“Rory?” he replied, glancing up at his sister, Eloise. She was the youngest of the MacTaggerts, and the only one of them raised English. She was also the reason her brothers had allowed themselves to be dragged down to London. The eighteen-year-old had gotten herself betrothed, an act that had set their father on his deathbed—where Angus MacTaggert still remained better than a month later according to his frequent letters warning his sons of the treacherous females lying in wait in London—and her three brothers with pretty, English-bride-shaped nooses around their necks.
“No, the necklace,” she corrected, descending the steps to join him. Eloise removed it from the deer’s antler and held it up to examine it. “Oh, they aren’t real, are they?”
“Nae. A lad lost a wager and had to give over whatever he carried in his pockets. I dunnae if they were to be a gift for a lass, or if he tried and she refused them, or if he nicked them from some unsuspecting lady or other.”
“That’s sad, any way you put it.” With a sigh she hung them back on the antler. “Even so, Rory is quite well dressed.”
“Aye. All the other deer in the Highlands would be jealous if they could see him now.” Kissing her on the cheek, he continued up the west-side stairs toward the group of bedchambers given over to him and his brothers. Whatever bother she’d caused them, Eloise was their bairn of a sister and a MacTaggert. She was to be loved and protected, English-raised or not. She’d lost her heart, and hadn’t known about the agreement any more than her three brothers had.
Behind him Eloise cleared her throat. “Thank you for returning in time to attend my luncheon,” she said, and he could almost hear her grimace. “I know you don’t like the idea of having young ladies thrown at you. But they areall my friends. And it’s just food, which you like. There’s no harm in you and Coll joining us.”
Aden slowed. Women were always flinging themselves at him, but since they’d arrived in London it seemed like someone had loaded a catapult full of skirts and bosoms and launched it at his head. Aye, Francesca demanded he wed an English lass, and aye, he’d been looking now for five weeks. Well, not looking as much as he’d been observing with growing cynicism. Fluttering eyelashes and discussions of the weather bored him to tears, but as far as he could tell that was the sum of female Sassenach conversation. Eventually, though, he would have to choose one of them, empty-headed and dainty or not. He did recognize that. The future of Aldriss Park depended on it. But he didn’t have to like it. And he did not. At all. Even Eloise’s friends—the ones he’d met, anyway—had seemed very, very… young. Naive. Dull. Full of naught but polite chatter and lace.
He couldn’t put into a sentence what it was he wanted in a lass, but a bit of fire and boldness would have been nice. Or not nice, which was what he preferred. A lass who wouldn’t lie on her back, wide-eyed and stiff, while he did his “husbandly right” or whatever the proper set called fucking here in London. As for the rest… well, he needed to marry. All he required, he supposed, was a woman who didn’t make him wish to drown himself in the nearest loch.
Perhaps the difficulty here was that Niall, the youngest MacTaggert brother, had not only found a lass within a day of arriving in London, but he’d found one he loved. And Amy adored him. Hell, they’d barely left Niall’s bedchamber in the six days since they’d returned from Gretna Green. Love was a sticky proposition, and any man aiming to find it was a fool. Niall, to his credit, hadn’t been after the damned thing, which apparentlywastheonly way to find it. A bloody conundrum, and one Aden wasn’t certain he would ever trust, anyway.
“Aden? You’re to respond by saying you appreciate my efforts and that you’ll behave yourself.”
Blinking, he turned around to face Eloise again. “I’ll behave myself,” he agreed. “But I suggest ye remind Coll of that, too. He’s the one more likely to put a lass over his shoulder and stomp off with her.”
“Yes, but he said he wants a dull, fainting lily he can leave behind here in London. That wouldn’t seem to require kidnapping.”
That made him grin. “Ye’re half Scottish down to yer bones,piuthar. Ye’ve the right of it. Just prop some half-dead flower up beside him, and he’ll thank ye for it.”
“But what about you?”
“Me?” Aden feigned surprise. “I keep thinking any lass will do, but then I reckon I’d prefer nae to be bored. So nae a boring one. And mayhap a lass who wouldnae faint at the sight of her wedding bed.”
“Aden,” she said, blushing.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Do ye mean to faint when ye see yer wedding bed, Eloise?”
“Well, no, but—”
“That’s because ye’ve a backbone. Someone nae boring and with a backbone, then, if ye mean to find me a match.”
Eloise tilted her head, her nearly colorless green eyes assessing him. “Weren’t there any lasses in the Highlands who could stand up to you, Aden?”
Was that how she interpreted his request? A fighter? It didn’t much matter, he supposed, if such a lass didn’t exist. Flashing a grin he didn’t feel, he turned up the stairs again. “If there were, I wouldnae be here,piuthar. I’d be in the Highlands, a married man and free of Lady Aldriss’s claws.”
There had been lasses aplenty in the Highlands, aye, and he was well acquainted with a fair share of them. At seven-and-twenty he’d begun to contemplate marriage even before he’d learned about Lady Aldriss’s decree, but he’d yet to encounter a lass whom he cared to wake beside for longer than the stretch of a single morning or two. They didn’t call him the elusive MacTaggert brother for no reason.
“My friends will be here in an hour. And you must have on shoes, for heaven’s sake. You’re fairly pleasant-featured, I suppose, but a prospective bride wants to know that her prospective husband is able to dress himself.”
He grinned. “Aye, Eloise. I’ll wear someaught to cover my nethers as well, even without ye reminding me.”
“Mm-hm. One hour, Aden.”
As he reached his bedchamber something crashed downstairs. Several voices began yelling, and he turned around yet again. Coll had been in a fine enough mood during their ride, but that had been all of five minutes ago and he’d lost forty quid since then. Or mayhap Eloise had reminded the viscount that they were to attend a proper luncheon with proper lasses.
Before he’d managed two steps back toward the stairs something black and smelling of wet and cabbages hurtled up the hallway and crashed into his legs. Staggering, he grabbed the wall to keep himself upright. “What the devil?”
The filthy thing wound around his legs, muddy paw prints all over the tops of his bare feet and patterning the green carpet runner around him. Finally it sat on his left foot and leaned hard against his knee.
Smythe the butler came into view, a walking stick raised in one hand and his generally bland expression locked into one of shocked affront. “Have you… There you are, you little piece of filth. Off with you! Out of this house!”
Tilting his head, Aden blocked the downward swing of the stick with his forearm. “I reckon ye’ll have to go through me before ye hit this wee beastie,” he drawled, catching and holding the butler’s angry gaze.
