“Or perhaps he was wounded doing one of those dangerous Highlands dances, and he cannot take the floor tonight,” Rebecca suggested.
“Was he in the war? He might have been wounded there,” Elizabeth Sampson surmised, joining them.
“You saw him two days ago. He wasn’t limping,” Amelia-Rose countered. For heaven’s sake. Sometimes a man didn’t dance simply because he didn’t wish to do so.
“Is he shy?” Melpomeni asked, sending Niall a longing look.
“Oh, he didn’t seem shy. He was very bold, in fact. It gave me the shivers.” Elizabeth Sampson shivered again for effect.
“What gave you the shivers, Elizabeth?”
“That brogue of his. And talking about living in the Highlands. Did you see his eyes? Such a light green. Maria calls them celadon.”
At least they didn’t need her to participate any longer, Amelia-Rose reflected. She had enough on her plate. But now she could add the … concern over whether she would ever see Niall again if she did break with his brother. Would she and Eloise have to cease their friendship, as well? Or if she did marry Coll, would she and Niall chat from time to time? Would he call her adae in that way that made her shiver? How silly that her name in Gaelic sounded so … sensual.
They reached Lord Glendarril, and with a nod Phillip released her. “Our second dance,” she said, shifting her hand to Coll’s arm.
“Aye.”
Amelia-Rose bit the inside of her cheek, holding back the desire to ask him some very pointed questions. Other people would overhear, and her mother would collapse on the spot if Coll abandoned her at the side of the ballroom. “We should have a little more opportunity to converse, at least,” she offered.
“Aye.”
Before she could roll her eyes at his apparent stoicism, the music began. She put one hand in his, placed the other very far up on his shoulder, and gasped a little as he put his free hand around her waist and plunged them into the dance.
“What’s it to be, then?” he asked without preamble. “Married, or nae?”
“Firstly, my lord, I’d like to be certain I have everything straight. Your plan is that we marry, you go back to Scotland and continue to live as a bachelor, and I remain in London. Yes?”
“Aye. That about sums it up. Ye’ll be Lady Glendarril, and later Lady Aldriss, which is what ye want, I reckon.”
“What about children?”
“I’ll need an heir. Two would be safer. So we’ll have our marriage night, and if that doesnae do it, I’ll send for ye once in a while.”
“Where will these children be raised?”
“In the Highlands.”
Without her, then. She would remain utterly alone, and be expected to tolerate all of it without comment. “And what of affection?”
He snorted. “Ye ken this is an arranged marriage, aye?”
Slowly she nodded, the awful, lonely horror of what lay before her clearly laid out in its most matter-of-fact, bleakest terms. She was grateful for that. It left no room for flights of fancy, of wondering whether they might eventually settle into a loving marriage. He didn’t intend to become well enough acquainted with her for that to ever happen. “I understand.”
“Then we’re in agreement. I’m glad this nonsense is over with. We’ll wed as soon as I can arrange it, I’ll bed ye, and then head back north to where I’m needed.”
If she’d been the fainting sort, the type of woman he expected and wanted her to be, she would have collapsed to the floor on hearing that. Instead, a loud buzzing started in her ears, one that got louder and louder until she realized it was the entirety of her, trying to scream.
“Nothing is worth this,” she said aloud.
“I beg yer pardon?”
“What you’re proposing—and I use that term loosely—is that you go and do as you please, while I sit in a house somewhere, assuming that you’ve provided me with one, and have no companionship, no affection, no children to occupy me, nothing but the occasional summons from you to go to the Highlands so you can bed me, then send me home again.”
“I reckoned ye could live with yer ma and da.”
Oh, that settled it. “My main reason for agreeing to this was to be able to leave that wretched house,” she snapped. “No, my lord. You are an arrogant, thoughtless, self-concerned … buffoon, and I will not throw my life into a dustbin so you can continue shearing sheep and lifting the skirts of tavern wenches. I don’t care who signed what. I will not yield.”
They stopped. In the middle of the waltz, in the middle of the other dancers, they simply stopped. And then he lowered his hands from her, turned his back, and walked off the highly polished floor.
With a hard breath she turned around. Couples swirled in front of her and behind her, sweeping across the ballroom floor. Farther away, among the nonparticipants, a low murmur began. Amelia-Rose clenched her fists. Oh no, oh no. This would ruin her. She’d turned Coll down, and he’d just ensured that she would never, ever make another match. She would be living in Baxter House until she was so old she turned to dust.
“Look at me,” a low brogue came from directly in front of her.
A shiver ran up her spine. Niall. “I don’t want to,” she whispered.
A warm, rough hand took hold of hers. “Then just waltz with me, lass,” Niall murmured.
His free hand encircled her waist, and she did look up to meet his impossibly light eyes. “You don’t have to, you know. I’m ru—”
“I want to,” he returned.
He swung her back into the waltz, and she closed her eyes against her sudden tears, dug her fingers into his shoulder, and she danced.
Chapter Nine
“Thank you,” Amelia-Rose breathed when she began to feel a bit steadier, looking up to meet Niall’s pale-green gaze.
“Ye’re white as a sheet, for Christ’s sake,” he said, his tone low but sharper than she was accustomed to hearing from him. “What the devil did he say to ye?”
“Give me a moment, will you?”
His fingers around hers flexed. “Aye. I can do that.”
A moment ago she’d been in a battle, and she’d won. And then she’d very soundly lost. Every nerve felt sharp and raw, and she held on to Niall to keep from stumbling. She had effectively ended the agreement and the engagement; even if Coll for some reason changed his mind, her mother would never allow the marriage now.
Coll’s actions did prove how little regard he had for her. Yes, she’d insulted him, but she didn’t think that had anything to do with his abandonment. She’d simply ceased to be useful, and so he’d walked away.
“Ye and Coll are like oil and water, lass, but ye knew that already,” Niall went on after a moment. “I reckon then that whatever just happened, it went past what either of ye expected.”
“I … He was very honest. I can’t fault him for that,” she said finally, wishing her voice would stop shaking. “I lost my temper. I don’t want a marriage where I’m ignored and abandoned. If that’s selfish, then I suppose I’m selfish.”
“I cannae think it’s a sin to want a measure of happiness,” he replied.
“Exactly.” She’d told her parents her opinion at the very beginning of this, but that had been more nebulous, more about being forced into a marriage with a stranger simply because he had “Lord” in front of his name. “I could have been less strident about it. I shouldn’t have called him a buffoon.” Tears welled in her eyes, and she blinked them away. No crying where anyone else could see.
He made a sound deep in his chest that might have been amusement. “I’ve called him that, if we’re being honest.”
Amelia-Rose lifted her chin. “I told you that I like my life. I see no reason I should give it up for a boor who offers me nothing but criticism and sheep and loneliness, wants me to continue living at my parents’ home and, if I have children, means to take them from me.”
His grip didn’t shift, but she had the distinct feeling that he’d just become angry. Quite angry. At her? That, she didn’t know. “He said he’d take yer bairns?”