by Eva Devon
Everything else about him had suggested an utter rogue. One with at least two principles. No unwilling maidens. . . And no sisters of men he knew.
One was admirable. The other most annoying.
“Do you think he’s a good shot?” she asked abruptly.
“Pardon?”
“This duke. Is he a good shot?”
Duncan eyed her carefully. “Yes, I think he’s probably excellent. From what I gather, he’s traveled vastly over the world, to parts unknown, and he has a certain edge about him. The edge of a man who has seen genuine danger many times and lived to tell the tale.”
So, that’s what that had been. That strange feeling about him.
“Why do you ask?” Duncan queried.
She shrugged. “Oh, no reason. One does wonder if a gentleman is any good at that sort of thing.”
Duncan nodded absently. “Did you know Lady Cavendish was well liked in the village?”
“Yes.”
There it was again. Duncan’s scowl. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She threw up her hands in exasperation and headed for the stairs. As she took the first step, she said over her shoulder, “Duncan, no one tells you anything.”
“That’s not true,” he called after her. “I listen.”
In answer, she laughed ruefully. She couldn’t help herself. Duncan was certain he knew the answer to everything . . . Perhaps even before the question had been asked. It would take someone of strong stuff to show her brother that he wasn’t always right and while she might attempt it on occasion, she knew she’d never change him.
As she climbed the main stairs and headed towards the west wing and circular stone stairs that would take her to her room, she shook her head.
Poor Duncan.
Oh! She really had to stop thinking that. Poor Duncan, indeed. He was wealthy, powerful, a duke! There was nothing poor about him. . . And yet, she knew he was lonely.
Loneliness. . . It was the worst. Or so she felt. When one felt alone, it was all too difficult to put one’s foot in front of the other.
Rather, the overwhelming temptation was to climb under the covers and never emerge again.
Duncan did put one foot in front of the other, of course. He’d never let anything like self-pity keep him abed.
And well, she’d made friends where she may.
Their clan, for the most part, was made of stern stuff. Moaning was not allowed. Her father had been an aberration because even her wild grandmother had had a will of iron. She’d run off, but then she’d returned, baby in tow, on the ducal castle steps and breezed in as though she hadn’t given birth to a by-blow, bolted, or done anything wrong.
Much to everyone’s shock, she’d carried it off and died an old lady happily drinking brandy and ruling the countryside after her own husband’s death.
Rosamund often wondered how she’d done it. For surely, after having acquainted oneself with the world, a small life in the Highlands would be a never-ending experience.
Even though she kept herself occupied and she was ever awe-inspired by the beauty around her, she couldn’t help but wishing a few people her age lived a trifle closer.
There was no other great family within thirty miles of their castle. She chatted regularly with the villagers but there was something about longing to share information on the books she read, the music she played, and the art she contemplated in their drafty but magnificent castle.
When her grandmother who had bolted with her lover ten years her younger had returned, it was not long after that wagon after wagon had arrived, or so legend went. Each had been filled with great art that she’d collected on her travels. Rubens, da Vinci, Botticelli. And tapestries. Glorious tapestries depicting scenes from worlds far afield and ancient times decked the cold walls, courtesy of that wild woman.
When the Highlands became terribly dreary, as they were wont to do in winter months, Rosamund had sat before those vast works of art and imagined herself into them.
It was a fanciful thing, but it did keep one from feeling sorry for oneself.
And of course, despite the impropriety, Rosamund had made friends with Maeve MacIntosh, her lady’s maid.
Her maid was a remarkable woman of fifty who had seen quite a deal. Though born into the Highlands, Maeve had worked for great families since she was twelve years old. And since those days when she’d first started out as a tweenie, she’d risen and risen high.
Her last position before she’d come home to the Highlands had been a grand one. She’d been the lady’s maid to the former Duchess of Hunt, a woman now riddled by scandal but once the toast of London.
Maeve had seen it all and Rosamund thanked the good lord for it!
Many a night before her bedroom fire, Maeve had regaled Rosamund with tales of life in London amidst the most powerful and most privileged.
Rosamund opened her bedroom door and, to no surprise, Maeve was waiting at the center with hot chocolate on a silver tray by her dressing stand, a gown laid out upon the bed, and a silver-backed hair brush in her wrinkled hands.
“Did you have a good swim, my lady?” the older woman asked in her beautiful voice that was now only touched by a burr when she was vexed.
Rather like Rosamund, who’d had the Highlands educated out of her speech by nannies and governesses.
Now, Rosamund kept secrets from her brother. In her opinion, all sisters had to. But, since she had no mother living and no close female friends, Maeve had become her confidante.
It wasn’t appropriate, but what was an isolated young woman to do?
“I had a fascinating swim,” she confessed.
“The icy water stimulates you more than usual,” her maid teased.
“Perhaps!” Rosamund widened her eyes and grinned. “Or perhaps it was the Duke of Aston.”
Any other maid might have dropped the hair brush in her hands. Maeve gasped and then waved Rosamund to the dressing table. “Sit and tell me all about it.”
Somehow, Maeve had convinced Duncan that she was a very proper sort. And when she’d been hired, her former employers had still been reputable. A duke’s family almost always was, even if touched by scandal.
But in truth, Rosamund was fairly certain that Maeve loved the scandalous life as much as her former mistress had done.
And while the maid had truly wished to return to Scotland, it was clear she missed the old days of London Town.
Rosamund plunked herself down in the silk-cushioned chair and stared at her maid’s face reflected near her own in the mirror.
“Well,” she explained, “I was swimming and I quite literally bumped into him!”
Maeve stared for a moment then guffawed. “Were you nude?”
Rosamund gave a daring smile. “Aren’t I always when swimming?”
Maeve hid a cheeky smile of her own and began stroking the brush down Rosamund’s long locks. Then she gave a knowing glance. “Was he?”
“Oh my!” A sigh of appreciate escaped her lips. Just the very thought caused her cheeks to burn. “Yes!”
“From what I know, the Duke of Aston is a young gentleman. A handsome gentleman. A scandalous gentleman.”
Rosamund clapped her hands together, trying to put the thought of a naked Duke of Aston from her thoughts. Such contemplations would make her flustered and incapable of continuing this important conversation. “I was hoping you would know something.”
“Not much mind you,” Maeve warned. “He was abroad much of the time I was in London. But there was a great scandal about him and his father. The two hated each other and refused to be in the same room together. Apparently, because the young heir had gotten a girl pregnant on one of his early trips to Africa.”
That gave her pause. “A pregnancy?”
Maeve nodded as she continued to brush Rosamund’s hair. “Yes. No one talks of it openly, but there are whispers that he has a bastard child somewhere and that he goes to visit often.”
Well, it shouldn’t shock her she suppos
ed. When one was as worldly as a man like Aston then there were bound to be children out of wedlock. . . Her own notorious grandmother had two children born on the wrong side of the blanket so to speak. Everyone knew and yet they’d been accepted into the family as cousins.
“What else?” she asked, feeling the more information she armed herself with, the better.
“He engaged in piracy, so they say.”
Rosamund twisted in her chair. “What?”
Maeve held the brush to the side and remained quite calm. “Oh, yes. He sailed under the pirate flag in the Caribbean and he’s acted as a privateer boarding French merchant ships during the war.”
“But. . . But he’s a duke,” Rosamund protested.
“A bored duke apparently who will seek adventure wherever he may.”
How could he then, a man so engaged in notorious exploits, be bothered by her station? Why had he run off so quickly and so determinedly?
And why was she thinking of even seeing him again? A pirate? Och. She was mad herself to consider tracking him down and insisting he, at least, be her friend. A rake was one thing, but if he’d been a pirate? My, he must have been absolutely brutal. A cutlass-wielding fellow who made people walk the plank!
“My lady?”
“Hmmm?”
“You’ve gone dreamy eyed.”
“I was distracted.”
If truth be known, she was dangerously close to fantasizing about a sea journey and a pirate boarding her own ship. Clearly, she’d been reading too many silly novels.
“Has he ever married or has there been an engagement?” she asked, trying to pull herself up out of the immorality into which she was so clearly eager to sink.
“No marriage and I’ve heard of no engagement.” Maeve leaned forward and said with a conspiratorial though unnecessary whisper, “One of the rumors is that he will never wed and the title will pass to a distant cousin. But this is just idle speculation. He’s a young man and has decades to marry and sire an heir.”
“Never wed?” she scoffed. “How preposterous. As a duke, that’s his first expected thing. . . To get another duke.”
“He seems to dislike the expectations put upon him. He meets none of them as far as I’m aware.”
Rosamund looked to the window, gazing out to the towering snow-touched bens. “I wonder what happened to make him so.”
“Don’t you think he might just be a bit of a bad one?”
She thought on that for a moment. She couldn’t believe it. People weren’t inherently bad.
“Well, Duncan used to be a world of fun,” she pointed out. “And now he’s completely the opposite because of specific events. Don’t you think it might be the same?”
“It might, but just you be careful, my lady,” Maeve said gesturing with the silver-backed brush. “Knowing why a man is bad doesn’t change the fact that he is.”
“That is exceptionally wise and very serious.”
“Well, I must be sometimes, mustn’t I?”
As she stared out at the towering bens that were a beautiful boundary she’d only escaped through books, she couldn’t help wishing she could step foot over them once. Just once. “Don’t you long for a bit of adventure?”
“I had a great deal of it as you know.”
“How could you give it up?”
Maeve grew serious. “Because sometimes the danger outweighs the enjoyment.”
Rosamund nibbled her lip. “I don’t understand. Oh, I understand that there are consequences for women who don’t do as they should but. . . Danger?”
Maeve smiled softly and twisted Rosamund’s hair into soft curls upon her head. “I pray you never need understand.”
“You wouldn’t condemn me to a life unlived though, would you?”
“Of course not,” Maeve tsked. “I will be by your side whatever path you choose, dear girl.”
Rosamund leaned forward and braced her elbows on her dressing table. “And If I choose to dance wildly by the light of the moon?”
“I’ll be waiting with a blanket when you come in from the cold.”
Rosamund drew in a fortifying breath, wondering if she was about to leap into some unknown chasm with her desire for adventure. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Good thing that you’ll never need be without me then.”
Rosamund nodded, her throat tightening. Losing her mother had been brutal. And without the closeness of her family, Maeve was the only person she felt she could be herself with.
“Now, when are you seeing the Duke of Aston again?” Maeve asked.
Ah. There it was. She frowned. “He doesn’t wish to see me again, I don’t think.”
Maeve chortled. “You know why don’t you?”
“No.”
“You’re a bonnie thing. A lass no man can resist.”
“I thank you for the compliment, but how can that be the problem?”
“You’re a duke’s sister.”
“And?”
“One doesn’t dally with a duke’s unmarried sister and expect to come out unshackled.”
“Oh! I see. It’s because I’m an innocent. He’s worried about being trapped into marriage.”
“Yes, dear girl.”
“If I was married, he’d have no concerns?”
“Likely no.”
Rosamund eyed herself in the mirror. How the devil had he known she was a virgin? It wasn’t as if it were marked on her forehead. She’d always thought of herself as rather mature and not even particularly shielded by the world given her close interactions with the villagers and crofters.
She pursed her lips. “Being an innocent is highly overrated.”
Maeve groaned. “It’s not so very terrible.”
“It gets in the way of a good many happy pursuits. Perhaps I should rid myself of mine.”
“With who? The miller’s son?”
“George?” she asked, never having once given the idea any thought at all. “I’ve known George since we were both in nappies.”
“You didn’t know George when he wore nappies. By rights, you shouldn’t even know him now.”
“I don’t wish to pursue George,” she replied simply. “He’s a nice young man but there’s nothing there that inspires one and I would like to be just a trifle inspired when I lose my innocence.”
“The Duke of Aston inspires you, I take it? You’d like to pursue him? Despite the fact that he likely will run miles from you lest he be forced to the altar?”
It was an incredible thing to realize given she’d met him just hours ago, but yes. My goodness, yes. The man spoke to her in a way she’d never imagined. That voice seemed to say, “Come with me, lass, and I’ll ruin you forever and you’ll not regret it for a moment.”
In fact, it had been all she could do when they spoke to appear entirely unimpressed by his imposing and delicious person.
“He is remarkable,” she said at last.
“He will lead you into scandal if you let him.”
“When have you been overly concerned with scandal?”
“Lady Rosamund, I have become increasingly thoughtful on it since your brother’s entrenchment into propriety. If he even knew we were discussing such a thing, he’d toss me out on my ear.”
“But you don’t mean to go entirely proper, do you?”
“Lady Rosamund, I could never,” the maid teased. “Still, you must be careful. You don’t want your brother sending you to a nunnery school in France.”
“I am far too old for that.”
Maeve gave a sad shake of her silvering head. “With strong-willed men like your brother, I have found that ladies are never too old for that kind of censuring.”
That gave her pause. She knew Duncan wouldn’t do that to her. She was too independent by far but it would change their relationship. Then again, their relationship had already changed. She loved her brother but he was burying himself alive. It was a fate she couldn’t allow for herself.
“I desire to kn
ow this duke better,” she said firmly. So firmly, she was half certain it was to convince herself. “I don’t need to sin with him per se but I cannot simply leave our acquaintance at this one meeting. Maeve, I am certain fate sent him to me.”
Maeve clucked. “I have a terrible feeling, my lady, that you’re the sort that should be married straight away.”
“Oh, indeed?”
“Yes. Then, at least, you’d be a good deal freer to make a bit of scandal.”
Rosamund winked. “And if I want scandal before the wedding?”
“Then you will be choosing a most challenging life.”
She considered that. She liked facts. She liked to know the possible outcomes of her actions. If she were to throw her life away for a fling with the Duke of Aston, who didn’t seem inclined, would it be worth it?
She took in a deep breath. “And if I could keep it a secret?”
“It would have to be very secret.”
“If I could?”
“Then, my lady, as they’d say in the ton, anything goes.”
Chapter 4
Derek charged into Lady Cavendish’s lavish hunting lodge, a feeling so unfamiliar dogging his steps he almost didn’t notice Cordelia, the Duchess of Hunt, standing in the library doorway.
“Lose your clothes did you?” she drawled.
Derek stopped, prepared to snarl but then he recalled himself. The Duke of Aston didn’t snarl. He was a font of naughtiness and goodwill.
“They wandered off,” he sallied. He was still clenching the tartan blanket about his waist and he hadn’t even realized, so distracted was he. Which boded very ill, indeed.
Cordelia, whom he had been acquainted with now for a few months, eyed him. “I say, you weren’t rogering some Highland lass? I mean, all well and good for a bit of pleasure. . . but it’s a terrible cliché.”
“No,” he replied. “No rogering the local ladies at present, if you must know.”
He did have a reputation for loving the ladies but, in all actuality in the last years, he had slowed dramatically in his pursuit of pure pleasure. He certainly didn’t stoop to young women in fields. . . Though apparently fiery maids in lochs were a dangerous temptation.
