Hit Me With Your Best Scot (Wild Wicked Highlanders #3) - Suzanne Enoch Page 0,113

to Niall, she sank down on her knees in front of him. “You are a good man, Niall MacTaggert. Without even being aware of it, you look after everyone around you. You’ve bent over backward to try and give me what I said I wanted. I love … I love that it bothers you that I may not see London again. And that you look baffled now, as if you couldn’t conceive of why you should think anything different.”

She cleared her throat. “I love you, Niall. I tried not to, until I realized that it wasn’t you who was wrong for me. It was the things I thought I had in place to make me happy that were wrong. Going to a ball made me forget for an evening how miserable I’ve been. But that’s not happiness. That’s just pretending, closing my eyes to the truth. You make me happy. And my eyes are open. Yes, I will marry you. Happily. Very happily.”

Niall pulled her into his arms and captured her mouth with his own. A fortnight. He’d known her for less than a fortnight, and now he couldn’t imagine a life without her. Her practicality, her compassion—she matched him well. And the Highlands wouldn’t collapse if they held a dance or two at Aldriss Park, for Saint Andrew’s sake. Clan Ross might be better off if a few of its chieftains knew the waltz.

All of that, though, paled compared with the fact that she trusted him, that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. Standing, he took her hand and helped her to her feet, then swung her into the air and kissed her again.

With a yelp she chuckled, folding into his arms. “Don’t drop me. We still don’t know if your sister’s clothes will fit me.”

“I’ll nae drop ye.”

Gavin cleared his throat. “Begging yer pardon, but we’ve a few miles to go before we sleep. If we sleep.”

“Aye.” Lowering her to the ground again, he took her hand and helped her into the coach. “Let’s get to Scotland, shall we?”

One hand on her chin and the other on her hip, Francesca Oswell-MacTaggert stood on the landing of Oswell House’s grand staircase and eyed the best-dressed red deer in the kingdom. Her sons had meant Rory the stag as an insult, as a touch of their rough Highlands lives brought into her sophisticated London life. Yet now Rory boasted a beaver hat over one antler, a green bonnet over the other, a single earbob, a wilted, badly knotted cravat around his regal neck, and a lady’s skirt around his rump.

She quite adored him, actually, though she would never say so. Whatever he’d been meant to represent, Rory brought … fun to the household. A sense of devil-may-care that she’d known in the Highlands, but had since all but forgotten.

How odd, that when she’d lived in Scotland she’d noticed only the loneliness and isolation, the lack of polish and sophisticated entertainments to which she’d been bred. Once she left, she’d done her best to put all but the thought of her boys out of her mind. Now that they were here, she remembered the laughter, the stubborn, proud sense of freedom every Highlander seemed to possess as a birthright. She remembered warm, passionate nights in a chilly room, and the bagpipes that had played to announce the birth of each of her children.

“Do you know if Sally was able to get Hannah to help her sew the hem of my green silk gown?” Eloise asked from the top of the stairs above her.

“Dear?”

“Oh, don’t touch the deer. I quite like Rory.”

Francesca forced a smile. “Not that deer. You, dear.”

Her daughter descended to the landing. “Oh. I was going to wear the green silk tonight, but I can’t find it anywhere.”

“I wouldn’t know, my sweet.”

Eloise nodded. “Why is it so quiet? Generally one of my brothers is here stomping about.”

It was quiet. They’d been at Oswell House for just under a fortnight, and she’d already become accustomed to the different energy that accompanied them. The air of barely restrained chaos. “First, I need to ask if you something.”

“Of course.”

“Is anything missing aside from your green silk?”

Eloise’s brows furrowed. “Have we been robbed? Oh, I hope they didn’t get the pearl earbobs that Papa sent me for my birthday.” She turned, starting up the stairs again.

Francesca caught hold of her wrist. “No, we weren’t robbed. You were … borrowed from.”

“They didn’t put my dress on Rory, did they?” She looked