The Highlander's English Bride (The Lairds Most Likely 6)

Part 1

Chapter 1

Pascoe Place, near Greenwich, late October 1822

Emily Baylor was the most annoying girl in the entire world.

No, make that the entire solar system. And Hamish knew what he was talking about. He was an astronomer. And promising to become a deuced famous one, at that.

Or at least that was the plan.

But so far, the self-satisfaction he’d imagined – no, he deserved! – to feel at this defining moment of his career proved elusive. Not that he meant his advancement to stop at this level. He had his eye on the Astronomer Royal position, and all the honors thereto pertaining. Tonight was an important stepping stone toward achieving his ambitions.

If only a nagging voice in his ear didn’t stop him basking in the knowledge of a job well done.

He wished to Hades he could say it was a strident, hectoring voice, but even at this instant, when the urge to pitch its owner down the steep hill into the Thames was nigh irresistible, he couldn’t describe the voice as anything but a pleasant contralto.

Damn it, this wasn’t fair.

Tonight was meant to be a major triumph for Hamish Douglas, Laird of Glen Lyon. Not that any of these ignorant Sassenachs gave a farthing for a man’s Scottish titles.

They did, however, give a farthing if that same fellow had just discovered a new comet. Not to mention if he was the man likely to win the Royal Society’s Copley Medal and who took up the post as assistant to the current Astronomer Royal, John Pond, in the new year.

But before Hamish could accept his well-earned acclaim, he needed to deal with the woman tugging at his sleeve and speaking in an urgent whisper. "Hamish, you have to withdraw the pamphlet. The calculations are faulty. I’ve checked them five times and got the same – wrong – answer every time."

"They’re not faulty, blast you," Hamish growled, striving to keep his bass rumble of a voice so low that only Emily could hear him. They were standing in a corner of Lord Pascoe’s beautiful ballroom, which was jammed with London’s scientific elite, present to applaud the great discovery. Hamish didn’t want the world and its wife to suspect that his findings might be in doubt. "Your father checked them."

"Papa is…" Emily trailed off and made a helpless gesture, when helplessness was a thousand miles from her usual condition.

To his sorrow, he knew why she had trouble finishing that sentence. Emily’s father, Sir John Baylor, had been Hamish’s mentor since he’d graduated from Cambridge. A tutor and a friend since Hamish had come to London to make a career in the field he’d loved from the moment he was old enough to understand what a star was. But over the last few years, Sir John’s health failed, and with his health, his mind. Sir John was here tonight, sitting beside the lectern. The place of honor befitted the teacher who had shaped the new force in British astronomy.

Hamish was pleased to see Sir John looking better than he had in a long time. The old man hadn’t been out in public since last year. Now his many friends and colleagues in the London Astronomical Society, the Royal Institution, and the Royal Society crowded around to pay court.

She tried again. "Papa is—"

"A great man."

"Inclined to be confused." Emily’s bright hazel gaze, more green than brown in the light from the chandeliers, settled on her father with a frown of concern. Then she shifted her attention back to Hamish. "You can’t make those calculations public. They will ruin you."

"They’re not wrong," he said through his teeth.

"They are," she said, just as stubbornly.

"Damn you, Emily," he muttered and dragged her across to the long mahogany table where hundreds of copies of his paper about the comet awaited distribution once the speeches were done.

She hoisted her imperious little nose into the air. "I can’t help it if you made a mistake."

He’d known Emily as long as he’d known her father. She’d annoyed him when she’d been a fourteen-year-old girl, partly because his masculine superiority hadn’t overawed her as it should. He’d soon discovered that she possessed a brilliant, incisive mind. While he’d like to say her mind was unfeminine, he came from a family of clever women so he couldn’t.

Nonetheless, she was far too ready to pit that mind against his. Even more annoying, on occasion her intellectual arrogance proved justified. On the very rare occasion, he wondered if, perhaps, her brain might surpass his.

Unacceptable.

Most people, even in England, rewarded him with immediate respect. After all, he came from a rich, powerful family. He owned a large and prosperous estate, and he was connected to many influential Scottish landowners. His late father had been a significant power in the War Office during the French wars, and his mother’s passion for politics made her influence felt across the nation. Not to mention that he was the size of a mountain and he had a brain like a steel trap.

Yet Emily Baylor, even as a girl, treated Hamish like her slow-witted older brother. The sight of her turning up her nose at him was no novelty.

Hamish wasn’t an overly vain main, but he was accustomed to female admiration. Emily most definitely didn’t admire him. She never had. Which shouldn’t niggle. After all, there was no accounting for taste. Most people loved strawberries. He couldn’t stand the things. Perhaps he was to Emily what strawberries were to him.

Over the years, he’d learned to live with her ill-concealed disdain. Mostly. It was easier these days, when the fashionable and scientific worlds vied to praise him.

This uppity, frank, clever – much as he hated to admit it – snip of a girl didn’t like him? So what? Everybody else did. In recent years, he and she had made an unspoken truce to stay out of each other’s way as far as possible.

But when she set out to spoil his special night, the chit crossed a line. A tide of long-held irritation

rose to clog his throat. He wanted to rage at her, tell her to find her own blasted comet, but both manners and the event’s public nature meant he had to keep a lid on his exasperation.

"I didn’t make a mistake," he said slowly and with commendable composure, given the provocation. "You did."

The long-suffering patience weighting her sigh made him want to push her out the window. "Let me show you."

He sucked in a deep breath and told himself he had too much at stake to inform this upstart what she could do with her interference. Hamish’s temper could get the better of him, and right now he was angry. But he retained enough self-awareness to notice a couple of heads turning in their direction. Sometimes it was no gift to be six foot five and built like a marauding Viking.

Anyway, he was the guest of honor, and therefore the center of attention.

"Not here," he said, still in that unnaturally steady voice.

Emily’s eyes narrowed. "I’m not going somewhere private, just so you can shout at me."

Offended, he drew himself up until he loomed over her. She wasn’t a small woman, but compared to him, she was a mere scrap. "I do not shout," he said icily.

"Yes, you do," she said with equal coldness. "It’s how you get your own way, when the practiced charm fails."