Hit Me With Your Best Scot (Wild Wicked Highlanders #3) - Suzanne Enoch Page 0,86
until ye realize that I already ken the answer ye want to give. I’d nae fall for a lass who only cared for what the world could give her. I’d nae fall for a lass who valued herself so little that she needed to fill her empty soul with pretty things.”
A tear, unbidden, ran down her cheek. Was that her? A woman who needed a place, who needed constant affirmation, before she could claim to be happy? Was she turning into her mother? The thought, just the idea of it, made her feel ill. She’d been told for her entire life that her value lay in making her family proud; in being the perfect, sophisticated, cultured young lady; in marrying a title to improve the family’s standing. But was that all she was? “That’s not me,” she said aloud.
“I know that,” he returned. “I know it because I’m a rough-edged man. I’ve nae made a secret of who and what I am, or of how I want to spend my life. It’s nae very fancy, though I dunnae mind a party now and then. And I’m here in yer bedchamber, because ye wanted me in here.” Green eyes, darker in the gloom, studied her face. “I’ve fallen for ye, Amelia-Rose. Hard. I want ye to have nae a bigger life than the one ye imagined for yerself, but a more satisfying one. I love ye, adae.”
Amelia-Rose put a hand over her heart, feeling it tremble beneath her fingers. He truly believed in her. He loved her, not despite her missteps and hesitations, but because they were part of who she was. It was utterly remarkable. Niall MacTaggert, the literal opposite of the polished, staid, dull gentleman she’d set out to catch, loved her.
“Ye neednae say anything,” he commented into the silence. “I know ye dunnae see a future for us. Ye’d be foolish to risk yer h—”
She threw herself on him, kissing him everywhere she could reach. The chair rocked, nearly going over backward. She grabbed onto his shoulders, gasping against his mouth as the overstuffed thing settled back onto all fours, then resumed with her kisses. Perhaps she didn’t own enough hope and faith to say the words, but she could show him how she felt.
“I like the way ye declare yerself, Amelia-Rose,” he murmured, settling her across his lap.
Her hair was up in its long night braid, but he tugged the ribbon at the end loose and began stroking his fingers through the mass to free it. Her sunshine hair, he’d called it. Somehow from him that sounded far more sincere and poetical than “spun gold” or “flaxen locks,” as she’d heard from other men who thought they might be able to tolerate her in exchange for her parents’ money.
“Ye’re certain ye wouldnae prefer one of those fancy lads with the high collars?” he asked, brushing his fingers from her wrist and up to her shoulder. “Someone who knows which spoon is for soup and which one’s for gruel?”
She chuckled, pushing against him with one elbow so she could reach the trio of buttons closing his gray waistcoat. “They may be the same spoon.”
He caught her mouth again. “I want ye, adae. If ye mean to send me away, for God’s sake do it now.”
“I’m not sending you away. I want you, skellum. I’m just … not quite … I don’t want to do something wrong.” Especially with someone who obviously knew what he was doing.
Niall put a hand beneath her knees and the other behind her shoulders, and stood. “I’ve nae been with an English lass before,” he commented, carrying her with ridiculous ease over to the bed, “so I’m a bit scared. I reckon if ye dunnae pull off any of my important bits, we’ll manage.”
“You are not scared,” she countered, scooting backward on the bed to make room for him after he set her down.
Light-green eyes caught hers. “I may be yer first man, lass, but I mean for ye to be the last woman I ever have. I want to wake beside ye every morning and fall asleep with ye in my arms every night. That doesnae scare me. Nae pleasing ye does.”
“I’m already fairly pleased,” she said as he sat on the bed and took off his boots, carefully setting one and then the other on the floor. Sitting up behind him, she slid her fingers beneath the lapels of his coat to tug it off his arms.