she said aloud.
“I beg yer pardon?”
“What you’re proposing—and I use that term loosely—is that you go and do as you please, while I sit in a house somewhere, assuming that you’ve provided me with one, and have no companionship, no affection, no children to occupy me, nothing but the occasional summons from you to go to the Highlands so you can bed me, then send me home again.”
“I reckoned ye could live with yer ma and da.”
Oh, that settled it. “My main reason for agreeing to this was to be able to leave that wretched house,” she snapped. “No, my lord. You are an arrogant, thoughtless, self-concerned … buffoon, and I will not throw my life into a dustbin so you can continue shearing sheep and lifting the skirts of tavern wenches. I don’t care who signed what. I will not yield.”
They stopped. In the middle of the waltz, in the middle of the other dancers, they simply stopped. And then he lowered his hands from her, turned his back, and walked off the highly polished floor.
With a hard breath she turned around. Couples swirled in front of her and behind her, sweeping across the ballroom floor. Farther away, among the nonparticipants, a low murmur began. Amelia-Rose clenched her fists. Oh no, oh no. This would ruin her. She’d turned Coll down, and he’d just ensured that she would never, ever make another match. She would be living in Baxter House until she was so old she turned to dust.
“Look at me,” a low brogue came from directly in front of her.
A shiver ran up her spine. Niall. “I don’t want to,” she whispered.
A warm, rough hand took hold of hers. “Then just waltz with me, lass,” Niall murmured.
His free hand encircled her waist, and she did look up to meet his impossibly light eyes. “You don’t have to, you know. I’m ru—”
“I want to,” he returned.
He swung her back into the waltz, and she closed her eyes against her sudden tears, dug her fingers into his shoulder, and she danced.
Chapter Nine
“Thank you,” Amelia-Rose breathed when she began to feel a bit steadier, looking up to meet Niall’s pale-green gaze.
“Ye’re white as a sheet, for Christ’s sake,” he said, his tone low but sharper than she was accustomed to hearing from him. “What the devil did he say to ye?”
“Give me a moment, will you?”
His fingers around hers flexed. “Aye. I can do that.”
A moment ago she’d been in a battle, and she’d won. And then she’d very soundly lost. Every nerve felt sharp and raw, and she held on to Niall to keep from stumbling. She had effectively ended the agreement and the engagement; even if Coll for some reason changed his mind, her mother would never allow the marriage now.
Coll’s actions did prove how little regard he had for her. Yes, she’d insulted him, but she didn’t think that had anything to do with his abandonment. She’d simply ceased to be useful, and so he’d walked away.
“Ye and Coll are like oil and water, lass, but ye knew that already,” Niall went on after a moment. “I reckon then that whatever just happened, it went past what either of ye expected.”
“I … He was very honest. I can’t fault him for that,” she said finally, wishing her voice would stop shaking. “I lost my temper. I don’t want a marriage where I’m ignored and abandoned. If that’s selfish, then I suppose I’m selfish.”
“I cannae think it’s a sin to want a measure of happiness,” he replied.
“Exactly.” She’d told her parents her opinion at the very beginning of this, but that had been more nebulous, more about being forced into a marriage with a stranger simply because he had “Lord” in front of his name. “I could have been less strident about it. I shouldn’t have called him a buffoon.” Tears welled in her eyes, and she blinked them away. No crying where anyone else could see.
He made a sound deep in his chest that might have been amusement. “I’ve called him that, if we’re being honest.”
Amelia-Rose lifted her chin. “I told you that I like my life. I see no reason I should give it up for a boor who offers me nothing but criticism and sheep and loneliness, wants me to continue living at my parents’ home and, if I have children, means to take them from me.”
His grip didn’t shift, but she had the distinct feeling that he’d just become angry. Quite angry. At her? That,