Page 27 of The Trouble With Dukes
The tears came, but true to his word, Murdoch was prepared. He sat right beside her, lent her his handkerchief, rubbed her back, and waited. When she’d cried not nearly enough, Megan rested her forehead against his arm, feeling so weary, she might have gone to sleep right there on the hard stones.
“Could be worse,” His Grace said. “Could be you wake up in a French garrison, chained to the wall, your head throbbing like ten devils are trying to get out of your skull. You know my shameful past, Miss Meggie. Why don’t you tell me of your great silliness?”
His Grace made confession sound so reasonable, a mere trifle between friends, and he followed up his invitation with a companionable arm around Megan’s shoulders. She rested her cheek against his biceps, wishing she’d met him years earlier, before he’d gone in search of his missing brother.
Before she’d written those damned letters.
“I fell in love,” she said, “or thought I did. In truth, I fell … I don’t know, into stupidity. Infatuation, rebellion, boredom. I met Sir Fletcher at a regimental ball and struck up a flirtation with him. I’d made my come out and had a few seasons. I knew everything and was soon to make a fabulous match with a dashing, wealthy, titled, kind, handsome, witty, interesting, princely gentleman as yet unknown. One with estates in Kent, preferably, nice family, and no need for acute vision in his wife.”
“This unknown paragon sounds like one of your cousins,” Murdoch said, his hand moving soothingly on Megan’s back. “One of those cousins who should have warned you: Regimental balls are responsible for much mischief. The most dangerous creatures in the military are newly commissioned officers. The enlisted men see a spotless uniform on a young gent wearing new boots, they put in for a transfer. If his horse is high strung, his hair always combed, so much the worse.”
Well, yes. War wasn’t a fashion magazine come to life, was it? Insightful, though, to notice that Megan’s manly ideal was based on Westhaven, Valentine, and St. Just.
“You’ve described Sir Fletcher the evening we were introduced,” she said, “though he was wearing dancing slippers and had one unruly curl gracing his brow. He was all manners, charm, and daring kisses.”
“Rutting, bedamned varlet.”
Megan smiled her first genuine smile in days. “You’re being polite, aren’t you?”
“I’m being saintly compared to what I’d like to say, and here I thought all my stores of self-restraint blown to bits. You’re a good influence, Miss Meggie.”
Another squeeze of her shoulders. Perhaps she’d misread Murdoch and missed a latent capacity for affection. Megan slipped her arm around his waist, for that seemed the logical place for her arm to go—though perhaps not the most sensible. His back was lean, and even through his evening attire she could feel the strength and warmth of him.
He smelled good too. Heathery, of all things.
“So Pilkington took liberties,” Murdoch said. “You’re not the first young lady he’s kissed, and I hope he’s not the only fellow whose charms you’ve sampled.”
Megan sat up and peered at her companion in the shadows, though she could not make out much of his features.
“I’m not … I’m not fast, Murdoch.”
Though here she was,nestlingagainst him. Nestlingandnuzzling.
“Of course you’re not fast,” he said. “We’re more practical in Scotland than you are in the south. We expect a woman to make an informed choice about a matter as serious as marriage. If she doesn’t like a fellow’s kisses, the wedding night is rather too late to find that out, and the fellow will be all the more miserable for it too. You’ve heard of handfasting?”
A couple ended up handfasted when they’d agreed to marry, then anticipated the vows. The union was legal and binding, and unlike Sir Walter Scott’s portrayal of it, usually considered permanent.
“My mother waxes eloquent about the mischief engendered by the custom of handfasting,” Megan said.
“Oh, right. As if dueling, scandal, or shaming a pair of lusty young people for indulging in the joys of nature is a better plan? Meanwhile, your London tailors kit a fellow out so snugly that the ballroom becomes one giant game of ‘show me yours’ while the ladies pretend ignorance. But back to your kisses, please. Somebody will soon be out here, insisting you dance with him, lucky toad.”
Show me yours?Megan had grown up among five healthy male cousins. She’d eavesdropped with no less than three sisters and five female cousins, and then there were Charlotte’s reports from various card rooms, archery contests, and race meets.
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. “Iseethat 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?”
