Hit Me With Your Best Scot (Wild Wicked Highlanders #3) - Suzanne Enoch Page 0,38

that to decipher Amelia-Rose Baxter. She wasn’t sharp-tongued. She was interesting and had opinions, with steel enough in her spine to convince him to take her to the picnic this afternoon.

“He what?” Francesca prompted.

“She’s nineteen. He’s nearly thirty. At first glance he didnae think they’d be compatible.” There. That didn’t insult either one of them. “He went off to go find a brawl, and ended at an establishment called The Pugilist.”

The countess’s cheeks paled. “He didn’t.”

“Aye. Aden and I reckon those buffoons at The Pugilist figured they’d waylay and rob him, and they … convinced him to have a whisky. A few whiskies. And one of ’em with laudanum in it, as far as we can tell. Then they tossed him in the fighting pit, likely with the idea of wagering on who could beat him down. Coll doesnae like small places.”

The countess had moved to place one hand over her heart. “I remember. Before you were even born, Niall, he and Aden were playing and Coll got locked in a wardrobe. It took us four hours to find him. He avoided small places after that.”

Niall nodded. “He still does. So nae, he isnae a bedlamite. He is angry and mayhap a bit shaken, with a splitting head and too much drink in him.” Narrowing his eyes, he willed them to take the next part seriously, for all of their sakes. “I’d nae recommend coddling him or pitying him, because he’s likely to fling it straight back at ye. If he wants ye to know someaught, he’ll tell ye. Otherwise, I’d feign ignorance.”

“Amelia-Rose said he’s to escort her to the Spenfield ball on Thursday,” Eloise said, her expression somewhere between relieved and worried. And that over a brother she’d never met until yesterday. Eloise was a better sister than the lot of them deserved, and he needed to see to it that Coll and Aden both knew that.

“Aye. I reckon I can convince him to give her a second look.”

When Lady Aldriss opened her mouth, he shrugged out of his sister’s grip and stood. “I’m nae yer toady, màthair, and I’m nae yer ally. I’m here to help Aldriss Park.” With that he went back upstairs to make certain he still had two brothers alive.

Francesca Oswell-MacTaggert sank onto the couch beside her daughter. Her oldest son was nearly six and a half feet tall. A man grown. Well grown. Nearly thirty, as Niall had said. And small spaces still troubled him. She never would have suspected such a thing, and in an odd way she found it encouraging. Not Coll’s troubles, but the fact that Niall had told her about them. They might still be a united front against her, but she wasn’t entirely an enemy.

It wasn’t that, however, that made tears run down her cheeks. “Goodness,” she said.

Eloise hugged her. “They’ll come around, Mama,” she said. “It’s only been a day, and they seem to be very stubborn. I’m certain they don’t detest you.”

“That’s not why I’m weeping, my darling,” Francesca returned, smiling. “Niall just called me màthair. That’s Gaelic for ‘mother.’ He called me mother.”

Her youngest son. The one she’d had the least hand in raising, and the one who had least cause to remember her. The one about whom she’d been the most worried, even knowing the well-earned reputations of the other two. How odd, and heartwarming, that Niall Douglas MacTaggert also seemed to be the one who most closely shared her sensibilities. She couldn’t tell him that; he wouldn’t believe her, and would likely be offended at the suggestion.

But then she’d managed to navigate thirteen years with the volatile Angus MacTaggert, and then another seventeen in London keeping her reputation, her wealth, and the entire Aldriss empire intact despite living the length of Britain away from her legal husband. Whether that made her a protector, or a diplomat, or something closer to a martyr, every day of those seventeen years away from her sons had hurt. She’d put aside her own happiness so they could grow up free and wild and independent, not smothered by the rancor festering between their parents.

Now that she had them back, she wasn’t about to let anything happen to drive them away again—even if it meant pushing them to marry women they might not otherwise have considered. If they’d known Eloise better, if she hadn’t taken her daughter south at such a young age, the brothers might have had more connection with the females of the family. They might even have