Hit Me With Your Best Scot (Wild Wicked Highlanders #3) - Suzanne Enoch Page 0,6
patrons. That makes for very poor attendance and less patronage. So again, thank you.”
Coll shrugged. “I’ve punched two men tonight, and both deserved it. Ye dunnae need to thank me for that.”
“Even so, I’m glad this is Persephone’s last night playing a romantic lead. We always have more wolves at the door when we perform a romance. After tonight, we’ll see ten days relatively wolf-free before we open Macbeth. And I daresay most men wouldn’t dare even dream of bedding Lady Macbeth. Not if they value their lives.”
That seemed peculiar—Persephone Jones was an actress, not the actual murdering lass. But then he’d just seen her transform herself into a boy with but a few shifts in the way she held herself. If she could become Lady Macbeth as efficiently, bedding her would seem a mite dangerous. He did like dangerous things, though. And she … Well, he could admit to himself that this was the first time he’d found a lad desirable, knowing what lay beneath those trousers as he did.
“Those werenae wolves,” he said aloud, just remembering to whisper. “Ferrets, more like, scavenging for an easy meal.”
“If they think of Persephone Jones as an easy meal, they’re very stupid ferrets.” Unfolding his arms, the man stuck out one hand. “Huddle,” he whispered. “Charlie Huddle. I manage the madness that is the Saint Genesius.”
Coll gripped his hand. “Glendarril. Coll MacTaggert.”
“Ah. You’re that Scotsman.”
Lifting an eyebrow, Coll freed his fingers from the firm grip. “Which Scotsman would that be?”
“The one seen a few days ago running naked down Grosvenor Square with a large sword in his hands. Viscount Glendarril.”
“Aye. And if I’d caught the bastard who threatened my family, ye’d be telling a different tale about me, I reckon.” It had been a close race; even with Captain Robert Vale on horseback, Coll had nearly managed to take an ear off the vulture.
“I’m not one to judge. When you spend as much time around theater folk as I do, naked swordplay doesn’t seem all that scandalous. Or unusual.”
“Ah, you’re still here, Macbeth,” a voice came from in front of him in a soft lilt.
He refocused his attention on the lass dressed as a lad standing at the edge of the curtains as Huddle went to chat with his overly exuberant Duke Senior. “I’m still nae Macbeth, lass.”
“Duncan, then? Banquo?”
“MacTaggert will do. Or Coll. I’ll answer to either of those.” He wasn’t certain why he didn’t add Glendarril, except that the two rutting pigs whose arses he’d just kicked had been aristocracy, and they hadn’t shown very well. He wasn’t English aristocracy, of course, but at this moment pointing out the difference just seemed petty.
“And I answer to Mrs. Jones.” She bowed with a flourish. “Or Persephone,” she said, her grin deepening as she straightened again. “Now that we’re acquainted, MacTaggert, whatever shall we do next?”
Chapter Two
“Give me your favor; my dull brain was wrought
With things forgotten.”
MACBETH, MACBETH ACT I, SCENE III
Athing or two they could be doing together came to mind—and they would be naked while they did it. Lasses didn’t wear trousers where he came from, Coll reflected, but then he was in a kilt—which had been called scandalous and barbaric by more Sassenachs than he had fingers to count. Given that, he had no complaints at all about her appearance. Not a one.
With her long legs and slender waist, her bosom half-concealed beneath a superfine shirt, waistcoat, and a blue coat that sat just a bit too large across her shoulders, Persephone Jones looked like a well-dressed waif. A very attractive, brown-haired waif with large blue eyes and a grin that made them dance, but a waif nonetheless. “Before I answer that, I have to ask ye where Mr. Jones might be,” he said, already better than halfway to hating the man.
She gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “Oh, somewhere about. Why do you ask?”
“Because I’m nae a poacher.”
“Ah. A hunter, then. You’re assuming, though, that I can be caught.”
“I reckon I could make a good go of it.”
Her expression speculative, the lass approached him, lifting up on her toes to make herself taller. Even so, the top of her head barely reached his shoulder.
“What sort of hunter are you, MacTaggert? Do you hang your trophy up on the wall for everyone to admire? Or do you eat what you catch?”
Good Lord, she was going to have him poking out from under his kilt in another damned minute. “I’ve a healthy appetite,” he returned.