Hit Me With Your Best Scot (Wild Wicked Highlanders #3) - Suzanne Enoch Page 0,95
to Eloise wasn’t a jest, but he figured that white and yellow roses would suffice for Mrs. Baxter, while the expensive box of American cigars he’d purchased for Charles Baxter had nearly cost him an arm in getting them away from Coll.
They knew what he was up to this morning, and despite the words of encouragement and the comments on his eagerness to let go of bachelorhood, he heard the concern in their voices. He had his own worries. The lass—his lass—wanted to please her parents, if only because she didn’t think she’d ever managed it before. Pleasing them, though, meant marrying a title. And he didn’t have one.
What he did have was a wealthy and influential family on the Oswell side, and a powerful one on the MacTaggert side. He’d never relied much on the Sassenach blood he carried, but it mattered here. His grandfather and the fathers before him had been viscounts for more than two centuries until the last one died with only a daughter—his mother—for an heir. On his father’s side, the earldom went back three hundred years, made aristocracy by the decree of fat Henry VIII, himself. That had to matter for something, because it was all he had.
He swung down from Kelpie as one of the Baxter House grooms appeared. Fluffing up the roses a bit with his fingers, Niall approached the door. The butler opened it as he topped the single step. “Good morning, Hughes,” he said, nodding. “I’d like a word with Mr. and Mrs. Baxter this morning, if ye please.”
The butler lifted an eyebrow. “You would?”
“Aye. I’ve someaught to discuss with ’em. Now do I wait on the step, or in the house?”
“May I ask what this is regarding? Unless you have a card now and can describe it there.”
“I dunnae have a card, and I’d prefer to discuss it with the Baxters.”
As he spoke, a lad trotted up to the house, a large bouquet of red roses in his hands. “These are for Miss Baxter,” he said, handing them up to the butler before he bounded away again.
Niall looked from the roses to his own posies. “Who’s sending Amelia-Rose flowers this morning?” he asked, keeping his tone level.
“I would imagine they are from Lord Hurst,” Hughes returned. “Her fiancé.”
Some unseen force punched Niall in the chest. He abruptly couldn’t breathe. The words the butler spoke seem to fly right past him, gibberish, but at the same time he knew exactly—exactly—what it all meant. Moments flitted through his mind, reminding him that she’d never told him that she loved him. That he’d wondered initially if he might simply have been the most convenient escape from a household she detested.
His first instinct was to charge into the house, find Amelia-Rose, and drag her away from there. His second was to find her parents and make certain they stopped whatever this new hell was and leave their daughter be. First, though, first he needed information. Words. Facts. They would be important, so he could fix this. And he would fix it. He had to.
“When did this happen?” he asked aloud.
He thought he’d managed an admirable degree of restraint, but even so the butler took a half-step backward, into the shadow of the foyer. “I’m certain it will all appear in the announcement tomorrow, Mr. MacTaggert. In the meantime, I’ll—”
“When did it happen?” Niall repeated in the same tone, centering his gaze on Hughes.
The servant cleared his throat. “Last evening.”
After he’d returned her home. He knew he should have kept hold of her, should never have trusted that her parents wouldn’t immediately track down another title and sell her off for respectability. “Who’s Lord Hurst?”
“I shouldn’t be—”
“Hughes.”
“Lionel West, the Marquis of Hurst. Brother to Lord Phillip West, and son to Mary, Lady Hurst.”
Niall knew Phillip. They’d met at least twice. Doe-eyed lad who seemed to like horses. Whoever this Lionel was, he’d swooped in like a damned vulture. And a marquis, damn it all. “Did she say aye?”
The butler frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Did Amelia-Rose say aye to Lord Hurst? Did he ask her the question, or did they just have her sign her name on a paper? Or shake hands? Did she smile?”
Something that might have been sympathy briefly touched the older man’s face. “I wasn’t in the room, Mr. MacTaggert.”
Nodding, Niall held out the flowers and the cigars. “With my compliments to the Baxters,” he said. He bloody well didn’t want the things. Abruptly they felt like poison, like something he’d been