Page 30 of The Trouble With Dukes
“What does that mean, Your Grace? I’m a half-blind spinster-in-the-making, and I don’t know how to fight at all.”
Megan was neither half-blind when it came to what counted, nor a spinster of any sort. Every woman had weapons, provided somebody showed her how to use them.
But Megan Windham wasgood, and good people did not recognize the face of evil when it smiled at them from their own ballrooms. A man outcast and disgraced among his fellow soldiers had occasion to know who was good, and who was merely posturing.
Megan Windham did not study Hamish’s face when he spoke, she instead aimed her gaze at her slippers, the fountain, the darkened border of posies. She relied on her hearing to deliver a conversation’s meaning to her, rather than the evidence of her eyes.
Truly, her vision was impaired.
For such a woman to labor over more than thirty letters, each word painstakingly chosen, full of her hopes and recollections, each epistle risking everything she valued … For her to commit her sentiments to paper, over and over, had been a labor of enormous magnitude and trust.
For Sir Fletcher to betray that trust was an equally enormous wrong.
Hamish picked up her hand rather than let it wander over his thigh even once more, and kissed her knuckles.
“Fighting dirty means, Meggie Windham, that we simply steal the letters back.”
“I don’t see Megan among the dancers,” Devlin St. Just, Earl of Rosecroft, growled. “Her Grace assignedyou, Keswick, to ensure Murdoch got through the evening without a mishap, and he’s not even participating in the supper waltz. How could you lose track of a man that large, particularly one wearing a deal of blue and green plaid?”
Joseph, Earl of Keswick, had married into the Windham family because nothing in heaven, earth, or any other realm would have prevented him from spending the rest of his life with Louisa Windham by his side. Her brothers were unavoidable nuisances, the type of collateral obligations a man endured when his heart’s desire slept next to him every night.
Rosecroft, Westhaven, and Lord Valentine were also the biggest mother hens in Mayfair—excepting possibly their own father.
Also quite dear.
“Megan and His Grace are taking a bit of air,” Keswick said. “I see you aren’t dancing either, LordRosebud.”
Valentine Windham had shared the misnomer for his eldest brother, which epithet, Keswick suspected, had been intentional on Murdoch’s part. Keswick had observed Scottish regiments in action, and a Scottish soldier’s humor was as wicked as his temper.
“Shall I dance you over the balcony, Keswick?” Rosecroft replied. “Her Grace likes these gatherings to be memorable.”
They stood at the railing of the ballroom’s minstrel’s gallery, for as any competent general knew, control of a battlefield’s high ground was necessary to make the best use of the artillery. On the dance floor below, anybody who was somebody went swaying past in triple meter, looking their best, smiling their most dazzling.
But no Megan Windham, and no Duke of Murdoch.
“This gathering will be memorable,” Keswick replied.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Rosecroft muttered. “You left Megan in the garden with a man we don’t know well, and now she’s missing in action. Not well done of you.”
“What have you heard regarding Hamish MacHugh?”
Louisa twirled about among the dancers, partnered by some kilted earl. Titled Scotsmen seemed to be the featured bachelor of the season, may God help the poor bare-kneed sods.
“Regarding MacHugh—Murdoch, rather—I haven’t heard enough,” Rosecroft said. “Sir Fletcher implies that Murdoch was a problem even before the French hauled him off that mountainside. To hear Sir Fletcher tell the tale, Murdoch disobeyed direct orders, was never honorably mentioned in the dispatches, had a murderous temper in battle, and disappeared back to the Highlands within weeks of Waterloo.”
Rosecroft had clearly been gathering intelligence, a role at which he’d excelled during the war.
“Most any man with sense mustered out after Waterloo,” Keswick replied, “and wealldisobeyed direct orders. We misunderstood them, misconstrued them, pretended they hadn’t been timely received. My thespian skills were sometimes the better part of my military successes. Do you truly accord Sir Fletcher Pilkington’s word any weight?”
A telling silence ensued, during which Rosecroft’s gaze followed the progress of a lovely blonde dancing with the Duke of Moreland. She was the Countess of Rosecroft, and the salvation of Devlin St. Just’s soul.
“Megan is interested in Sir Fletcher,” Rosecroft said. “They were in earnest conversation throughout the entire minuet, which is an interminable penance of a dance.”
Gayle Windham, Earl of Westhaven, sauntered up from the direction of the stairs. “Awake past your bedtimes, my dears? Or wouldn’t the wallflowers spare you any pity dances?”
In his evening finery, Westhaven looked every inch the ducal heir, though Keswick knew exactly what the earl was about. He was checking on his older brother, making sure Rosecroft, who’d traveled down from Yorkshire with no less than a wife and two smallfemalechildren, was bearing up under the strain of civilized socializing.
Keswick had daughters and sons in quantity. He knew all about bearing up and about checking on family.
