Page 85 of Too Scot to Handle
Anwen tousled Dickie’s hair, and for once the other boys kept their elbows to themselves.
“Madam, if you could spare me a few minutes?” Colin asked.
“We’ll be back,” Anwen said. “I want to show the boys the pirate’s treasure that resulted from the card party.”
A good idea, because what the children could see, they’d believe.
Colin stole a quick kiss in the corridor, and Anwen stole a not-so-quick kiss too.
“We have to talk,” Colin said. “I gather Montague made a pest of himself last night?”
“Not here,” Anwen said, “and I left Lady Rosalyn waiting in the coach. She’s quit the committee, by the way. I’ll get around to telling the boys that if they bring it up.”
“She is the least of our problems,” Colin said, leading Anwen across the corridor into an empty classroom. Not a single lamp had been lit, so the space was gloomy, chilly, and quiet. “I sent her on her way, and told her I’d take you home. What happened between you and Montague last night?”
“He acted very oddly,” Anwen said, rubbing her arms and pacing between the desks. “He attempted to flirt, which was pathetic, and when I told him you’d asked to pay your addresses, he became quite toplofty.”
A euphemism for the ages, no doubt. “I promise not to call him out, love.”
“Thank you. A lady does worry.”
Anwen had male cousins, and thus she still looked worried.
Colin had sisters, and he had Anwen. “I won’t even invite him into the ring at Jackson’s Salon,” he said, stalking closer to her. “I won’t provoke him or any of his toadies into calling me out.” He came to a halt immediately before her. “I won’t disappoint you, Anwen. The children are depending on us.”
Her shoulders relaxed and she slipped her arms around him. For a moment, Colin simply held her, telling her without words that she wasn’t alone with whatever challenges she faced.
And neither was he. The realization warmed his heart as no drinking party with the fellows ever could.
“Winthrop Montague is a disgrace,” Anwen said, resting her cheek against Colin’s chest. “He expressed dismay that you’d consider offering for me, not because you have wealth, a title, good looks, and charm in abundance, while I’m the least impressive Windham ever to make her bow. He was wroth with you for poaching on his preserves.”
His preserves. To Winthrop Montague, anything he desired was or should be his. Colin’s heart belonged to Anwen, but she was very much her own person. How could even Montague not see that?
“Did you laugh at him?” A humiliated Winthrop Montague was a dangerous creature.
“His plan was to inform you that he’d beat you past the post, as it were, and was already courting me. You were to decamp in the interests of gentlemanly honor, and Mr. Montague could congratulate himself on earning my undying gratitude as well as my settlements merely by lifting his eyebrow and waving you off. I found that disgusting rather than amusing, Colin. Is he daft?”
Colin could feel the anger in her, and not a little bewilderment, but worse—why had he promised not to beat the idiot to a pulp?—fear.
Anwen was afraid, and as arrogant as Montague was, as influential as he could be, her fear was understandable.
“Montague is everything detestable about the wealthy aristocrat,” Colin said, “writ in a large, sloppy hand. He told me if I persist in courting you, he’ll have this building condemned. I’m to run back to Scotland and stay there, lest I make you miserable for the rest of your days. By marrying you, Montague is doing me a favor. He assured me of this, even as he threatened to pitch the boys back into the slums.”
Maybe Colin ought not to have shared that last bit, about doing him a favor, because Anwen went ominously still.
“Put out his lights, Colin. Persuade Mrs. Bellingham to serve him the cut direct at the fashionable hour. Break his perfect nose in three places—oh, what am I saying? That would set no kind of example for the boys. Can he have the building condemned?”
Everything in Colin wanted to offer platitudes and reassurances, though Anwen would skewer him for doubting her fortitude.
“His father is an earl, Anwen, and the other wing is in poor condition. We must assume Winthrop’s threat is sincere, and be about finding homes for the children.”
She shifted, dropping her forehead against his sternum, a posture of weariness, but not defeat. “I was afraid you’d say that. I hate to think of them having to part from each other, and I just promised them their home is secure.”
“We’ll make our plans, and hope that Winthrop is bluffing. We’ll have to say something to Moreland, though.” Colin would send a pigeon to Hamish as well.
“Uncle Percy has given you permission to court me. What is there to say?”
“Montague will mispresent the situation to your uncle, claim I was toying with your affections, that you’d given him reason to hope, that a woman deserves a choice. He’s devious, and I don’t put much past him.”
