“Now, now, dear,” Amelia-Rose’s father soothed, ushering them past Hughes and out to the waiting coach. “Three of those proposals are from this year. She is making an effort.”
“Thank you for saying so, Father.” And she had been making an effort. She hadn’t said anything truly scathing since late last Season, when Lord Albert Pruitz, the Marquis of Veyton’s thirdborn son, had compared her to a pitcher of milk. She’d learned her lesson after that calamity, and she’d minded her tongue. Her thoughts hadn’t been all that cooperative, but at least the entirety of her did understand that no one would ever offer for her again if she couldn’t refrain from accusing a suitor of having the imagination of a turnip.
In her second Season now, she’d learned to temper her expectations and to accept her own shortcomings. She’d hoped to find a man who admired her for who and what she was, who appreciated that she had a wit, and that hadn’t happened. Now her parents had gone and found a man for her—one who apparently met none of her qualifications. The only actual benefit she could see to marrying Lord Glendarril would be that she could move out of Baxter House. But going from there to the Highlands didn’t seem much of an improvement at all.
No one arrived early at Drury Lane Theater, because being early meant there was no one there to admire one’s gown or cravat as one walked up the wide, curving staircase. On the other hand, they were seated in Lady Aldriss’s box and provided with drinks within two minutes of leaving the carriage.
Three open seats remained in the box. Lady Aldriss, of course, and Lord Glendarril, but who else? Not Eloise MacTaggert, because Amelia-Rose knew her friend to be dining with the Harrises this evening. One of the other brothers, then. She stifled a scowl as people below began to wander to their seats. Nothing had been officially declared, but people knew who she would be meeting tonight, and she wasn’t about to give anyone fodder for gossip by allowing a careless expression. Not any longer.
Across the theater in a box nearly opposite the one in which she and her parents sat, Lady Caroline Mays and her younger sister Lady Agnes, together with the Duke and Duchess of Hildergreen, took seats in their own box. Caroline lifted her opera glasses, spied Amelia-Rose, and gave her a wave.
Smiling, Amelia-Rose waved back. Inwardly, though, she cringed. She liked Lady Caroline—they were dear friends, really—but the duke’s daughter couldn’t keep a secret to save her life. She would see everything that went on in Lady Aldriss’s box, and by morning every one of their mutual friends would know it, as well. Wonderful.
She sighed. If she couldn’t somehow avoid all this, perhaps it would go well. Perhaps Coll MacTaggert was handsome and agreeable and had always wanted to live in London. His accent would fade over time, hopefully his manners weren’t horrid and could be corrected, and she could therefore avoid having her entire life upended.
“Ah, good, you’re here.” Lady Aldriss’s voice came from the box entrance behind her.
Amelia-Rose took a deep breath, leveled her shoulders, and turned her head just so to show off the curve of her neck. The action was wasted, though, because only Lady Aldriss, lovely in mauve-and-black silk, stood in the curtained entryway. Perhaps the MacTaggert brothers hadn’t arrived, after all—and that would be fine with her. Her calendar for the Season was already full to bursting.
She stood, curtsying as the countess moved into her private box. “Good evening, my lady.” Because she and Eloise were friends, she’d become quite familiar with Lady Aldriss, and had come to appreciate her rather straightforward manner, so different from Amelia-Rose’s own mother and her half-complimentary, half-insulting “suggestions.”
“Victoria, Charles, so good to see you,” Lady Aldriss said with a smile, offering a hand to each of Amelia-Rose’s parents. “And you, my dear, are a vision.”
“Francesca, thank you for inviting us this evening,” her mother returned. “Did your sons not arrive?”
One side of the countess’s mouth quirked. “They did.” Taking a step backward, she reached through the curtain.
A tall man, his shoulders so broad he barely seemed to fit in the doorway, half stumbled into the box as if pushed from behind. With a low word that sounded like a curse he straightened, and all at once she took in green eyes so light they looked nearly colorless, a straight, well-proportioned nose, a mouth that turned down at the corners in a half scowl, wildly overgrown brown hair, those shoulders, a lean waist, and—oh, good heavens—a vibrant red, black, and green kilt. And those Scottish shoes with the long laces wound around his legs nearly up to the knees.
Thank goodness he was wearing that kilt, though, because otherwise her first thought might have been that he was extraordinarily handsome in a wild, uncivilized way—some pagan god of virility. Now, though, she had no choice but to remember that he was a Highlander, and that she really didn’t want one of those. His gaze caught hers, something she couldn’t decipher but that felt … warm, touching his expression and then vanishing again. Oh. Abruptly she wanted a breath of air.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Lady Aldriss muttered. “This is Niall, my youngest son.” She vanished briefly, then reappeared through the curtains on the arm of an even larger man. “This is my oldest, Coll MacTaggert, Viscount Glendarril. Coll, Mr. and Mrs. Baxter, and Miss Amelia-Rose Baxter.”
Lord Glendarril looked very like his younger brother, though his eyes were a much darker green, his mouth harder, and his brows straight slashes that shadowed his eyes but didn’t hide his direct, disconcerting stare at her. This was the man her parents wanted her to marry? This huge, hard-edged, staring brute?
Her mother nudged her in the small of her back, and Amelia-Rose belatedly curtsied. “My lord. I’m so pleased to meet you.”
“Are ye?” he replied in a thick Scottish brogue. “Will ye be pleased to wear my ring and call yerself Lady Glendarril?”
“I…” Heavens, he was terrifying. “I think we should become acquainted first, my lord. Don’t you?” she asked, trying very hard to remember she was supposed to be polite. Oh, this was not going to happen. This brute would cart her off to the Highlands to milk his cows and give him strapping Highlands babies while he stomped about in his great boots. No, no, no.
“Well, that’s what we’re about tonight, isnae?” He unceremoniously took the empty seat beside her while his mother and silent younger brother sat beside her parents. “Tell me someaught about yerself, then.” Lord Glendarril folded his arms over his chest.
He made her feel firstly like she was being questioned at the Old Bailey, and secondly like some sort of harpy who’d sacrificed a goat in order to find herself a husband. Amelia-Rose opened and closed her mouth again. What in the world was she supposed to say to that? Clearly he wouldn’t approve or appreciate whatever she uttered.
Behind her, her mother reached forward to straighten one of Amelia-Rose’s sleeves. “My daughter has already received four marriage proposals, my lord,” Victoria said grandly, her voice pitched just loudly enough that those in the boxes on either side could overhear. “I daresay Amelia-Rose has secured her place as a diamond of the first water over the course of her two Seasons.”
“What the devil is a water diamond?” the viscount retorted, snorting.
“It’s an expression,” Amelia-Rose returned. “My mother exaggerates, of course.”
He lifted a straight eyebrow. “So ye’re nae a diamond?”
“I’m … I have rarely wanted for a dance partner,” she stumbled. How did one explain a brag without sounding either too humble or too haughty?
“Ye like to dance, then.”