Page 52 of Too Scot to Handle
“I am drunk on the pleasure of your company,” she said, quite briskly. “You argued with me at the orphanage, Colin. Went figuratively toe to toe with me. Nobody has paid me that compliment since I was six years old. You don’t treat me as if I’m a porcelain shepherdess perched too near the edge of the mantel, and that makes me happy.”
He had no idea what she was going on about, but she was either able to hold her cordial, or exercise restraint around an open bottle. Regardless, he approved. A wife who was too fond of drink, no matter how lovely, sweet, delightful, and passionate, would always cause a man worry.
Colin kissed Anwen, and the closeness necessitated by that liberty meant he caught a whiff of her, up close, where she was warm and well-endowed. Her lemony fragrance acquired a spicy undertone, much as Colin’s falls acquired a snugness.
A wife who greeted her husband like this, who listened to him, who saw him honestly, who took his troubles to heart, such a wife would be…
Wife.
Husbands had wives. For the first time, Colin envied them that good fortune. “Hamish and Megan are happy with each other,” Colin said, “and I know they had their differences. He’s deliriously happy. I’ve never seen Hamish so happy. He glows with it. He laughs, he—”
Anwen’s fingers had gone still. “Megan too. I watched her walk up the church aisle on her wedding day, and I wondered, what fools, what blind idiots, said my sister was plain? She’s never been plain, and to Hamish MacHugh she never will be.”
A certainty took possession of Colin’s heart, a knowing born of instinct, but also of sense and experience. Anwen Windham was different, special, and precious. For a long moment, he simply held her, savoring a sense of peace where all had been frustration and tumult before.
“I’d like to ask you something, Anwen.”
She rested her head against his shoulder, the weight of her in his arms exceeding even perfection, and achieving a sense of completion.
“Ask me anything. I’ll argue with you if we disagree.”
That pleased her, so it pleased Colin. “Would you think me very forward if I requested permission from Moreland to pay you my addresses? Please be honest, because with you, I want no posturing, no prevaricating to spare me embarrassment. I’m known to be precipitous, but that’s not truly my nature. I can be patient, it’s just that—”
“Yes, I would think you forward.”
Well, all right, then. Colin’s heart sank, but he couldn’t blame her. They hadn’t known each other long, and her family had much more consequence than his. He’d bear up, somehow, under a disappointment that made his earlier foul language look like casual remarks in the church yard.
“I would think you forward,” Anwen said, “and I would approve heartily of your initiative. I am so blessed sick of wasting each spring on the company of men I cannot esteem, and I esteem you ferociously, Colin MacHugh.”
That was…that was a yes. That was permission to court, and a lady did not grant permission to court unless she was mightily impressed with a fellow.
“Are you sure, Anwen? Are you very, very sure?”
She scooted around, so she was facing him. “I’m very, very sure, and the door is very, very locked.”
Chapter Ten
In the words of countless gentlemen, Lady Rosalyn Montague was lovely, not merely pretty. The matchmakers had bestowed the usual appellations upon her—diamond of the first water, incomparable, jewel of the haute ton—but Rosalyn secretly preferred the nom du guerre given to her by the wallflowers.
The Problem. As in, “There goes the Problem,” and, “If it weren’t for the Problem.”
Rosalyn had never meant to be a problem, but when she’d decided Christian charity required her to befriend the merely pretty, the poor dears had resented her. The gentlemen had flocked to Rosalyn’s side as she’d whiled away dance after dance among the potted palms. The wallflowers had apparently felt even more ignored with the Problem in all her loveliness sitting in their very midst.
One could but try.
“You have that look about you,” Win said as he entered the library at Monthaven House and went straight to the sideboard. “As if you’ve been too good for too long. Care for a tot?”
He was the best of brothers. “I’ll have a sip of yours.” The housekeeper would know who’d drunk out of the second glass otherwise, and a lady didn’t partake of strong spirits for any reason save medical necessity.
In theory.
Win tossed back a brandy, then refilled the glass and brought it to Rosalyn. “You could have come shooting with Lord Colin and me. Your gracious presence might have spared me an awkward dressing down—an awkward, undeserved dressing down.”
Rosalyn laid out another card, the knave of clubs, which was of no help at all. “Have you been naughty, Winthrop?”
Poor Win fancied Mrs. Bellingham, according to Rosalyn’s maid, who’d gleaned that tidbit from the first underfootman, who’d heard it from Win’s valet. Mrs. Bellingham would be a very expensive frolic.
“How could I be naughty when I am ever a paragon, sister dear?” Win cast himself onto the library sofa and propped his boots on a hassock. “Come sit with me.”
