Free One Hot Scot by Suzanne Enoch

didnae … That is to say, I didnae take precautions. I didnae expect to meet ye, Julia. I didnae think I’d want ye so. I—”
    She pulled one of her hands free and put it gently over his lips. “Is this what you want, Duncan? Tell me you’re not simply being the generous, heroic man I know you to be.”
    He smiled up at her. “Fer God’s sake, lass, I feel like a scoundrel, using Bellamy to get ye bound to me. If it didnae sound foolish fer me to say it, I’d tell ye that I love ye. I will tell ye that this is the beginning of love, that what I feel fer ye will only become more and more. But ye should know, I mean to live here, with my sisters. Ye’ll be far from London most of the year, and—”
    “Yes.”
    He swallowed. “Yes, ye’ll be far from London, or yes ye’ll—”
    “Yes, I will marry you. Today. Now. And I will hurt anyone who tries to come between us.”
    Slowly he stood again, pulling her into his arms and kissing her warm, soft mouth. “No one’s allowed to come between us,” he murmured.
    When he considered all of the chance moments that might have gone differently, the number of things that had to go just as they did in order for them even to meet, he had to become a believer in … something. In God, in Providence, in Magic, in Love. Or all of them, just to be certain he gave the correct entity its due.
    “Shall we tell my family then, lass?”
    She grinned up at him. “This should be interesting.”
    *   *   *
    A little better than two hours later, Julia Prentiss wasn’t Julia Prentiss any longer. She was Julia Lenox. The priest had hesitated, but clearly he knew who buttered his bread. And just as plain was the respect he had for Duncan, the way he’d known that Mr. Lenox didn’t do things frivolously.
    Before she said her vows she’d attempted to trace the route of her money, tried to discern once and for all if this had somehow been Duncan’s way of manipulating circumstances in order to gain her dowry. It wasn’t logical, though. Aside from the grand state of Lenox House, his lands were green, his gardens well-kept—every sign that he had a fair amount of wealth all on his own. He hadn’t known who she was in the world, and the papers he had written up by the solicitor Mr. Finchey, who’d accompanied Father Ross to the house, clearly stated that her income was to go to their mutual child. If that turned out to be impossible, it would be inherited by Lord Glengask, and no one there seemed to doubt for a second that the marquis would see the money returned to her—not as a conditional dowry, but as an actual cash sum to her and for her.
    It was actually a better arrangement than she could have hoped for even in a love match. Because anyone who wooed her would do so knowing she had a purse worth forty thousand pounds attached to her wrist. She had hesitated to even believe any of the sweet words her potential beaux had spoken to her for that very reason. But Duncan … Duncan had found a way to give the money back to her, or at least for the benefit of her children.
    She looked at him as he leaned over the table and signed the last of the hastily-written agreements. Duncan. Her Duncan, now. It wasn’t at all how she’d imagined her marriage, because her parents would have seen to it that she had a huge, grand cathedral wedding as befitted an heiress and daughter of a viscount. As he’d said, though, today or six months or a year from today, it would have been him and her. The setting was secondary.
    As if sensing her gaze, Duncan glanced up at her and flashed a grin. “Ye’ll have quite the note to send yer mother now, won’t ye, lass?” he said, handing the pen back to Mr. Finchey.
    “I imagine she’ll be relieved, once I explain.”
    Walking up, he cupped her face in his broad hands and leaned down to kiss her. “Are ye certain ye won’t stay inside with Grandmama and her blunderbuss?” he asked in his deep, rolling brogue.
    She shook her head. “If you