Page 10 of Too Scot to Handle
“That’s what it feels like for my team when I release the check rein, and let the horses know that for a short time, they’re off duty. For five minutes, they can relax, grab a snack, rest mentally and physically, before getting back to work.”
Miss Anwen raised her head, but didn’t put her bonnet back on. “I tell Mr. Hitchings the boys need to get out. They can’t sit in a classroom hour after hour and be expected to attend much of anything. They’re children, not monastic scholars training to be anchorites.”
Colin withdrew his hand—he’d made his point. “And if the boys don’t get out, they’ll become querulous, and then Hitchings will punish them for squabbling and for lack of attention to their studies. Where did you find this old besom? He sounds like every grown man’s worst boyhood nightmare.”
“Mr. Montague said Hitchings was quite a bargain, for the salary we’re paying him.”
“Winthrop Montague?”
“He’s the vice-chairman of the board, and Lady Rosalyn serves on my ladies’ committee.”
This interconnectedness of all parts of polite society was something like the army, or Highland clans. Everybody knew everybody, and that was sometimes a good thing.
Though not always. “I’m acquainted with Win Montague,” Colin said. “If he claims Hitchings was a bargain, then Hitchings was a bargain.”
Miss Anwen set her bonnet back on her head, and Colin wanted to snatch it away and toss it into the bushes.
“How do you know Mr. Montague, Lord Colin?”
“We served together, both captains.” Though that was years ago. Colin had passed through London a few times since mustering out, and once even called on Win, though Win hadn’t been home at the time. “Montague has been helpful, acquainting me with what’s expected of a titled gentleman of means.”
Miss Anwen tied her bonnet ribbons and slipped on her gloves. “And acquainting you with Lady Rosalyn?”
Colin wanted to pitch her knowing smile into the bushes too. “Yes.”
Lady Rosalyn Montague was a vision in blonde, blue-eyed pastels. Her movements were elegant, her laughter warm, her dancing made a man feel as if no one had ever partnered a woman more gracefully.
Colin liked to watch her, but he didn’t enjoy watching other men fawn over her. She expected the fawning, which brought Anwen’s earlier comment to mind: You simply made money off my ambitions.
Lady Rosalyn earned smiles off a man’s ambitions, though to be fair, she dispensed smiles as well—with interest of a sort Colin didn’t quite grasp but knew he would never pay.
“Lady Rosalyn is a friend,” Miss Anwen said. “She made her come out two years after I did, and is in every way an estimable individual. You would make a very attractive couple.”
That remark should be sent not into the bushes, but rather, tossed straight into the depths of the Serpentine.
“Don’t do that,” Colin said, passing the reins over and climbing down again. “Don’t treat me as if I’m some orphan bachelor because I’m wealthy and new to polite society. I like Lady Rosalyn well enough, but if it came down to a night of waltzing with her, or cards with my brothers…”
“Yes?”
He fiddled with the check reins, leaving them a few holes looser than was strictly fashionable.
“I’d leave the ball early. I’m not looking to get married, Miss Anwen. Not yet. Someday, of course. But not…Hamish has been a duke for a matter of weeks, and I can assure you, until the title befell him, I wasn’t considered half of an attractive couple. I was a presuming Scot, in trade, with airs above my station. Now I’m a lord. It unnerves a fellow.”
It also predisposed a fellow to babbling. Colin climbed back into the phaeton, mindful that his tone of voice had caught the attention of his horses.
“Now you know what the ladies put up with year after year,” Miss Anwen said. “We’re seen as nothing more than half of an attractive couple, good breeding stock, decent settlements. Nobody refers to us as gorgeous settlements, even if a lady is an heiress. The highest praise she’ll garner is ‘decent settlements.’ Be patient with the ladies, Lord Colin, for they are very patient with the gentlemen.”
Colin gave the horses leave to walk on, when he wanted instead to offer some teasing, charming remark.
And yet, he could not make light of Miss Anwen’s observation.
He’d watched his sisters over the past few months. Edana and Rhona had looked forward to enjoying the London social season for the first time, thinking to be more spectators than participants. Hamish had stumbled into a ducal title, Edana and Rhona were ladies by association, and enthusiasm had turned from glee, to wonder, to bewilderment, to disappointment.
Was anybody enjoying springtime in London?
“You were explaining to me about interest,” Miss Anwen said, “and about how that could make the orphanage solvent. Please do go on.”
“Right. Interest,” Colin said. “If you’re borrowing money, interest is a cost. If you’re lending money, that interest is a benefit, and that brings us to the topic of endowments.”
