Page 45 of The Scot Who Loved Her

“Good show, man,” Malcolm complimented. He believed in offering support where support was due.

Malcolm decided he would give the ogre about five minutes of punches, lunges and grabs before putting him down.

They circled each other in the usual fashion, the ogre springing forward and missing several times and Malcolm dodging him. This went on for about half a minute until Malcolm grew bored and threw a quick jab, hitting the beast in the chin. His head knocked back as expected—Malcolm was quick and powerful.

The crowd let out a mix of “Ohhh” and “Boo,” which only served to egg on the behemoth. He lunged again, swinging wide in a hook that would have taken Malcolm off his feet, should he have been less trained. But all it took was Malcolm bending slightly backward out of the way to feel the wind of his opponent’s fist as it flew past. Malcolm let fly two jabs in quick succession to the middle of his opponent’s forehead.

The man backed up, shaking his head, dizzy from the blows. The crowd was starting to rumble now. Those who’d bet against Malcolm were finally figuring out what they’d done wrong. One man, in particular, was extremely vocal about it—and Malcolm would have recognized his voice anywhere because he had been obsessing over him.Paisley.

While the ogre regained his eyesight, Malcolm searched the sea of faces, settling on Paisley. Itwashim. Good. Mission complete.

The ogre lurched forward, and Malcolm dodged, kicking him in the back of the knee to slow him down. Malcolm took the opportunity of the behemoth trying to regain his balance to two-step around the front of his opponent and deliver a jab to the chest, another to the jaw. The beast fell slowly backward—perhaps the slowest Malcolm had ever seen—until he hit the ground, unconscious.Easy. One only had to know the right places and right order in which to land the cracks.

And Malcolm knew them all.

“And we have a winner! The man in black!” shouted one of the ringleaders. Climbing between the rings, he lifted Malcolm’s arm in the air.

But Malcolm wasn’t paying attention anymore. He was focused on Paisley having a meltdown in the corner. A man beside him, tall, thin and with a very aristocratic nose, was trying to get him to calm down. Thirlestane, Malcolm presumed.

Got ye.

“Olivia,why are you still in bed?” Lady Helvellyn’s voice pierced the dream Olivia was having as if it were a knife cutting through fabric. A very dull knife that left the edges of her brain feeling frayed and hacked at.

Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she glanced toward her mother, who was waving a stack of cards frantically. Lady Helvellyn was already dressed, her hair done, her cheeks rouged as if she expected guests at any minute.

“Gentleman callers,truegentlemen,” her mother gushed as if her prayers had been answered.

“What?” The cobwebs were ripped away then, and Olivia swung her legs over the side of the bed. She needed at least two more hours of sleep, she ventured.

“I’ve accepted several of them for you this morning. They will be here soon. You need to get ready. Oh, you must be so excited, dear! No longer will you need to entertain the dreaded Scot now that real gentlemen have expressed an interest. You must have turned your tides of fortune going to the opera the other day. The men saw you with that devil and decided they had to have you for themselves.”

Olivia focused her gaze on the waving cards in her mother’s hand. “But are they Scottish? We are in Scotland. Those at the opera were all Scottish…” She couldn’t help digging in a little.

“That is beside the point,” her mother snapped, and the cards snapped with her. “They are gentlemen.” She said this last part with a little stomp of her foot.

Olivia refrained from reminding her mother that Malcolm was an earl and, therefore, a gentleman, for it didn’t matter. For some reason, her mother had gotten it into her head that Malcolm equaled bad news. She held her tongue when what she wanted to say was that it didn’t matter because her father would be apoplectic no matter what. Since she could remember toddling around, Viscount Helvellyn had in his brain that his daughters were going to marry English gentlemen.

Where was her father anyway? She’d barely seen him since they arrived in Scotland. He’d been at breakfast a few times, but then he often disappeared for the rest of the day, and he’d not come to any of the social events with them. She hadn’t guessed that he’d be so busy here in the city. Though she supposed since he didn’t come often, he likely had a lot to tend to that he normally disregarded.

Olivia dressed in a frilly pink dress she despised that her mother pulled from the wardrobe . She could have sworn she’d taken the sickeningly sweet frock out of her trunk before they’d left London, but her mother must have repacked it.Unfair!

As Elaine worked on her hair, Olivia tried to ignore her mother’s incessant chatter about this man or that, what she’d read about them in theLady Edinburgh, how much one had per year in income versus another and who held what estate and what English title. Of course, it would only do for Olivia to choose a man with both English and Scottish ties because she would want to have access to both sets of society as a wife. Olivia bit the tip of her tongue to keep herself from saying that she didn’t care about any of it and that none of it was what she wanted, and just because her mother desired it for her didn’t mean she would embrace it. Doing so would only make the morning more unpleasant than it already was.

“Mama, isn’t it true that Lord Dunlyon also holds an English title?” She couldn’t help herself. Her mother was getting under her skin. And while she couldn’t mouth off to her mother about the rest, she decided she could get in a little jab.

“Oh, you are a trying daughter. How could you provoke me? My nerves!” Lady Helvellyn collapsed onto the chaise and demanded that Elaine stop curling Olivia’s hair and fetch her a lemonade.

Hidden from her mother, Olivia rolled her eyes in view of Elaine. And then, with her maid gone, she tried working the hot tongs herself to finish the curls. While she enjoyed the result, getting there always left her a little peevish. Olivia thought it a waste of time to spend hours doing hair and putting on just the right touch of rouge. What did it matter in the end?

A knock at the front door of the house echoed up through the walls, and Olivia daydreamed that it was Malcolm coming to sweep her away from all of the callers her mother had invited to call. Even if it were to take her to the Old Tolbooth to interrogate her. She’d rather deal with that. She wasn’t good at flirting. Especially if she didn’t like the person she was supposed to be flirting with. More often than not, they were insulting to her or her family or ill-mannered. With every day that passed, her patience for such artifice grew thinner and thinner. That was likely why she was more apt to toss her punch on the fellow. What her mother had done in agreeing for all these men to call was essentially approving for her to endure a severe punishment.

She heavily sighed as Elaine returned with the lemonade to finish Olivia’s hair. Olivia would have liked a lemonade. Her stomach was rumbling. She’d not even had a proper tea. And now she’d have to face off with whoever was downstairs on an empty belly, which would only make her ornerier.

“Who was at the door?” Lady Helvellyn asked.

“I’m not certain,” Elaine said, having gone merely to the kitchen and not the foyer to oversee the butler.

“Mama, do calm down.”

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