They were in a gallery separating the ballroom from a torchlit terrace, and the air was cooler and quieter. The stomping still reverberated through the floor and hammered against Hamish’s skull.
“There will be no ‘falling into place,’ Keswick,” Hamish said, abandoning any pretense of good manners. “I’m leaving for Scotland in a few days’ time.” He’d make that the dukedom’s motto, considering how often he repeated the words in his head.
“You must do as you see fit,” Keswick replied, marching out into the night, “though leaving so many invitations unreturned would be insufferably rude and redound to your eternal discredit. I’m nearly always rude, but my countess keeps me on the social side of insufferable. I believe you’re to dance the supper waltz with Miss Megan Windham?”
Foreboding swamped Hamish, and foreboding was a familiar companion. He’d found himself lost in a hostile wilderness once before, one infested with French patrols, French sympathizers, and no reliable landmarks. Hamish shook off the memory, which invariably ambushed him at the worst possible moments.
“Keswick, I haven’t time to kick up my heels in London much longer. I have lands to see to, tenancies to look over, and some damned manor house or seat or ruin, which, as duke, I must inspect and pretend I’m pleased to acquire.”
The solicitors had explained that the dukedom’s seat actually straddled the border—the location of which had been somewhat fluid in centuries past—putting Hamish in possession of English land.
Of all the curses.
Keswick’s gaze in the flickering torchlight was both amused and pitying. The amusement was welcome, for after two hours of chit-chat, false civility, and a pounding head, that amusement infuriated Hamish, while the pity … the pity threatened his reason.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Keswick shot back. “The damned earldom of Keswick, and the barony lurking beneath it, came to me upon the loss of my only living relation. A dearer old fellow you never met. Sixtus was jovial, generous, the best of men, and his faith in me when I decided to buy my colors was the greatest asset I might have had in battle. One soldiers on, Murdoch.”
Even out on the terrace, Hamish could hear violins screeching above the marching army of debutantes and dandies. Laughter floated on the night breezes, along with a noxious blend of lamp oil, exertion, perfume, and tobacco.
Then somebody—some tipsy, gossiping, unsuspecting soul—murmured a bit of gossip in French.
Hamish’s French, like that of most British military officers, was proficient.
“Murdoch has such a brutal air,” a woman said in titillated Parisian accents. “One can’t help but wonder, given all the talk …”
“He was taken captive, you know,” a bored male voice replied in the same language. “His men never said exactly how that happened. Not held prisoner for very long, by all accounts. Perhaps the French haven’t your appreciation for savagery, my dear.”
Somebody was speaking—in English—but Hamish could not grasp the words. He was under another moonlit sky, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, exhausted, furious, his heart pounding in time with the blows falling on him from all directions.
Go down fighting. You’ve the blood of a hundred generations of warriors … the blood of a hundred generations of warriors … a hundred generations of warriors….
Self-defense begged for expression. A compulsion to destroy panicked its way past the part of Hamish that watched from a vantage point above his head.
This again, this mindless surrender to despair. This clamoring demand to salvage a shred of honor with a tidal surge of violence.
This loss of all control, of all hope, and he’d been doing so well …
While the Hamish choking in his evening finery raised a hand to strike out at the next fool who sought to subdue him. His ears roared, his vision misted red, his breathing came in great, soughing bellows.
He knew what was happening, and yet he could not preserve himself from the disgrace bearing down from all sides. Go down fighting. Die hard … make them die harder.
“There you are.” The soft words came from Hamish’s right. “I’m so glad I found you. Our dance approaches, and I’ve been looking forward all evening to my waltz with you.”
Between the part of Hamish preparing to wreak havoc without mercy and the part of Hamish collapsing in defeat at the hands of violent memories, a rational thought emerged, like the ringing of church bells over a battlefield.
Gently spoken Englishwomen did not participate in moonlit ambushes. He could trust that conclusion as a fact grounded in a soldier’s experience.
Hamish lowered the fist that had been raised to the level of his heart, while the tittering couple moved away, and the violins lilted along, spreading gracious melody over the tramping of the dancers’ feet and the pounding of Hamish’s heart.
Keswick’s watchful stillness suggested Hamish might have been a horse beaten too many times, crowded against the walls that had prevented flight to safety. The animal could strike out at the very person who sought to tend its wounds and lead it to freedom.
“Miss Megan,” Keswick said, not taking his gaze off Hamish. “Good evening. Is it time for the supper waltz?”
The scent of lilacs came to Hamish as a gentle grip wrapped around his elbow.
“The next set should be the supper waltz,” she said. “You may entrust me to His Grace’s care, Keswick, and find your countess.”
Saved. Saved not by Keswick’s fist plowing into Hamish’s jaw, not by Colin tackling his older brother and slamming his head against the paving stones. Saved, not even by a certain baroness storming onto the dueling grounds and hurling scolds in all directions.
Saved by a quiet question and a hand on Hamish’s arm. He nearly collapsed at Miss Megan’s feet, as a man will when battle-madness eases its stranglehold on reason.
“Murdoch,” Keswick said. “Shall I leave you and Miss Megan to find your own way back to the ballroom?”
Hamish managed a nod. “Aye.”
“Thank you, Joseph,” Miss Megan added. “I’m sure Louisa is looking for you.”
After another pointed visual inspection, Keswick bowed to the lady and departed.
“Joseph is fierce out of habit,” Miss Megan said, leading Hamish to a shadowed bench. “His children take shameless advantage if he doesn’t put up a show of gruffness, but he is a much loved man. Louisa, of all people, was smitten to her toes and remains in that blessed state to this day.
“Do sit down,” she went on. “I overheard Lady Viola’s speculations, Your Grace. She’s a tart, of course, and you’re not to spare her a moment’s thought. My feet ache, by the way. We’re sitting out the supper waltz. Please say something, for I’m babbling.”
The sound of Megan’s voice, with its hints of Wales and heart-deep goodness, soothed Hamish. Her proximity, her invitation to sit with her beneath the torches, to rest for a moment in the shadows, calmed his spirit, like a well-aged dram on a bitter night.
Hamish said the first words that came to mind. “I’m glad you found me too, Miss Meggie. Very glad.”
Megan’s heart was still pounding, her belly was in an uproar, and all she could think was that with the Duke of Murdoch, she’d find sanctuary. He was a good man, honest, honorable, all the things Sir Fletcher was not. For the length of an entire minuet, Megan had endured Sir Fletcher’s smiling, bowing assurances of ruin, should she fail to yield to his proposal posthaste.
“We can waltz if you insist,” Megan said. “It’s not that I’m ashamed to be seen with you.” Though she was very ashamed of herself.
“You should be.” His Grace sat immediately beside her, not the polite twelve inches away propriety demanded.
The ballroom had grown very warm, while out on the terrace the late night air was chilly, typical of early spring. One could not be comfortable anywhere, in other words. And yet, the duke gave off a lovely heat, and his very bulk sheltered a lady from chilly breezes.
“Ashamed to be seen w
ith you?” Megan asked. “Why would you say such a thing?”
“You heard that Lady Viola. I was taken captive and held by the French, I lost a fiancée somewhere along the way. I’m a savage. Five years from now, no matter how well I waltz or how harmlessly I natter on about the weather, the talk will still follow me. Any woman seen in my company will be the subject of unkind speculation.”
He sounded so matter of fact that for a moment, Megan’s own troubles receded. “You were imprisoned by Baron St. Clair. He’s apparently been forgiven for joining the French Army as a youth, though nobody will say why.”
The duke patted Megan’s hand. “He was a youth, that’s why. Stranded in France when visiting his mother’s people during the Peace of Amiens. St. Clair’s a good sort, in his way, though I’d not like to meet his baroness in a dark alley. Do your feet truly ache? My head is killing me and I’ll not venture near the punch bowl again.”
The change of subject was less than deft and that pat to Megan’s hand had been … off. Murdoch didn’t strike her as the patting kind. Perhaps Megan’s own upset was responsible, or perhaps Lady Viola’s gossip was to blame.
“Shall we stroll, Your Grace? Many people do at the supper interval.”
“Stroll.” He made the word sound suspect. “Aye, though I’m sure finer points attach to strolling, and you will please instruct me in them.” He rose and offered his arm, quite correctly.
Megan stood, though such was the difference in their heights that she could have climbed onto the bench itself and not been much taller than her escort.
“You are not a savage,” she said softly. “You are a soldier, or you were.”
“And now I’m a duke. Feels like being taken captive all over again. One minute I’m on patrol, consumed with my missing brother’s whereabouts, cheered to think we’ve spotted his horse’s tracks. The next all is chaos and noise, mayhem, and bloodshed.”
Did Lady Viola know that Murdoch had been looking for his missing brother when the French had descended upon him? Did anybody?
Megan slipped her arm through the duke’s. “We’ll find quiet down by the fountain. I’d like a moment of quiet.”
“God knows, I would too.”
Megan discarded a handy conversational inanity about the ballroom decorations, for even with an escort, making her way in the dark required focus.
“Lady Viola gave you a bad moment, didn’t she?” Megan asked when the steps had been safely negotiated. “Keswick was worried, and he doesn’t worry easily.”
“Lady Viola merely spoke the truth, but yes. I wanted to thrash her and whatever fawning dandiprat was with her. My reputation for violence was not lightly earned, Miss Meggie, though I should not speak of such things to one so fine as you.”
Megan and her escort moved down the path, past white-clad debutantes doubtless trying to look bored on the arms of their brothers’ friends. In the low light, Megan could see only ghostly shapes and shadows, and the duke’s escort became a matter of necessity rather than social convention.
“I wanted to thrash Lady Viola,” she said, “and when it comes to soldiering, who can you speak with about it? Carrying a secret hurt only makes the ache worse, in my experience. It paces about in your mind, like a lion in a menagerie. Miserable, far from home, burning to escape. Until you know, you just know, no matter how stout the fence, how high the gate, or how dangerous the choice, that poor, crazed animal, trapped so far from home, will risk all—”
Murdoch’s hand closed over Megan’s where it rested on his arm.
“We’ll talk,” he said gently. “It can’t be so bad as all that.”
His understanding was a chink in the wall of misery surrounding the rest of Megan’s life. “If I talk, I’ll start to cry.” And possibly never stop.
“If you talk, I’ll listen. I came armed for skirmishes.” He brandished a white handkerchief. “Do you know how much the rogues on Bond Street want to charge to have my coat of arms embroidered on this little bit of cloth? Now that is a scandal worth gossiping about. Worse, I do not doubt the poor ladies ruining their eyes to create such finery are paid a pittance compared to the tailor’s profit from their labor.”
“Your sisters might take on such a project.” Beth could manage it easily.
“That pair. Have they tried to sell you any of my cigars? Enterprising of them, but ye gods, Miss Meggie. I pity the fellow who stumbles into their gunsights. They know how to make a rope of bedsheets, though you mustn’t tell anybody I said that.”
He teased, he complained, he wandered the garden with Megan until almost everybody else had gone in for the supper waltz and Megan could hear the soft splash of the fountain as water poured over the fingers of a perpetually smiling shepherdess.
“Have I made enough small talk, Miss Meggie? I confess my store is about exhausted. I’m down to asking why, you see, which is my question of last resort. Why are you so upset, and why must you deny me the pleasure of the only waltz I’ve anticipated with any joy?”
Megan sat not on the bench flanking the fountain, but on the stone wall surrounding the fountain’s sunken square. Because she’d been here by day, she knew that heartsease had been planted on all four sides, and lampposts sat at each corner of the square. Three of the lamps needed relighting, rather like Megan’s hopes.
“I’m in trouble,” she said around a lump in her throat. “I have been rash, silly, and stupid, and I must pay for my foolishness with the rest of my l-life.”
The tears came, but true to his word, Murdoch was prepared. He sat right beside her, lent her his handkerchief, rubbed her back, and waited. When she’d cried not nearly enough, Megan rested her forehead against his arm, feeling so weary, she might have gone to sleep right there on the hard stones.
“Could be worse,” His Grace said. “Could be you wake up in a French garrison, chained to the wall, your head throbbing like ten devils are trying to get out of your skull. You know my shameful past, Miss Meggie. Why don’t you tell me of your great silliness?”
His Grace made confession sound so reasonable, a mere trifle between friends, and he followed up his invitation with a companionable arm around Megan’s shoulders. She rested her cheek against his biceps, wishing she’d met him years earlier, before he’d gone in search of his missing brother.
Before she’d written those damned letters.
“I fell in love,” she said, “or thought I did. In truth, I fell … I don’t know, into stupidity. Infatuation, rebellion, boredom. I met Sir Fletcher at a regimental ball and struck up a flirtation with him. I’d made my come out and had a few seasons. I knew everything and was soon to make a fabulous match with a dashing, wealthy, titled, kind, handsome, witty, interesting, princely gentleman as yet unknown. One with estates in Kent, preferably, nice family, and no need for acute vision in his wife.”
“This unknown paragon sounds like one of your cousins,” Murdoch said, his hand moving soothingly on Megan’s back. “One of those cousins who should have warned you: Regimental balls are responsible for much mischief. The most dangerous creatures in the military are newly commissioned officers. The enlisted men see a spotless uniform on a young gent wearing new boots, they put in for a transfer. If his horse is high strung, his hair always combed, so much the worse.”
Well, yes. War wasn’t a fashion magazine come to life, was it? Insightful, though, to notice that Megan’s manly ideal was based on Westhaven, Valentine, and St. Just.
“You’ve described Sir Fletcher the evening we were introduced,” she said, “though he was wearing dancing slippers and had one unruly curl gracing his brow. He was all manners, charm, and daring kisses.”
“Rutting, bedamned varlet.”
Megan smiled her first genuine smile in days. “You’re being polite, aren’t you?”
“I’m being saintly compared to what I’d like to say, and here I thought all my stores of self-restraint blown to bits. You’re a good influence, Miss Meggie.”
Another squeeze of her shoulders.
Perhaps she’d misread Murdoch and missed a latent capacity for affection. Megan slipped her arm around his waist, for that seemed the logical place for her arm to go—though perhaps not the most sensible. His back was lean, and even through his evening attire she could feel the strength and warmth of him.
He smelled good too. Heathery, of all things.
“So Pilkington took liberties,” Murdoch said. “You’re not the first young lady he’s kissed, and I hope he’s not the only fellow whose charms you’ve sampled.”
Megan sat up and peered at her companion in the shadows, though she could not make out much of his features.
“I’m not … I’m not fast, Murdoch.”
Though here she was, nestling against him. Nestling and nuzzling.
“Of course you’re not fast,” he said. “We’re more practical in Scotland than you are in the south. We expect a woman to make an informed choice about a matter as serious as marriage. If she doesn’t like a fellow’s kisses, the wedding night is rather too late to find that out, and the fellow will be all the more miserable for it too. You’ve heard of handfasting?”
A couple ended up handfasted when they’d agreed to marry, then anticipated the vows. The union was legal and binding, and unlike Sir Walter Scott’s portrayal of it, usually considered permanent.
“My mother waxes eloquent about the mischief engendered by the custom of handfasting,” Megan said.
“Oh, right. As if dueling, scandal, or shaming a pair of lusty young people for indulging in the joys of nature is a better plan? Meanwhile, your London tailors kit a fellow out so snugly that the ballroom becomes one giant game of ‘show me yours’ while the ladies pretend ignorance. But back to your kisses, please. Somebody will soon be out here, insisting you dance with him, lucky toad.”
Show me yours? Megan had grown up among five healthy male cousins. She’d eavesdropped with no less than three sisters and five female cousins, and then there were Charlotte’s reports from various card rooms, archery contests, and race meets.
The Trouble With Dukes Page 8
