Hit Me With Your Best Scot (Wild Wicked Highlanders #3) - Suzanne Enoch Page 0,2

them, of course, had been raised to be proper English ladies who could handily oversee a proper household.

Not a one of them, he imagined, had set foot in the Scottish Highlands. Not a one of them would know how to raise good Scots bairns in a wild and rugged land, where peril waited in the deep, still lochs and the silent, brooding forests and the endless rocky hills. God, he missed the Highlands. The idea that he had to wed to please his mother bit at him like a pack of angry badgers. But damn it all, she had hold of the purse strings.

She’d outfoxed her husband, Angus MacTaggert, Earl Aldriss, and kept all of the considerable Oswell fortune in her name and under her control. And before she’d fled the Highlands, she’d made Lord Aldriss sign that paper. That was why Coll had twenty-seven days to find a bride, or Lady Aldriss would cease funding Aldriss Park.

“Excuse me, sir.”

He blinked, swinging around as a petite lass dressed like a peasant of a previous century pranced past him. A stout lad by an unadorned door nodded and stepped aside to let her enter, then took up his guard position once more. “What’ve ye got there?” Coll asked.

“Nothing for the theater guests,” the big man replied. “If you wish to pay your respects to the performers, you can wait at the rear of the theater by the stage door until after the performance.”

Coll didn’t wish to pay his respects to the performers; he’d seen but a minute of the play. What he did want, though, was a place where he could stay out of the rain and think for a damned minute without being plagued by Lady Aldriss or any more of her messengers.

He dug a coin out of his pocket. “What if I’ve a mind to take a look through that door anyway?”

The man glanced down at Coll’s palm. “Then you’d best have more blunt than that. Night before last, I had eleven gentlemen trying to crowd in behind the stage to see Mrs. Jones, and management don’t like that. So the price to get through this door is now two quid.”

“Mrs. Jones?” Coll repeated, ignoring the rest of the jabbering and the outrageous bribery sum being sought. “Who the devil is Mrs. Jones that it costs two pounds to set my peepers on her?”

With a snort, the big fellow folded his arms over his chest. “Either you take me for a fool, or you’re not from around here.”

“I dunnae know if ye’re a fool or nae, lad, but as ye might have guessed, I’m nae from around here.”

“Then Mrs. Persephone Jones is the actress who’s broken half the lordlings’ hearts here in London. She’s onstage now playing Rosalind, so if you go back to your seat, you can take a gander at her yourself.”

Generally, Coll wouldn’t even have considered paying two quid for a gander at a lass. But when his mother had dragged him and his two younger brothers down from the Highlands, she’d made it clear as glass that she was the one who controlled the purse strings, that all the blunt in their pockets was thanks to her. That made the money in his pockets tonight hers, and he had no qualms about spending it with the idea of avoiding her talons.

Putting the one coin away and pulling out two different ones, he pitched them to the door warden. “I reckon I’ll take a gander from behind the stage.”

“Suit yourself, then. But be quiet. If you make any noise in the wings, they will throw you out.”

Coll doubted any man could throw him out of a place where he was inclined to be. His brothers didn’t refer to him as “the mountain” for no reason. He’d reached four inches past six feet a good time ago, and as far as he was concerned, he had the shoulders and strength to match his height. “I’ll be a wee church mouse, then.”

The guard pulled open the door. “Be quick about it. If you get caught, I will say I’ve never seen you before. I’ve no wish to tussle with you, but neither do I want Mr. Huddle sacking me for letting you in here.”

For the briefest of moments, Coll felt a pinch of disappointment that he’d avoided yet another fight. Since he’d arrived in London, he’d fallen into one brawl that hadn’t been any of his doing, taken one punch from his brother Niall that he’d deserved, and