Page 2 of A Bride for the Wicked Highlander (Daring a Highland Laird #2)

M addie watched Oscar choke on the meat of her words, resisting the urge to laugh. She’d often wondered, since their last meeting, what it would take to wipe the smirk off his face. Now, she knew.

“Ye what?” he rasped, clawing a hand through his long, dark hair.

“Judging by the bulge of your eyes, I’m certain you heard me the first time,” she replied, rather proud that she’d managed to shock the formerly unshockable Laird of Muir.

But the thrill didn’t last as the nerves clawed their way back into her veins, closing around her heart like a bony fist. She’d gone back and forth with her plan on the never-ending journey from the east coast, convincing herself that hiding for a while would be enough, before crippling doubts forced her to settle on the most outlandish solution.

Hiding only means delaying the inevitable. But he can’t marry me off or force me to serve my sister if I’m already married.

Oscar’s gaze skimmed over her body, his lupine gray eyes making a good view of her, and taking his time too.

From the shape of her calves in her white stockings to the curve of her thighs in tight buckskin breeches, to the loose fit of her striped waistcoat, up to her face—he seemed to savor the sight as if imagining her as his wife already, possessing a woman who’d made it clear she couldn’t stand him.

She didn’t like the sly smirk upon his lips one bit, forcing her to look elsewhere.

Yet the image of him lingered, regardless of where she turned her gaze.

The collar of his shirt had come unlaced, a triangle of browned, gleaming skin making her breath quicken.

As if wherever he’d come down from had been a great deal warmer than the entrance hall, where a draft crept through her clothes, chilling her skin.

Silvery scars marked that sun-browned skin, her curiosity piqued as to how far below his shirt they went. There were a few on his face, too, adding a dangerous, rough quality to his handsome features.

Lilian would be screaming in delight if she could see me now. Her dear friend had such a romantic heart.

Clearing her throat and pushing her spectacles up, Maddie made herself look back at Oscar, though she was careful to keep her gaze away from the lines of hard muscle, exposed by that open collar. She chose the safety of a tapestry on the back wall instead.

“This is a jest, aye?” Oscar said, once he was done undressing her with his eyes. “Och, of course, this is one of them dares that Hunter told me about.”

Her eyes narrowed. How does he know about that?

“Aye, I ken all about that,” he said, as if reading her mind.

She straightened up, pulling the two sides of her greatcoat across herself to hide as much of her body as she could. “Maybe you do, but this is not that.” She exhaled stiffly. “I am here to ask for your hand in marriage. It’s not a jest or a joke or a dare.”

He laughed regardless: a deep, throaty sound that somehow seemed to rumble in her own chest.

“With respect, Laird Muir, it isn’t funny,” she said tartly, meaning no respect at all. “Do you think it was easy for me to come here and ask for your hand? Do you think it is at all amusing to me that I’m here, offering myself to a rake like you?”

His eyebrow shot up and she wished she had taken a moment to phrase her words more carefully.

She was not, under any circumstances, offering herself to him.

Not in the way he clearly thought, but she couldn’t say that without her tongue tying itself into knots and her throat closing up.

As such, she blurted out the next best thing.

“I suspect you’re the sort of man that parents warn their daughters about, so I highly doubt you have many other prospects. None who would overlook your taste for... variety, at least,” she remarked, pointing her thumb at the door where the two ladies had exited.

“At least this would make your life simpler,” she continued, unable to stop.

“No need to bother with courtships and broken hearts, not to mention furious fathers when their daughters come crying. You aren’t so young, so your council must be pestering you to marry.

I’m solving that for you. I’m a Lady too, which rather makes me the best choice you’re likely to have. ”

The dark amusement faded from his face, shifting toward a hard stare that made her breath catch for a moment.

She’d forgotten that there was more to Oscar than intense flirtation and cocksure arrogance, remembering how, not so long ago, he’d barred the door of the carriage to protect her, even though she’d fought and screamed like a wild thing to get to her friend, Grace, who was being stolen away.

She’d forgotten, too, how sweet he could be with children. He’d comforted Hunter’s daughter, Ellie, after she’d been kidnapped. Had comforted them both, in truth, though Maddie hadn’t appreciated it at the time.

He stopped me from doing something very stupid that night.

“It might nae be wise to insult a man whose help ye clearly need,” he said, his voice low with threat.

He took a step closer, leaving barely a gap between them.

Tall as she was, he was far taller, forcing her to crane her neck to meet his gaze in defiance.

Meanwhile, every instinct inside her screamed for her to take a step away from him, to put some breathing room between them, but she couldn’t.

She refused. She would never cower from or bow to any man.

Let alone someone she intended to marry.

I won’t give false expectations of the kind of wife I will be. She stood firm, conscious of not accidentally touching him, more aware of her body than she had ever been.

“Well?” he prompted, that infuriating smirk returning to his lips. “Are ye goin’ to apologize, lass? Beg me to forgive ye and accept yer proposal?”

Maddie scoffed instinctively, raising her chin a little higher. “I don’t beg, Laird Muir. I certainly won’t beg for you.”

“Then there’s nothin’ more for us to discuss,” he replied with a slight shrug of his broad, muscular shoulders. “Ye can see yerself home, back to that school ye came from. A shame they couldnae teach ye some manners.”

Panic pinched Maddie’s throat, her hand almost snatching a desperate handful of his shirt, though she stopped herself at the last second.

“I still won’t beg,” she croaked, “but... will you please do me the honor of agreeing to marry me, Laird Muir? I can’t go back.

I’m here asking you to marry me because. .. I can never go back.”

My father has destroyed my one refuge. It will never be safe for me to return there again.

She couldn’t tell him that, but the thought bolstered her resolve as she drew in a breath, hoping her eyes conveyed enough as she peered into the wintry gray of his.

A frown furrowed his brow, his smirk becoming a thoughtful bite of the lip that drew her attention to his mouth. Absently, her mind drifted to the two women he had dismissed, wondering if they had been kissed by those lips before she interrupted.

What an odd thing: a kiss.

Grace insisted it was a marvelous thing, but Maddie couldn’t see how.

What pleasure could there be in the random crush of two mouths together?

Then again, she was a woman of science; if through study and research there were evidence against her musings, she was more than willing to have her mind changed.

Just then, Oscar turned heading across the brightly lit entrance hall. He did not move toward the staircase he’d descended, but to a corridor on the right.

At the arched entrance, he paused to look back at her. “I suggest ye daenae stand there in the cold unless ye’ve decided to leave?”

She hurried after him, ignoring his pleased smirk, cursing herself for not walking at a more leisurely pace. She was desperate, but she didn’t need him to know that.

Halfway down the shadowed corridor, where torchlight flickered in battle with the pervasive draft, Oscar booted open a door and disappeared inside. Following just behind him, Maddie hesitated on the threshold, peering into the room beyond.

It appeared to be a study, with an old desk along one side, crowded bookcases looming behind, while a roaring fireplace blasted gloriously hot air in her direction. A tempting offer to thaw the ice from her bones, frozen after what felt like an eternity of traveling.

She stepped inside, noting two comfortable armchairs in front of the fireplace, a well-stocked side table of liquor, and more overstuffed shelves bowing under the weight of so many books.

“Sit down, Lady Madeleine,” Oscar said, coming to steer her toward one of the armchairs.

He didn’t touch her, but the curve of his arm behind her shoulders tingled her skin as if he were.

“Maddie,” she muttered. “If we’re to be more closely acquainted, you should use my name.”

He left her in the armchair, heading for the table of liquor. “Oscar, then,” he said, gesturing to the bottles. “What will ye drink?”

“Whiskey, if you have it,” she replied, needing a nip of something to steady herself.

He laughed. “Ye’re nae in England now, lass.

If I didnae have whiskey, I’d be cast out of the country.

” He poured two hefty measures of amber liquid, passing her one as he took the opposite armchair.

“Now, take a breath, and tell me everythin’.

I must admit, it’s the first time a man has asked me to marry him. ”

She nearly choked on the mouthful of whiskey she’d just gulped, dabbing her lips with her sleeve as she looked down at her clothes.

Neither the fisherman nor the farmer had made any comment about her attire, yet she could tell they’d seen right through her disguise, the same as the men from the university.

In truth, she wondered why she’d bothered at all, when it clearly wasn’t enough to hide the fact that she was a woman.

“Aye,” Oscar said, sipping his drink. “Ye can start with that.”

Maddie resisted the urge to smile at his joke, taking a moment to let the fire warm her numb limbs before she began.

With a sigh, she told the story of the past month: her long-planned scheme to be permitted entry into university, how her designs had finally come to fruition, and then... catastrophically failed.

“I got thrown out of St. Andrews yesterday,” she concluded. “For the second time this month. Third time, if you include my brief spell at Edinburgh.”

She gulped down another mouthful to temper the rising embarrassment, smothering it in the burn of the potent liquor. Indeed, she had nothing to be ashamed about. It was the universities who ought to be ashamed—denying women the chance to learn just as much as any man.

“And ye’ve decided to give up bein’ a scholar to be a wife?” Oscar asked, sitting back in his chair. “That doesnae seem like the natural step for a lass such as ye.”

“No,” she said coolly, shaking her head. “No, Oscar, I haven’t given up at all.”

And I don’t plan to.

If she was going to do this, she would be honest from the start, so he wouldn’t mistake her and think he was getting the kind of wife she would never be.

The trouble was, now that she was sitting there with her proposal out in the open, she realized that hers was not at all a tempting offer. What man could accept what no man had accepted before—her, as she was? What man would let her have her dreams, demanding nothing in return?

As she sipped her whiskey, she couldn’t help but wonder if she had made a terrible mistake.