Hit Me With Your Best Scot (Wild Wicked Highlanders #3) - Suzanne Enoch Page 0,30
glance, and retreated inside the house with the butler. Hm. Both she and Niall had made it clear that they would be meeting Coll, but then Jane already knew they’d lied about that very same thing this morning. She and her second cousin were going to have to have a chat when she returned.
“Trouble?” Niall asked, following her gaze.
Amelia-Rose straightened. “No. Not yet. Will Lord Glendarril actually be joining us?”
“With any luck, aye. Aden—our other brother—is fetching him.”
“I’d begun to think all three of the MacTaggert brothers were a myth,” Matthew Harris said from opposite Niall. “I’m relieved at least one of you is real.”
Niall grinned, the expression a little cooler than it had been just a moment ago, reminding Amelia-Rose that he could be much more formidable if he chose. “Just ye bear in mind that I’m the nice one.”
Matthew smiled back. “Then I remain relieved that I’ve met you first.”
“Don’t listen to him, Matthew,” Eloise said, hugging her fiancé’s arm with an obvious affection that made Amelia-Rose a little jealous. “They’re all nice. Just … mountain-sized.”
“Ye’ve grown a mite since last I saw ye, yerself,” Niall returned, easing into genuine amusement again. Good heavens, he was handsome when he smiled like that.
“Do you truly remember me? You were barely seven years old when Mama and I moved to London.”
He tilted his head. “Of course I remember ye. Ye were wee and plump, as bairns should be, but I see yer eyes in ye still. And yer smile.”
The affection between them, near strangers though they were, was palpable. “You two make me wish I had a sibling,” Amelia-Rose said aloud. Sighing, she shook herself. “Speaking of which, Matthew, where is your sister?”
“My aunt Beatrice wrote to say she and her three young ones had all taken ill, so Miranda and my mother went back to Devon this morning to help tend them. With any luck they’ll be home in a week or so.”
“Does everyone know everyone else in Mayfair, then?” Niall asked.
“Very nearly,” Eloise answered. “Amelia-Rose came out a year before me, but we go to all the same parties. By now we’re practically sisters.”
That made Amelia-Rose smile. Eloise MacTaggert had proven to be much less judgmental than others, perhaps because she knew she had three wild brothers just to the north. “We are, and thank you for saying so. There are others who aren’t quite as friendly.”
“And why is that?” Niall prompted, frowning. “The lot of ye baffle me.”
“Once a lady turns eighteen, there are certain expectations,” Matthew offered. “She is foremost to do her family honor, which for most young women means she needs to attract the attention of a man who will offer for her hand.”
“She must comport herself with dignity and grace, for every word she utters and every move she makes reflects on her schooling, upbringing, and parentage,” Eloise recited. “An offer of marriage is therefore a compliment to both her and her family.”
“But it can’t be just any man,” Amelia-Rose took up, warming to the conversation and rather relieved that Eloise had dealt with the proper-behavior portion. “She may have any number of suitors, but she is to choose and marry only the best of them. The one with the loftiest heritage, of course. He must also have the means to support her and quite possibly the rest of her family. If he can lift both her and her family’s status in Society, that is the most ideal.”
“I’m beginning to feel inadequate,” Matthew drawled, chuckling. “I’m a mere seventeenth in line to inherit my family’s dukedom, and my father has been known to dabble in trade in an effort to keep our coffers full.”
“Yes, but you’re very pretty,” Eloise countered, patting his shoulder.
“Handsome, darling. I’m very handsome,” Matthew corrected with a grin, taking her hand in his to kiss her knuckles.
Amelia-Rose found it all slightly too sweet for her taste, but from Niall’s expression he remained baffled by the exchange. As handsome as he was, she could well believe that no woman would have dared reduce his worth to his pleasing countenance. “And here you see,” she said aloud, her gaze on him, “the rare and much-envied love match. Sugary, full of cooing sounds, and completely oblivious to how very lucky they are.”
Niall looked at Amelia-Rose, catching her gaze. Over a day’s acquaintance he’d found her to be amusing, clever, very conscious of propriety, and willing to use his circumstance to her advantage—at least as far as enabling her to attend a picnic.