Finally her light went out, and then the one in the neighboring room. Niall waited for a late coach to rumble by, then straightened and made his way to the front door. He put a foot on the large pot holding some sort of flowers, then jumped up, catching the eave of the portico with his fingers.
Hauling himself up, he moved from there to the narrow windowsill beside it, then the decorative fleur-de-lis and the next window. If his reach had been any shorter he would have had to try shimmying up the drainpipe instead, but without much effort he traversed the next pair of windows until he reached Amelia-Rose’s. Bracing himself in the tiny corner of the window, he found the bottom of the catch and pushed up.
It didn’t budge.
Niall frowned. He pulled on the bottom of the window. Nothing. The curtains on the other side were shut, and he couldn’t make out any movement, any light, beyond them. She didn’t even have the fireplace lit tonight. Taking a breath, he rapped a knuckle softly against the glass.
Silence answered him. “Damn it, lass,” he muttered, and knocked again, a little louder.
The window to the next room down squeaked open. He tried to flatten himself against the wall, but there wasn’t anywhere he could go. Just as he contemplated dropping into the flower bed below, a dark-haired head and tight bun emerged into the night.
“She isn’t in there,” Jane Bansil whispered. “Lord Hurst told my aunt about your meeting on Bond Street, I was sent upstairs without dinner for not telling her, and she moved Amelia-Rose to the interior of the house in the bedchamber directly beside hers.”
“I need to talk with ye, then,” Niall decided, shifting his weight and starting back along the wall.
“No, you don’t,” she hissed. “I will not have my reputation compromised.”
“At least tell me if a wedding date’s been set, lass,” he countered, slowing his approach so she wouldn’t begin throwing things at him.
“Yes. Three weeks from tomorrow. Lord Hurst sent for a special license this afternoon.”
Cold stabbed into him. “She doesnae want this, ye ken.”
Jane opened and closed her mouth. “I know that. She adores you. You make her smile. But you won’t make her a marchioness.”
“Nae, I willnae.” He reached her window, gripping the top of the sill. “If I cannae see her, will ye give her this?” Niall dug into his coat pocket and produced a dried thistle flower on a short stem. He’d brought it south with him on a whim, pressed between the pages of an old book. At the time he’d had no idea why, except that a thistle was the Highlands, and he was leaving them for a time. Now it represented him, and he wanted Amelia-Rose to know that she wasn’t alone.
The companion backed inside a little, as if she feared he would try to yank her outside. “You need to stop making trouble, Mr. MacTaggert.”
“The only trouble is the lot of ye trying to stop Amelia-Rose and me.” He took a breath. “I cannae see my life without her in it. Do ye reckon Lord Hurst could say the same?”
Scowling, glancing over her shoulder as if she expected to be discovered at any moment, she reached out and snatched the thistle from his fingers. “I am not promising you anything. The decision is hers.”
“Aye. It’s always been hers.”
With that she closed the window, nearly flattening his fingers before he moved them. This wasn’t the damned evening he’d wanted. There was supposed to have been more sex, the two of them deciding on the plan he’d concocted this evening, and him holding her for as many hours as they could fit in before the sun rose.
Slowly he made his way back to the portico roof and dropped to the ground. He might have told Jane what he meant to do, but while he didn’t doubt the companion cared for her charge, he had no idea if Jane’s idea of protecting her would mean tattling about everything to Mrs. Baxter and stopping them before they’d even begun.
Staying in the shadows, he made his way up the street to the inn where’d he’d left Kelpie. Loki stood beside the bay, and he turned around just in time to block his brother from grabbing him. “Enough, Aden.”
Aden lowered his arms. “We told ye nae to go off alone. But if ye’re back here already, ye’re doing someaught wrong.”
“They moved her to a different room,” he grunted, freeing the reins and swinging up into the gelding’s saddle.
“So she doesnae know what ye’re about?”
“Nae.”
“That makes this all a bit more dangerous, ye ken,” his brother returned, mounting beside him.
“If ye’re scared, I’ll take care of it myself,” Niall retorted.
“Nae dangerous for me, ye clod. Dangerous for ye.”
Niall shrugged. “She’s worth it.”
Aden fell in beside him as they made their way back to Oswell House. “I’d make fun of ye for how moon-eyed ye are all of a sudden, but I dunnae want to risk a black eye while I’m after a wife.”
“I’d risk it.” On Niall’s far side Coll trotted into the dim lamplight. “Ye kept us out here for four hours looking for ye, ye lummox.”
“If there was a way to reason with the Baxters, I’d do it. If ye can think of something I’ve missed, for God’s sake tell me.”
The three of them rode in silence up the nearly deserted street. “I ken that ye’re about to make enemies of yer in-laws,” Coll finally said, his breath frosting in the night air. “And I ken that that doesnae sit well with ye. The way I see it, someone’s going to get hurt here. They’ve pushed it that way. It can be ye, or it can be them.”
“Aye,” Aden agreed. “Ye’ve tried negotiating. Ye’ve tried making friends. Stick yer hand in the bear’s mouth often enough, eventually he’ll bite ye.”
Niall had to agree with that. “What ye dunnae see in yer metaphor, Aden,” he returned, “is that I’m the bear.”
This was one bloody bear who was tired of being polite and affable. He wanted Amelia-Rose. And tomorrow she would be the only one who could stop him from taking her.
He went up to bed when they arrived back at Oswell House, but he might as well have saved himself the trouble. Twice he nearly left the house again to make another attempt to see Amelia-Rose, but he talked himself out of it. He’d done what he could. If Jane wagged her tongue about his appearance, the Baxters would consider themselves wise to have moved their daughter out of his grasp, but they would have no idea of anything else in the offing.
Even if Miss Bansil spoke only to Amelia-Rose, neither of them knew what he’d planned—only that he had something in mind. But if he went out again and they caught him, he had a good chance of spending the next three weeks in Old Bailey, and that would be too late to fix anything.
Rising before dawn, he belted on his kilt and headed downstairs to find some breakfast. The footmen were just setting out the first toast and boiled eggs, but then the rest of the family likely wouldn’t be rising until midmorning. He hoped they wouldn’t be, anyway. He didn’t need anyone trying to talk him out of anything or trying to convince him to think of his reputation.
His own reputation didn’t concern him. Amelia-Rose, though, was going to have to make a decision. And since he hadn’t seen her last night, she was going to have to make it without the benefit of hours of consideration, of weighing the benefits against the storm that would likely follow.
“I thought I might find you here.” Francesca strolled into the morning room, selected a slice of toast and some butter, then sat beside him to pour herself a cup of tea.
Niall closed his eyes for a moment. “I dunnae want to hear that I’m being rash or nae thinking things through.”
Carefully she dropped two lumps of sugar into her teacup and stirred it. “Did you tell Amelia-Rose that if you two married, you would spend the Seasons in London?”
“Aye.”
“And you meant it?”
With a frown he cracked another egg in its ridiculous wee cup and downed half of it. “Of course I meant it. She likes London.”
“I have … overheard a few things, aside from what you deigned to tell me regarding Lord Hurst, and I do wonder if you’ve asked yourself how Miss Baxter might feel about your plans. Unless you’ve told her, of course.”
Niall hadn’t told his mother about them, either. Not all of them. “I tried. Couldnae get to her without setting Baxter House on fire.”