Page 26 of The Trouble With Dukes
“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 with 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.
“Iwanted 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? Nowthatis 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.”
