“You, sir!” one of the men said, putting a hand on Niall’s shoulder. “Which bird do you prefer?”
Niall looked straight at his newfound friend, all trace of easy amusement gone from his face. The man abruptly lifted his hand away and took a half-step backward without Mr. MacTaggert having to say a word. Everyone seemed to be looking at him, as a matter of fact, and all he’d done was stand and be taller and more muscular than every other man in the shop.
He held out a hand to her, and she placed hers in it. For a hard beat of her heart she felt … regal. Protected. Anyone would be a fool to cross such a fine, fit specimen of a man—and yet she’d done just that. Well, not so much cross him as use his own desire to hide trouble in order to gain herself an escort to a luncheon she wanted to attend, but that only seemed to have amused him.
“Since ye asked,” he said, glancing over her head at the bird admirers, “I prefer a swan poached in a sauce of peaches and saffron.”
With that they strolled out of the shop. “You shouldn’t have said that,” she commented as they returned to John and the horses. “Coffeehouses are the home of meaningless philosophical arguments, especially from professors—which they looked to be. And only the nobility is permitted to dine on swans.”
“So ye reckon they’re jealous?”
“What? No. It’s…” She glanced at him, to find him wiping a soft grin from his face. “You were teasing them.”
“I’d nae be able to call myself a Highlander if I ever ate swan poached in saffron. It’s nae bad stuffed with mushrooms and oysters, but I prefer duck.”
“You do know you could be tossed into gaol for eating a swan.”
He tilted his head. “Did ye forget I’m an earl’s son and a viscount’s brother?”
She had forgotten, and that was very stupid of her. She was practically engaged to said viscount, after all. “It’s just that you don’t … act like an aristocrat.” Immediately she regretted her words. Stop talking, she ordered herself.
“I’ll take that as a compliment, adae. Ye didnae offend me, if that’s why ye willnae look me in the eye now.”
Before John could give her a hand into the saddle, Niall stepped up, standing so close she had to lift her chin to meet his gaze. He looked at her while her heart did an odd flip-flop again. “Yes?” she prompted when she began to worry she would wrap her arms around his shoulders and kiss him.
“Permission to put my hands on ye, lass.”
“Oh. Certainly. If the wind’s not too strong.”
Holding her gaze, he slid his hands around her waist and lifted her into the air. For a split second she forgot what they were doing, until her backside bumped against Mirabel and her sidesaddle.
Pay attention, Amelia-Rose, she ordered herself, fitting her knee around the saddle horn and then refusing to hold her breath when Niall grasped her ankle and slid her foot into the single stirrup. For heaven’s sake, since her debut last Season no fewer than five men had helped her onto Mirabel. None of them, though, had given her the delighted shivers. Of course she’d been attempting to impress them with her manners and decorum, while here she didn’t have to trouble herself.
“Ye’ve a delicate ankle,” he mused, his hand still on her foot. “It’s a wonder ye can stand on it.”
Her cheeks warmed. “I assure you that though I’m not constructed of iron and tree trunks like you are, I manage quite well,” she retorted. “What did you think I tottered about on?”
Blowing out his breath, he released her ankle and stepped back. “With all those long skirts and immense bonnets, I reckoned all ye English lasses floated above the ground on the morning breeze.”
Amelia-Rose laughed. The image of half a hundred young ladies being carried aloft by a gust of wind actually didn’t seem that far-fetched, now that she considered it. “You are not what I expected, Niall MacTaggert,” she said, walking Mirabel in a circle around him.
“Neither are ye.”
She stiffened a little. “Is that bad?”
“Nae.” He continued looking at her, pivoting to keep her in view as she circled. “Nae.”
Niall didn’t care to be walloped, even by a petite, delicate English lass, and for that reason he hoped she never discovered that adae didn’t mean “rose.” It meant “trouble.” And she was presently causing him a great deal of that. Truthfully it wasn’t all her fault, because if Coll had done as he was supposed to, as he’d sworn to after they’d all drawn cards and he’d lost the game, it would be the viscount taking Amelia-Rose to coffee and the damned picnic.
But his … annoyance, he supposed it was, wasn’t about an imagined inconvenience, of having to take her to a luncheon when he had something better to do—because riding off to find a dim-witted wife didn’t particularly appeal at the moment.
He liked the way Amelia-Rose laughed. Aye, he charmed people all the time, put them at ease, heard them laugh at his jests. She gave out her laughter like it was a prize; as if someone had told her that ladies didn’t laugh out loud and so she’d determined not to do so, but she couldn’t help herself. She’d promised to be more proper today, as if she hadn’t felt justified in handing Coll that well-deserved insult last night. In the tales his father told, females of the English variety were all coy and self-concerned and not a match for any Highlander. This one, Coll’s almost-betrothed, didn’t fit that mold. At all.
Niall shook himself as he reached Oswell House again, after only one wrong turn. This townhouse was nothing at all like the sprawling castle up in the Highlands. Pogan, the butler at Aldriss, had complained for years that he never had any idea where any of the MacTaggert brothers might be, because they were in and out at all hours of the day and night, and often enough didn’t even use the doors to enter and exit. Niall had once literally butted heads with Aden as his brother left the mansion through a library window while he climbed back in through the same window after a night spent in a bonny lass’s bed.
The entire front of Oswell House, though, overlooked the street. One rear door led into the tidy brick-walled garden and then a small park behind that, which had more possibilities for secrecy at least in the middle of the night—as long as none of the neighbors happened to be looking out their own windows. The side door opened to a covered drive with the stable directly behind it.
Niall swung down from Kelpie and handed him off to one of the stableboys. Before he reached the plain back door it swung open, and the bony butler eyed him. “The countess is looking for Lord Glendarril,” he stated, stepping aside to allow Niall through. “She’s been looking for him all morning.”
“And a bonny day to ye as well, Smythe,” Niall returned, heading for the main part of the house.
“She says that if she doesn’t speak to him by sunset, there will be consequences.”
Niall kept walking. The fine mood he’d been in shredding with every step, he made for the stairs and the second floor. “Oscar!” he called, stripping off his damned heavy jacket as he went and tossing it over Rory’s unoccupied antler.
Without waiting for an answer he counted doors until he reached Aden’s temporary bedchamber, where he shoved open that door and stalked in. The heavy curtains were still closed, and his brother lay in a massive pile of blankets and pillows crossways on the large bed. The sprawl wasn’t unusual; his brother had always been as restless in his sleep as he was during the day.
“Aden,” he said, continuing on to the window and pushing open the first set of curtains.
“Damn ye and the horse ye rode in on,” came from the bed in a muffled growl. “Close the bloody curtains or I’ll thrash ye.”
Niall shoved open the next set of curtains. “I’ve nae seen Coll since act one last night, and I just had to take his nearly betrothed out for coffee in his stead.”