Hit Me With Your Best Scot (Wild Wicked Highlanders #3) - Suzanne Enoch Page 0,8

gloom, wearing yet another pair of trousers and a green coat. “MacTaggert,” she said, with a grin and a nod.

“There you are, my dear,” Claremont said, sketching an elegant bow and holding out the posies.

“Claremont!” she exclaimed, dabbing a quick curtsy. “I hadn’t expected you back yet.” She took the flowers, gave them a quick sniff, and handed them off to a woman walking at her heels. “I’ve no time to converse, I’m afraid.”

“That is what later is for,” the earl returned, sending Coll a very pointed look over her head—a look that said he’d proven his claim.

Her mouth had smiled, but her eyes hadn’t. Whether that signified anything or not, Coll didn’t know. But as he had a wife to find, and as Mrs. Jones had been a momentary, unexpected diversion, he shrugged. “I’m here for the play,” he muttered, folding his arms and leaning against a sturdy-looking upright as the lass strolled onto the stage and became a young lad once more.

If the lass was spoken for, that was that. A damned shame or not, in all honesty, he hadn’t come down here looking for her. Hell, he’d left Lady Aldriss’s box before she’d ever appeared onstage.

That had been a short hunt; more than anything else, it had served to remind him that he’d been reluctantly celibate for the past eight weeks, plus the week before that, as he, Aden, and Niall had meandered south with every bit of luggage they could pile atop their two wagons.

He’d been full of defiance then, ready for the three of them to challenge Francesca Oswell-MacTaggert head-on, tell her that she and her conditions for continuing to fund Aldriss Park could go to hell, and march back to the Highlands. But damn it all, they needed the blunt she provided. That money allowed the MacTaggerts to look after more cotters than any of the other chieftains in the area could manage. It allowed them to supplement a poor harvest, to purchase sheep and cattle when the fall weather made for fewer young ones in spring, and in short, to keep those dependent on them from starving.

And his idea of a united front against their mother—who hadn’t bothered to write a letter, much less visit in the seventeen years since she’d left her three sons behind—began to crumble the moment Niall had fallen for Amy. Coll gave a shudder. He liked the lass well enough now, but for God’s sake, his mother had meant Amelia-Rose Hyacinth Baxter for him. Thank God Amy and Niall had turned out to be perfect for each other and he’d been left out of the equation.

Once the first had fallen, Aden had no doubt seen what lay ahead, and so when he’d stumbled across Matthew Harris’s sister, he’d staked his own claim. Coll sighed. Which left him. As the oldest, he no doubt should have been the first to wed. It was his duty to lead the way into such perils. But every time he thought to make an effort toward wooing a lass, he recalled how badly his father had mangled a marriage with his own Englishwoman. Angus MacTaggert and Francesca Oswell had managed to remain beneath the same roof for twelve years, but none of them had been peaceful. None that he could recall, anyway.

But that was neither here nor there, because tonight all he’d accomplished was an escape from two more prospective brides and a few minutes of imagining that he and Mrs. Persephone Jones might have spent a sweaty, naked night together. So now he could return to Oswell House and make a list of which lasses might serve, or he could stay where he was and watch a rather inspired performance in As You Like It.

In the end, the play won out, and while he felt a wee bit cheated that all the lads had found their loves while he stood in the wings without so much as a bridal prospect, he could say one positive thing about English tastes—they were all correct when they raved about Persephone Jones.

All the actors gathered onstage for a standing ovation before they flooded past him to the dressing rooms and the rear door. He waited where he was; no sense making an appearance outside until Lady Aldriss and her weeping maidens were well away.

“We’ll be putting out the lights in ten minutes,” one of the behind-the-stage men eventually informed him, “and there’s nothing darker than a theater.”

“Except a lady’s heart, mayhap,” Coll rejoined, hiding his shudder