She glanced at him. He looked less ducal than she’d seen him previously, now that he was in more relaxed country clothing. “I do take an interest. Why shouldn’t I? If I’m to inherit, I need to understand how the lands prosper, how they are laid out, and what makes us of any use to our tenants.”
The duke tilted his head, his hazel eyes greener among the overcast skies and rolling hills. “That’s not the usual sort of interest for a woman, Ceana Shaw.”
Ceana snorted softly. “There is no such thing as woman’s work or man’s work here. I can waltz as properly as any English girl and shoot as well as any Englishman.”
He laughed at that. “Better, I’d reckon, with those eyes.”
She jerked to look at him sharply, her horse whinnying at the sudden motion. “And what exactly does that mean, Your Grace?”
The duke raised a brow. “Aside from the obvious beauty in them? You have steady eyes. Never wavering. You see clearly and with focus. Steady eyes, Ceana Shaw. Would that we all had them.” His voice softened at the end, and he was no longer looking at her.
That was odd. He’d given her a fair compliment, though he had done little but annoy her to death since they’d met, and even more so today. He’d arrived at Ravensmere early, jauntily greeted her by her full name, and chattered on endlessly about his life in London as though she had any interest in it, and now this?
“You’re a strange sort of duke, Your Grace,” Ceana admitted warily.
Her words seemed to amuse him, and his mouth drew up in a half smile. “And you’ve never said truer words, Ceana Shaw.”
Ceana’s brows snapped down. “Why do you always say my full name, Your Grace?”
His smile turned teasing, and his eyes twinkled. “I don’t know. I just like the way it feels.”
Her stomach clenched in spite of herself, and she wrenched her gaze away from his. “As you can see, Your Grace,” she intoned, desperate to return to guiding him, “Mr. Bruce’s land struggles, despite being well tended.”
“You can call me David,” the duke said as though he were not listening. “I don’t need formalities out here.”
David? Ceana kept her gaze fixed firmly ahead of her, though his name reverberated in her mind. He looked like a David, far more than he looked like a duke, but she couldn’t . . . There was absolutely no reason . . .
“I’ve no need for familiarity with a duke, Your Grace,” Ceana replied in a crisp tone. “I know my manners.”
“Just as you please, Ceana Shaw,” he shot back, riding closer. “But no one would know if you called me David. You might find your indignation and prejudice lessened. Surely such fury is draining for you.”
“I’ve nothing against dukes in general.”
“Oh, just me?”
“It seems enough.”
“Because I almost ran you over?”
She glanced at him then, smiling tightly. “No, sir, before then I thought you a great fool. That simply reinforced my dislike and gave it a face.”
He tsked loudly. “First impressions have never been my strong suit. At least now I know that I shall be David in your mind, even against your will, and hope that further exposure to my better qualities will lessen your distaste.”
“Why do you even care, Your Grace?” she asked with a laugh. “It’s no’ as though I’m anyone of significance.”
“Aren’t you?” he murmured, giving her a too-thorough look.
“Your Grace,” Ceana managed to protest, though her voice was weak.
“If you have your way, Ceana Shaw,” David went on, “you’ll become a baronetess and as responsible for the people hereabouts as I. You are the future of this region, which makes you quite significant to my interests. Mr. Bruce is younger than your father, and he does well enough with his farms, though my sources tell me he’d do better if he considered choosing either sheep or farms, not both. Your Uncle Hamish has lost almost all his tenants with his transition to sheep farming and isn’t seeing any profit from it, as his lands are so small. My own lands are waffling between both farms and sheep and not seeing profits either way. Your father, however, seems satisfied with his situation and, as I understand it, has yet to make a decision one way or the other. You have an opinion, if I know you, and if your mind is half so keen as I think it is, it’s a rather good one.”
Ceana stared at David, as she now seemed to think of him, without speaking. He couldn’t have had much time to truly consider the lands about them since dinner last night, and she’d heard her father had been most unhelpful. Yet he had pinpointed the particular states of each estate in their vicinity and given her the benefit of a voice at the hypothetical table.
He saw her as an equal party in this.
Or at least pretended to.
“I have,” she allowed hesitantly, unsure if she could trust the change in him. “But my opinion matters little.”
“Why?” David persisted. “If you are to inherit—”
“If,” she broke in. “If is the important word there, Your Grace. I do not have the benefit of a sure inheritance, as you do, because I was born a woman. Had I been a son to my father, there would be no question and I would be tutored up in his matters. As a daughter, I must take what I can when I can and gain the information on my own. I may not inherit at all, and without the lands, I have nothing.”
His brow furrowed deeply. “Nothing?”
Ceana nodded once. “We are land rich, Your Grace, but in all other respects quite poor. My father refuses to see it, but neither can he ignore the state of affairs. If I do not inherit, Your Grace, I will have the same sort of dowry as Mary McDonald from Aviemore. So for all your impressive flattery of my significance, I have none if I do not inherit.”
There was no sound for a moment but the trudging sound of the horses’ hooves. “There was no flattery,” David finally said in a low voice. “I think you are significant, questionable inheritance and all.”
She smiled at that, undoubtedly the first true smile she had given him that day. “Then you would be one of very few. My father wishes me to inherit, but does not seem to think he should help me do so.”
“So why not try to marry you off instead?” David asked, watching her closely. “A man with a respectable fortune could make everything far more secure for Ravensmere.”
Ceana snorted without reserve. “I have no inducement to marry. I may inherit our lands with or without the connection.”
“You may gain lands and titles and fortune if you marry,” he pointed out.
She shook her head. “My husband would have those. I would lose all independence with a marriage.”
“You might also gain it.” He straightened in the saddle and turned to face her more completely. “I understand your desire for these lands to be your own, to have something of worth to show for your name. But there are more ways than one to have a life of value. And if you are willing to work at it, you may have several ways.”
There was something to his words that struck her, some deep-seated truth that took hold of her heart. “Do you, Your Grace?” she found herself asking. “Have several?”
He sighed, looking away and over the lands before them. “I don’t know. All I ever wanted was one, but it wasn’t the one anybody else thought important enough to matter. I’ve always had to ask which value did I want to place on my life: the one they wanted or the one I wanted?”
Ceana looked at David with some interest. “And they are not the same?”
“They aren’t even close.”
She wondered at that. “Can you have both?”
“I didn’t think so. But now . . . I wonder.” His voice faded, lost in the midst of his inner torment or regret.
“Wonder what, Your Grace?” Ceana pressed, suddenly possessed of a fierce desire to have his thoughts open and laid bare before her, to know what he meant and how he felt.
He shook himself, and a playful light entered his eyes as he looked at her now. “I wonder, Ceana Shaw, what a fair lass such as yourself
thinks of being called by such a name. Ceana is not a name I am familiar with, yet it suits you well.”
She wasn’t prepared for the sharp twist of disappointment at the return of his lightheartedness, and she could barely restrain a small frown. “Ceana was a favorite name of my mother,” she told him, not bothering to hide her irritation. “She only knew me for three days, but it was enough to name me.”
“And what does it mean?” David inquired, offering a cheeky smile. “‘God is gracious’? ‘Ruler of people’? ‘Light and hope’?”
Ceana sighed and gave a laugh. “It means ‘fair,’ all right? You’d never guess it at the rate you’re going.”
“Fair?” David repeated, looking up at the cloud-covered skies momentarily. “Fair. I approve of that, and even more so of its belonging to you. No wonder it suits you.” He glanced at her with a curious smile. “Fair Ceana is Ceana fair. Yes, of that I greatly approve.”
Her cheeks colored at that, and she fought to keep the smile from her lips.
“Tell me,” he said, smiling still. “Is that Ceana with a K?”
“No, Your Grace,” Ceana told him, warming to his playfulness now. “Unless you’re unfamiliar with your letters.”
David scoffed. “Well, for those of us not educated in the intricacies of Scottish spelling, do tell me how to spell your name.”
“Why would you need to know such a thing?” Ceana asked with a dubious look.
He shrugged. “In case I need to send you a missive or something.”
She barked a laugh. “Why would you?”
“Perhaps I fancy you.” He gave her a suggestive yet still playful quirk of his brows.
Ceana smiled outright at that.
He pretended at haughty airs and sniffed. “Fine, then. Don’t tell me. And suffer the indignity of not receiving one of my well-written notes in an impressively fine hand because your name will be spelled wrong and no one will know where to send it.”
Ceana stared ahead for a long moment, still smiling at the antics of this impossible duke. Then she sighed and relented. “C-E-A-N-A.”
There was a markedly long pause, and then, “In what world do those letters in that order make up your name the way it’s pronounced?”
“In the refined and elegant world I inhabit,” Ceana told him with an imperious lift of her chin.
David scoffed to himself. “Apparently I don’t live there.”
“No, you don’t,” Ceana agreed, looking over at him. “But for the sake of argument, how would you spell it—in your very boring and simple world?”
He raised a brow. “K-E-N-N-A. Simple, straightforward, and nigh impossible to get wrong.”
Ceana smirked, inclining her head. “Then it is a good thing that my parents did not ask you how to spell my name.”
“Indeed,” David said bluntly. “I would have been a child and probably horrid with letters, so you would have had at least one G in there and probably several Qs.”
Ceana couldn’t help it; she laughed merrily at his response, tossing her head back. She could appreciate a fine show of wit and humor, and while she knew the duke was a man of irony and in possession of a quick tongue, she had hardly expected this. He was lively and playful, without artifice or airs, and he the wealthiest and most influential of any in the region.
It surprised her beyond measure, almost as much as the sudden loss of her indignation.
“What a sound, Ceana Shaw,” David mused from beside her. “Are the Highlands always so musical or is that magic entirely of your making?”
Ceana looked at him in outright bewilderment, smiling still. “Are you always such a terrible flirt?”
“Terrible?” he protested hotly. “I have it on good authority that I am a most accomplished flirt!”
“And with whom have you flirted, Your Grace?” she asked him, keeping her tone light, as his had been.
David suddenly smiled knowingly. “Jealous, Ceana Shaw? And we barely know each other . . .”
Startled at the suggestion, she shook her head and exhaled sharply. “Merely curious as to what sort of women are dense enough to believe a single word you say.”
“I wouldn’t know,” he replied in the smoothest voice she had ever heard. “I’m told it’s impolite to discuss a woman’s density.”
Ceana clamped down on her lip hard, determined not to laugh at his quip, hilarious though it had been. She could not encourage him, not if she wanted to maintain any sort of dignity where he was concerned. She was supposed to be cool and distant with him, disapproving of everything he was and everything he stood for.
But then, he was not supposed to be amusing or charming.
When her desire to laugh had faded, she turned to him once more. “Have you even been listening to what I’ve been saying today?”
David smirked at her. “I have. Mr. Bruce has the best farmers, which is why I think he should stick with that and get rid of his sheep. Your father is land rich, cash poor, which means he needs to make the most of that land, which he is not currently doing.
“There’s a fence bordering my lands, which is offensive to the locals, including you, probably because enclosing land isn’t done in the Highlands. Your name, Ceana, is not spelled as pronounced, but it means ‘fair,’ which you are.
“The only thing we haven’t talked about that interests me is why you, your father, and everybody else seems to be stalling me from accomplishing my purpose here.” He gave her a questioning look that may have been the most serious she’d ever received.
He had been listening. He’d listened to everything she’d said, besides what he’d already gleaned from his estate agent, and he was taking it seriously.
He really was not what she had expected a duke to be at all.
“I presume,” Ceana began, keeping her voice low, though there was no one to overhear, “the landowners have recently begun transitioning to sheep farming instead of the existing farms because the farms in some regions are not producing enough and sheep are currently in high demand. Progress, as you said, must be allowed to press on—even in the Highlands.”
He nodded at that, which she found comforting. The Scots were never quite sure how much of their business actually trickled down to the ears of the English, particularly those without any sort of interest in them. They had a hard enough time with the English with interests, including him or, as she’d now come to believe, his father.
This Duke of Ashcombe appeared anything but ambivalent.
“They’re called sheep walks, correct?” David asked, a furrow of thought between his dark brows. “And the more space the sheep have, the larger the flock, the more profit you can make.”
Pleased in spite of herself, Ceana nodded. “Something like that. The problem is that the land required for such growth is already inhabited.”
“Ah.” David looked out over the lands again, his eyes narrowing. “Tenant farmers.”
Ceana nodded again, this time watching David with interest. “This is nothing new, Your Grace.”
“David,” he reminded her.
She rolled her eyes. “These land clearances have been going on for decades, but only now are coming into effect here. Uncle Hamish had his lands cleared, but that isn’t saying much. Mr. Bruce refuses to do anything of the sort, which leaves his lands congested and floundering.”
“And your father?”
Ceana debated saying anything against what her father was or was not doing, lest David think less of her for it. Why that was important she refused to contemplate.
“My father struggles to make a decision one way or the other,” Ceana admitted softly. “So we limp along without a direction.”
David grunted softly, but said nothing in response, which she was grateful for. He cleared his throat. “These clearances. How are they handled?”
A humorless smile crossed Ceana’s lips. “That would depend upon the landowner in question. I suggest you ask some of the others in the area for guidance, if you are looking to clear tenant
s.”
“My understanding was that some of ours were given the option of leaving if they chose, with a generous severance pay,” David told her. “I wouldn’t trust my father on that, but Mr. Gordon insists it was handled well, and he is a local man.”
Ceana laughed once. “That means nothing. This isn’t an English against Scottish matter, David. Some of the landowners are English; some are Scottish. Some are ruthless, brutal, and cruel. Others have done the best they can by their tenants. It isn’t a matter of nationality; it’s a matter of personality.” She looked at him with a speculative look. “They don’t trust you because they wonder which sort of landowner you will be, now you’ve decided to take an interest.”
David was already watching her, his eyes warm, a peculiar smile on his face.
“What?” she queried with no small amount of suspicion, sighing heavily. “Are you wondering which side of the argument I’m on where you’re concerned? Because I have yet to make up my mind on that score.”
“That wasn’t what I was thinking about,” he replied, shaking his head.
Something about that made her swallow hard. “No?”
Again, he shook his head. “No.” His smile grew. “You called me David, Ceana Shaw. The single most musical sound I’ve ever heard.”
Her heart stopped, and she thought back quickly. Had she? She acknowledged that she thought of him as David now, thanks to his planting the thought there, but out loud . . .
Blast. She had.
She gave him the sort of look that would relay various curses, which only made him smile more. “Do you ride as much as you talk, Your Grace?”
“David,” he teased with a quirk of his brows.
“I’ll take that as a no,” she replied, kicking her heels into her horse and shooting off before he had a chance to respond.
He would chase her, she had no doubt, and she didn’t mind that. She needed distance, for a few moments at least, to collect her thoughts and her wits.
And she desperately needed David, Duke of Ashcombe, to go back to being insufferable and far, far less charming.
Falling for a Duke (Timeless Regency Collection Book 8) Page 4
