Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (3 page)

“Lady Quince.” Strathcairn’s lowered voice was absolutely irresistible when he forgot himself enough to let the Scots burr rumble. “Let me make right sure I understand you—are you
flirting
with me?”

“Am I?” Quince ignored the blaze of heat his voice and gaze kindled under her skin, and gave him her bright, knowing smile—all pleased lips and mischievous eyes. “What I am doing is trying to make you remember your duty, and accede to my wish to dance with me.”

He regarded her with those too canny, too bright green eyes for another long moment before he answered. “Perhaps I will.” He reached for her hand, and held her at arm’s length for a lengthy perusal, as if he had not yet decided to grant her wish. “Yes, I definitely will. But before I do so, perhaps I ought to warn you, wee Quince, to be good. And be very, very careful what you wish for.”

The heat that had blossomed under her bodice spread like wildflowers across her skin along the whole length of his gaze. And she liked it.

She raised her chin and gave him her slyest smile yet. “Oh, I am always careful, Strathcairn. But I had much rather be bad, and be
right
.”

Chapter Two

The wee slip of a lass was astonishing. Young Lady Quince Winthrop was just as willowy and witty and amusing as Alasdair had always hoped she would grow up to be. And grown up she had. In the five years that had passed since he had seen her last, she had become a damnably attractive young woman.
 

Alasdair Colquhoun, formerly fifth Earl Strathcairn and now fourth Marquess of Cairn, had not foreseen that—her being so attractive. Dangerously, distractingly attractive.
 

Which was strange. Because she wasn’t a raging beauty—no one in London would have called wee Quince Winthrop a diamond of the first water. She was pretty without being beautiful, ordinary without being plain.
 

But what she was, was animated. And intelligent. And
interesting
.
 

Even with that appalling name.
 

Quince. It was bad enough as a boy’s name, but it was nothing short of ridiculous for a girl. But Lord Winthrop was Edinburgh’s Gardener Royal, a botanist who had long ago been bitten by a particularly virulent horticultural bug, given to erecting glasshouses and planting pinetums and arboretums, and giving his daughters ridiculous botanical names like Linnea, Willow, and Plum. And wee Quince.

Alasdair had always thought of her as
wee
Quince. She had been the baby sister in the Winthrop household—the naughty one wearing long chestnut braids, the one as spare and silent and sly as a she-fox. But she had also been entirely sympathetic, always laughing at his jokes. He could still see wee Quince in his mind’s eye, peeping out at him with those bright golden-brown eyes as big as saucers, smiling with mischief from behind whatever chair or curtain she had hidden herself when she was supposed to be practicing the pianoforte.

She was still clearly naughty. Delightfully, unapologetically so.

Most young ladies of his acquaintance were the opposite—they pretended not to be naughty or vain or cynical, or interested in putting their arms around their beaux, and would never call the damned fellows darling. But Lady Quince Winthrop seemed impish and open, uncensored by society’s opinions.

How damnably, dangerously refreshing.

She was tall for a lass, though she barely came up to his chin, even when she tilted that formidable nose in the air. But there was something about her—a largeness of presence that did not have to do with size. And although Lady Quince was dressed like almost all the other young ladies present, in the same sort of soft white dress the Duchess of Devonshire had recently made the height of fashion, wee Quince stood out like a bright-furred fox—all sleek, un-powdered chestnut hair, and neat, elfin features in a heart-shaped face.
 

But wee foxes could bite.

They could be provoking. And enchanting.

So enchanting he did not object to her next proposal. “You really must dance with me” —she began to tow him toward the ballroom—“if for no other reason than the pleasure it will afford me when you make the figures of the
ceilidh
dance badly.”

She breezed onto the dance floor to take her place in the set without waiting for his agreement or say so. He had half a mind to abandon her there in the middle of the floor.
 

But it was as if wee Quince could read his thoughts. “Come, come, my Lord Cairn.” She raised her voice loud enough for everyone in all of Edinburgh New Town to hear, and ladled on a broth of Scots brogue. “Don’t be shy and stand-offish. I’m sure ye’ll dance well enough, though ye’ve been in London so long with your parliamentary set, ye can’t be expected to remember all the complicated
ceilidh
steps.”

Guests turned their heads, just as she had wanted. There was nothing for it but to bow, and accede to her wishes as gracefully as possible. “You are a brat.”

Her vixenish smile was all in the corner of her eyes. “A
clever
brat.” She spun herself into a gracefully melting curtsey as the first fiddler scraped up his bow. “You do ken how to dance a proper Scottish
ceilidh
like Strip the Willow, do you not?”
 

He offered her a deep, if somewhat ironic, courtly bow. “Though I was educated in France, my lady, as all good Scots gentlemen are, I have not forgotten my country dancing.”

“Were you really educated in France?” She narrowed her eyes, and then looked at him all askance. “And still they let you into the English government, with all the revolutionary uproar going on in France nowadays? How shocking.”

He would love nothing more than to shock the tight, uplifting stays right off her trim little—

Devil take him. Best not to think of trim waists and uplifting bodices, or he wouldn’t be able to call himself a gentleman. And he had worked long and hard—too long and too hard—to make himself into a proper British gentleman, to abandon that title five minutes after reacquainting himself with this provoking young lass.

A provoking young lass who was not yet done twitting him. “Mayhap we will be so fortunate as to have a small collision that will knock your wig askance, and amuse the onlookers, who stare to see you dance so.” She pressed an unhelpful hand to her luscious little bosom, and let out a sigh of anticipatory pleasure. “I live in hope.”

He was beginning to live in something else entirely.

But it would not do to say so. “And I live to serve, brat. Though I assure you I wear my own hair powdered, and not a wig.”

“Do you? A pity.” She let out a dramatic little sigh. “But perhaps we still might amuse, for we do look ridiculous together—me so small, and you so tall.”

Alasdair was about to protest that however wee she was, she wasn’t in the least bit small. But it would never do to tell a young lady—even a witty, amusing lass like Lady Quince Winthrop—that her strange impression of largeness was a product of her over-sized character. The damn lass should have been a field marshal, the way she had maneuvered him.
 

Once the music began, he found his feet easily enough, following the lilting lift of the fiddles as they skipped along. And Lady Quince was both uplifting and diverting in her own way—she executed the little jumps and turns with such gracefully careless enthusiasm that Alasdair’s gaze became increasingly fixed on the top line of her bodice, from whence her lily white bosom threatened to spill over the top of all that sublime, silky lace.
 

When had she grown such superb breasts?

Oh, devil take him for a damned fool. Thank God he was dancing, or he’d have no way of explaining the astonishing heat sweeping across his face. Alasdair could only pray people would think his color was due to the exertion of the dance, and not to his musings on Lady Quince’s remarkable little breasts.

To combat that heat, Alasdair lowered his gaze to the floor, which he hoped would be a rather more prosaic view, but the skipping steps of the dance conspired to give him more than one glimpse of the brat’s trim, stockinged ankles. Enough of a glimpse to make him think of the calves above those well-turned ankles, and of the knees above the calves, and of the garters above the knees, crossing her milky thighs—

Alasdair pinched his eyes closed, and forced himself to take a deep, calming breath. Why he thought said thighs might be milky was pure hallucination on his part. Clearly the young lady’s thighs were likely to be as tricky and dangerous as the rest of her—even her smile was devious, as if she were daring him to like her.
 

If ever there was a lass in need of a husband, it was daring, darling Lady Quince. She needed a man who could keep all that mischievous potential in check, and keep her too busy to flirt and cause ballroom havoc. “Why are you not married?”
 

Bloody hell. He had asked the bloody question out loud—loud enough for the couple next in the set to hear him, and give him a horrified, cautionary look.
 

Any other lass would have instantly rebuked him, or burst into tears, or perhaps even slapped him at so forward and intrusive a question. But because wee Quince Winthrop was not like any other lass, she laughed. “Why on earth would I want to be married? Give up my freedom for wedlock at my age? What an appalling, auld-fashioned notion.”

For some reason he could not fathom, Alasdair felt compelled to defend the institution. “Sometimes the old-fashioned ideas are best.”
 

Her scornful look told him she did not agree. “When did you become such a sorry auld grumphus?”

When he had realized being ambitious meant choosing sides. But, “grumphus?” He could feel his face split into another ill-considered smile. “Lady Quince, you’re havering—there is no such word as ‘grumphus.’”

“There is now—I just made it up. And you are most assuredly a very sorry auld grumphus thinking that way. Though you do dance tolerably well.”
 

Even her rebukes had an air of sweet mischievousness. Which was growing decidedly hard to resist. So he stopped resisting, and let his smile stretch out and make itself comfortable in a grin. “Only with you, my lady lass. Only for you.”

She accepted his fealty as her due, with a roaring laugh that threatened the integrity of her bodice. “You’re getting there. Another five minutes and we’ll have you laughing full out, like a proper Scot. Admit it—dancing, and laughing, is good for you. You should do it more often.”

“Perhaps,” he conceded as they took hands to go down the dance. “Perhaps I will.”

But when they got to the bottom of the line, the fiddlers drew their bows to end the dance, and Alasdair was forced to relinquish her hand. “Thank you, my lady. You were quite correct. It has been a distinct pleasure.”

“You are quite welcome.” She curtseyed very becomingly, and then led the way off the floor. “But as lovely as it has been to renew our acquaintance, and dance, and match wits with you, Strathcairn, I’m afraid you’ll now have to go.”

Go? Alasdair was not about to be so easily dismissed. Not when he was having fun matching wits with her
.
“I think not.”
 

“Strathcairn.” She frowned mightily, and made a more obvious shooing motion with her agile, animated fingers. “Go away. You musn’t talk to me anymore. Someone will notice.”

“I thought that was what you wanted when you cozened me into dancing with you.”

She smiled, but blithely ignored his logic. “Nay. I won’t allow you to be such a danger to yourself. And don’t pretend you don't understand. If a mon like you, a
marquess
, for pity’s sake, who ought by all rights to be married off by now—what
have
you been doing with your time?—is seen talking to
me
, who’s nobody, it can only be for devious or nefarious purposes.”

Her logic was categorically flawed. But vastly amusing. “What I have done with my time is work for the Prime Minister’s government. And thus no one who knows me will think that I am being either devious or nefarious. And you’re not nobody.”

“Don’t be absurd.” The lady made a decidedly un-ladylike, disparaging sound. “Then it will be worse, Strathcairn—they’ll think you’re being
serious
.”

He decided he liked the irreverent way she called him by his old name Strathcairn, man to man, as it were. “That is a chance I am willing to take, lass. Perhaps I
am
being serious. Perhaps, because I am
old-fashioned
, I shall appoint myself to watch over you, and keep you from slipping out into the night to embrace ill-mannered, callow young cads named Davie. You must understand how dangerous that is?”