Hit Me With Your Best Scot (Wild Wicked Highlanders #3) - Suzanne Enoch Page 0,17
against her legs as she walked.
And she was walking now. Good glory. For a dozen hard beats of his heart he envisioned her with her blond hair tumbled past her shoulders, her expression wide-eyed and breathless, and all those buttons broken open and scattered to the floor. Beneath his proper trousers, his cock jumped again.
He shook himself. Every time he set eyes on her, she pulled at him. Aye, he could admire a bonny lass; he wasn’t dead, after all. But he shouldn’t be admiring this one. He damned well shouldn’t be lusting after her. Amelia-Rose was Coll’s lass. Niall was there merely keeping the agreement open until his oldest brother came to his senses. Nothing more.
Of course if Coll got a look at her this morning, he might just propose on the spot. She was a lithe, sensuous goddess. The thing that troubled Niall most was the idea that Coll could marry such a lass and then decide to leave her behind in London. No, that wasn’t the thought that troubled him the most. But he refused to acknowledge the other one. It would serve nothing but damned bloody trouble.
“Let’s be off, shall we?” she said pertly, apparently unaware she’d nearly made him split his seams. “We shouldn’t keep Lord Glendarril waiting.”
Lord Glendarril was most likely somewhere sleeping off a large dinner and a woman, but that wasn’t for her to know. “Aye.”
He let the groom boost her up into the sidesaddle; until his brain caught up with his cock he wouldn’t be touching her. If he hadn’t been tired, hungry, and boasting a headache so grand that even his hair hurt, he wouldn’t have been imagining doing anything naked and sweaty with Amelia-Rose Baxter. And still somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that was a lie, too.
When everyone else was mounted he swung up on Kelpie and led the parade south and east. Lines of connected townhouses, broken up by small parks filled with more nannies and prams and bairns, gave way to fancy-looking shops, hotels, and gentlemen’s clubs.
The gray mare drew even with him. “Do you know where we’re going?” Amelia-Rose asked.
“More or less. I reckon ye’d inform me if I make a wrong turn.”
“Certainly. We’re a bit too far south at the moment, but this is the less complicated route.”
“I asked yer groom for directions,” he said, indicating the man riding at the rear of the parade. “He looked at me like I was an idiot, so it follows he’d give me the simplest route.”
She cleared her throat in what might have passed for a chuckle. “This is truly your first time in London?”
“Aye.” He felt more than saw her sideways glance at him. Next she’d be asking if he’d ever kissed a lass, because from what he’d always heard about the Sassenach, they thought every man who’d never been to London was no man at all. “Is that White’s club?” he asked, indicating the plain building front that looked very much the same as all the others, with the exception of its prominent bow window. He’d seen a drawing or two of that, as he recalled.
“Yes. Is your father a member?”
Niall snorted. More English snobbery. “Nae. My da is a chieftain of clan Ross. That’s the only club he’d ever care to join. A gaggle of Sassenach sitting about and arguing over how important they are is a bigger waste of time than milking a cat.”
Her smile loosened a little. “That’s a bit severe, isn’t it?”
Was it? “I’ve nae seen a thing to change my opinion.”
“That’s because you haven’t seen anything at all but an evening at Drury Lane Theater and a morning riding down the street.” She squinted one eye.
“Either ye’ve a twitch, or ye’re wanting to say someaught more, lass. Dunnae be shy with me. I dunnae offend easily.” Aside from that, he’d very much appreciated the way she’d blasted at Coll last night.
With a barely audible sigh, she nodded. “We’re to be friends, aren’t we? In-laws, if our parents have their way. Tell me, then, if your father so dislikes London and the English, why did he marry your mother?”
“That’s a question we’ve debated for two decades,” he answered truthfully. “He claims it was for her da’s money. I reckon he got cracked in the head by Cupid, but he willnae admit it now out of pride.”
Her mouth, with which he’d been fascinated all morning, quirked again. She’d be terrible at card games, because every emotion she felt mirrored