Page 65 of The Trouble With Dukes
The resounding silence was answer enough.
“Colin, don’t inspire me into raising my hand against you. You love a good scrap, while I’ve had a bellyful of fighting in all its forms. After a bout of temper, you’ll probably shake hands with the fellow who’s bloodied your nose, whereas I might well bury my opponent. I would hate for that fellow to be you.”
The flask glinted in the light of the nearest porch lamp, though this time, Colin stopped walking and drained the container.
“You left a part of yourself back in France,” Colin said. “I don’t know what part, but it was important, and you haven’t been truly happy since you mustered out—since you joined up, in fact. I don’t know what to do for you, and now this damned title has been slung about your neck. Somehow, that feels like my fault too.”
Quite the confession from a man who loved to gallop breakneck across open country or across some merry widow’s sheets.
Hamish laid an arm over Colin’s shoulders and scrubbed his knuckles against his brother’s crown.
“I’m a duke. Soon I’ll be a husband. I do believe the one will be copious consolation for the other. Maybe instead of chasing widows and testing my temper, you ought to find a wife of your own.”
Hamish expected Colin to laugh. Instead another silence rose between them, this one as thoughtful as the last one had been frustrated.
“I apologize for abandoning you at the musicale,” Hamish said. “Colin got into a wee situation involving a lady and a darkened balcony.”
“Let me guess,” Megan said as she strolled the Moreland gardens with her beloved in the morning sunshine. “The Viscountess Rothergild. She’s had her eye on him since he showed up at Aunt Esther’s ball in his kilt. I should have warned him.”
Hamish seemed tired, or perhaps burdened, but then, he typically called on Megan in the morning, when most of polite society rested and domesticated.
“I’m not courting you so you can take on the task of looking after my siblings, Meggie. Your family has done much for me and mine already. Getting Colin out of scrapes has been my job since he was born.”
As, apparently, was looking after Edana and Rhona, managing the family wealth, keeping an eye on other brothers and relatives back in Scotland as well as various cousins in London, and otherwise being head of the family. Megan took Hamish’s hand, because she loved to touch him, and because the way his fingers grasped hers and the attitude of his walk told her as much as his words.
“Sir Fletcher escorted me home.”
“Did hebotheryou, Meggie?” Hamish’s tone promised woe to Sir Fletcher if he had transgressed.
What a lovely man Megan’s intended was. “I informed Sir Fletcher that he no longer had my letters, and told him to keep his distance from me, my sisters, your sisters, and polite society in general. He seemed to take it well, but then, Rosecroft and Keswick were nearby, and Edana and Rhona were along as well.”
Hamish drew Megan behind a hedge of rhododendrons that had yet to bloom. His arms came around her, secure and sheltering.
“Meggie mine, you took a risk.”
“You took a risk, retrieving my letters. Putting Sir Fletcher in his place was marvelously gratifying. I couldn’t call him out, but I could deliver a set down. As much as I’m grateful to you for getting those letters back, I’m equally grateful that I had the chance to confront him. He’s a pestilence that wanted purging.”
“You put up your fives,” Hamish said, kissing Megan’s brow. “Poor bastard was doubtless ambushed. Well done, Meggie, but you must promise me you’ll be cautious now. Sir Fletcher doesn’t deal well with being thwarted.”
The hedge gave them privacy, which Megan would have liked to use plundering her beloved’s charms. Hamish, though, did not seem in a plunder-able mood.
“Tell me the rest of it,” she said. “You know something you’re not saying, and we’re to be married, Hamish. You’re very much in my confidence, and I hope you’ll return that honor to me.”
He kissed her, and even his kisses could convey a sense of weariness. “I don’t like to talk about my time in the army.”
Megan rested her cheek against his chest, the better to feel his heartbeat. “Rosecroft says he prefers living up north for many reasons. He has no patience with men who’ve nothing better to do than relive a few years of gore and glory over drinks at the club. Life is not meant to be an endless reminiscence, much less one that misrepresents the past as other than it was.”
Hamish’s hand settled on her nape, and everything in Megan relaxed.
“Your cousin told you that?”
“He told Emmie that, and Louisa and Eve say Keswick and Deene are of the same mind. I love the scent of you, Hamish MacHugh.” She did not love that his sporran came between them. “Let’s sit, shall we?”
He went unresisting to the nearest bench, a plain, sun-warmed wooden seat amid potted delphiniums. For long moments, he was quiet, his hand in Megan’s.
“While you’re gathering your thoughts,” Megan said, “may I explain something to you? I’ve only recently puzzled it out for myself.”
He kissed her knuckles. “I like when you explain things to me. Not many people bother to try, but you have the way of it.”
