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“You might want to hold off on that until the end of the evening, don’t you think? See how things go?”
“No, sir, I plan to thank you again at the end of the evening. I was raised with manners and with the understanding that my sole purpose as a gentleman is to ensure your daughter is always safe and happy.”
Jesus. The little prick was making it difficult to hate him.
Well played.
Oliver was proving to be an impressive adversary.
“Aye, there he be. Oliver, me boy, ye be looking well.”
Angus.
Who didn’t appear to be as skeptical of their mutual enemy as he would have liked. Angus seemed happy to see him. Jocular, even.
Like Lucas, Oliver reached out his hand to the non-threatening Scot, who shook it vigorously and looked at the boy as if a puppy in training.
“‘Ow’s yer arm?”
Oliver held one hand to his opposite shoulder and moved his arm around. “I rubbed it down with the Arnica blend, just as you suggested.”
Lucas was confused. “What’s the matter with your arm?”
Oliver and Angus said at the same time, “Claymore.”
Lucas’s eyebrows rose. “Like, the sword? You were struck with a sword?”
Oliver seemed taken aback. “With all due respect, sir, a claymore is nothing like a sword. And I wasn’t struck by a claymore, I’m too fast to allow for that.” The boy grinned at Angus. “My arm’s just sore from wielding it.”
“You, are able to wield a claymore?” Lucas asked with a fair amount of skepticism, taking in the boy’s physique, which he had to admit, appeared to have begun to develop.
“The boy be a nat’ral. Trained ’im meself,” Angus bragged. “The claymore be a perfectly balanced weapon, easy to wield despite its heft.”
Lucas noticed the hairs growing on Oliver’s chin.
“You trying to grow a beard, son?” Lucas asked.
The sixteen-year-old dipped his chin and pulled at the few hairs emerging from it. “Aye, I mean, yes, sir. I real man wears a beard.” He glanced at Angus for his approval. “At least that’s what I’ve been told.”
Angus gave Oliver a sage nod, which got the young man going, feeding on Angus’s endorsement. “And a real man treats a woman like a lady. Which means that before he can earn the right to spend time with her, he must prove himself able to defend her.”
“What else defines a man, me boy?”
“Well, a real man practices the art of stoicism, shouldering burdens as opposed to the whiny, emotional vomiting of a fannybaw.”
“Fannybaw?” Lucas asked.
Angus responded with a wave of his hand, “A wee boy who’s no a man.”
“Okay,” Lucas said, thinking Angus and Oliver must have been spending a lot of time together in Mia’s absence. “What else has Mia’s bodyguard slash nanny taught you?”
As if exercising a verbal test in manhood, Oliver added, “To be a man of consequence, one doesn’t assume a woman wants you to fix her problems but to listen to them. Nodding every once in a while, and then repeating her words back to her, assuring her that she’s been heard. Oh, and to avoid any public displays of affection—”
Okay, now they were getting somewhere. He and Angus were on the same side of established enemy lines. Angus was merely addressing the threat in another more subtle way as opposed to head on.
He never thought he’d use the word subtle in a sentence characterizing Angus MacGavin.
Oliver was still talking. “…at least not until I’ve mastered the Angus MacGavin Manliness Program, which includes growing a full beard, wielding a claymore, and learning to throw a hatchet onto the bull’s-eye of a target set at twenty-five feet.”
