Page 79 of Too Scot to Handle
“Don’t be daft,” the duke said, rising. “You will take his lordship and Rosecroft, as well as three of my largest footmen, and the Windham town coach. Half the thieves in London probably got wind of this party, and are lurking among Her Grace’s hedges to waylay you. A man who’s hungry enough will steal from orphans. We don’t have to make that crime easier to commit.”
The duke shook hands all around, and Colin was soon ensconced in a capacious crested coach with a small fortune and Win Montague’s small-mindedness. Rosecroft had chosen to ride up on the box, and Colin might have joined him except for the covetousness he’d seen in Montague’s eyes as the jewels had been counted.
“I had a private chat with Miss Anwen,” Montague said as the coach pulled out of the mews.
Colin had seen them walking out to the terrace, and he’d seen Anwen return to the ballroom alone not ten minutes later. He hadn’t found time to ask her about the conversation.
“Is your discussion any of my business?”
“I’m making it your business, MacHugh. The lady admitted that you’ve pressed her to accept your addresses. That is the height of bad form, and I expect better from even you.”
Ach well, then. Whatever else was true about this private chat Montague was so fixed on, Anwen had let the fool live. Colin took his inspiration from her gracious example.
“I trust you will enlighten me regarding particulars of my bad form,” Colin said, “as you have so generously done on many previous occasions.”
Montague propped his foot on the velvet-cushioned bench opposite him. “Anwen can’t put you in your place, you idiot, because of the family connection, and because she must face you across a conference table every time she attends one of our meetings. The orphanage means a lot to her, and her family means even more. If she tells you to pike off, as she ought, then she creates awkwardness on every hand. A shy little mouse like Miss Anwen can’t do that.”
A shy little mouse, who’d told Colin to pike off for the sake of the boys, the first time he’d threatened their well-being. Montague was lucky Anwen hadn’t parted his cock from his cods.
“So you’re running me off on her behalf?”
“I will make it plain to the lady that she has options, MacHugh, plainer than I already have. Let me make something else plain to you.”
In the dim light of the coach lamps, Montague’s complexion was sallow, and fatigue grooved his features. His golden good looks would soon give way to a saturnine countenance, if the French disease didn’t do worse than that.
“Do go on,” Colin said.
“I am chairman of the board of directors for the House of Wayward Urchins,” Montague said. “The building is rotten with rising damp, and by rights should be condemned. The safety and comfort of the children must be my foremost concern, and if you continue to bother Miss Anwen with your rutting presumptions, I’ll have the building razed to the ground. Every effort will be made to find other accommodations for the children, but the boys would be safer in the streets than at a ruin of an orphanage.”
Montague was concerned with the safety and comfort of only one person—himself. That he’d try to come between Colin and Anwen was merely selfish and arrogant. That he’d threaten the well-being of children to effect his claim was vile.
“You’d put the children back on the street, if I paid my addresses to Anwen Windham?”
“Go back to Scotland,” Montague said. “She doesn’t want you, and neither does anybody else. I have tried to be decent where you’re concerned, but you don’t fit in, you’re not welcome, and you impose on the good graces of your betters every day you remain in London.”
The cold, calculating temper Colin had relied on to see him safely through battle rose, and stayed his hand when he might have slapped a glove across Montague’s face.
“Your advice, as always, bears consideration. I am touched, Montague, at the tenderness of your regard for innocent children. I’m sure Miss Anwen would be too. I take it you intend to offer her marriage?”
Winthrop expelled a gusty sigh that bore the rank scent of overimbibing.
“One doesn’t march up to a gently bred woman and haul her off to the altar. Even you knew to start with a request to pay the lady your addresses. I will observe every jot and tittle of protocol, lest any think less of Miss Anwen for seizing hastily on the first proper offer to come her way.”
“And what about Mrs. Bellingham?”
“None of your bloody business, though you’ll stay the hell away from her too, MacHugh.”
Colin had known the building was a problem, and he’d given Anwen his word he’d keep the children safe. That wasn’t a new challenge. If Winthrop had the orphanage condemned, then the time to ensure each boy was in a situation suited to him was being ripped away.
That was a problem because these boys had been tossed about too much already in their young lives. The idea that Winthrop Montague would pitch the children into the street if Anwen refused his proposal was arrogance of a magnitude that eclipsed mere sin and flirted with evil.
“You’re not smitten with Miss Anwen,” Colin said after the coach had rattled along for some minutes. “Why marry her?”
Montague smiled, and such was the smug self-satisfaction in his eyes that he should have been tasting the air with a forked tongue.
“The poor dear has to marry somebody, as do I. Our kind grasp what marriage is and is not about. I don’t expect you to understand, but I’m doing you a favor, MacHugh. You’d make her miserable and regret the match within a year.”
Colin let that masterpiece of self-deception remain unanswered. Montague had at some point come to believe his own handbills regarding the privileges of his station. Whatever he wanted, he was entitled to have, even a woman who’d shown no interest in him. Whatever he believed became fact, despite any evidence contradicting such a contention.
