Page 11 of A Dash of Scot
“What flavor would ye like?” Dougal asked.
“Strawberry,” Anise said.
“My favorite. Good choice,” the colonel replied.
“And ye, Miss Featherstone, what do ye think will be your favorite?”
Poppy glanced to the side where he was staring at her intently. Her favorite… Oh, but he was toying with her again. She sniffed and turned away, taking little pleasure in turning her nose up at him, even though she wished she could bathe in satisfaction at giving him the cut direct. “I think chocolate.”
“An excellent choice.”
She wanted him to hate her choice, not find it excellent.
Dougal and Colonel Austen retrieved the iced cream, bringing it to one of the small tables that Poppy and Anise had procured. Delicate scoops of light brown iced cream melted in her bowl. The first bite was heaven. The second felt like a decadent sin.
What a tease, bringing them to a place like this. She was going to be ruined forever.
It was hard for Poppy to eat each bite slowly without groaning in exquisite pleasure. After her third bite, she looked up to see Dougal watching her, his iced cream forgotten, and the look in his eyes akin to…desire.
Blast him!
Her face heated as he watched her, and she was suddenly self-conscious in a way she’d forgotten. Self-conscious in the way a man looks at a woman when he wishes to kiss her—a look she remembered quite well on him. Even then, she’d recognized it for what it was. That was something she’d seen when she was attending balls on the regular. But most of the men she’d been acquainted with—until Dougal had waltzed into London—were sticks-in-the-mud. And over the last year, none had compared, nor shown as much interest.
Dougal was no stick-in-the-mud but an exciting, intelligent, jovial man. The air in the room changed when he was there. His very presence could elicit a smile from even the sourest matron—except for Mary. No one could make Mary smile.
And perhaps that is why she’d been in love with him for the last five years. Because he lit up the world.
Well, perhaps love was a bit of a strong word. A more appropriate description might be that she, too, desired to kiss him every day for the rest of her life.
“Do you not like your iced cream?” she asked, staring at his melting bowl of chocolate hoping to get him to stop staring at her.
“I think I like yours better,” he said.
Poppy almost choked, her spoon clicking against her teeth.
Colonel Austen tried to cover his laugh with a cough, accidentally inhaled his iced cream, and then coughed for real with Anise slamming her hand against his back.
“My goodness, Colonel, are ye well?” The question came from a young gentleman who’d entered the creamery along with a friend.
“Aye, Sir John, just fine.”
Sir John’s gaze moved to Anise, sitting beside Colonel Austen. “My lady, allow me to introduce myself. Sir John Ross at your service.”
The young man was handsome—Poppy would give him that. A riot of brown curls and eyes that were the color of her iced cream. Tall, well-formed and impeccably dressed. The twinkle in his eye suggested he might also be a fun conversationalist, but there was something else there, just hidden beneath the surface, that gave Poppy pause. On instinct, she wasn’t sure he was a man who could be trusted.
And from the way the colonel stiffened, she wondered if she was right.
“Mackay,” Sir John said in greeting to Dougal.
“Sir John. What brings ye to Edinburgh?” Dougal, too, seemed to stiffen in the young man’s presence.
“Business, and ye?”
“Aye, same.” Dougal glanced at Poppy, and she wished she could read what was going on behind those eyes. “Sir John and I are practically neighbors, as is Colonel Austen here.”
“Ah.” She nodded as if she understood but truly was as confused as she’d been before, and her chocolate was melting into a puddle.
“Would you care to join us?” Anise suggested, to which Colonel Austen, Poppy and Dougal stared at her in shock.
