The Devil Wears Kilts (27 page)

His brother nodded. “Aye. That’s all I wanted t’hear.”

“And I want to hear that ye willnae be brawling tonight. For any reason.”

“Then ye have my word.” Arran sat back, flicking aside the carriage’s curtain to look out at the deepening twilight. “Then we’re not discussing the Sasannach lass?”

“We are nae.”

He couldn’t order Arran to close his eyes to what he saw; after all, he frequently made good use of his brother’s keen observations. If Arran wanted to draw his own conclusions where Ranulf and Charlotte were concerned, no one could stop him. What Ranulf
could
do, though, was keep him from discussing it. And from offering an opinion Ranulf didn’t particularly want to hear.

“And Berling?” Arran asked after a moment.

“I may not agree with ye, but I’m nae a fool. If ye think there’s a chance someone else is involved, I’ll pay attention. But fer God’s sake, next time tell me before ye slip off to confront someone.”

Finally Arran’s smile touched his light blue eyes. “I can do that.”

Once they’d retrieved Myles from Wilkie House, it was only another five minutes until they reached the tail end of the crowd of carriages surrounding Mason House. As they made their way inside, the noise of the street was replaced by the din of hundreds of voices trying to be clever. If anything, the party seemed more crowded than the Evanstone soiree. Perhaps the guests were hoping they would see another fight. That might well be, but neither he nor Arran would be involved with it. Through it all he listened for one voice, one honey-sweet note of sanity in all the chaos.

“Are we allowed to dance?” his brother muttered.

Ranulf damned well hoped so, since the only reason he’d bothered to put on his best clothes had been to claim a waltz with Charlotte. “Aye. But ye’re nae to step on anyone’s toes,” he returned in the same tone. “Literally or figuratively.”

“Berling’s here,” his uncle noted under his breath.

“Just give him a smile,
bràthair
,” Ranulf instructed his brother. “Let him come to his own conclusions.”

“I’m grinning. Not at all sarcastically.”

“Ye’d best nae be.”

He understood that Berling was dangerous. He’d disliked the man and his arrogant, self-serving manner even before the torching of the schools and the wounding of Bear. From that moment on, dislike had become hatred.

Given all that, tonight the earl at most felt like a nuisance. A distraction. Ranulf kept his gaze moving, identifying each guest who crossed his path as someone he’d met or someone he hadn’t. After that, he dismissed them from his thoughts. None of them was the one he was after.

Then he caught sight of her, and time simply … stopped. Close by the double row of windows Charlotte tilted her head, a smile touching her mouth as she handed her dance card to the round fellow, Henning. She looked almost like a Thomas Lawrence painting, so exquisite she was. But no portrait could capture the scent of her, the taste of her, or the way simply seeing her sent warmth searing beneath his skin.

She’d worn red and black, rich and bold and striking against her fair skin and golden hair. He tried not to read anything into the fact that she’d also garbed herself in two of the three colors of the MacLawry tartan, but in seeking every strand that connected her to him, he couldn’t help himself. His fingers curled, wanting to tangle into the soft folds of her skirt and pull her up against him.

“This way,” he said, otherwise not bothering to see if his brother and uncle followed him as he strode forward.

When he was halfway across the room she stilled, then turned to look at him. It might be witchcraft, or it might not. He didn’t care any longer. All he knew was that he wanted her. Immediately.

Before he could reach her, Rowena moved in front of him, blocking his path. “Good evening,
bràthair,”
she said, dipping a curtsy.

With some difficulty Ranulf forced his attention down to his sister, his reason for being in London in the first place. “Ye wore yer birthday gown,” he drawled, taking her hand.

Sometime when he’d lost sight of his sister, when he’d been distracted by tracking her down and by being annoyed that she’d left home without permission, Rowena had stopped being a wee sprite in pigtails who always asked for dresses covered with lace and frills and ribbons. She’d grown up, and in looking at her instead of seeing her, he’d nearly missed it.

“What is it?” she asked, furrowing her brow.

“Ye look very like our mother,” he murmured.

She smiled, sudden tears shining in her eyes. “Do I?”

He studied her face for a moment. “Aye. Only prettier,
piuthar
.”

“That you are,” Myles put in, kissing her on the cheek.

Lord Hest stepped in and offered his hand. Whatever else the earl was, whatever his character, at this moment he was simply another obstacle between Ranulf and Charlotte. “I do think that tonight I’m escorting the four loveliest ladies in London,” the older man announced.

“I’d have to agree with ye,” Ranulf said, shaking the earl’s hand. His future father-in-law, whether Hest would approve of the notion or not.

“Oh, Jonathan,” the countess said with a blush, cuffing her husband lightly on the shoulder.

There. That had to be enough in the way of pleasantries. Pausing his breath, Ranulf slipped around his sister—to find his brother chatting with Charlotte. After Arran’s comments about the Sasannach lass, Ranulf didn’t like what he saw. At all.

“Arran,” he said, moving in, “go write yer name on Rowena’s card.” What good was it being the patriarch of his clan if he couldn’t order others to leave his most precious thing—his obsession—alone?

His brother sent him an unreadable look and strolled over to join Rowena and Jane. Once Arran walked away, Ranulf ceased paying attention to him. “Hello, Charlotte,” he said, reaching out to take her hand and bring it to his lips. It wasn’t enough, and he just barely kept himself from pulling her into his arms.

“Ranulf,” she greeted him, her hazel eyes sparkling brown in the chandelier light.

“I think I may have made a mistake,” he continued, lowering his voice and moving in more closely on the pretext of taking her dance card.

“What sort of mistake?” She sent him a suspicious look, her smile dropping.

“My attraction to ye doesn’t seem to have eased at all. And in that dress ye look more delicious than the apple that tempted Adam.”

Charlotte cleared her throat. “I believe that to be a mutual difficulty, then. Despite my better judgment.”

“Aye, that’s the rub, dunnae ye think? But tonight my better judgment can go hang itself. I want ye, Charlotte.”

“I think you should write your name down beside that dance,” she said a little unsteadily, indicating the second waltz of the evening. “And I want you, too,” she continued in a whisper, her changeable eyes meeting his in that way few other people ever dared.

In that moment he vowed to himself that whatever man she wanted, he would be. It would likely cost him, but if Charlotte was the prize, he would pay the price. Pushing against the ridiculous urge to burst into song or something equally unmanly, he scrawled his name where she indicated. “Take me sightseeing again,
leannan
.”

Her lips parted in a soft smile, and he caught himself leaning down toward her. Propriety was a damned nuisance. But it was what she felt comfortable with, and so he would be patient. Handing her card back, he brushed his fingers against her red, elbow-length gloves.

“How are yer hands?” he asked, annoyed that he hadn’t asked her that immediately. In his defense her appearance had dazzled him, but she’d gotten those blisters on his behalf.

“Much better. In another day or two I daresay no one would ever know I had blisters.”

“I would know.”

“Ah, there you are, dear Lady Charlotte,” a dry voice came from behind him. “Tell me you haven’t given away every dance.”

Thankfully for the sake of his resolve, it wasn’t Berling. But that didn’t actually leave him feeling any better. A tall, fair-haired fellow of about Bear’s age stood there, an easy smile on his face and his body clothed in a well-made dark blue coat that might or might not have had padded shoulders.

“I believe I have a free dance or two remaining, Lord Stephen,” Charlotte replied, then gestured at Ranulf. “Lord Glengask, may I present Lord Stephen Hammond? Lord Stephen, the Marquis of Glengask.”

“You’re the Highlands fellow,” Hammond commented.

“Aye. I am.”

When Hammond offered his hand, Ranulf shook it. That was what gentlemen did. But he didn’t like it, any more than he liked the way Charlotte smiled at the new arrival. The other men with whom she generally danced weren’t much in the way of rivals. This was different. And now that he thought about it, Miss Florence had mentioned something about a Lord Stephen Hammond who’d said she looked like an orange. That didn’t leave him more disposed toward liking the pretty fellow at all.

Back home he would have flat-out asked if this Hammond had done as rumored. And then he would have added some character to his face. It was still tempting; Ranulf could claim to be defending Miss Florence’s honor, while he could at the same time remove Lord Stephen from where he currently stood smiling too prettily at Charlotte.
His
Charlotte—whether he could announce that to all and sundry or not.

“Charlotte, that trouncing you gave me in croquet last year still stings, you know,” Lord Stephen went on with a grin as he took her card and penciled in his name. “I want a rematch.”

“I’m willing to oblige you,” Charlotte returned, “if you don’t fear further humiliation.”

Hammond returned her dance card. “Life is a risk. And I believe he who hesitates is lost.” He sketched a bow. “I must go beg a dance from your lovely sister, now. I’ll claim you later.”

Still grinning, Charlotte watched Stephen make his way over to Jane. She, of course, was already surrounded by eager young men. When Charlotte returned her attention to Ranulf, though, he didn’t look nearly as amused.

“Who is Lord Stephen Hammond?” he asked, glancing from her to her dance card.

“He’s the second son of the Duke and Duchess of Esmond. This is their soiree.” She made the statement as matter-of-factly as possible, hoping Ranulf wasn’t about to begin punching people again. Yes, she liked the idea that he might be jealous. No, she didn’t want him to act on it.

She saw him take a breath. “Then I suppose he’s allowed to ask a dance of the bonniest lass in the room,” he said.

Oh, thank goodness.
Just when she thought she had him figured out, he surprised her again. “You exaggerate, but thank you for saying so.”

“The only thing I ever exaggerate aboot is the size of the fish I nearly caught. Ye’re Aphrodite,
leannan
. Ye take my breath away.”

That was very nice of him to say. In fact, she would have been quite content to just stand and listen to the sound of his voice for the rest of the evening. For the rest of her life, really. But then she noticed her father looking at the two of them, his expression less than pleased. “You have to go talk to someone else,” she whispered regretfully. “People will begin to think you’re courting me.”

“Ah. And what if I am?” he returned.

Before she could decipher the explosion of … everything that rattled her insides at his words, he gave her a jaunty grin and strolled over to disrupt the crowd around his sister.
Did he mean it?
He couldn’t possibly, with what he clearly believed about the unsuitability of English ladies to the Highlands. So was he merely teasing her? And if they were so wrong for each other, why did those few words make her feel so … excited?

“I don’t suppose ye have a jig left fer a poor stranger, do ye?” Ranulf’s brother said, appearing on her other side.

“No jigs, but I do have a country dance,” she returned, looking up into his pale blue eyes, very different from both Ranulf’s and Winnie’s.

“I reckon that’ll do, unless Ran chases me off again.” He wrote his name beside the next dance as the orchestra played the last few notes of a quadrille. “Why do ye think he’d do such a thing, my lady?”

Perhaps Arran MacLawry wasn’t quite as good-humored and easygoing as she’d thought. Ranulf had said the middle brother was the clever one. “You would have to ask him,” she said, then put a smile back on her face. “It was good of you to come down to London. I think your brother feels more comfortable having you here.”

Arran inclined his head. “I think my brother keeps his own counsel, but it’s kind of ye to say it, anyway.” With a glance in Ranulf’s direction, he moved off toward the refreshment table.

Before she could ponder what any of that meant, several of her friends arrived to chat about the crush around them and to compliment her dress and her hair. Elizabeth Martin had come out the same year that she had, and Margaret Cooper the year after. Both of them were married, Elizabeth with three children, and Margaret with a boy and a girl. At times she’d envied them for choosing husbands who didn’t see being laughed at as a murderworthy offense, for finding the lives they’d wanted and managing to hang on to them where she hadn’t.

Now, though, as she looked from Mr. Martin with his self-important preening and Lord Roger Cooper with his too tight waistband to the magnificent Lord Glengask laughing at something his sister said, she wondered for the first time if things didn’t happen for a reason. Yes, she would have been perfectly content with James Appleton, and she would have lived a happy and perfectly predictable life.

Immediately that question pushed into the front of her mind again. Why had Ranulf jested about courting her? Or if for some reason he wasn’t teasing, did she want a life with him when it would entail danger and violence and threats both from her own kind and from his fellow Scots? Charlotte shook herself. Everything she knew about him, both through her own observations and in conversations with Winnie, said he wasn’t serious. Therefore she didn’t need to decide. She didn’t need to choose between him and what was fast becoming a dull, predictable, and yet supremely safe life.