Hit Me With Your Best Scot (Wild Wicked Highlanders #3) - Suzanne Enoch Page 0,103

Bracing himself in the tiny corner of the window, he found the bottom of the catch and pushed up.

It didn’t budge.

Niall frowned. He pulled on the bottom of the window. Nothing. The curtains on the other side were shut, and he couldn’t make out any movement, any light, beyond them. She didn’t even have the fireplace lit tonight. Taking a breath, he rapped a knuckle softly against the glass.

Silence answered him. “Damn it, lass,” he muttered, and knocked again, a little louder.

The window to the next room down squeaked open. He tried to flatten himself against the wall, but there wasn’t anywhere he could go. Just as he contemplated dropping into the flower bed below, a dark-haired head and tight bun emerged into the night.

“She isn’t in there,” Jane Bansil whispered. “Lord Hurst told my aunt about your meeting on Bond Street, I was sent upstairs without dinner for not telling her, and she moved Amelia-Rose to the interior of the house in the bedchamber directly beside hers.”

“I need to talk with ye, then,” Niall decided, shifting his weight and starting back along the wall.

“No, you don’t,” she hissed. “I will not have my reputation compromised.”

“At least tell me if a wedding date’s been set, lass,” he countered, slowing his approach so she wouldn’t begin throwing things at him.

“Yes. Three weeks from tomorrow. Lord Hurst sent for a special license this afternoon.”

Cold stabbed into him. “She doesnae want this, ye ken.”

Jane opened and closed her mouth. “I know that. She adores you. You make her smile. But you won’t make her a marchioness.”

“Nae, I willnae.” He reached her window, gripping the top of the sill. “If I cannae see her, will ye give her this?” Niall dug into his coat pocket and produced a dried thistle flower on a short stem. He’d brought it south with him on a whim, pressed between the pages of an old book. At the time he’d had no idea why, except that a thistle was the Highlands, and he was leaving them for a time. Now it represented him, and he wanted Amelia-Rose to know that she wasn’t alone.

The companion backed inside a little, as if she feared he would try to yank her outside. “You need to stop making trouble, Mr. MacTaggert.”

“The only trouble is the lot of ye trying to stop Amelia-Rose and me.” He took a breath. “I cannae see my life without her in it. Do ye reckon Lord Hurst could say the same?”

Scowling, glancing over her shoulder as if she expected to be discovered at any moment, she reached out and snatched the thistle from his fingers. “I am not promising you anything. The decision is hers.”

“Aye. It’s always been hers.”

With that she closed the window, nearly flattening his fingers before he moved them. This wasn’t the damned evening he’d wanted. There was supposed to have been more sex, the two of them deciding on the plan he’d concocted this evening, and him holding her for as many hours as they could fit in before the sun rose.

Slowly he made his way back to the portico roof and dropped to the ground. He might have told Jane what he meant to do, but while he didn’t doubt the companion cared for her charge, he had no idea if Jane’s idea of protecting her would mean tattling about everything to Mrs. Baxter and stopping them before they’d even begun.

Staying in the shadows, he made his way up the street to the inn where’d he’d left Kelpie. Loki stood beside the bay, and he turned around just in time to block his brother from grabbing him. “Enough, Aden.”

Aden lowered his arms. “We told ye nae to go off alone. But if ye’re back here already, ye’re doing someaught wrong.”

“They moved her to a different room,” he grunted, freeing the reins and swinging up into the gelding’s saddle.

“So she doesnae know what ye’re about?”

“Nae.”

“That makes this all a bit more dangerous, ye ken,” his brother returned, mounting beside him.

“If ye’re scared, I’ll take care of it myself,” Niall retorted.

“Nae dangerous for me, ye clod. Dangerous for ye.”

Niall shrugged. “She’s worth it.”

Aden fell in beside him as they made their way back to Oswell House. “I’d make fun of ye for how moon-eyed ye are all of a sudden, but I dunnae want to risk a black eye while I’m after a wife.”

“I’d risk it.” On Niall’s far side Coll trotted into the dim lamplight. “Ye kept us out here for four hours