“Here, laddie,” he said, opening his sporran and pulling out the biscuit he’d stolen from the kitchen earlier. “Do ye favor a trade?” Squatting, he held the biscuit out in his hand.
The long-snouted dog edged forward, tail down, pointed ears flattened, and boot in his mouth. Whoever he was, he hadn’t been treated kindly on the streets of London. Aden could sympathize with that.
“Grab him, Aden,” Coll urged.
Aden ignored his brother. Coll always favored a scrap, even when a gentler hand would serve a situation better. The dog dropped the boot, stretching forward with a slightly sideways cant, one eye twitching as if it expected to be struck. “Only cowards beat animals,” Aden soothed, holding his hand and the biscuit steady and outstretched. “Ye’ve nae a thing to fear from me.”
Ears lifting a little, the dog clamped its teeth over the edge of the sweet and skittered away, disappearing around the corner in the direction of Hyde Park. With a sigh Aden stretched out to pick up his boot and stood again. Poor wee lad.
When he turned around, Lady Aldriss had her green gaze on him. The woman was clever and knew it, and because she’d managed to get the youngest of the three MacTaggert lads married already, she thought she had them all figured out. But he wasn’t amiable, goodhearted Niall. He was three years older than his twenty-four-year-old brother, and ten times more cynical. He remembered quite well the day their mother had left them behind in Scotland, and how empty and … idiotic he’d felt for months afterward. That was the last time he’d been caught unaware. Hell, he hadn’t led matters with his heart since then.
“What is it ye think ye’ve deciphered, Countess?” he asked aloud, catching his second boot when Gavin tossed it to him and turning for the Oswell House front door.
“I don’t know,” she returned, following him. “I continue to observe.”
“Observe all ye wish, then,” he countered. “I reckon ye’d gain more insight doing that with me in my natural surroundings, which isnae here in London.”
“From the way you and your brothers speak about you, I thought your natural surroundings would be anywhere you might find a table and some cards or dice.”
“Aye. Ye’ve the right of that, then. Ye’ve deciphered me.”
“Aden, d—”
“Nae,” he interrupted, not slowing his retreat. “I’ll do yer bidding and find a wife, because ye’ve nae left any of us a choice. But I’m nae going to sit down for a heart-to-heart chat with ye over tea, màthair.” Over his shoulder he caught sight of Coll’s interested expression. Always looking for trouble, the viscount was. “Forty quid, ye behemoth.”
“I’ll pay ye in a damned minute.”
Padding barefoot into the foyer, Aden passed an affronted-looking Smythe the butler, who’d likely never seen any of Oswell House’s residents without footwear before. Heading upstairs, he freed a necklace made of paste pearls from his coat pocket and hung it over the antlers of Rory, the stuffed deer they’d brought south with them and left on the landing of the main staircase for every exalted Sassenach guest who stepped through the front door to see.
The red deer had been a part of the ridiculous amount of luggage they’d toted from the Highlands with them, because as far as they’d known, all traveling English had a ludicrous number of trunks and bags accompanying them. And they’d wanted to make a ruckus, to demonstrate that they wouldn’t be ruled by some Englishwoman they barely remembered just because she had gold in her purse. When the countess had declared that under no circumstances would Rory be allowed to live in the library as he had up at Aldriss Park, Aden and Coll had set him down on the landing out of pure contrariness.
In the weeks since then the deer had acquired a cravat, a beaver hat, a blue satin skirt, a lambskin glove over one antler tine, earbobs, and various other knickknacks hung over his impressive rack of antlers and muscular frame. The lad looked less than dignified now, but the amusement of dressing him like a disheveled Sassenach had kept Aden, at least, from punching several actual Sassenach.
“Where did you get that?” a female voice asked from the landing above him.
“Rory?” he replied, glancing up at his sister, Eloise. She was the youngest of the MacTaggerts, and the only one of them raised English. She was also the reason her brothers had allowed themselves to be dragged down to London. The eighteen-year-old had gotten herself betrothed, an act that had set their father on his deathbed—where Angus MacTaggert still remained better than a month later according to his frequent letters warning his sons of the treacherous females lying in wait in London—and her three brothers with pretty, English-bride-shaped nooses around their necks.
“No, the necklace,” she corrected, descending the steps to join him. Eloise removed it from the deer’s antler and held it up to examine it. “Oh, they aren’t real, are they?”
“Nae. A lad lost a wager and had to give over whatever he carried in his pockets. I dunnae if they were to be a gift for a lass, or if he tried and she refused them, or if he nicked them from some unsuspecting lady or other.”
“That’s sad, any way you put it.” With a sigh she hung them back on the antler. “Even so, Rory is quite well dressed.”
“Aye. All the other deer in the Highlands would be jealous if they could see him now.” Kissing her on the cheek, he continued up the west-side stairs toward the group of bedchambers given over to him and his brothers. Whatever bother she’d caused them, Eloise was their bairn of a sister and a MacTaggert. She was to be loved and protected, English-raised or not. She’d lost her heart, and hadn’t known about the agreement any more than her three brothers had.
Behind him Eloise cleared her throat. “Thank you for returning in time to attend my luncheon,” she said, and he could almost hear her grimace. “I know you don’t like the idea of having young ladies thrown at you. But they are all my friends. And it’s just food, which you like. There’s no harm in you and Coll joining us.”
Aden slowed. Women were always flinging themselves at him, but since they’d arrived in London it seemed like someone had loaded a catapult full of skirts and bosoms and launched it at his head. Aye, Francesca demanded he wed an English lass, and aye, he’d been looking now for five weeks. Well, not looking as much as he’d been observing with growing cynicism. Fluttering eyelashes and discussions of the weather bored him to tears, but as far as he could tell that was the sum of female Sassenach conversation. Eventually, though, he would have to choose one of them, empty-headed and dainty or not. He did recognize that. The future of Aldriss Park depended on it. But he didn’t have to like it. And he did not. At all. Even Eloise’s friends—the ones he’d met, anyway—had seemed very, very … young. Naive. Dull. Full of naught but polite chatter and lace.
He couldn’t put into a sentence what it was he wanted in a lass, but a bit of fire and boldness would have been nice. Or not nice, which was what he preferred. A lass who wouldn’t lie on her back, wide-eyed and stiff, while he did his “husbandly right” or whatever the proper set called fucking here in London. As for the rest … well, he needed to marry. All he required, he supposed, was a woman who didn’t make him wish to drown himself in the nearest loch.