“O Scotland, Scotland!”
MACDUFF, MACBETH ACT IV, SCENE III
“We want to see our daughter,” Lady Bayton insisted, a handkerchief going to the corner of her eye again. “We haven’t set eyes on our darling in eight years, Lady Aldriss.”
Francesca glanced at Coll, who nodded. He’d seen enough to assess precisely who the Marquis and Marchioness of Bayton were, and to be perfectly satisfied that Temperance had described them accurately.
“Very well,” the countess said. “If you don’t mind, Coll?”
He pushed to his feet and walked to the library door. Temperance stood in the hallway, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she did before she began a performance. “I’ll still happily throw ye over my shoulder and ride with ye to the Highlands,” he suggested quietly.
“No. I made my identity public to make me—and everyone else—safe from any more plotting. This needs to be done. I need to do this.”
She nudged him sideways and walked past him into the Oswell House library. Her parents both shot to their feet, coming toward her until she put up a hand.
“Do not,” she said calmly. “I only agreed to see you to tell you what I wish I’d had the strength to do eight years ago. I do not want your money. I do not yearn for a title or a lord with influence. I do not intend to manipulate any said lord into gaining more power or influence. What I am going to do is marry Coll MacTaggert, Lord Glendarril. And I am going to continue performing onstage for at least the remainder of this Season and through the next, because I have a signed contract saying that I will. I do not care if you’re ashamed of me or mortified that your own reputations will be damaged. I thank you for keeping me fed and clothed, and for paying for my education. And that is all I have to say to you.”
Her words were measured and calm. Coll was damned proud of her. When the one hand she held behind her back waved at him frantically, he took a step forward and grasped it, squeezing her fingers gently.
“But you are our daughter,” her mother countered. “There are familial obligations, and promises that have been made, not to mention the … upset you have caused us. Eight years, Temperance! And now we find you on a stage? Acting? It’s enough to overset a saint.”
“According to the newspaper,” her father took up, “your home was burned. Certainly, we can help you rebuild, after which we can speak again about your future. You’re no longer a debutante, after all, but I believe we can do better than a viscount from Scotland. The—”
“Who the devil are these powdery daisies?” Lord Aldriss demanded, walking into the room. “Did I hear them insult my son and heir? Do ye ken what we do in Scotland when a man insults another man in his own house? We feed him to our dogs! And in Scotland, we have bloody big dogs—big as sheep, they are. Damn ye, whoever ye are, and get out of my house before I put a boot in yer arse!”
“What my husband is saying,” Lady Aldriss took up, “is that your daughter has stated her intention to marry our son and has quite plainly informed you that she no longer wishes to be part of your lives. I therefore suggest you go, before you do find a Scottish boot in your arse.”
Like all Sassenachs, they had a fine talent for words and arguments and contracts and agreements. Threats of physical violence, though, wound them up like tops and sent them reeling. Still stammering their indignation, they allowed Smythe to usher them out the front door.
“Well, that was something,” Francesca said faintly. “Dogs as big as sheep?”
“Och,” her husband grunted. “They’re gone, are they nae?”
“Yes, they are.”
“Aye, they are,” Coll agreed, tugging on the hand that Temperance still squeezed.
Rather than releasing him, she turned to look up at his face. “They’re gone.”
“Aye.”
“I’m free.”
“Aye.”
“Did I hear the gong? I believe breakfast is set out,” Lady Aldriss said, gesturing none-too-subtly at the earl.
A moment later, Coll and Temperance had the library to themselves. “What are ye thinking?” he asked her. The idea that she was free sounded pleasant, but it also seemed to mean she had no entanglements, and he didn’t much like that. He was an entanglement, after all.
“I’m thinking you should lock the door,” she whispered, cupping his cheek in her hand.
“Ye dunnae need to tell me that more than once.”
He locked all three doors that led into the library from various parts of the house, then returned to take her in his arms. Lifting her, he carried Temperance over to the deep couch and settled there with her on his lap.
“Will they expect us for breakfast?” she asked, pulling his shirt from his kilt and sliding her warm hand up along his chest.
“Aye. Everybody’ll be there.”
“Then we shouldn’t be late. Too late.”
“I can see to that, as long as ye dunnae hold it against me later.”
Temperance laughed. “Out, out, brief candle.”
Coll narrowed his eyes, unable to stop his grin. “Oh, stop that right there.”
Shifting, he set her on her knees to lift her pretty borrowed yellow and red muslin up over her hips, then shoved his kilt aside. The sight of her dismissing her parents like a queen had already aroused him, and with her kissing him like that and squirming about on his lap now, he was damned ready for her.
“Come here, lass.”
She sank down over him, moaning as she took him in. When she put her hands on his shoulders and began bouncing, Coll grabbed hold of her hips, thrusting up to meet her. This was what mattered: the two of them, together. Not where they lived or whether she spent her nights on a stage for a few months of the year. Hell, he’d go see her every night.
“Coll,” she rasped, arching her back, clinging to him as she came.
He let himself go over with her, filling her as he pushed hard inside her. “Temperance Hartwood,” he breathed, when he could speak again. “Temperance MacTaggert.”
She smiled a bit breathlessly. “I love you, Coll. Just you being with me, it makes me … more than I was. I don’t know how to say it, but I … I never thought I would be this happy.”
“That sounded fine to me. Tha mi airson a bhith còmhla riut an-dràsta,” he said for the second time.
“Now tell me what it means,” she breathed, kissing him again.
“It means ‘I want to be with ye right now,’” he translated. “An-còmhnaidh. That means ‘always.’”
“An-còmhnaidh,” she repeated, her accent startlingly good. “It’s what I want, as well.”
“M’laird? Breakfast is served,” Smythe’s voice came, muffled through the door. “Lady Aldriss has requested your presence.”
“Of course she has.”
“She helped us, Coll. And she accepted me even before she knew I wasn’t Persephone Jones.”
Aye, she had. And she’d told him some things that bore thinking about—and a few questions he wanted his father to answer. If he’d discovered one thing through falling for Temperance, it was that when two strong people met, one of them had to bend. And bending didn’t mean losing. It only meant finding a different path.
“Let’s find some food, then,” he drawled, helping her to her feet and settling the skirt back around her ankles.
When they reached the breakfast room, though, neither of his parents were inside. The rest of the family, though, stood huddled about the countess’s carefully ironed edition of the London Times.
“Did you see this?” Eloise asked, shaking the newspaper. “‘The audience could only sit, transfixed, while Lady Aldriss’s box spewed Scotsmen over the side and another Highlander, Lord Glendarril himself, charged onto the stage, kilt akimbo, to fling actors about like chess pieces.”
“I barely flung anyone,” Coll retorted. “I shoved Montrose aside, mayhap.”
“Hush. ‘And then the Queen of Scotland revealed herself to be not one Mrs. Persephone Jones, but Lady Temperance Hartwood! This witness was heartily entranced by the magnificence of it all. The only shame was that Macbeth was prevented from uttering his famed closing soliloquy. Perhaps, though, tomorrow.’”
“We were magnificent,” Niall echoed with a loose grin. “I wouldnae say we spewed from the box, but Aden and I did vault over the side. I nearly landed on Lady Darlington’s hat.”
“I am so sorry I ever had a single uncharitable thought about you, Temperance,” Eloise said, setting aside the paper to throw her arms around Coll’s betrothed. “My brothers spent the evening vaulting over things while wearing kilts, and I’ve already been invited to two additional parties this morning.”
“Just ye keep in mind we’re nae going to be so acrobatic every time we go somewhere,” Aden cautioned, laughing.
“I’ve been thinking,” Coll’s sister went on. “You could marry at the same ceremony with Matthew and me, Coll. As long as you say your ‘I do’s’ first, the agreement will have been honored.”
He flung some food on a pair of plates and sat beside his sister, his lass on his other side. “I dunnae—”
“We wouldn’t dream of it,” Temperance answered before he could. “That is your day. And for heaven’s sake, you’ve had the longest engagement I can remember.”
“We had to make it long enough to give my brothers a chance to find English wives and marry,” his sister returned with a cheeky grin. “In return, I’ve been promised a grand wedding ball, so I am appeased.”
“I’m marrying Temperance as soon as I can ride down to Canterbury and back,” Coll put in. “Tonight, more than likely.”
Lady Aldriss walked into the room. “Weddings are generally performed on Saturdays.”
“Nae mine.”
Temperance cleared her throat. “Charlie’s put off tonight’s performance so he can find someone to learn Clive’s lines,” she said, her gaze on Coll. “So … I’m available.”
Lady Aldriss sighed. “I’ll send word to Father Thomas, then.” She put her hands behind her back, then around to the front, twisting them a bit. Something was biting at her.
“What did ye want to tell us?” he prompted.
“Yes, that.” She took another breath. “Forgive the timing, but your father has something to say to all of you.”
With a heavy-looking wooden box in his hands, Angus MacTaggert followed her into the breakfast room. “Lads, I did what I did so ye’d grow up strong and independent and nae willing to bow to any lass and her opinions,” he said without preamble.
The countess cleared her throat.
“That being said,” he went on, “I reckon I overreacted to yer màthair leaving us behind. The letters ye wrote her, begging her to return, I didnae send them on to her.” Opening the box, he removed a stack of letters bound with twine, and set them on the table.
Coll scowled. She’d said as much, but he hadn’t quite believed her. Or rather, he’d preferred to believe the version with which he’d grown up—that she had a cold heart and had happily left them all behind, never to return. “Ye lied to us.”
“Aye, I did. For yer own good. Or so I reckoned.” The earl drummed his fingers on the lid of the wooden box. “And she sent ye a letter or two, and I didnae pass them on to ye, for the same reasons.”
“‘A letter or two?’” Lady Aldriss quoted, lifting an eyebrow, her arms folded across her chest.
“Bah.” Lifting up the box, he dumped out its contents. Letters fell to the table. A hundred, if not more, covered the surface and spilled to the floor. “There. It was me and my damned pride. Make of it what ye will. I’m nae going to apologize for making ye grow up to be who ye are, three lads of whom any man would be proud.” With that, he put the box beneath his arm, turned on his heel, and left the room.
Aden leaned out of his chair to pick up a letter from the floor beside him. “Niall, this one’s for ye,” he said, flipping it at their youngest brother, who caught it against his chest.
“Those letters don’t excuse one thing,” Francesca said quietly, lowering her arms again. “I waited for your father to invite me to return, to visit you—or better yet, to announce that he couldn’t manage raising the three of you and that he needed me back. I should simply have gone. I should have gone to see my sons, and I didn’t, because as proud as Angus is, I am just as guilty.” She gestured at the sliding stack of correspondence. “As your father said, make of this what you will. I just wanted you to know that for all those years we were apart, I did—and I do—love you. All four of you, all seven of you, all soon-to-be eight of you.”
A tear rolled down Temperance’s cheek as the countess slipped out of the room again, closing the door behind her. The servants had all exited as well, no doubt at one of her secret signals. All the lasses, in fact, had begun weeping. Coll pushed back his chair.
“I reckon the lesson at the end of all this,” he said slowly, knowing his brothers would follow his lead, “is that all of us have managed to find someone to love us, mad as we are. I’ll take that with me, along with the promise that my own bairns willnae grow up with two parents too stubborn to find the center of the argument, that being the fact that they love each other.”
Temperance stood up beside him. “You are a good man, Coll,” she said quietly, going up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. “I am lucky to have found you.”
“I reckon he found ye when he was running away from two other lasses,” Aden said, not bothering to hide his grin.
“Dunnae step on my moment,” Coll retorted, taking Temperance—his stubborn, smart, beautiful lass—around the waist and kissing her.
“Speaking of moments,” Niall said, pushing to his feet, “I think I should tell ye that Amy and I are—”
“Nae,” Coll interrupted, grinning. “My moment. Our moment.” Lifting Temperance in the air, he looked up at her as she chuckled breathlessly, her hands on his shoulders for balance. “I love ye, lass.”
“An-còmhnaidh,” she returned, smiling down at him, tears in her sky-blue eyes. “Always.”