Parliament to fleece the yeoman of his profits.”

  Anwen had thought to enjoy a pretty day, but if she didn’t raise the topic of the orphanage’s finances with Lord Colin, then with whom could she have that discussion? The Windham ducal heir, the Earl of Westhaven, was the family accountant, but he was also…Westhaven. If Anwen brought up a financial matter with him, he’d smile sweetly, ask after her health, and admire her bonnet.

  Oh, to be six years old and once again regarded as the tempestuous Great Fire of the Windham family.

  “You’ve gone silent,” Lord Colin said. “I hope I haven’t given offense.”

  “I’m thinking. My orphanage is in want of funds. I’d like to propose a means of addressing that problem to the directors, for they’ll tut-tut and such-a-pity while my boys are turned out onto the streets again. The Lords will dash off to their house parties in July and their grouse moors in August, and the children will never know safety or security again.”

  Some of the boys were eager for that fate to befall them, especially now that spring had arrived.

  “You are asking me how an orphanage might raise funds?”

  How refreshing. Lord Colin wasn’t laughing or peering down his nose at her.

  “Indeed, I am. Mr. Hitchings advised me to hold a charity ball, bat my eyelashes, and hope the attendees are motivated to part with coin on the basis of my flirtation.”

  “Many would be happy to part with coin if you held a charity ball.” Lord Colin didn’t come right out and say it: If you held yet another boring, predictable, dull, barely endurable charity ball.

  Anwen wouldn’t want to attend, much less organize, such a gathering.

  “Say I hold a ball. Then what happens next year when the funds are again exhausted? I repeat my performance? What if something happens to me? What if my simpering isn’t convincing enough? The children still have to eat, and they have nothing and no one without that orphanage.”

  Anwen surprised herself with the vehemence of her response, but when both Lady Rosalyn and her brother had failed to attend today’s meetings, Lord Derwent, the chairman of the board of directors, had declared that without a quorum, he could only preside over an informational meeting.

  Hitchings had informed them funds were running short. Fifteen minutes of throat-clearing and paper-shuffling later, the meeting had broken up with nothing decided and no plans in train.

  “Has anybody told you that you’re fierce?” Lord Colin asked.

  “Not since I was six years old.”

  “Well, you are. Give me a moment to think, because in your present mood, only a well-thought-out answer will do.”

  He’d not only taken her question seriously, he’d paid her a compliment. “Take as long as you need, Lord Colin. If the topic were easily addressed, every orphan in London would have a secure future.”

  * * *

  Silly and Charming—Scylla and Charybdis—were on their best behavior, suggesting Miss Anwen met with their approval. The geldings also liked Hamish and Edana, and they positively purred when Rhona accompanied Colin.

  For Miss Anwen, they’d gone beyond purring to perfectly matching their steps, and spanking along at a trot Colin could have set his watch to. More than a few horsemen stopped to gawk, though in all eyes, Colin could see the question: Wonder what he paid for that pair?

  “Has anybody explained the concept of interest to you?” Colin asked the lady beside him.

  “As in, small boys have an interest in sweets?”

  All boys had an interest in sweets of some sort. Miss Anwen had no brothers. No wonder her urchins fascinated her.

  “Not quite,” Colin said. “If you wanted to borrow your sister Charlotte’s blue parasol, and she agreed, but said in return, you had to lend her your green parasol for an outing in two weeks, that would be an exchange without the financial version of interest.”

  “We’d be trading favors, which we do all the time.”

  “Correct. If Charlotte instead said that yes, you could borrow her parasol, provided that in two weeks’ time, she could borrow both your parasol and your favorite reticule, that would be a transaction where she was said to charge you interest.”

  “The extra cost to me for borrowing her parasol is interest?”

  “Exactly. You had better desperately need her parasol now, to be willing to give up your best reticule for a time in addition to your own parasol.”

  Colin expected Anwen to change the subject, though he couldn’t make the explanation any simpler.

  “How does this work with money, Lord Colin?”

  Perhaps Miss Anwen had some Scottish blood back a few generations, though she’d lowered her voice on the word money.

  “The same concept applies. Let’s say you know of a highly profitable shipping venture, but you haven’t any capital to invest at the moment—all of your money is committed. You come to me and agree that if I lend you a hundred pounds for a year, you’ll pay me back a hundred and ten pounds because you expect to make a hundred and fifty.”

  “But you haven’t earned that extra ten pounds,” she said. “You simply made money off my ambitions.”

  Colin turned the team for another circuit along the quieter paths. “Or I lost the entire sum as a result of your dodgy venture.”

  “Hardly that. You’ll toss me into debtor’s prison if my scheme comes to nothing, have my goods seized, and probably know to the penny what I’m worth before you consider lending me a farthing.”

  “What if you’re a titled lord,” Colin countered, “and I can’t toss you into debtor’s prison?”

  “Then you’ll find some other way to protect your investment, or you won’t lend me the money. My orphanage cannot borrow money, Lord Colin.”

  Miss Anwen had an intuitive grasp of how a loan worked, as did Edana and Rhona.

  “Your orphanage can lend money,” Colin said, steering the horses to the verge and bringing them to a halt.

  “The House of Urchins hasn’t money to lend. I haven’t any either.”

  “Take the reins,” Colin said, passing them to her. “We’ll let the boys blow for a moment.” He climbed down and loosened the check reins enough that his geldings could steal a few mouthfuls of grass.

  “You’re encouraging naughty behavior,” Miss Anwen said, passing Colin back the reins. “Horses aren’t supposed to graze while in work.”

  “Did your cousin Lord Rosecroft the cavalry genius tell you that?”

  “And my first equitation instructor, and every instructor, groom, stable lad, and cousin since.”

&nbs
p; What a bloody lot of people she had telling her how to go on. “Ever stood at attention for three straight hours, Miss Anwen?”

  She took off her gloves, untied her bonnet ribbons, and peeled the hat from her head.

  The hat snagged on a hairpin, or a combination of hairpins. Colin intervened, carefully untangling silky locks from satin ribbons, and passing Miss Anwen several hairpins when she’d set her bonnet on the bench beside her.

  “My thanks, sir.” She used the hairpins to secure a loose curl. “I’ve passed years tied to a posture board, spent hours with three books piled on my head. My finishing governess laced me so tightly I once fainted at the top of the steps. Papa discharged her, but she’d been with me six months at that point. When she left, all of my dresses had to be to let out.”

  Miss Anwen turned her face up to the sun, though the phaeton sat in a quiet patch of dappled shade. She had a profile to make cameo artists weep, and the line of her throat was elegance personified.

  She also had freckles. Faint, visible only if a man sat right beside her, and they could have easily been disguised with a touch of rice powder, but Anwen Windham had freckles.

  Also a keen mind, and experience with physical tribulations Colin would never have suspected.

  “When you took off your bonnet just now, how did it feel?”

  She regarded him steadily. “Heavenly. It’s Elizabeth’s bonnet, and a touch snug when I do my hair as I have. I grabbed it by accident but didn’t want to be late for my meeting. If you weren’t sitting here, I’d…well. I will brush out my hair before changing for supper tonight.”

  Colin wrapped the reins around the brake and used his teeth to pull off his right glove. He reached over to Miss Anwen’s nape and gently massaged her neck.

  “How does that feel?”

  She dropped her head forward, a soft sigh joining the afternoon breeze. “You ought not to touch me like that, even if we are practically family and no one is watching.”

  They were not practically family. To emphasize his point—not to enjoy the exquisite feel of smooth female flesh beneath his fingers—Colin persisted for another moment.

  “That’s what it feels like for my team when I release the check rein, and let the horses know that for a short time, they’re off duty. For five minutes, they can relax, grab a snack, rest mentally and physically, before getting back to work.”

  Miss Anwen raised her head, but didn’t put her bonnet back on. “I tell Mr. Hitchings the boys need to get out. They can’t sit in a classroom hour after hour and be expected to attend much of anything. They’re children, not monastic scholars training to be anchorites.”

  Colin withdrew his hand—he’d made his point. “And if the boys don’t get out, they’ll become querulous, and then Hitchings will punish them for squabbling and for lack of attention to their studies. Where did you find this old besom? He sounds like every grown man’s worst boyhood nightmare.”

  “Mr. Montague said Hitchings was quite a bargain, for the salary we’re paying him.”

  “Winthrop Montague?”

  “He’s the vice-chairman of the board, and Lady Rosalyn serves on my ladies’ committee.”

  This interconnectedness of all parts of polite society was something like the army, or Highland clans. Everybody knew everybody, and that was sometimes a good thing.

  Though not always. “I’m acquainted with Win Montague,” Colin said. “If he claims Hitchings was a bargain, then Hitchings was a bargain.”

  Miss Anwen set her bonnet back on her head, and Colin wanted to snatch it away and toss it into the bushes.

  “How do you know Mr. Montague, Lord Colin?”

  “We served together, both captains.” Though that was years ago. Colin had passed through London a few times since mustering out, and once even called on Win, though Win hadn’t been home at the time. “Montague has been helpful, acquainting me with what’s expected of a titled gentleman of means.”

  Miss Anwen tied her bonnet ribbons and slipped on her gloves. “And acquainting you with Lady Rosalyn?”

  Colin wanted to pitch her knowing smile into the bushes too. “Yes.”

  Lady Rosalyn Montague was a vision in blonde, blue-eyed pastels. Her movements were elegant, her laughter warm, her dancing made a man feel as if no one had ever partnered a woman more gracefully.

  Colin liked to watch her, but he didn’t enjoy watching other men fawn over her. She expected the fawning, which brought Anwen’s earlier comment to mind: You simply made money off my ambitions.

  Lady Rosalyn earned smiles off a man’s ambitions, though to be fair, she dispensed smiles as well—with interest of a sort Colin didn’t quite grasp but knew he would never pay.

  “Lady Rosalyn is a friend,” Miss Anwen said. “She made her come out two years after I did, and is in every way an estimable individual. You would make a very attractive couple.”

  That remark should be sent not into the bushes, but rather, tossed straight into the depths of the Serpentine.

  “Don’t do that,” Colin said, passing the reins over and climbing down again. “Don’t treat me as if I’m some orphan bachelor because I’m wealthy and new to polite society. I like Lady Rosalyn well enough, but if it came down to a night of waltzing with her, or cards with my brothers…”

  “Yes?”

  He fiddled with the check reins, leaving them a few holes looser than was strictly fashionable.

  “I’d leave the ball early. I’m not looking to get married, Miss Anwen. Not yet. Someday, of course. But not…Hamish has been a duke for a matter of weeks, and I can assure you, until the title befell him, I wasn’t considered half of an attractive couple. I was a presuming Scot, in trade, with airs above my station. Now I’m a lord. It unnerves a fellow.”

  It also predisposed a fellow to babbling. Colin climbed back into the phaeton, mindful that his tone of voice had caught the attention of his horses.

  “Now you know what the ladies put up with year after year,” Miss Anwen said. “We’re seen as nothing more than half of an attractive couple, good breeding stock, decent settlements. Nobody refers to us as gorgeous settlements, even if a lady is an heiress. The highest praise she’ll garner is ‘decent settlements.’ Be patient with the ladies, Lord Colin, for they are very patient with the gentlemen.”

  Colin gave the horses leave to walk on, when he wanted instead to offer some teasing, charming remark.

  And yet, he could not make light of Miss Anwen’s observation.

  He’d watched his sisters over the past few months. Edana and Rhona had looked forward to enjoying the London social season for the first time, thinking to be more spectators than participants. Hamish had stumbled into a ducal title, Edana and Rhona were ladies by association, and enthusiasm had turned from glee, to wonder, to bewilderment, to disappointment.

  Was anybody enjoying springtime in London?

  “You were explaining to me about interest,” Miss Anwen said, “and about how that could make the orphanage solvent. Please do go on.”

  “Right. Interest,” Colin said. “If you’re borrowing money, interest is a cost. If you’re lending money, that interest is a benefit, and that brings us to the topic of endowments.”

  Miss Anwen listened to him as he prattled on, truly listened. One of her endowments was a keen mind, apparently, in addition to brilliant red hair, the airs and graces of a lady, and the heart of a lioness where her orphans were concerned.

  Also skin so soft, Colin could recall the feel of it beneath his fingertips even as he waxed eloquent about the Rule of Seven.

  * * *

  “And here you are,” Lord Colin said, alighting from the phaeton. “Delivered to your very own doorstep.”

  Anwen didn’t correct him, though this was not her doorstep. Did a lady ever have her very own doorstep, short of widowhood?

  She wasn’t even alighting at her papa’s doorstep, for Mama and Papa were again off cavorting in the wilds of Wales, while Anwen and her sisters bided with Uncle Percival
and Aunt Esther.

  Lord Colin came around to assist her from the vehicle. Her descent was a precarious undertaking involving the use of several tiny metal footrests, and much gathering of skirts, until his lordship muttered something under his breath and swung her to the ground.

  “My thanks,” Anwen said, stepping back. “Was that Gaelic?”

  His smile was bashful and a bit naughty. “It wasn’t French. Allow me to see you inside.”

  “What about the horses?” For he hadn’t a tiger to hold them or walk them.

  “They will stand until the first snowfall.”

  “Unless somebody comes along to steal them.” What was this propensity she’d developed for contradicting a gentleman?

  He patted the offside beast. “They won’t budge for anybody but me or their grooms, not without creating a riot first. One learns a few useful skills in the army.”

  Apparently, one did. Not even Devlin St. Just drove about without a tiger.

  Lord Colin did the pretty for Anwen’s sisters, Charlotte and Elizabeth, then went on his way before they could inveigle him into staying for tea—thank goodness. Anwen needed to think, to work some figures, and to gather more information.

  “Anwen Heather Gladys Windham, where have you been?” Elizabeth demanded, before his lordship had even climbed back into his conveyance. “Her Grace was about to send out the watch.”

  The watch was Anwen’s three male cousins—Westhaven, St. Just, and Lord Valentine—all of whom were in Town for the season.

  “I went to my meeting at the House of Urchins, exactly as I said I would,” Anwen replied as Charlotte led her by the wrist to the family parlor.

  “That was three hours ago,” Elizabeth retorted, from Anwen’s other side. “We were afraid you’d been struck with a megrim, or a fever, or turned your ankle, or come to harm. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Any other time, Anwen might have admitted that a pot of peppermint tea would be welcome, because the day had been tiring. When peppermint tea became too much to bear, chamomile and lemon soothed the nerves. Ginger settled an upset belly. Lavender and valerian tisanes could quiet worry.