Hit Me With Your Best Scot (Wild Wicked Highlanders #3) - Suzanne Enoch Page 0,53

lion ready to swat at midges than a man meant to be impressing the lass he needed to marry.

“The what?” Aden asked.

“There’s a drawing at the end of the evening,” Matthew Harris put in from somewhere on the far side of Lady Aldriss. Wise fellow, to keep some distance between himself and Coll, at least until they’d had time for a conversation. “This year it’s a two-year-old bay gelding named Westminster. They say he’s a half brother to Wellington’s Copenhagen.”

“If I get him, his name’s nae going to be Westminster,” Coll returned. “Wulver, mayhap.”

“Shouldn’t you be seeing what Miss Baxter is up to?” Lady Aldriss prompted, looking up at Coll’s flat expression.

“Before ye chose a woman for me, ye might have thought to ask what sort I’d like,” he grumbled. “Where do I put my damned name?”

“For heaven’s … There. Write your name down on one of those pieces of paper, and put it in the bowl.” She gestured at a small table close by the door. The bowl was already half full of wee papers, and Coll immediately headed in that direction, Aden on his heels. “Only put your name in once,” she called after them, then looked over at Niall and Matthew. “Oh, get going, then, you two.”

With a grin Matthew loped off to join his almost-brothers-in-law. Niall, though, stayed where he was. Eloise and Amelia-Rose stood in the center of a swirl of gowns and coattails, and he didn’t trust that they wouldn’t be swept off their feet in the turmoil.

“You don’t want a horse?” the countess asked.

“I have a horse.” He kept his gaze on his sister and the other lass. “Do the Spenfield lasses know that their partners are here to win an animal?”

“It’s been this way for the past four years, since Polymnia turned twenty-four and the youngest, Melpomeni, turned eighteen. So yes, I assume they’re aware.”

“Hm.”

“What does that mean?”

Niall could feel her gaze on him. “I’m just trying to decide how the ladies might feel when a lad leaves with a horse but nae a wife.”

“I’m not their mother,” Francesca returned, keeping her voice below the level of the conversation around them. “It wouldn’t have been my plan, but there it is.”

“Nae, we’ve seen what yer plan is, m’lady.” Halfway across the room Eloise and Amelia-Rose hugged a third young lady, the three of them bending over their full dance cards and comparing partners. He’d wanted to write down his name—not for the horse, but just for a dance. One dance with that lass before he had to begin calling her sister and watch his angry, cynical oldest brother put his hands and his mouth on her and then leave her behind. Or worse, decide he liked her and take her with him to the Highlands where Niall would have to see her every day.

“Niall, I’m not trying to be rid of you and your brothers. I want you back in my life. You’re here now. Isn’t that some sort of evidence in my favor?”

“Aye, that ye have a fine solicitor.”

The orchestra up on the balcony that overlooked the ballroom played a trio of notes that were evidently meant to warn any dancers to get their arses onto the dance floor. He assumed that because everyone scattered, pairing up, the lasses forming three circles with their partners on the outside. The extra men and those not there to dance—mostly mamas and a few papas—piled onto the chairs set around the edges of the room or returned to the restocked sweets table.

Eloise had paired with Aden, while Amelia-Rose held fingertips with a stocky, pleasant-faced lad who seemed to be admiring the beading in her gown, the bastard. Niall glanced about for Coll, to find him devouring half a plate of strawberries and sugared orange slices. For Saint Andrew’s sake.

As the country dance began, he wound around the edge of the room to his oldest brother’s side. “Who’s yer lass dancing with?” he asked.

Coll lowered an eyebrow. “Some Sassenach,” he returned, glancing about the dance floor and then going back to browsing through the fruits and pastries. “If they mean to hold us captive, they should at least serve some meat to keep us happy.”

“How did ye find her?”

“I found her at home, with her mouthy mama and pinch-faced, frowning da. Here, try one of these.”

Niall took the sweet from his brother and set it aside again. “Those are to be yer in-laws, ye ken.”

“We kept apart from Francesca for seventeen years. I reckon I