It's Getting Scot in Here (The Wild Wicked Highlanders #1)(8)
No doubt Angus had been embarrassed to have been put in such a vulnerable position by such a wee woman as Francesca Oswell-MacTaggert, but the family patriarch hadn’t done his sons any favors by keeping that damned piece of paper and its contents a secret from them until the moment he’d learned of Eloise’s betrothal.
If they’d known earlier, they might have had time to hire an English solicitor to find them a way out of this mess. They might have come up with a strategy on their own to get around all of them having to marry Englishwomen, and Coll being forced to wed the one his mother chose for him. They might have married Scottish lasses, and then dared Lady Aldriss to do her worst.
His door swung open again. “Here,” Coll said, and tossed him an apple.
Niall caught it. “We’re nae sitting for dinner then, I assume?” he asked, biting into the fruit.
“Ye assume correctly. I’ll go to the damned theater because I gave my word, but I’m nae sitting and eating beside that woman and pretending we’re a family.”
An apple might suffice for a few hours, but it was not a long-term solution. “If it comes down to it, we’re eating yer horse first, then.”
Coll paced to the window and back again. “She has us over a barrel.”
“Aye, that she does.”
“I suppose, then, that it doesnae matter who this lass is, as long as she’s spineless. If I cannae get around a marriage, the duller the better. I’ll sit through having eyelashes batted at me and talking about the weather and Parisian fashion, and I’ll wed her as soon as possible. Ye and Aden find yer lasses, and then we’ll go home alone. Francesca may have won, but she willnae like the prize.”
Niall had never thought he would be looking for a simpering lass, but he hadn’t anticipated any of this. “I’ll follow yer lead. The MacTaggerts stand t—”
“Together,” Coll finished, approaching to clap him on the shoulder. “Aye. Aden’s already gone out, so what say we throw some darts in that fancy billiards room until Lady Aldriss calls us down for the theater?” He scowled. “I hope it’s at least Macbeth or someaught bloody.”
As they found the billiards room someone banged a gong downstairs. Niall supposed that meant dinner was served, but since Coll had already decided they were to survive on apples tonight, he ignored the reverberating clang. A gong, when someone yelling up the stairs would have sufficed just as well. Then again, their father had once fired a pistol into the floor to get his sons into the dining room.
Generally Niall would be the one smoothing the rocks between Coll and Francesca. Aye, he liked a good fight, especially when the two sides had equal power, and in this instance he hesitated even to name Francesca as family, but he knew both his brothers and his father turned to him looking for common ground. And it wasn’t just them. Whenever it had happened, he’d become the valley’s peacemaker. Their diplomat, his father called him. If that meant that he had no use for bullies or that he protected the people around him, then he supposed he accepted the moniker. How that all played into being hamstrung into a marriage, he had no idea.
“There you are,” came from the doorway, and Niall turned to see the butler straightening his waistcoat. “You’ve missed dinner, my lord, Master Niall, I’m afraid.”
“Aye,” Coll replied, and threw another dart.
“I’m to inform you that the gong sounds the commencement of dinner every evening, and that it will only sound once. I’m also to say that the coach is on the drive, and that Lady Aldriss wishes to see you join her there without delay.”
Coll coiled his fingers around his last dart. Sighing inwardly, Niall nudged his shoulder against his brother’s. “Ye dunnae have an alternative plan,” he muttered before the viscount could begin putting holes in people. “And there is the wee chance that the lass ye’re to meet favors just the sort of man ye are. Ye know, dull, stupid, and pliable.”
“Ye’re an idiot,” his brother grumbled back at him, tossing the last dart into the dead center of the board. “Let’s find out, aye?”
“Mother, should I wear Grandmama’s pearls, or the onyx necklace from Aunt Louise?” Amelia-Rose Hyacinth Baxter called, leaving her bedchamber with a bauble in either hand and stopping at the top of the stairs.
Her mother appeared downstairs from the direction of the downstairs sitting room. “You cannot wear pearls with that white lace at the neckline—you’ll make them look yellow.” Her brow furrowed. “Don’t you have blue glass beads with the matching earbobs? They’ll bring out your eyes.”
“I’m already wearing a blue gown,” Amelia-Rose countered, twirling. “That’s too much.”
Her mother, Victoria Baxter, flipped a hand at her. “Wear the onyx, then. Just hurry. We must have you seated before Lady Aldriss and her son arrive.”
Yes, of course. A lady always looked very fine curving her neck to glance behind her, and then rising and turning to greet her admirers. It made her gown swirl about her waist and thighs. Amelia-Rose hurried back to her bedchamber and handed the onyx necklace to Mary. “We’ve spent too long on my hair,” she told her maid, sitting so Mary could fasten the gold chain behind her. “Mama’s worried we’ll be late.”
“But you have to concede that your hair looks very fine this evening,” the maid returned, putting a finger through a delicate blond curl and twisting it. “A golden waterfall, it is.”