Page 43 of The Trouble With Dukes
“You had an adventure,” Megan said, though it sounded as if His Grace’s adventure had also been a perilously close call.
He rose stiffly. “All’s well. You have your letters, and I can be on my way.”
Megan had no choice but to see him to his horse. “Will you fetch your sisters home at the end of the season?”
“Colin can see them home, assuming they don’t find English gentlemen to take to husband. The novelty of this excursion will soon pale for them both, I’m guessing, and they’ll be glad to get back to Scotland.”
“You are homesick.” What could Megan offer to compete with home? Mama still missed Wales decades after marrying Papa, and despite claiming that where her family was would always be her home.
“Homesick? That, I am. Have been for half my life,” Murdoch said. “I would like you to promise me something, Miss Meggie.”
“Of course.” Maybe he’d ask her to write to him, and of all gentlemen, Hamish MacHugh, Duke of Murdoch, was the one to whom Megan would feel safe putting any sentiment on paper.
“You must not be writing to any gentlemen in the future,” he said as they approached the high wall at the back of the garden. “Mind your reputation closely, because once Sir Fletcher discovers the letters are missing, he’ll not accept defeat easily. He’ll waylay you if he can, he’ll spread rumors without any basis in fact, he’ll try to compromise one of your sisters. Be more careful than ever, try to think of the worst he could do, and then what’s even worse than that.”
“You want me to be a soldier, to approach this season as a military campaign. I can warn my sisters, and I’ll be careful.”
Megan would also be homesick, for this man, for his company, for his kisses.
Beyond the wall, the steady clip-clop of hooves sounded in the alley, nearer and nearer.
“Then good-bye, Miss Meggie, and God keep you.” He smoothed his hand slowly over her hair, a tender caress that wasn’t nearly as presuming as Megan would have preferred.
“You won’t allow me to give you even the smallest boon?” she pressed. “I feel as if I ought to tie a ribbon to your sleeve at least. You’ve been a friend, an ally, and a confidant. I will be in your debt always, and you’re simply riding off, never to be seen again, when but for you, I might never—”
He cupped her cheek against the warmth of his palm. “You’ll have me in tears, Miss Meggie. Good-bye.”
He drew her closer and touched his lips to hers.
Hamish stole a kiss, of parting, of rejoicing, of thanks. Megan was safe now, and he’d send along a note to one of her cousins—Rosecroft or Keswick—warning them of the threat Pilkington might pose. Hamish would add Colin to her honor guard; Megan would alert her sisters, and soon, she’d be beyond Sir Fletcher’s schemes.
Sir Fletcher had the combination of characteristics that made for competent line officers. He was smart and lazy. What he couldn’t delegate, he’d dodge, and when it became clear that further troubling Megan Windham was more risk than reward, he’d find other quarry to pursue.
Megan was safe. Hamish’s heart, however, was not whole. He’d leave a piece of it in her keeping, for what woman ever—for any reason—had thrown herself into his arms, and wept on his shoulder, as if he alone held her trust?
So his kiss bore an element of regret, that he’d not met Megan before war had stolen his innocence, and left him incapable of maneuvers among the very people Megan called family.
That regret somehow shifted closer to passion, to a yearning for what could not be. He gathered Megan in his arms, as if he’d imprint the feel of her on his memory, and to hell with gentlemanly everything. For one moment, for the duration of one kiss, Hamish could admit that he craved this woman every way a man longed for his heart mate.
When she should have stepped back, Megan wrapped herself close to Hamish in a manner that had nothing of parting and everything of welcome about it. She got him by the hair, tucked a leg between his knees, and—God have mercy upon a poor soldier—where was Hamish’s sporran when disaster threatened?
“Meggie, you mustn’t—”
“Don’t go,” she whispered against his mouth. “Please don’t ride away, as if—”
As if her tongue weren’t besieging the stout walls of Hamish’s best intentions. As if her breasts weren’t softly crushing the breath from Hamish’s common sense and self-restraint. As if every particle of him wasn’t clamoring to toss her into his saddle, and reave her from beneath the noses of—
She slid a hand around his hip, and gave Hamish a gentle squeeze on a part of him that had recently acquired a large purple bruise.
The pain was a welcome recall to common sense. Hamish ended the kiss, but remained in a loose embrace with the woman who’d haunt him clear back to the Highlands.
“Meggie, I’ll never fit in here. I’m followed by gossip and rumor everywhere I go. I nearly struck Keswick in public for no reason, and that’s not the worst of it. You don’t truly know me, which is for the best. Burn the letters, and think of me fondly, but I must go.”
She pressed her forehead to the middle of his chest. “Iknowyou. I know the parts of you that matter, and I’ll never forget you. I’ll look after Edana and Rhona, and I’ll look after Colin, but it will be a long, long time before I stop looking for you to enter the ballrooms with them or come calling at their side.”
A mutual haunting, then. Hamish pressed his mouth to hers one more time when he should have made the parting real. He was on the verge of that very display of heroism when the garden gate swung open, and the Duke of Moreland stood before them, one hand braced on the gate, his hat in the other.
A moment of silence passed, but neither Megan nor Hamish stepped back, for they were wedged beneath the arch of the doorway in the garden wall.
