The Heiress Bride - Catherine Coulter [6]
“So that’s why she’s been behaving so oddly,” Alex said on a huge yawn and came up on her elbow beside her husband.
“His name is Colin Kinross.”
“Oh dear.”
“What is it?”
“Someone pointed him out to me the other evening at the musicale. He looks very forceful, Douglas, and stubborn.”
“All this from just a viewing of the man?”
“He’s quite tall, perhaps even taller than you. That’s good, because Sinjun is very tall for a woman. Ruthless, that’s what I meant to say. He looks quite capable of doing anything at all to get what he wants.”
“Alex, you can’t tell all that about a man just by looking at him. Now, I will take away your clothes for two days if you don’t stop speaking nonsense.”
“I don’t know anything about him, Douglas.”
“He’s tall and he’s tough-looking. He’s ruthless. A fine place for me to start.”
“Yes, and you’ll see I’m right.” She laughed, her breath warm and soft against his shoulder. “My father despises the Scots. I hope you don’t feel that way.”
“No, I don’t. Sinjun hasn’t yet met him, she told me.”
“She will, very soon, I doubt not. She’s very resourceful, you know.”
“In the meantime I’ll endeavor to find out all I can about our Scottish gentleman. Ruthless, hmm?”
The next evening Sinjun felt like dancing in her bedchamber. Douglas was taking her and Alexandra to the Drury Lane Theatre to see Macbeth performed. Surely as a Scot and a Kinross, with scores of cousins named Mac Something, he would also be there. It was opening night. Surely, oh surely he would be there. But what if he accompanied another lady? What if he . . . She stopped herself. She had spent an hour on her appearance, and her maid, Doris, had merely nodded, smiling slyly. “You look beautiful, my lady,” she had said as she lovingly threaded a light blue velvet ribbon through Sinjun’s hair. “Just the same color as your eyes.”
She did look well enough, Sinjun supposed, as she studied herself one last time in the mirror. Her gown was a dark blue silk with a lighter blue overskirt. The sleeves were short and puffed out, and there was a matching pale blue velvet sash bound beneath her breasts. She looked tall and slender and fashionably pale. There was just a hint of cleavage, no more, because Douglas felt strongly about things like that. Yes, she looked just fine.
Sinjun didn’t see him until the intermission. The lobby of the Drury Lane Theatre was crowded with the glittering ton, who gossiped and laughed and whose jewels were worth enough to feed a dozen English villages for a year. The lobby was also very hot. Some unfortunate patrons were splattered with dripping wax from the hundreds of lit candles in the chandeliers overhead. Douglas took himself off to fetch champagne for Alex and Sinjun. A friend of Alex’s came up, and thus Sinjun was free to search in every corner of the vast room for her Scot, as she now thought of him. To her delight and speechless excitement and horror, she saw him standing not eight feet behind her, speaking to Lord Brassley, a friend of Ryder’s. Brass, as he was called, was a rake and kindhearted, a man who commendably kept his wife in more luxury than his mistresses.
Her heart speeded up. She turned completely to face him and began to walk forward. She bumped into a portly gentleman and automatically apologized. She simply kept walking toward him. She wasn’t more than three feet away when she heard him laugh, then say quite clearly to Lord Brassley, “Good Lord, Brass, what the devil am I to do? It’s damned painful—I’ve never in my life seen such a gaggle of disasters, all of them in little knots or herds, giggling and simpering and flapping and staring. It isn’t fair, no it isn’t. I must needs wed myself to an heiress or lose everything I own, thanks to my scoundrel of a father and brother, and all those females I’ve met who fit the groat requirements scare me to my toes.”
“Ah, my dear fellow, but there are other females who aren’t disasters,” said Lord Brassley, laughing. “Females you don