Her heart had very nearly melted when the first of them had called her “mother.” She’d waited so long to hear it again from her boys. Aden, though, used the word like a weapon. “Are you implying that I don’t keep my word, son?”
“I’m nae implying. I’m saying it straight out.” He slipped into a waistcoat and buttoned the trio of buttons up over his chest, then picked up a starched cravat and slung it around his neck.
“You’ve insulted me. Please explain.”
He scowled at his twin image in the dressing mirror as he began knotting the cravat. “‘This year for your birthday, Aden,’” he said, in a quite remarkable imitation of her London-raised accent, “‘you and I are going to York. And whatever your father says, I am purchasing you that saddle.’”
Memories flooded back, scented with moors and pines and fresh-cut lavender. “And I left three weeks before your birthday. You resent me still because of that?”
“Nae. I resent that Da told me I couldnae trust the word of a Sassenach woman, and I believed him. And so I nearly didnae see Miranda with her standing right in front of me. I nearly didnae trust that she wasnae using her wiles on me to get me to help her. I was wrong. Da was wrong. And ye were wrong to promise a ten-year-old boy someaught ye knew ye couldnae deliver.”
“Aden, I—”
“I dunnae need to hear an explanation or an apology. But if ye’re going to warn me now nae to make a stir when Miranda’s troubles dunnae concern the MacTaggerts—or the Oswell-MacTaggerts, rather—ye may as well save yer breath.”
“Oh, stop that,” she said, walking forward to pull the ruined cravat out of his fingers and toss it to the floor. She picked up a fresh, crisp one and pulled it around his neck. “How much debt is Matthew in? Miranda studiously avoided mentioning a number.” Twisting the ends of the cloth, she put in a knot and pulled the middle into an understated cascade of ruffles. She had to reach up to tie it; Aden might be the shortest of the brothers, but that was akin to being the third highest peak in a range of mountains.
“I’ll nae be responsible for stepping between Eloise and her beau.”
“Despite the fact that doing so would mean you and Coll will have an indefinite reprieve in your task to find an English bride?” From what she’d learned and deciphered, Aden had been plotting with Miranda for at least a fortnight. From the first moment he’d learned of Matthew’s losses he could have stopped his sister’s engagement. He could have freed himself from the agreement between Angus and herself—at least for a time. If he’d returned to Scotland and found some bonny Highlands lass to wed, she wasn’t certain she would have had the nerve to declare the agreement broken.
“Was Matthew unlucky, then? Or unwise?”
“He was foolish. He crossed paths with a snake and didnae realize it until he’d already been bitten.”
“And he traded his sister to cover his debt.” She finished his cravat, but continued tugging at it to give herself an excuse to remain standing there. “I find that much more troubling than the debt itself.”
“Miranda was the prize all along,” he returned, lifting his chin a little to accommodate her. “Vale pushed at the lad till he had nae other way to go.”
“So you’re not angry with him? I got the distinct impression that you’re rather fond of Miranda Harris.”
Aden put his hands over hers and gently removed her fingers from his neck. “Ye’re sly, Lady Aldriss, but I’ll keep my own counsel. If ye’ve misgivings about Matthew Harris,yebreak Eloise’s heart. I’ll nae do so.”
“I cannot make that decision without all the necessary information.”
“I gave ye the necessary information. And I’ll give ye a wee bit more. I’m off to Boodle’s, and I mean to make a ruckus. A large ruckus. Feel free to tell all yer blue-blooded Sassenach friends that ye strongly disapprove of me.”
Pulling on a dark-green coat and picking up a matching beaver hat and a pair of gloves, Aden moved around her to the bedchamber door.Highlanders.He made her want to stomp her feet. “If you gave me a few more damned details, I might be able to assist you, Aden Domnhall MacTaggert.”
That earned her a raised eyebrow. “That would require me trusting ye now, wouldnae?” He set the hat over his longish hair, the very image of a handsome English gentleman until he opened his mouth and spoke. “Keep my lass safe, and then I’ll consider it.”
Francesca waited a beat before she followed him downstairs and watched him out the front door. He had perhaps a thousand pounds with him, and she presumed he meant to win enough money to pay off Matthew’s debt. But it somehow involved making a ruckus at one of the most prestigious gentlemen’s clubs in London, one to which he hadn’t even yet been granted full membership.
“Smythe, alert me the moment Lord Glendarril returns from wherever he went off to,” she instructed, and the butler nodded. “And we’ll all be staying in today. They know better, but undernocircumstances are Eloise, Amy, or Miranda Harris to leave this house.”
“Are we in for some trouble again, my lady?”
“I believe we may well be. Arrange to send one of the footmen to lurk about outside of Boodle’s. I wish to be informed immediately if anything untoward happens.”
“I’ll see to it, my lady.”
In the meantime, she would try squeezing some additional information out of Niall. The MacTaggert brothers, though, tended to become a veritable wall of stone whenever she attempted to cajole one of them to speak about another. It made her proud to see them so close and so loyal, but at the same time their stubbornness was absolutely maddening. And whether they’d been apart for seventeen years or not, she still worried about them—and about the one who supposedly most resembled herself, in particular.
Chapter Sixteen
Aden brushed street dust from the shoulders of his coat and stepped into the Boodle’s gaming room—half a dozen tables with a fair amount of space between them and no windows to speak of. Determined gamers didn’t always wish to know how late an evening had gotten. This afternoon only half the tables were occupied, with Vale sitting by himself at the very center. The captain wanted to make a show of this, then. Well, he was going to have one, even if it likely wasn’t the spectacle he expected.
Without preamble he took the seat opposite Vale. “Generally when a man calls me a coward and a bounder, or whatever it was ye wrote out and had someone else deliver to me, it means I’m about to be in a fight. Ye seem to want to play cards, though, so let’s get to it.”
