Megan knew very well what “show me yours” alluded to, and perhaps she ought to have been scandalized by such blunt speech … except Murdoch was right. Some people’s idea of evening attire—some ladies’ and some gentlemen’s both—was nearly indecent.
“I wrote Sir Fletcher letters,” she said, “recounting his kisses, swearing eternal devotion, longing for his embrace, and … so forth. The terribly scandalous sort of so forth.”
The so forth part was especially mortifying. Show me yours, indeed.
The duke rose, and Megan felt bereft, chilled, and—all over again—stupid, stupid, stupid. His Grace would be polite, for in his way he was gallant, but he’d explain to her that he had to return to Scotland that instant, and she mustn’t spend too much time around his sisters in the coming weeks, please. He would not judge her for her lapses, of course, but …
But.
“You have cousins,” he said, puzzlement in his voice. “At least one of them was a soldier, another will be a duke, and the nancy one has the shoulders of a stevedore and is no fool. Why haven’t they simply asked for the return of these letters? If they call on Sir Fletcher as a group, he’ll likely wet himself he’ll be in such a hurry to surrender the contraband.”
“I adore your honest speech,” Megan said. “You think in terms of logic and honor, and that is … that is the very problem, you see.”
Murdoch took off his evening glove and trailed his fingers through the shepherdess’s endless waterfall. “I see that adoring a fellow got you into this mess, Miss Meggie, but I thank you for the compliment. I am … considered unsophisticated, and rightly so. Simple logic, right and wrong. Those I can keep straight even in a noisy, stinking ballroom. Why won’t your cousins confront Sir Fletcher?”
Murdoch assumed the problem was with Megan’s cousins. How she treasured him for his reasoning.
“I won’t ask my cousins to confront Sir Fletcher because he’ll call them out, of course,” Megan said, scooting on her perch, though finding a comfortable seat on cold, hard stone was a hopeless undertaking. “I couldn’t bear that, and a duel would ruin my reputation anyway, bring scandal down upon my sisters, and disappoint my parents. For two years after Rosecroft mustered out, he had to consume spirits to endure thunderstorms. The idea of subjecting him to gunfire or swordplay, for any reason, is beyond me.”
“What was Sir Fletcher doing for those two years and more, and why is he only now making a pest of himself to you?”
His Grace asked a shrewd question.
“I’ve concluded I’m Sir Fletcher’s fiancée of last resort.” Another hurt, to be any man’s last resort. “First, he paid his addresses to a banker’s daughter, but her family’s fortunes declined sharply and they no longer come to Town. Then, he became devoted to a sugar heiress, who moved to the West Indies. I was relieved to see him pursuing other women, when it became clear he wasn’t at all as interested in me as I had been in him. I considered I’d had a near miss, a bitter but important lesson.”
“Rotten luck, that he still has your letters.”
“I don’t think it’s luck, Your Grace. I think Sir Fletcher is that good at scheming. He’s turned the entire season into enemy territory for me. I never know when he’ll accost me at the punch bowl, demand a dance, or inflict himself on me at a musicale. I understand better now, why Rosecroft was so unsettled when he came home from Waterloo.”
His Grace took a seat on the rim of the fountain, his evening glove peeking from his jacket pocket like a white flag. He brushed his fingers over the wool of his kilt, drawing attention to a pale male knee.
Oh, for spectacles and blazing torches by which to appreciate the picture he made.
“Soldiers generally don’t discuss their peacetime challenges,” His Grace said, “but Rosecroft is not the only man in England having difficulty—or in France, Germany, Spain, Poland, Portugal. Thunderstorms, nightmares, and stupid duels too, of course. We all have near misses, Meggie Windham, and they haunt us.”
He clearly included his own history in that category. Such a past would bedevil a commanding officer long after the war ended.
“I can’t tell my cousins about these letters,” Megan said. “I’ve thought of telling Uncle Percy, but he’s the worst of the lot when it comes to protectiveness, save for my own papa. Uncle Percy might not call Sir Fletcher out, but he’d ruin him all the same, and it would still be a scandal. A ruined man has no reason to keep his mouth shut.”
Murdoch rose, and Megan felt tears threatening all over again. He’d bow, he’d tell her Sir Fletcher wasn’t the worst option, and she had to marry somebody, after all.
She’d told herself some version of those same lies many times.
Murdoch crouched before her and took her hand. “You can’t marry Pilkington, Miss Meggie. He has a cruel side; ask any man who served under him. Sir Fletcher delighted in lifting the lash, even on boys whose only crime was stupidity. The scandal of a few passionate letters would provide you sanctuary from a life tied to such a man.”
Megan’s free hand went to her middle. “I want to say you’re exaggerating, that you don’t like him because he’s English, and golden, and did not fall into French hands.”
Though had Sir Fletcher fallen foul of the French, he’d have done so in uniform. Charlotte had reported that Murdoch had been captured out of uniform, which accounted for him having been handed over to a French officer notorious for his skills at … interrogation.
“Sir Fletcher is golden and English,” Murdoch said, rising and remaining before her. “I don’t like him, I never have, and I won’t lie about that. Other people would say he’s a good catch.”
Megan closed her eyes. “Other people would be wrong. If Sir Fletcher will take advantage of me, he’s not a gentleman. He cannot be trusted to protect those weaker than he, if he instead exploits them when it’s to his advantage.”
She was revealing more than she’d intended to, brushing up against memories she’d sworn she’d never revisit.
A foot scraped on the flagstone, the scent of wool and heather came closer, then warmth, then an embrace so gentle, so enveloping and secure, adoration was too tame a word for the emotion that inspired Megan to rise, slip her arms around Murdoch’s waist, and rest her forehead against his chest.
Sanctuary, indeed. Blessed, heather-scented, impregnable sanctuary.
Chapter Seven
War was so damned seductive. Nobody warned a lad as he took the king’s shilling that he was risking not only his life, but also part of his soul, his sanity, and certainly his heart.
As Hamish held a weeping Megan Windham in his arms, his emotions lurched close to grief, for all he’d left on the battlefields of Spain and France.
Camaraderie without limit.
Affection for his men and even for some of his fellow officers.
Shared memories of valor, squalor, violence, victory, and everything in between.
Bad rations that had tasted ambrosial.
Haggard women who should have been canonized for their part of the war effort.
A worthy enemy, even including St. Clair, who’d held Hamish’s life in his hands.
Homesickness and horror that went deeper than the soul.
Hilarity only a soldier could grasp and only at the time.
Holding Megan, Hamish could acknowledge all of those losses and injuries, and even treasure them for the proof they offered that not all of his military memories were of shame and indignity.
He saw too, though, that war seduced a man’s reason by promising him that what he had to offer, what he had to give, mattered desperately. He would not live, die, march, moan, retch, itch, sweat, or swear in vain. He mattered. Every soldier, regardless of how stupid, clumsy, bumbling, or venal, mattered indispensably, and thus his future was forfeit and he was glad to surrender it.
Being a duke did not matter. Waltzing, social calls, riding in the park … so much wasted time and foolishness. Being oldest brother to a lot of unruly siblings h
adn’t mattered as much as Hamish had hoped, for he’d been absent two years at a stretch, and his family’s life had gone on without stumbling.
Holding Megan Windham, though, that mattered. Holding her confidences, that mattered terribly. When all of polite society saw Hamish as some kind of titled bear perfect for baiting in a ballroom, she relied on him to come to her aid.
“About Sir Fletcher,” Hamish said, when the lady’s bout of tears had ebbed. “I canna kill him for ye, Meggie, though for once, the notion of murder has some appeal.”
She was luscious to hold. Soft, sweet, warm … her hair under his bare hand was the lambent warmth of candlelight and the cozy fire in the hearth, and silky too. Hamish wanted to gather her closer, but didn’t dare.
She gathered him closer. “You are no killer, Hamish MacHugh. You needn’t posture for my sake.”
Society probably saw him as nothing but a killer—or a coward. Hamish made himself step back, resuming his place beside her on the bench, and to hell with propriety. He tucked her close, and she bundled against him.
The rightness of that, the sublime absolution of it, made the souls of the hundred generations of MacHugh warriors rise up and dance up across the heavens.
“I have promised a certain baroness I will never again call a man out,” Hamish said. “Her ladyship was most insistent, and the consequences she threatened me with motivate me to keep my word. Dueling is ridiculous, in any case.”
Inside the Windham mansion, the orchestra struck up the introduction to the waltz. Hamish had wanted to dance with Meggie Windham, but this conversation beneath the guttered torches was far more precious.
“If you can’t call Sir Fletcher out, what does that leave?” Megan wailed softly. “I can’t call Sir Fletcher out, and he’s pressed me again to set a date. My parents depart for Wales next week, and Sir Fletcher said either he’ll talk to Papa before then, or take other measures to ensure our engagement must be announced.”
Hamish considered calling on the Baroness St. Clair and asking for one small dispensation from the promise he’d made her, but no. That would mean calling on St. Clair as well. The baron still featured in Hamish’s nightmares, and in all honesty, the idea of a duel turned Hamish’s stomach. Then too, he did not want to explain Megan’s situation to anybody, for her confession had been given in confidence to Hamish.
And only to Hamish.
“I won’t let you do murder,” she said, stroking a hand over the pleated drape of his kilt. “Your conscience forbids you from dueling with Sir Fletcher, and yet, he has my letters. Thirty-one of them. He brags about taking them out and reading them before the fire in his library of an evening. Keeps them in his desk drawer, where he can enjoy them at any time. He finds them wonderfully entertaining too.”
In the privacy of his mind, Hamish fashioned foul epithets for Pilkington in English and Gaelic, both. The moment, however, wanted practicality, despite Megan Windham’s hand on Hamish’s thigh.
“I could bribe him,” Hamish said. “Buy the letters from him.”
“You are paying for two sisters to make their come outs,” Megan said. “Your wealth is in Scotland, I’m guessing, and Sir Fletcher will want his money before Mama and Papa leave next week.”
Sir Fletcher would also learn, if paid once, that he could demand more payment in the future, until all of Megan’s sisters were safely married. Megan would never know peace, and she’d have to confess her missteps to any fellow who sought her hand.
“The objective here is not to win a skirmish, then,” Hamish said as his thigh endured another soft, slow caress through a single thickness of wool. “We must win the war.”
“You hated war.”
How he loved hearing those words from her, for they were the truth a soldier, much less a disgraced soldier, never quite admitted to another.
“I do not hate that a man who plunged an entire Continent into twenty years of endless, pointless carnage, ended up sitting on his rosy arse in the middle of the south Atlantic, Meggie. Napoleon’s own troops were weary of him by the time we engaged them at Waterloo, but they’d lost their taste for being ruled by a king. Boney left them nothing to do but fight until not a Frenchman under the age of eighty remained to hold a gun.”
And God help the army that faced the surviving French women, much less the mothers of all those men who’d died in service to an emperor’s bloodthirsty delusions of glory.
“I do not want to marry Sir Fletcher Pilkington,” Megan said. “I’ve considered running off.”
So had Hamish. “Running doesn’t work, Meggie. You only look guilty of whatever charge you’re trying to avoid. You turn a retreat into a rout when you run, and you hand over the field to your enemy. The English learned that lesson on the way to Corunna. We fight to win, and we fight dirty.”
Battle talk felt oddly invigorating, for once. Megan’s hand stroking Hamish’s thigh, though likely nothing more than a nervous gesture on her part, was invigorating too.
“What does that mean, Your Grace? I’m a half-blind spinster-in-the-making, and I don’t know how to fight at all.”
Megan was neither half-blind when it came to what counted, nor a spinster of any sort. Every woman had weapons, provided somebody showed her how to use them.
But Megan Windham was good, and good people did not recognize the face of evil when it smiled at them from their own ballrooms. A man outcast and disgraced among his fellow soldiers had occasion to know who was good, and who was merely posturing.
Megan Windham did not study Hamish’s face when he spoke, she instead aimed her gaze at her slippers, the fountain, the darkened border of posies. She relied on her hearing to deliver a conversation’s meaning to her, rather than the evidence of her eyes.
Truly, her vision was impaired.
For such a woman to labor over more than thirty letters, each word painstakingly chosen, full of her hopes and recollections, each epistle risking everything she valued … For her to commit her sentiments to paper, over and over, had been a labor of enormous magnitude and trust.
For Sir Fletcher to betray that trust was an equally enormous wrong.
Hamish picked up her hand rather than let it wander over his thigh even once more, and kissed her knuckles.
“Fighting dirty means, Meggie Windham, that we simply steal the letters back.”
“I don’t see Megan among the dancers,” Devlin St. Just, Earl of Rosecroft, growled. “Her Grace assigned you, Keswick, to ensure Murdoch got through the evening without a mishap, and he’s not even participating in the supper waltz. How could you lose track of a man that large, particularly one wearing a deal of blue and green plaid?”
Joseph, Earl of Keswick, had married into the Windham family because nothing in heaven, earth, or any other realm would have prevented him from spending the rest of his life with Louisa Windham by his side. Her brothers were unavoidable nuisances, the type of collateral obligations a man endured when his heart’s desire slept next to him every night.
Rosecroft, Westhaven, and Lord Valentine were also the biggest mother hens in Mayfair—excepting possibly their own father.
Also quite dear.
“Megan and His Grace are taking a bit of air,” Keswick said. “I see you aren’t dancing either, Lord Rosebud.”
Valentine Windham had shared the misnomer for his eldest brother, which epithet, Keswick suspected, had been intentional on Murdoch’s part. Keswick had observed Scottish regiments in action, and a Scottish soldier’s humor was as wicked as his temper.
“Shall I dance you over the balcony, Keswick?” Rosecroft replied. “Her Grace likes these gatherings to be memorable.”
They stood at the railing of the ballroom’s minstrel’s gallery, for as any competent general knew, control of a battlefield’s high ground was necessary to make the best use of the artillery. On the dance floor below, anybody who was somebody went swaying past in triple meter, looking their best, smiling their most dazzling.
But no Megan Windham, and
no Duke of Murdoch.
“This gathering will be memorable,” Keswick replied.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Rosecroft muttered. “You left Megan in the garden with a man we don’t know well, and now she’s missing in action. Not well done of you.”
“What have you heard regarding Hamish MacHugh?”
Louisa twirled about among the dancers, partnered by some kilted earl. Titled Scotsmen seemed to be the featured bachelor of the season, may God help the poor bare-kneed sods.
“Regarding MacHugh—Murdoch, rather—I haven’t heard enough,” Rosecroft said. “Sir Fletcher implies that Murdoch was a problem even before the French hauled him off that mountainside. To hear Sir Fletcher tell the tale, Murdoch disobeyed direct orders, was never honorably mentioned in the dispatches, had a murderous temper in battle, and disappeared back to the Highlands within weeks of Waterloo.”
Rosecroft had clearly been gathering intelligence, a role at which he’d excelled during the war.
“Most any man with sense mustered out after Waterloo,” Keswick replied, “and we all disobeyed direct orders. We misunderstood them, misconstrued them, pretended they hadn’t been timely received. My thespian skills were sometimes the better part of my military successes. Do you truly accord Sir Fletcher Pilkington’s word any weight?”
A telling silence ensued, during which Rosecroft’s gaze followed the progress of a lovely blonde dancing with the Duke of Moreland. She was the Countess of Rosecroft, and the salvation of Devlin St. Just’s soul.
“Megan is interested in Sir Fletcher,” Rosecroft said. “They were in earnest conversation throughout the entire minuet, which is an interminable penance of a dance.”
Gayle Windham, Earl of Westhaven, sauntered up from the direction of the stairs. “Awake past your bedtimes, my dears? Or wouldn’t the wallflowers spare you any pity dances?”
In his evening finery, Westhaven looked every inch the ducal heir, though Keswick knew exactly what the earl was about. He was checking on his older brother, making sure Rosecroft, who’d traveled down from Yorkshire with no less than a wife and two small female children, was bearing up under the strain of civilized socializing.
The Trouble With Dukes Page 9
