He could picture himself a very happy man at that table.
“Not feeling very conversational this evening, are we?” Colin asked, breaking into his (admittedly tame) fantasies.
“No,” Michael said, not appreciating the vague hint of condescension in the other man’s voice, “we are not.”
Colin chuckled, then took the last sip of his drink. “Just testing you,” he said, leaning back in his chair.
‘To see if I have spontaneously divided into two separate beings?“ Michael bit off.
“No, of course not,” Colin said with a suspiciously easy grin. “I can see that quite clearly. I was merely testing your mood.”
Michael arched a brow in a most forbidding manner. “And you found it…?”
“Rather as usual,” Colin answered, undeterred.
Michael did nothing but scowl at him as the waiter arrived with their drinks.
‘To happiness,“ Colin said, lifting his glass in the air.
I am going to strangle him, Michael decided right then and there. I am going to reach across the table and wrap my hands around his throat until those annoying green eyes pop right out of his head.
“No toast to happiness?” Colin asked.
Michael let out an incoherent grunt and downed his glass in one gulp.
“What are you drinking?” Colin asked conversationally. He leaned over and peered at Michael’s glass. “Must be jolly good stuff.”
Michael fought the urge to clock him over the head with his now empty tumbler.
“Very well,” Colin said with a shrug, “I shall toast to my own happiness, then.” He took a sip, leaned back, then touched his lips to the glass again.
Michael glanced at the clock.
“Isn’t it a good thing I have nowhere to be?” Colin mused.
Michael let his glass drop down onto the table with a loud thunk. “Is there a point to any of this?” he demanded.
For a moment it looked like Colin, who could, by all accounts, talk anyone under the table when he so chose, would remain silent. But then, just when Michael was ready to give up on any guise of politeness and simply get up and leave, he said, “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”
Michael held himself very still. “Meaning?”
Colin smiled, with just enough condescension that Michael wanted to punch him. “About Francesca, of course,” he said.
“Didn’t we just confirm that she has left the country?” Michael said carefully.
Colin shrugged. “Scotland’s not so very far away.”
“It’s far enough,” Michael muttered. Certainly far enough to make it abundantly clear that she didn’t want anything to do with him.
“She’ll be all alone,” Colin said on a sigh.
Michael just narrowed his eyes and stared at him. Hard.
“I still think you should-” Colin broke himself off, quite on purpose, Michael was convinced. “Well, you know what I think,” Colin finally finished, taking a sip of his drink.
And Michael just gave up on being polite. “You don’t know a damned thing, Bridgerton.”
Colin raised his brows at the snarl in Michael’s voice. “Funny,” he murmured, “I hear that very thing all day long. Usually from my sisters.”
Michael was familiar with this tactic. Colin’s neat sidestep was exactly the sort of maneuver he himself employed with such facility. And it was for probably this reason that his right hand had formed a fist under the table. Nothing had the power to irritate like the reflection of one’s own behavior in someone else.
But oh God, Colin’s face was so close.
“Another whisky?” Colin asked, effectively ruining Michael’s lovely vision of blackened eyes.
Michael was in the perfect mood to drink himself into oblivion, but not in the company of Colin Bridgerton, so he just let out a terse, “No,” and pushed his chair back.
“You do realize, Kilmartin,” Colin said, his voice so soft it was almost chilling, “that there is no reason you can’t marry her. None at all. Except, of course,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “the reasons you manufacture for yourself.”
Michael felt something tearing in his chest. His heart, probably, but he was growing so used to the feeling it was a wonder he still noticed it.
And Colin, damn his eyes, just wouldn’t shut up.
“If you don’t want to marry her,” Colin said thoughtfully, “then you don’t want to marry her. But-”
“She might say no,” Michael heard himself say. His voice sounded rough, choked, foreign to his ears.
Dear God, if he’d jumped on the table and declared his love for Francesca, he couldn’t have made it any more clear.
Colin’s head tilted a fraction of an inch to the side, just enough to acknowledge that he’d heard the subtext in Michael’s words. “She might,” he murmured. “In fact, she probably will. Women often do, the first time you ask.”
“And how many times have you proposed marriage?”
Colin smiled slowly. “Just once, actually. This afternoon, as a matter of fact.”
It was the one thing-truly, the only thing-that Colin could have said to completely diffuse Michael’s churning emotions. “I beg your pardon?” Michael asked, his jaw dropping in shock. This was Colin Bridgerton, the eldest of the unmarried Bridgerton brothers. He’d practically created a profession of avoiding marriage.
“Indeed,” Colin said mildly. “Thought it was about time, although I suppose honesty is owed here, so I should probably admit that she did not force me to ask twice. If it makes you feel any better, however, it did take several minutes to wheedle the yes out of her.”
Michael just stared.
“Her first reaction to my query was to fall to the pavement in surprise,” Colin admitted.
Michael fought the impulse to look around to see if he’d somehow been trapped in a theatrical farce without his knowledge. “Er, is she well?” he asked.
“Oh, quite,” Colin said, picking up his drink.
Michael cleared his throat. “Might I inquire as to the identity of the lucky lady?”
“Penelope Featherington.”
The one who doesn’t speak? Michael almost blurted out. Now there was an odd match if ever he’d seen one.
“Now you really look surprised,” Colin said, thankfully with good humor.
“I did not realize you’d hoped to settle down,” Michael hastily improvised.
“Neither did I,” Colin said with a smile. “Funny how that works out.”
Michael opened his mouth to congratulate him, but instead he heard himself asking, “Has anyone told Francesca?”
“I became engaged this afternoon,” Colin reminded him, somewhat bemusedly.
“She’ll want to know.”
“I expect she will. I certainly tormented her enough as a child. I’m sure she will wish to devise some sort of wedding-related torture for me.”
“Someone needs to tell her,” Michael said forcefully, ignoring Colin’s stroll through his childhood memories.
Colin leaned back in his seat with a casual sigh. “I imagine my mother will pen her a note.”
“Your mother will be quite busy. It won’t be the first thing on her agenda.”
“I couldn’t speculate.”
Michael frowned. “Someone should tell her about it.”
“Yes,” Colin said with a smile, “someone should. I’d go myself-It’s been an age since I’ve been up to Scotland. But of course I’m going to be a touch busy here in London, seeing as how I’m getting married. Which is, of course, the entire reason for this discussion, is it not?”
Michael shot him an annoyed glance. He hated that Colin Bridgerton thought he was cleverly manipulating him, but he didn’t see how he could disabuse him of that notion without admitting that he desperately wanted to travel to Scotland to see Francesca.
“When is the wedding to be?” he asked.
“I’m not entirely sure yet,” Colin said. “Soon, I would hope.”
Michael nodded. “Then Francesca will need to be informed right away.”
Colin smiled slowly. “Yes, she will, won’t she?”
Michael scowled.
“You don’t have to marry her while you’re up there,” Colin said, “just inform her of my impending nuptials.”
Michael revisited his earlier fantasy of strangling Colin Bridgerton and found the image even more tantalizing than before.
“I’ll see you later,” Colin said as Michael headed for the door. “Perhaps a month or so?”
Meaning that he fully expected Michael not to be in London anytime soon.
Michael swore under his breath, but he did nothing to contradict him. He might hate himself for it, but now that he had an excuse to go after Francesca, he couldn’t resist making the trip.
The question was, would he be able to resist her?
And more to the point, did he even want to?
Several days later, Michael was standing at the front door of Kilmartin, his childhood home. It had been years since he’d stood here, more than four, to be precise, and he couldn’t quite halt the catch in his throat when he realized that all of this-the house, the lands, the legacy-was his. Somehow it hadn’t sunk in, perhaps in his brain, but not in his heart.
Springtime didn’t seem to have arrived in the border counties of Scotland yet, and the air, while not biting, held a chill that had him rubbing his gloved hands together. The air was misty and the skies were gray, but there was something in the atmosphere that called to him, reminding his weary soul that this, not London and not India, was home.
But his sense of place was little comfort as he prepared for what lay ahead. It was time to face Francesca.
He had rehearsed this moment a thousand times since his conversation with Colin Bridgerton back in London. What he’d say to her, how he’d make his case. And he rather thought he’d figured it out. Because before he convinced Francesca, he’d had to convince himself.
He was going to marry her.
He’d have to get her to agree, of course; he couldn’t very well force her into marriage. She’d probably come up with countless reasons why it was a mad idea, but in the end, he’d convince her.
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