Page 3 of Wouldn’t it Be Scottish?

When the tailor was finally done tormenting Donal, he and his aunt set off for home. Once they arrived, Jennie declared she was exhausted from the effort of turning her nephew into a fashionable gentleman about town and needed to take a nap. She vanished upstairs to her bedchamber, Bothwell the cat following in her wake.

Donal had tried to stroke Bothwell when he had first arrived, but the cat hissed and then stared malevolently at him while swishing its tail. He had heard that Rory’s wife, Grace, was the only other person, apart from Jennie, that the cat would allow to pet it. He had decided right then that he wasn’t going to risk touching the creature again.

Alone now, Donal sat for a time and stared at nothing, wondering if he should go for a ride. He had not brought his horse with him, but Jennie had said there were stables nearby that hired out horses if he wanted one. Donal wasn’t much of an equestrian, unlike Rory and Callum, and he certainly did not want to go drinking or carousing like Rory used to. Marriage to Grace seemed to have settled him in that regard. According to Cat, Rory had been tamed by his wife and was now domesticated.

Donal was neither intrepid nor wild. He had no desire to run amok around London. All he wanted was to have Mary back again, to take her home and never leave Bonnyrigg again.

“Lord Donal?” Hocking’s voice made him jump, and when he looked up the butler was standing at rigid attention in the sitting room doorway. “There is a young lady here to see you. She says you are expecting her.”

The butler looked disapproving, as if a young lady arriving like this out of the blue was extremely inappropriate. Donal suspected he was right, but he wasn’t about to send her away. He already suspected who this young lady might be, and it was not Mary.

And yet what if it was Mary? What if she had heard he was here in London and could not wait to seek him out? What if his dreams had come true and she was going to beg him to take her home?

“What is the young lady’s name?” he asked Hocking with more animation than he had shown so far.

“Miss Agatha Kilsyth, my lord,” the butler droned. “Should I show her in?”

Of course it was Kilsyth’s daughter and not Mary, and he had already known that, so there was no reason to feel disappointed. “Verra well,” he said wearily. “Show her in, Hocking.”

Hocking disappeared, and he heard voices and then the quick tap of shoes on the marble floor. The next moment, a girl entered the sitting room. She was as different from Mary as she could possibly be. Short, although not as short as Penelope, Callum’s wife, and pleasingly plump. Her hair was brown, and her eyes were pale blue and very direct. She was looking at him now as if she wanted to memorize every detail of him, which he found disconcerting, although he was probably staring at her just as rudely.

“You must be Lord Donal MacKenzie,” she said in a melodious voice which was deep for a woman. “I was told you were handsome.”

Donal choked on a laugh. “Told by who?”

“My father. I am Agatha, Lord Kilsyth’s daughter. Weren’t you expecting me?”

Not quite so soon, Donal thought, but he kept that to himself. He bowed. “How do you do, Miss Kilsyth?”

She gave him back a curtsy without taking her eyes from him. “How do I do? Not very well, but then I think we are in a similar boat when it comes to that.”

She certainly wasn’t trying to minimize what she was feeling. Agatha Kilsyth said what she thought in a blunt, unpretentious manner that Donal liked.

She didn’t wait for his answer. “My father explained to me the plan that he discussed with your aunt. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but now that I have seen you . . . I think it could be just the thing to bring our wandering partners to heel.”

Donal remembered that the plan was for Mary to feel jealous of Agatha and anyone else who showed an interest in him. But would Mary see this girl as a rival? Agatha was pretty, in a pink cheeked and wholesome sort of way. Not as beautiful as Mary, but then few were. And yet Agatha did have an appeal, and she was very shapely—he couldn’t help but admire her figure.

Agatha seemed to be thinking similar sorts of things as she looked at him.

“I have seen Miss Davidson,” she said abruptly. “She is lovely. You should never have allowed her to come to London. Her head is quite turned by all the attention she has received since she arrived. I think you will struggle to get her back to Scotland after this.”

“Allowed her to come? As if I could have stopped her!” Donal retorted. “I don’t own her, you know.”

Agatha looked at him in surprise. “That is refreshing. So many gentlemen seem to believe a woman is their property to order about as they choose.”

“Well, I don’t,” he said. Now he was confused. Where was this conversation going?

Agatha sighed. “It’s too late now anyway. What’s done is done. We will just have to deal with the situation as it is. Shall I sit down?”

Donal realized he was being very impolite and quickly gestured to the sofa. She looked at it and then chose to sit in an armchair. He noticed that Hocking was still standing in the doorway looking bored but no doubt listening to every word that was being said. Would he report their conversation to Aunt Jennie? Donal sent him off with an order for tea and cake, and the butler left with obvious reluctance.

“When I arrived in London a fortnight ago,” Agatha explained when they were alone, “I thought I would find Richard missing me and eager for my company. Sir Richard Leslie is the gentleman I was going to marry. Instead of missing me, he was enjoying himself far too much to even notice me. I felt like going home again at once because I felt so hopeless. And I assure you I am not a woman who loses hope easily. But seeing the man I had imagined myself married to dancing with another woman in his arms, and gazing at her so—so adoringly . . .” She took a shaky breath and tears filled her eyes. “Let us just say I did not enjoy what I witnessed. That was when I understood fully what I was up against if I were to win him back to my side again.” She blinked her tears away and straightened her back as if refusing to let her emotions overrule her. “I am not normally a weepy sort of girl. I apologize,” she said, confirming what he already thought. He was glad of it, because he did not come from a family of weepy females and never knew how to behave with them.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Donal assured her. “I have felt very low since my Mary left, and on one occasion . . .” He cleared his throat when she stared at him sympathetically but did not end up telling her about the time he had cried and bemoaned his situation so loudly in the forest that the wild animals had run from him. “Tell me about this man who has abandoned you. Sir Richard Leslie, was it?”

“Yes,” she said promptly. “I have known him for years, we were neighbors and childhood friends, and I always thought . . . believed we would marry. It was something our parents hoped for too, joining our families and our properties together. Neither of us have siblings. But then Richard suddenly decided he didn’t want to settle down with me, not until he had seen more of the world. I believe a cousin of his brought on his change of heart. The cousin had married young and then discovered himself to be very unhappy with his situation. Richard spoke to him several times, and I think he started to worry the same thing might happen to him. So off he went to see the world. But he only got as far as London where he met the woman he now tells me he has fallen in love with. Her name is Charlotte Elliot, and she is very pretty and very sly. Or perhaps,” she added wryly, “I am only saying the ‘sly’ part because I am jealous.” She pulled a face. “I understood why he might want to see the world before he settled down, but it turned out it was me he was unhappy with.”

“He sounds like a flibbertigibbet,” Donal said, but the truth was her story sounded disturbingly similar to his own.