“Unless,” he repeated, still hanging halfway out of the barouche with a ridiculous gracefulness, “ye’re willing to make a bargain. Say, for example, we spend the Season in London, and the rest of the year in the Highlands?”
Amelia-Rose stared at him for at least a dozen hard beats of her heart. She hadn’t just heard what she’d heard. It was far too simple. “P … Please sit down,” she repeated.
Niall swung the door shut and latched it, then dropped down beside her again. “My point is, adae, that I grew up with one parent who’d nae leave the Highlands, and without one who’d nae stay there. I reckon there must be some space in the middle.”
She wanted to hug him. She wanted to kiss him. Just the idea that he would take her reservations into consideration without her first having to plead her side, or that he wouldn’t have conjured something he wanted that she could withhold so they could bargain for it, stumped her for a moment. Amelia-Rose cleared her throat. “Where might we stay in London?”
He smiled. “I’ve nae thought much about it, but Oswell House is grand. Or I reckon my ma would be happy enough to have us about that she’d find us a bonny house somewhere close by.” Beneath the level of the sides of the carriage, and more important, beneath the pile of her discarded shawl, he took her hand in his. “I’ve nae desire to stay at Baxter House, but that’s because I’ve a fair idea yer ma would like to kill me.”
“Niall, if I discover that you’re bamming me, I will punch you in the head,” she stated.
“I’m nae teasing, Amelia-Rose. I am accustomed to making peace in the family, but this is much easier than that. I’m nae about to let a stretch of countryside come between me and a lass with sunshine in her hair and the noonday sky in her eyes.”
This couldn’t all be true. It couldn’t be so … ridiculously straightforward. As a child she’d imagined falling in love with and marrying a handsome prince and living in his castle, but well before her debut she’d come to understand that while she might wed a prince, or a duke, or some other title, the rest of it didn’t matter to anyone but her. She continued to demand a partnership, affection, but she knew no one was listening to her. She might as well have been howling at the moon.
“Dunnae tell me ye’ve forgotten how to speak, lass,” Niall teased. “I am manly and rather splendid, but ye—”
“I am available tomorrow afternoon after half two,” she interrupted. “I will be attending a dinner party with family friends at eight, so I must be home by six.”
“Half two till six o’clock tomorrow. Aye.” His fingers twined with hers beneath the shawl, out of Jane’s sight. “I’ve an idea for an outing. Wear walking shoes, and I’ll fetch ye then.”
“I’ll meet you around the corner from the house,” she decided. “On Wigmore Street.” Her mother might accept that she’d taken today to let Niall down politely, but another rendezvous tomorrow would put the lie to whatever excuse she tried to make. Doom still loomed over her shoulder, but blast it all, today she felt like her feet weren’t even touching the ground. And that was a very difficult thing to walk away from. He was going to be very difficult to walk away from. So much so that she didn’t want to think about it.
“Your mother will not approve,” Jane pointed out.
“Just for once I would like you to be on my side, cousin,” Amelia-Rose returned. “Do you truly wish to be the villain of this piece?”
Her companion frowned. “And what happens if I say nothing, your mother discovers that you’ve been seeing this man against her wishes, and she sends me away?”
“If ye stand up for Amelia-Rose and get sent away because of it, ye call on Lady Aldriss at Oswell House,” Niall said. “She’ll find ye someaught. I swear it.”
“It must be very nice,” Jane countered, “to be so secure in yourselves that you can encourage others to ignore the tenets of their employment, to ignore what you know to be the wishes of your employer, on a whim. Mrs. Baxter is my aunt. She has fed and clothed me for six years, and paid me for the past two. It is not villainy to do the job one has been employed to do.”
Niall looked like he wanted to argue that, but Amelia-Rose squeezed his hand, and with a glance at her, he subsided. “I do understand, Jane,” she said. “My mother expects to be obeyed. I can only ask for your cooperation in this. The decision is yours.”
“Yes, it is. And I think we’ve given you enough time to gracefully end whatever may exist between you and the Honorable Mr. Niall MacTaggert.”
She’d given Niall’s precise title, the one by which he would be formally addressed. And she’d done it on purpose. Amelia-Rose wanted to clench her fists and scream. If not for that lack of peerage, Niall would be perfect. He was perfect, as far as she was concerned.
Could it be enough? She could speak to her father first; Charles did have a firmer grasp on practicality than did his wife. Perhaps she could convince him. She’d been on display for two years now, after all, and though Niall very little resembled Mr. and Mrs. Baxter’s ideal, he was technically a gentleman. His brother was a viscount, he was an aristocrat, and he very much seemed to like her. Perhaps more, though she refused to use the word. Not yet. Not when so many things could go wrong.
“Shall I return ye to Baxter House?” Niall asked.
No. “Yes, I suppose we should go.” And to think, a fortnight ago she’d claimed to detest Highlanders. But back then, she’d never actually conversed with one.
As they arrived in front of Baxter House, Niall put his arm over the back of the seat behind her. When he half turned to face her, the warmth of him seemed to surround her. It was heady. He made her nearly giddy, and she was not a giddy person.
“Which window is yers, then?” he murmured, looking up at the house. “I’ll nae be kept from ye if yer parents decide we’re nae a match.”
“I think you mean when they decide,” she returned, wondering if a woman could combust just from wicked thoughts.
He glanced about, then briefly leaned his temple against hers. “I did promise to ravage ye, lass,” he murmured. “Dunnae make me into a liar.”
Goodness. That began an entirely different kind of heat running through her. With his easy grace and athletic build, she’d been imagining for days what it would be like to be in his arms. To have him inside her. This tall, rugged, independent man who didn’t care what anyone thought, wanted her. No doubt he could have half the women of Mayfair if he chose. But for some reason, he continued to look at her. Only at her.
No one thanked him for it. Even she scoffed at him. And yet there he sat, his thigh touching hers, his light-green eyes no doubt trying to decipher what in the world she must be thinking. But today, she was tired of thinking. She wanted to feel, and she wished it could be that simple. “Niall, you know my mother will never agree to a match between us. Ever.”
Niall lifted her hand in his to brush his lips against her knuckles. “I will charm her, adae. Or at the least, wear her down to my way of thinking. I didnae come down all the way from the Highlands to meet ye and then bid ye goodbye.”
“That sounds very romantic.”
“It’s supposed to.” He released her hand. “Point me to yer window.”
Jane sat bolt-upright. “She will do no such thing!”
He lifted both eyebrows. “What’s this, now?”
“You heard me.”
“Well, I reckon the lass can decide for herself what she will or willnae do.”
Oh, she shouldn’t. But doing what she should hadn’t proved very satisfying. “The second one from the left,” she said, pointing at the upper floor.
“The yellow curtains?”
“Yes.”
“Well, now I’ll have to sit up in your bedchamber all night tonight,” Jane complained.
“He was only curious, Jane.” She looked over her shoulder at him, to see him wiping away a grin. “Isn’t that correct, Niall?”
“Aye. Curious.”
“Well, dunnae ye look grand.”