Hit Me With Your Best Scot (Wild Wicked Highlanders #3) - Suzanne Enoch Page 0,64
breakfast table and folded his arms over his chest. “Aye. I reckon I’m calling yer bluff, Lady Aldriss. And only because Aldriss Park is involved, I’ll tell ye the lass turned me away.”
Niall, seated across the small table from his oldest brother, looked down, stabbing another pork sausage to cover the move and his roiling anger. He’d known Amelia-Rose had serious reservations about Coll, and vice versa, but Coll had nearly ruined her. For a lass as sensitive about her reputation as she was, that had been devastating. She had plenty of spleen, aye, but last night could have gone very, very differently.
“And I suppose you haven’t got any idea why she would do such a thing,” Lady Aldriss countered.
“Nae.” He pinned her with a glare. “I only described what I intended for our marriage—one that mirrors yers. Her staying in London, me carrying on in the Highlands, and any bairns she might have residing with me.”
The countess’s cheeks paled beneath her carefully applied blush. “You’re a cruel boy. You wanted to hurt me, and instead you hurt an innocent young lady whose parents put far too heavy a burden on her shoulders.”
Coll looked away at that, finding something out the window to catch caught his eye. “She called me a buffoon.”
Aden at the far end of the table snorted. “Good for her.”
“Shut yer gobber. At least ye have a say in which Sassenach ye’re leg-shackled to.”
“For your information,” their mother countered, “and aside from the fact that you’ve violated the terms of my agreement with your father, I have made inquiries about you over the years. I know you to be hotheaded and abrupt, not one to suffer fools in silence. I chose Amelia-Rose Baxter with you in mind, my son. She is clever and quick-witted and very kind as well as being lovely—a perfect counter to you.”
“If ye reckoned I’d trust ye to choose any woman for me, ye reckoned wrong,” Coll retorted. “I’ll nae wed that sharp-tongued shrew. And she’ll nae have me. So do yer worst.”
The countess opened her mouth and shut it again. “You are … forcing me to take an action I had hoped—”
Niall launched himself over the table, catching his brother with a hard fist to the jaw before they both crashed to the floor. Coll had hurt her. And the bastard wasn’t even sorry about it. Whipping around, using his speed against his brother’s size, Niall hit him again, plowing into Coll as the viscount started back to his feet. A chair cracked into splinters beneath them.
“What the—”
Ducking an arm, Niall swung in again. “Ye nae had any intention of marrying her,” he growled, shaking off a glancing blow to his shoulder.
“And so ye wasted a few days being kind to her. Why do—”
“Ye have nae idea, do ye, amadan? Ye just decided to ruin her life because ye dunnae like yers, ye fu—”
Aden grabbed him from behind, hauling him off Coll. At the same time, no doubt alerted by the noise, Gavin, Oscar, and Wallace the piper skidded into the room to grab the viscount, pulling him in the opposite direction as Charles the second piper took hold of Niall’s other arm.
“Stop this at once!” Francesca yelled. “I will not have this in my house!”
“He started it,” Coll growled, shrugging Oscar off only to have the valet reattach to him like a remora on a shark.
“Because ye’re a damned bastard!” Niall snapped back again. “Ye dunnae deserve the lass.”
His brother swiped blood from his nose. “Ye jumped me over that lass? What are ye, mad?”
“Aye. And ye,” Niall said, turning his glare on Francesca, “yer agreement didnae say ye could choose a wife for Coll, anyway.”
Francesca looked back at him, her expression wary and very worried. “Yes, it did.”
“Nae. It said one of yer lads would marry a lass of yer choosing, and the other two would marry English lasses.”
“Dunnae pull us into this,” Aden murmured, still gripping Niall around the chest.
“Yer agreement didnae say which brother,” Niall insisted. “So if it’s Amelia-Rose ye have in mind, I’ll take her. And ye can go hang yerself, Coll.”
Silence crashed over the room. If there had been a mouse in the attic, Niall was fairly certain they would have been able to hear it. Even the servants seemed to be holding their breaths. Not him, though. Now that he’d demonstrated his annoyance with Coll, and now that he’d said what he wanted—needed—to say, he felt … satisfied.