Page 7 of Too Scot to Handle
“The gallant swains are merely being polite, as am I when I accept their flattery. You have younger brothers, am I correct?”
“Three, each one taller, louder, and hungrier than the last. The French Army at its plundering worst couldn’t ravage the countryside as thoroughly as those three when they’re in the mood for a feast.”
What would that be like? To have younger siblings? People to condescend to and look out for?
“You miss them, Lord Colin. I can hear it in your voice and see it in your eyes.”
The MacHughs whom Anwen had met—Hamish, Edana, Rhona, and Colin—were red-haired and blue-eyed. Anwen’s hair wasn’t red, it was orange. Bright, brilliant, light-up-the-night-sky, flaming, orange.
Her male cousins had dubbed her the Great Fire when she was six years old.
Lord Colin’s hair was darker than his brother’s, shading toward Titian, and his eyes were a softer blue—closer to periwinkle than delphinium. Helena Merton would fancy herself in love with those eyes, while her mama was likely enthralled with the family title—a Scottish dukedom, no less—and the settlements.
“I miss my siblings,” Lord Colin said. “I miss home, I miss wearing clothes that don’t nearly choke a man if he wants to exert himself beyond a plodding stroll. I miss tramping over the moors with my fowling piece, and I sorely miss the smell of the wort cooking in the vats.”
Did he miss a young lady who remained back in Scotland longing for him?
“Be patient another two months or so, and you can return to your Highlands, your distillery, and your sheep, or whatever else you’re pining for.”
To look at Lord Colin, Anwen would never have suspected he was homesick. He had a ready smile, and his manner was a trifle flirtatious. A dimple cut a deep groove on the left side of that smile and made his features interesting. Everything else was in gentlemanly proportion, though his nose was a touch generous, while that dimple pulled his expression off center, in the direction of roguish.
When Frederica and Amanda Fletcher wheeled past, their brother at the ribbons of their barouche, Anwen lifted her hand in a more extravagant wave.
“My thanks,” Lord Colin muttered, as he guided the horses to the leafy beauty of Hyde Park in springtime. “Those two hunt as a pair, and a man can’t dance with just the one sister, he must stand up with each in turn. Now that Hamish has gone off on his wedding journey, I’m the only escort Edana and Rhona have, so I’m always on picket duty.”
A military term, though Mayfair’s ballrooms were hardly battlegrounds. “You served in Spain.”
“And in Portugal, France, the Low Countries. War is in some ways quite simple. Your equipment is a gun, a bedroll, and a few cooking implements, all of which you keep in good repair. You shoot at the fellows wearing enemy uniforms. You don’t shoot at anybody else. Makes for a pleasing sense of order. London in springtime is a regular donnybrook by comparison. I considered it my job to guard Hamish’s back, but now your sister has taken that post.”
Lord Colin reminded Anwen of herself in her third season. The first season was all excitement and adventure. Even if marriage wasn’t an immediate objective, it was at long last a possibility. In her second season, she’d enjoyed not being a debutante, not being so giddy and nervous.
In her third season, she’d started dressing for comfort instead of display, and learned that sore feet, a megrim, a head cold, all had their places on a young lady’s spring calendar.
Now, she simply endured, but for her work at the orphanage, which might soon close its doors for want of coin.
“You abhor idleness,” Anwen said as the press of carriages required the team to slow to a walk. “Is that because you’re in trade?”
The question was bold, but not quite rude between in-laws.
“I am, indeed, in trade.” Lord Colin sounded pleased about it too. “I gather some people expect me to sell my distillery and pretend I’m content to raise sheep. Hamish was given to understand that his breweries are also not quite the done thing for a duke. Good luck getting him to give up profitable enterprises.”
“Orphanages are not profitable.”
Lord Colin turned the phaeton onto a less crowded path, and the relative quiet was bliss. Anwen loved the boys, loved taking a hand in running the House of Urchins, but her time there today had left her frustrated.
And worried.
“Regarding profitable enterprises, I am in favor of wee hands doing wee tasks,” Lord Colin said, “but using children for the production of coin on a significant scale will never meet with my approval.”
His burr thickened when he spoke in earnest. When he and his brother had a difference of opinion, Anwen could hardly understand them.
“You don’t employ children?”
“Of course I employ children. The tiger, the boot boy, the scullery maid—”
“No, I mean in your whisky-making business. Do you employ children in your business?”
“Nobody under the age of fourteen, and not in quantity. Why?”
