Page 18 of The Trouble With Dukes
“And slow,” Rhona added. “Not dull, but everything must make sense to him, and that is a challenging undertaking when so much about polite society is for the sake of appearance rather than substance.”
They were being helpful again, drat them both. “I manage well enough in the kirk yard.”
“Church yard,” all three cousins said at once.
“Where I come from,where I am a duke, it’s a kirk yard,” Hamish said. “And to there I will soon return, the sooner the better.”
Edana’s expression promised Hamish a violent end before he could set a foot on the Great North Road. Rhona looked like she wanted to cry, however, and that … that shamed a man as falling on his arse before English nobility never could.
“Walk in the park,” Lord Nancy Pants said. “Tomorrow, if the weather is fair, Megan can join His Grace for a walk in the park. Joseph and Louisa are in Town, Evie and Deene are as well. Take Lady Rhona and Lady Edana walking, Murdoch. Megan will be attended by a pair of cousins-in-law, both of them titled, and you can rehearse your small talk.”
“Excellent tactics,” the colonel muttered.
“Her Grace would approve,” the earl said. “I like it. Megan?”
She’d rather be called Meggie by those who cared for her.Hamish would rather sneak off to Scotland that very moment. Hyde Park was a huge place, crammed full of bonnets, parasols, ambushes wearing sprigged muslin, and half-pay peacocks in their regimentals.
Rhona looked at her slippers—peach-ish today, more expensive idiocy.
Studying his sister’s bowed head, Hamish located the reserves of courage necessary to endure another battle.
“If Miss Megan can spare me the time to walk in the park, I would be grateful for her company.”
“Oh, well done, Your Grace,” she said, smiling at him. Not the great beaming version he’d seen on the dance floor, but an even more beguiling expression that turned her gaze soft and Hamish’s knees to porridge.
“Two of the clock, then,” the earl said. “Assemble here. I’ll make the introductions, and Her Grace’s ball will be the envy of polite society, as usual.”
Within five minutes, Hamish was bowing over Miss Megan’s hand in parting, though he’d committed himself to tomorrow’s skirmish in defense of MacHugh family pride—or something. The Windham cousins seemed genuinely, if grudgingly, intent on aiding the cause of Hamish’s education, probably for the sake of their own family pride.
And Miss Megan was smiling.
Hamish was so preoccupied with mentally assembling metaphors to describe her smile that he nearly missed the low rumble of the pianist’s voice amid the farewells and parting kisses of the ladies.
“He’s a disaster in plaid,” Lord Nancy Pants muttered.
“He provoked Megan into trotting out her Gaelic,” the colonel added. “Not the done thing.”
Well, no, it wasn’t. Falling on one’s arse was not the done thing, arguing with a lady was not the done thing. One ball, however, for the sake of Ronnie and Eddie’s pride, one little march about the park, and Hamish could retreat with honor, which sometimeswasthe done thing.
Hamish got Rhona by one arm, Edana by the other, and hauled them bodily toward the door, which was held open by a fellow in handsome blue livery.
“My thanks for the dancing lesson,” Hamish called, because expressing sincere gratitude was also the done thing where he came from. “Until tomorrow.”
Miss Megan waved to him. “Mar sin leibh.” A friendly farewell that fortified a man against coming battles and provoked both the colonel and the musician to scowling.
And as the liveried fellow closed the door, another snippet of clipped, masculine, aristocratic English came to Hamish’s ears.
“You give up too easily. I think Murdoch has potential,Rosebud.”
Chapter Five
London’s weather was abominably changeable. Megan’s eagerness to walk with the Duke of Murdoch was abominably fixed.
She was all but engaged to Sir Fletcher, a problem for which she could see no resolution, and yet, three-quarters of an hour tramping the familiar confines of Hyde Park was all she could think about.
“I hear you spoke a bit of the Gaelic with His Grace of Murdoch,” Mama said.In English.She sat at the piano and leafed through music in the chamber designated as the music library.
“I suspect Gaelic is His Grace’s first language,” Megan replied, extricating a fading daisy from the bouquet on the windowsill. “I merely asked a question that was easier to understand in Gaelic.”
