How to Seduce a Scot (2 page)

Her color rose to an even lovelier shade of pink, and he drew her a bit closer—too close it seemed, for he caught Lady Jersey's eagle eye. He felt her censure and knew it was deserved. These English did not seem to know what a waltz was good for—namely for a man to sneak a moment of warmth with the woman in his arms. He reminded himself that he was not at home in the Highlands, nor in Venezuela, nor in a planter's mansion in the West Indies, but in a staid London ballroom, and ought to behave as such. But Alexander clutched his prize for one moment more, breathing in the scent of her hair before forcing himself to relinquish her. The song ended, and his angel stepped away, but not before he caught her hand and laid it on his arm. Now that the dance was done, he would set aside his growing infatuation and return to his original intention.

There was one more way in which he might be of service to her. The fops that called themselves men at that assembly might not dance with her simply because he had done so, but they would have no choice but to accept her if Lady Jersey smiled on her.

“Please allow me the honor of presenting you to her ladyship.”

His angel looked up at him as if trying to read his thoughts from his eyes. Her gaze was frank and unflinching, which only confirmed his suspicion that there was more to admire in this girl than her beauty and her sweetness.

“You cannot present me to anyone,” she said. “You do not know my name, and I see no reason to give it to you.”

Alexander smiled, reveling in the challenge she laid down. “Very well. Since you will not reveal it, let us see if I might discover it another way.”

As much as she enjoyed his touch and his fine, dark eyes, Catherine wondered if she should be annoyed with Mr. Waters's high-handed ways. But just when she thought to become irritated with him in truth, he took her, not to Lady Jersey as he had threatened, but directly to her mother.

“Catherine, there you are at last!” Mrs. Middlebrook said as Alexander Waters returned her relatively unscathed. “And who is this fine gentleman with you? A friend of Miss Waters's, no doubt?”

Mary Elizabeth frowned like thunder. “Ma'am, may I present my brother, Alexander Waters. Alex, this is Mrs. Middlebrook, sweet Catherine's mother.”

Catherine prayed to the Holy Virgin that none of the people close by were listening to the belated introductions, but her mother's voice was a bit strident, and carried far. She felt her hated blush rise again, and wished herself anywhere but where she was.

Mr. Waters seemed to sense something of her pain, for he patted her hand once where it rested on his arm. She felt shored up by the gentle touch. The Scots might not hold with all the proprieties that her grandmother had drilled into her, but they were warmhearted people who seemed genuinely to like her. All of her own people seemed only to ignore her—or to stare at her as if she were a bug on the bottom of their shoe.

“Mrs. Middlebrook, it is an honor to make your acquaintance,” Alexander said. Catherine found herself distracted from her embarrassment once again by the deep, honeyed tones of his voice. “Please forgive me for squiring away your lovely daughter, but I found myself overwhelmed by her beauty and could not resist drawing her into the dance.”

Catherine wanted to reprimand him for saying something so improper, but had lost all ability to speak. She breathed deep, and as her blush began to subside, she sneaked a glance at the virile man beside her. In spite of his audacious behavior and speech, there was something about him that soothed her, though he was truly too large for comfort. For the first time that night, standing beside him, she felt oddly sheltered from the dismissal of the people around her, and even from her mother's haphazard care. She wondered where she might have gotten such a wild notion that she was being protected by a man she had only just met. Perhaps Mary Elizabeth's taste for wild speculation was catching.

“Oh, what is an introduction among decent people of good fortune?” Mrs. Middlebrook asked. Catherine cringed but her mother spoke on. “I am as pleased as I could be to make your acquaintance, Mr. Waters, and that of your lovely sister. We have only been in London a fortnight and have had little society since we arrived. You and your sister are a breath of fresh air.”

Catherine prayed for death, though she knew it would not come. For her mother to reveal their countrified unpopularity to near strangers was one thing, but her voice carried and revealed their situation to every man and woman within ten feet of them. Catherine was not sure, but it seemed to her as if those groups standing closest to her drew back a little, as if her mother's gauche impropriety was a disease that might be catching.

Before her mother could launch into an explanation of Catherine's intentions to marry for money within the next two months—or something else equally damning—Alexander Waters smiled. His masculine beauty was such that even her mother fell suddenly silent.

“With your permission, ma'am, I would like to present you and your daughter to Lady Jersey. She is an old friend of the family, and Mary Elizabeth and I have not yet spoken to her this evening.”

Mrs. Middlebrook almost crowed with triumph. “Lady Jersey herself! How wonderful! I find that my dance card is filled for the next set, Mr. Waters, but if you would be so good as to escort Catherine without me, I would be ever so obliged.”

Catherine's mother caught the eye of a man across the room and winked.

Catherine wished very fervently that the parquet floor beneath her feet would open and swallow her whole. It did not, but Mr. Waters's arm beneath her hand shored her up. He bowed to her mother, then offered his other arm to his sister.

With her mother's good-byes ringing in her ears, Catherine concentrated on walking as calmly as she might while Mr. Waters escorted Mary Elizabeth and herself across the ballroom to Lady Jersey's side. As they faced the august lady, Catherine was grateful that her mother had stayed behind. She straightened her spine and reminded herself of her grandmother's teachings. She was a lady, no matter how unguarded her mother's behavior. Her father had been a gentleman, and if he could glimpse her from his place in heaven in that moment, she would make him proud of her.

Mr. Waters was blessedly silent, not commenting on her mother's behavior as he led her across the room. Mary Elizabeth seemed to wish to distract her, for she did not stop speaking about her new favorite topic—fishing in the burn near her home—until they reached the seat of power and stood at Lady Jersey's feet.

“So, Mr. Waters, it seems you have grown.” Lady Jersey perused the man before her with a smile that did not seem quite proper to Catherine. She was brought out of her own embarrassed misery over her mother's behavior to feel a strange stab of jealousy just below her spleen. But then the moment passed, and Lady Jersey talked of banalities. “I do hope your mother is well. It has been many years since last I had the pleasure of Lady Glenderrin's company.”

“Since we came south when I was fifteen,” Mr. Waters said.

“Indeed. Far too long ago.”

“A mere moment, my lady. You have not aged a day.”

Lady Jersey laughed, then seemed to dismiss him and all his dark-eyed charm.

“This is your sister, Miss Waters. And this young lady must be…”

Mary Elizabeth spoke up. “This is my friend, Miss Catherine Middlebrook. May I have your permission to waltz, my lady?”

Lady Jersey blinked at the sudden onslaught from a girl who should know better than to speak before being spoken to. Catherine held her breath. But the illustrious lady did not stare Mary Elizabeth out of countenance, though it was clear that she was not best pleased. “Of course you may dance, Miss Waters. Any young lady sponsored by the Duchess of Northumberland is a graceful addition to these halls.”

“I thank you, your ladyship. Do you ever fish when you are in the country?”

Seeing Lady Jersey's smile waver, Catherine made her curtsy, tugging less than gently on Mr. Waters's arm. Mary Elizabeth did not pursue her line of questioning but curtsied as well, understanding without being told that in this instance, retreat was the better part of valor. All three stepped away from Lady Jersey, who turned to speak with the next eager girl and her mother who were waiting for an audience.

Catherine had no idea what to say, which was just as well, as Mr. Waters was too busy chastising his sister to notice her. “I thought we agreed that you would not mention fishing in company.”

“Lady Jersey is not company,” Mary Elizabeth said. “She is Mother's friend. Alex, take me to the cake before we go back to the dancing. I'm sure to be asked now that Lady Jersey has smiled at me. The English have their rituals, and God knows we must follow them.”

“One of those rituals, as you put it, is not to discuss fishing in a ballroom.”

“Why ever not? Fishing is one of the best sporting pastimes one might expect to find. Even the English fish, surely.”

Catherine choked on a laugh she was trying to suppress. Mr. Waters caught her eye and smiled wryly, handing both girls glasses of lemonade and slices of dry pound cake. Catherine felt as if the entire room were watching them now. She felt her nerves jump beneath her skin and wondered how she was going to bear it if no other man asked her to dance.

She ate some cake and found that it was not as bad as she had heard it was. She had been on her best behavior before Mr. Waters had drawn her into a waltz, and no other man had approached. Maybe now that she had waltzed and had been presented to Lady Jersey, she might have a bit of success in catching her prey.

Namely, a gentle, titled husband who would take care of her madcap family for the rest of their lives. Her papa had left enough money for her to have one Season, but with her mother's spendthrift ways, that money was drying up already. Catherine needed to be engaged, as quickly as possible, to as gentle and decent a man as she could find.

She met Alexander Waters's warm gaze over her now-empty lemonade glass. The heat in his eyes was neither gentle nor decent.

She set her empty glass down and turned away from him just in time to see Lord Farleigh, a blond gentleman with well-shined shoes, bow low before her.

“Miss Middlebrook, your mother introduced us earlier, if you recall.”

Her mother had all but throttled the gentleman in an effort to get him to dance with her daughter—an effort that had come to nothing.

Until now.

Catherine put Mr. Waters out of her mind and smiled at the man in front of her. “Of course I remember you, Lord Farleigh. Will you take a cup of lemonade with us? May I present my companions, Miss Mary Elizabeth Waters and her brother, Mr. Alexander Waters.”

“Waters of Glenderrin fame? I understand your brother brought in quite a load of timber the last time he came into port.”

Mr. Waters bowed as if the young lord had just offered him a compliment and not cast aspersions on his family's ties to trade. “Nova Scotia has been good to us, and to the whole clan. The lumber is just the beginning. It is the fur trade that really keeps us in gold and land.” The Highlander spoke all of this as if he were proud of it, and accompanied his words with a bland smile. But Catherine saw that his eyes were gleaming.

“You still consider yourselves members of a clan?” Lord Farleigh asked. “How quaint.”

“But true, my lord. No matter how many times the English come to burn the barley, the clans are in the Highlands forever.”

Catherine felt her dread and horror rise up from the ground at her feet. She prayed that Mary Elizabeth would begin her usual talk about highwaymen or fishing—anything to break the silence that seemed to linger in her ears like a curse.

No one mentioned trade in polite society, and no one mentioned the old wars of the last century that had devastated Scotland and left the clans broken, the men who were not dead imprisoned or transported for life. How the Waters family had escaped such a fate, Catherine could not guess. She told herself that she did not want to know, but she felt the keen edge of curiosity slide into her thoughts like a blade. Once the opening was made, she found she could not turn away from her questions about Alexander Waters, his family, and his pride.

But in the next breath, the moment was over, and Lord Farleigh was bowing once more over her hand. “Miss Middlebrook, may I have the honor of this dance?”

A simple quadrille was forming in the center of the floor. Catherine took his hand as if it were a lifeline. She nodded to Mary Elizabeth, ignoring her friend's brother as she turned away. She smiled on the bland, quiet Lord Farleigh as he led her into the dance. Though she wished herself as far from Alexander Waters as she could get, she felt his eyes linger on her long after she had walked away.

* * *

On the carriage ride home, Alex found himself brooding about the angel who had turned her back on him.

Though they had lingered another two hours, Alexander had not asked her to dance again. Instead, he had watched as all the fops and dandies who had been too cowardly or too blind to approach her before now came to her side, offering punch, cake, even to meet their mothers as if she had just appeared among them from her home among the clouds.

The rutting bastards had clearly only stepped up when they'd seen that a real man valued her.

Alex was not sure why, but he was bothered by that girl. She was lovely, but he had seen lovely women before. Her soft, blonde hair had been piled on her head in an unfashionable style, covered with pink rosebuds, a pink ribbon woven through the curls. He did not care for the new fashion of ladies shearing their heads as if they were sheep. When he was in bed with a woman, he wanted her hair covering them both like a curtain of silk, or laid out across his pillow like a spill of sunlight.

Alex caught himself, and realized where his thoughts were tending. He could not bed that girl. Angel or no, she was a virgin meant for marriage, and he was a rutting bastard himself to think of her in any other light but an honorable one. Now that Catherine Middlebrook was well launched among her own kind, his time would be better spent focusing on the task at hand, so that he might return to the sea. Once his sister was happily married to the best Englishman he could find, he would set sail for Antigua and forget for six months together that England even existed.

If he could only keep Mary Elizabeth from speaking too freely of her love of fishing, hunting, shooting, riding, swordplay, and archery, giving the game away before it had even begun.

Mary Elizabeth was a delightful sister, but she would make some poor bastard one hell of a wife.

“Did you see how many times I danced after we took lemonade? It was delightful! Say what you will of Englishmen, but they certainly know how to waltz.” Mary Elizabeth sat smiling on her side of the duchess's coach.

“They had enough sense to value you once they decided your friend was of worth. The English are a peculiar people, but I am glad to see that the gentlemen you danced with made you happy. I don't suppose you want to marry one of them?” Alex asked hopefully, waiting for the usual gleam of irritation to come into his sister's eyes.

For once, she did not bristle at the subject, but sighed contentedly as she leaned back against the velvet squabs of their borrowed coach. “Oh, I won't marry any of them. That is why they are so pleasant. I don't want a thing from them. I'll enjoy myself here for a bit, and then go home.”

Alex did not open his mouth to argue with her. She was in a sunny mood and he was not going to break it by telling her hard truths she already knew.