Page 16 of The Trouble With Dukes
“Find London? You go down the Great North Road until you can’t go any farther, then you follow the noise and stink. Can’t miss it. I prefer the drovers’ routes myself. The inns are humble, but honest.”
Megan’s mother was Welsh, so a thick leavening of Celtic intonation was easily decipherable to her. She switched to Gaelic, as she occasionally did with family.
“I meant, does London appeal to you?”
Nothing had broken His Grace’s concentration thus far. For dozens of turns about the room, despite Westhaven’s and St. Just’s adventuresome maneuvers with Murdoch’s sisters, and Valentine’s increasingly daring tempo, the duke had become only more confident of his waltzing.
One simple question had him stumbling.
And when a large fellow stumbled and tried to right himself by grabbing on to a surprised and not very large woman, and that woman stumbled …
Down they went, though Megan landed on His Grace, an agreeably solid and warm place to find herself. His sporran had twisted itself to his hip, and his arms remained about her.
“Miss Megan,” Lady Edana cried. “Are you all right? Hamish, turn loose of her, for pity’s sake, you’ll wrinkle her skirts, and break her bones, and tramp on her hems, andget up, you can’t simply lie there, a great lummoxing lump of a brother.”
“Get up now,” Lady Rhona chorused. “Oh, please do get up, and promise you’ll never attempt to waltz in public again. Wellington might be at Her Grace’s ball, or the king. Oh, Ham,get up.”
His Grace could not get up as long as Megan luxuriated in the novel pleasure of lying atop him.
“I’m fine,” she said, kneeling back after enjoying two more instants of His Grace’s abundant warmth and muscle. Westhaven hauled her to her feet by virtue of a hand under each elbow, glowering at her as if she’d purposely yanked fifteen stone of Scottish duke to the floor.
St. Just extended a hand to Murdoch and pulled him upright, but not fast enough to hide a flash of muscular thigh from Megan’s view, not fast enough by half.
The duke righted his sporran, bowed, and came up …smiling. “Miss Meggie, my apologies for hauling you top over teakettle. You speak the Gaelic.”
All the rainbows in Wales, all the Christmas punch brewed at the Windham family seat, couldn’t approach His Grace’s smile for sheer, charming glee. That smile dazzled, intrigued, promised … oh, that smile was quite the weapon against a woman’s dignity.
Megan fired off a shy, answering volley of the same artillery. “My mother is Welsh, and I enjoy languages. Welsh and Gaelic aren’t that different to the ear.”
In fact, each Scottish island and region had its own dialect, some sounding nearly Irish, others approaching a Scandinavian flavor, and Megan didn’t pretend to grasp the proper spellings, dialect by dialect. But she could manage well enough in casual conversation to take a Highland duke very much by surprise.
“Nobody speaks the Gaelic in an English ballroom,” Murdoch said. “Not since the Forty-Five, probably not ever.” He made a few words of Gaelic sound like a great feat of courage, not a simple courtesy to a newcomer.
St. Just and Westhaven watched this exchange like a pair of oversized pantry mousers placing bets on the fate of a fugitive canary.
Bother the glowering pair of them.
Nobody smiled at Megan Windham the way Murdoch was smiling. Even without her glasses, she could see the warmth and approval in his eyes, see all the acceptance and admiration a woman could endure from one man.
“Nobody ends the waltz by falling on his partner,” Westhaven snapped. “Lord Valentine, if you would oblige. The duke is in want of practice, assuming Cousin Megan is none the worse for her tumble.”
Megan had tumbled hopelessly, right into a pair of bottomless blue eyes, a pair of strong arms, and … those thighs. Ye manly waltzing gods.
“I’m fine,” Megan said, putting her hand on Murdoch’s shoulder. She was apparently becoming a proficient liar, because having seen his great, beaming benevolence of a smile, she might never be fine again.
Cousin Valentine struck up another introduction at the piano, the pace moderate, the ornamentation minimal, and Megan wished someday, ages and ages hence, she might tell her granddaughters about the time the dashing Scottish duke had waltzed her right off of her feet.
Hamish would fight across Spain, scale the mountains, and march through the whole of France all over again for a waltz like the one he was sharing with Megan Windham.
He danced with the same passionate abandon formerly reserved for when the swords were crossed after the fourth dram of whisky, and the camp followers had acquired the airs and graces of every soldier’s dreams.
Miss Megan beamed up at him, her hand clasped in his, her rhythm faultless, her form starlight in his arms.
When the music came to a final, sighing cadence, Hamish’s heart sighed along with it.
“My thanks for a delightful waltz,” he said as Miss Megan sank into a deep curtsy. She kept hold of Hamish’s hand as he drew her to her feet and bowed.
“The pleasure was entirely mine, Your Grace.”
