How to Seduce a Scot by English Christy

Author:English, Christy [English, Christy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc
Published: 2015-10-07T07:00:00+00:00

Twenty-three

Alex Waters was brought into the Middlebrook house through the front door. Jim did not judge him for having cornered his mistress in the foyer the night before. Alex wondered if the man noticed anything that went on under his nose. That lack of awareness was a rare and wonderful trait to be found in a servant, if it was real.

Jim released him into the back garden as if he were a hound, closing the door behind him. Alex stood, taking in the sweet scent of his angel’s garden. It was three in the afternoon, and the sun was slanting gently to the west, bringing out the deep greens and golds among the grasses and flowers. The fruit trees had finished blooming, and now offered a simple light green in their branches that made him feel strangely welcome. As beautiful as his Highlands were, they were never as green as this.

Still, he felt a pang of homesickness twist in his gut like hunger. Suddenly, he wished himself home by the burn that ran cold whatever the season. He would walk there one day with his angel beside him.

He looked for her then among her kin, but did not find her. Mrs. Angel sat on a blanket beneath a greening tree, the last of its pear blossoms falling onto the lawn around her. She drank tea from a china cup, and seemed to listen with bated breath to the man who sat beside her.

Mr. Josiah Pridemore looked quite at home among the flowers and the ladies, though Alex knew him to be a man of action. A man who had helped conquer the Mughals in India, if such a brave and uncompromising people could ever truly be conquered. A man who had given up his place in the army to turn to business, where he now made a great deal of money shipping silks and spices for the East India Company. All this and more he had discovered that day. Only he had failed to acquire the knowledge his angel had sent him for—namely, what Mr. Josiah Pridemore, lately of Mumbai, wanted with Mrs. Olivia Middlebrook. Alex’s contacts in shipping could not tell him that.

Alex continued to peruse the garden, taking in the company from the doorway to the house, where he had not yet been seen. His sister, no doubt abandoned among the Middlebrooks by their brother, was peering up at the house as if she would paint the shutters, calling directions to someone he could not see. He smiled. His sister was a managing baggage, but he loved her. Someday soon, he prayed to a merciful God, she would make some poor blighter a loving—if bossy—wife.

Miss Margaret stared up at the house as well, leaping up and down in excitement as she waved to whoever was doing the painting. Alex stepped out of the shadow of the doorway then, and went to his sister’s side, so that he might see what amused the two girls so greatly.

As he looked up, he saw his angel swinging from a rope ladder along the side of the house.

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