Page 24 of The Trouble With Dukes
“Sir Fletcher has shown favor toward Miss Megan Windham,” Eddie murmured. “But my gracious, evening attire does show off a man’s attributes, doesn’t it?”
Colin snorted, and Hamish maintained a commanding officer’s silence.
Sir Fletcher sparkled, laughed, and bowed over the ladies’ hands until Hamish wanted to shove the brave knight’s head under the nearest fountain. Colin took up a flirtation with some viscountess, and the hands of the tall clock near the orchestra stopped moving.
Rather like taking a watch as sentry, when the night acquired pitiless permanence. For four interminable hours, the moon would hang unmoving in the sky, while unseen creatures rustled in the undergrowth and a French picket a few hundred yards away listened desperately for the shuffling and munching of his own horses at grass.
As long as the beasts remained relaxed and calm, no midnight raiders approached.
“You might consider looking bored rather than dyspeptic, Your Grace,” said a voice at Hamish’s elbow. “Or you could indulge a flair for adventure and ask some widow to dance.”
Joseph, Earl of Keswick, stood to Hamish’s left. Keswick had been among the Windham relations recruited for escort duty in the park, and true to Hamish’s hunch, his lordship had served on the Peninsula.
With notable distinction.
“My lord,” Hamish said, offering a bow. “Good evening. I look dyspeptic because I am dyspeptic.” The stomp and thump of the dancers’ feet too closely matched the rhythm of an army on the march, and the pounding of the megrim radiating from Hamish’s left temple.
Keswick was dark-haired, and tonight at least, dark-humored. “Goodevening, indeed,” he said. “While I watch my countess flirt, flatter, and charm her way through hours of interminable dances and pretend I would not rather be anywhere else—”
He fell silent, and the look that came over his saturnine features was transfixed, almost pathetically so, except such benevolence infused his expression, such quiet joy, that in that moment, Hamish would have said Keswick was capable of effortless charm, grace, and every virtue to which a gentleman aspired.
“My love,” Keswick said, holding out a gloved hand to a dark-haired lady. “Introductions are in order….”
Merciful powers.Not more introductions … Except what else could the evening hold but an endless parade inspection for the Duke of Murder? Miss Megan had warned Hamish it would be so, and Keswick—married to one of Megan’s battalion of cousins—ensured she was right.
For the next two hours, Hamish was thwarted from returning to his siblings’ sides. Barons and viscountesses, honorables and eligibles, Hamish was subjected to more bowing and curtsying in one evening than he’d endured in any year in Scotland. He danced with half of the Duchess of Moreland’s daughters and daughters-in-law, was teased and flirted with by the other half, and still, the hands of the clock advanced at only a crawl….
While Hamish considered pelting through a window before his head exploded and his two cups of punch made an unscheduled reappearance.
“You see now why the terraces and card rooms are necessary,” Keswick said as the hour neared midnight. “Even the bravest officers are permitted winter leave.”
“The terrace appeals.” The ballroom was positively stifling, Edana and Rhona did not lack for dance partners, and Colin was practicing his flattery on the wallflowers.
Time to fall back and regroup.
“You’re through the worst of it.” Keswick gestured Hamish past a set of double doors. “The duchess has seen that the rest of the hostesses will have to invite you to their social functions, and all will fall into place.”
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 gossipin French.
