Page 4 of Too Scot to Handle
“I do not indulge in polite fictions.”
The hell she didn’t. “Anwen, when I see you among your family, you are the most quiet, demure, retiring, unassuming facsimile of a spinster I’ve ever met. Now I chance upon you without their company, and you are far livelier. You steal birch rods, for example.”
She looked intrigued rather than insulted. “You accuse me of thievery?”
“Successful thievery. I’ve wanted to filch the occasional birch rod, but I lacked the daring. I’m offering you a compliment.”
If he complimented her gorgeous red hair—more fiery than Colin’s own auburn locks—or her lovely complexion, or her luminous blue eyes—she’d likely deliver a scathing set down.
Once upon a time, before Colin’s family had acquired a ducal title, Colin had collected both set downs and kisses like some men collected cravat pins. Now he aspired to be taken for a facsimile of a proper lordling, at least until he could return to Perthshire.
“You admire my thievery?” Miss Anwen asked, pausing at the top of the front stairs.
“The boys will thank you for it, provided the blame for the missing birch rod doesn’t land on them.”
Miss Anwen had an impressive scowl. “Hitchings is that stupid. He’d blame the innocent for my impetuosity and enjoy doing so. Drat and dash it all.”
She honestly cared about these scapegrace children. How…unexpected. “We’ll have the birch rod returned to wherever you found it before we leave,” Colin said. “Hitchings merely overlooked it when he left the schoolroom.”
“Marvelous! You have a capacity for deception too, Lord Colin. Perhaps I’ve underestimated you.”
“Many do,” Colin said, escorting her down the steps.
He suspected many underestimated Miss Anwen too, because for the first time in days, he looked forward to doing the lordly pretty before all of polite society.
And before Miss Anwen.
* * *
“What news, Tattling Tom?” Dickie asked, pushing his hair out of his eyes.
As far back as they’d been mates, Rum Dickie had been asking for the news, and as best as Thomas could recollect, the news had always been bad.
“Hitchings will leg it in June,” Thomas said, which came close to being good news.
“So we’re for the streets by summer?” Dickie used a length of wire to twiddle the lock on the door, then hid the wire among the books gathering dust on the shelves.
Wee Joe kept his characteristic silence. He was a good lad, always willing to stand lookout. Because of his greater size, he was also willing to take on the physical jobs such as boosting a fellow over the garden wall or putting up with Hitchings’s birchings.
“Miss Anwen is worried,” Tom replied, trying to condense what he’d overheard outside the classroom. “Not enough funds to keep us fed, and Hitchings hasn’t got any useful ideas about where to get more blunt.”
Wee Joe remained by the window—the detention room had the best view of the alley, proof that Hitchings was an idiot. If you wanted to shut a boy in so he’d sit on his arse and contemplate his supposed sins, you didn’t provide him a nice view from a window with a handy drainpipe two feet to the right.
“Joe, come away from there,” Dickie said. “We’re supposed to be memorizing our amo, amas, amats.”
Joe pointed out the window, so Tom joined him.
“Cor, Joey. That’s a prime rig.” Not only did the phaeton have spanking yellow wheels, the couple on the bench looked like they came straight off some painting of Nobs Taking the Air.
“Miss Anwen got herself a flash man,” Dickie marveled.
Joe scowled ferociously.
“That’s Bond Street tailoring, Joe,” Dickie said, “and the best pair in the traces Tattersalls has seen this year. Spanish, I’d say, not Dutch nags.”
The gent got the phaeton turned about in the alley—no mean feat—and the team went tooling on their way.
“Haven’t seen him before.” Tom was the designated intelligence officer in the group—Miss Anwen’s description of him—and he prided himself on keeping track of names and faces.
