It's Getting Scot in Here (The Wild Wicked Highlanders #1)(11)
“Nae if I can avoid it.”
She caught her expression before it could fall. For heaven’s sake, he wasn’t even trying to be pleasant. “What do you enjoy then, my lord?”
“What do I do that hasnae a purpose, ye mean? When I’m nae seeing the sheep sheared or the crops planted, the cotters fed, roofs repaired, and whatever else comes to my attention? I reckon I drink, and I curse, and I brawl. What do ye do that isnae for yer own enjoyment?”
Amelia-Rose kept her lips tightly closed. What a rude, insufferable man. If her parents thought for one second that she wanted this … Highlander for her husband, in her bed, well, they were very, very mistaken. And they might as well realize that now. “I am n—”
“Amelia-Rose,” her mother interrupted, “tell Lord Glendarril about the Sundays you’ve spent aiding the poor.” Victoria leaned forward, evidently unwilling to leave the explanation to her daughter. “On the third Sunday of every month our church donates clothing, shoes, and hats to the poor. Amelia-Rose always attends, helping women find the most charming ensembles. She is much beloved, I assure you.”
That sounded horrid. Is that how her mother actually saw it—that she was helping underprivileged women play dress-up? “It’s not that frivolous,” she said in a low voice, forcing a smile.
The gaslights along the front of the stage sparked into life, and the crowd below them tittered and quieted. It dawned on her that she didn’t even know which play they were here to see. Hopefully a comedy, something to lighten the mood and amuse the brute beside her. Because even though she’d resolved not to marry this man, she didn’t wish to sit next to a giant, angry Highlander for hours and hours.
The curtains opened, and a single man in hose and doublet took center stage and began to speak.
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
Oh, wonderful. Shakespeare. And not Much Ado About Nothing or A Midsummer Night’s Dream. No, Lady Aldriss had invited them to see Romeo and Juliet. Now she was meant to sit there and listen to a tale of misunderstanding, of families at war, of a love that ultimately ended in yet more misunderstandings, tragedy, and death. And during the intermission, she would no doubt be expected to be polite and charming while he would continue to glower and call her frivolous.
“Dunnae faint yet, lass,” the mountain rumbled from beside her. “Tell me about the weather or someaught. Or what passes for weather here in the south.”
The weather. That was what he thought of her, that she was just some simpering, empty-headed miss. Well. Her pony had just left this race. “I might, my lord, if I thought you would understand what ‘cumulous’ and ‘precipitation’ mean. Perhaps I should just say ‘rain wet’ or ‘sun warm.’ Or is that more than you expect of me? I could nod silently, of course, but then you wouldn’t have dialogue over which to bully me. ‘Dialogue.’ That means ‘words.’”
Lord Glendarril’s jaw clenched, and he stood. In Gaelic he muttered something to his brother seated behind them, and then he shoved out through the curtains at the back of the box. “What was that?” Lady Aldriss asked quietly as the play continued below them. “I’m afraid I never learned much more than ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ in Gaelic.”
“Coll went to find someaught to wet his whistle,” the other MacTaggert brother, Niall, replied after a beat. “He’ll be back shortly.”
“He is fond of English beer,” Lady Aldriss said in a voice that sounded a bit too flippant, as if she’d realized what a disaster Amelia-Rose had just precipitated.
The play below them continued, the men in the crowd roaring approval when the famous actress Persephone Jones took the stage as Juliet. Not everyone had eyes only for the onstage tragedy, though; Amelia-Rose could see the glint of opera glasses turned in her direction—or more specifically, at the chair beside hers.
Having her almost-betrothed absent now was almost worse than having him glowering there beside her. Everyone knew they were to be a match. At least, all of her friends knew, and that meant everyone else likely knew as well. And what they saw was her, sitting there with an empty chair. Oh, dear.
She’d done it again. Perhaps they should all leave, and later they could claim some unforeseen emergency had arisen to call them away. That would be better than her having to explain tomorrow why Lord Glendarril had vanished five minutes into the play and twenty minutes later hadn’t returned. Had he left? Was he coming back at all?
She half turned to suggest an exit to her father, but then stopped when something rustled behind her. Abruptly the seat beside her wasn’t empty any longer. Stifling a sigh, annoyed with herself for being relieved that he’d returned when she’d already decided she didn’t like him, Amelia-Rose sent him a sideways glance and opened her mouth to apologize.
“I couldnae see from back there,” the viscount’s brother Niall MacTaggert said from beside her. “Coll can boot me out when he gets back. If ye reckon ye dunnae mind me sitting here.”
Considering that he lacked only an inch or two of his brother’s height, she “reckoned” he could see quite well from any spot in the theater. But he’d bothered to move, and in the dark no doubt one Highlander looked nearly like another to the theatergoers below. “He’s not coming back, is he?” she whispered back at him.