again. Even as she acknowledged that she should stay well clear of his mouth, though, she had to admit that it would be easier to stop breathing. What had she wound herself into? Already she’d begun making compromises in her head, when firstly he’d never asked her for any, and when secondly the two largest walls between them were the ones neither of them could change. He would never be a viscount, and he would always be a Highlander.
“What did that … man say to you?” Victoria demanded as the butler handed her and then Amelia-Rose into their coach.
“That he wants to win me,” Amelia-Rose returned, sliding sideways on the seat to make room for her father.
“Ha. He should have kept his mouth shut, then. Lady Aldriss was in the middle of trying to convince us to sign a new agreement to give you to Niall MacTaggert in exchange for a share in her shipping company, until he stormed into the room and declared that we were trying to buy and sell you and he wouldn’t permit that to happen again. As if he has a say in anything the Baxters do. Ha!”
“He … did?” That was where he’d stomped off to, then. To save her again. Even if an agreement would have rescued her from having to decide for herself what she truly wanted.
“Oh, yes. And then he shouted at me that he meant to win you regardless of what your father and I might want for you. The nerve of that heathen. I can hardly believe he’s Lady Aldriss’s son.”
Goodness. Now she wanted to demand yet another explanation from him. His mother wouldn’t have written up an agreement without him knowing about it, so he had thought to simply … purchase her. But then he’d stopped it. He’d listened to her in the garden, and had taken steps to alter what might have happened.
“You are to have nothing further to do with him, Amelia-Rose. Do you understand?”
“We’re certain to meet during the course of the Season, Mother. But you needn’t worry; I may attempt to reason with him, but I am still as set against marrying a Highlander as I was when you bound me to his brother.” There. Not much of a lie at all.
“Don’t be impudent.”
“I’m just saying it may take a bit of effort for me to convince him that we won’t suit, but I will be polite about it because I have no wish to make a second scandal out of this. He did save my reputation last night.”
“Y—”
“Now, now, dear,” Charles Baxter said. “You know that makes sense. Lady Aldriss is a powerful figure, and if we can dissuade her youngest son from pursuing Amy without making a scene, that benefits all of us.”
“Amelia-Rose,” her mother stated, glaring at her husband.
He inclined his head. “Amelia-Rose.”
Yes, that was her, Amelia-Rose Hyacinth Baxter. Mother hated the nicknames, especially “plain” ones like Amy. Victoria would no doubt detest a Scottish nickname like adae even more, but she didn’t know about that one. At the end, that name might be all she had by which to remember Niall.
She supposed she was willing to be wooed to a point, because he was extremely good-looking and clever and irreverent, and she wanted more kisses and more of the way she felt lighter inside when he was about. Truth be told, just last night she’d had a rather heated dream about him that had involved a bed and nudity and more kissing, though the parts she wasn’t certain about had unfortunately been rather nebulous. But unless he could miraculously convince her that the Scottish Highlands was superior to London, and convince her parents that being a mister was superior to being a lord something, it couldn’t go any farther than that.
“There was Lord Oglivy,” her mother mused. “Of course he’s only a baron.”
“And he’s fifty-seven years old,” Amelia-Rose added. “For goodness’ sake.”
“Hush. You could be engaged to a viscount with a future as an earl right now. But you didn’t like the details.”
“The details? I don’t want to live as a brood mare in a stable while he … fornicates with whomever he pleases! And takes any children I might have away from me!” she protested.
“Language, Amelia-Rose! For heaven’s sake.” Her mother fanned herself. “You would have been a countess, though. There’s a difference between a brood mare and a countess.”
“Mother!”
“I think we’ve burned that bridge,” her father put in. “She won’t be our Lady Glendarril, sadly enough.”
“The Marquis of