Page 67 of The Trouble With Dukes
Oh, but he could. Sir Fletcher was hurting Megan at that moment, haunting her with memories of rejection and humiliation.
“He acted as if he barely recognized me. I didn’t have my glasses. For a moment, I wondered if I’d mistaken some other gentleman for my very own Sir Fletcher. Before half of polite society, he made a prodigious fuss about recalling a few dances with me, graciously greeting a besotted young woman who’d made a complete cake of herself. With every gossip looking on, I realized how great a fool I’d been. I’ve spent my seasons since avoiding him, and then, this year, he decided to make a greater fool of me still.”
Hamish held her, let her cry and sniffle and regret, but the longer Megan remained in his arms, the more the hurt and anger faded.
“I wish him to perdition for all time,” she said. “I was an idiot—I hate that I was such a blind idiot—but he was no gentleman.”
“He was, and is, a scoundrel of the first water.”
Something in Hamish’s voice caught Megan’s ear. She sat up, tucking herself against his side. Before too much longer, some helpful sister—or duchess—would come strolling along, inspecting the beds of roses that were still not ready to bloom. If Megan was found in tears, all manner of meddling might result.
“You’ve foiled him,” Megan said. “Thank God, you’ve put Sir Fletcher in his place once and for all. I suspect it’s not the first time you’ve frustrated a scheme of his.”
“I’m marrying a woman of discernment. Sir Fletcher got the worst of our encounter in Spain too, though I suspect that’s why he later sent Colin off on a goose chase.”
“As long as Sir Fletcher got the worst of it,” Megan said, snuggling closer to her beloved. “May he always get the worst of it in the end, and I do want to hear the details. But first, Hamish, you must know that my sisters agreed I should have the last bedroom in the family corridor. It’s the one overlooking that border of heartsease. Will you join me tonight?”
He took to studying the flowers Megan had mentioned, cheerful little purple and yellow blooms that tolerated cold and wet easily. Shading the heartsease was a maple whose branches made climbing to the balcony the work of a moment for a fit and determined suitor.
“Your cognitive faculties have turned to organizing my evening schedule?”
Well, yes. More or less, and Hamish hadn’t offered an immediate refusal either.
Chapter Fifteen
Army life had taught Sir Fletcher all about suffering—how to avoid it, how to inflict it on others, and even how to endure it when necessary. He hadn’t liked the enduring partat all.
“Poppet, might you practice your singing somewhere else?” Geneva’s voice would shatter crystal at thirty paces, for the child had operatic aspirations. Her older sisters, damn them to eternal spinsterhood, encouraged the girl’s musical fancies.
“Papa says I must practice in the library for it has the thickest walls. When will you take me riding, Fletchie? You promised.”
The late morning sun made patterns on the parquet floor, though even reflected sunlight was so many daggers plunged into Sir Fletcher’s pounding skull.
“I’ll take you up before me when the weather’s fine,” Sir Fletcher said, pouring himself a tot of brandy. The housekeeper doubtless kept track of whose visits to the library coincided with a reduction in the sideboard’s inventory—one of the many indignities Sir Fletcher would not miss when he set up his own household.
“The weather is fine today,” Geneva said, climbing onto the sofa. “Papa said the day is lovely, but my beauty surprises even the sun.”
When the girl smiled like that, the sun very likely was surprised. “Not surprises, surpasses. It means goes beyond. Jumping on the sofa surpasses the worst manners I’ve seen you display heretofore, Lady Geneva Louise Marie Hamilcar Pilkington. Little girls who hop about and make noise won’t find themselves sharing the saddle with their favorite older brother.”
Sir Fletcherwasher favorite, which mattered more than it ought.
She kept up her gymnastics, blonde curls bouncing against her little shoulders. “Thomas didn’t scold me for jumping on the sofa. I like him. When will he get his livery so he doesn’t have to work in that skirt? Is that why I haven’t seen him abovestairs? Because his livery hasn’t arrived?”
Her questions hammered against Sir Fletcher’s aching head, a counterpoint to her unladylike hopping about.
“Would you like a sip of my drink?” Geneva was his sister, at least in name, though he doubted they shared any blood. All the same, scolding him had never worked when he’d taken a childish notion to abuse the sofa cushions, so he didn’t bother to scold her.
“Your drinks are awful, and you forget to use your toothpowder in the morning. When can we go riding?”
“Where’s Harriet?” Sir Fletcher asked, lifting the candlestick on the left side of the mantel. “A lady typically rides out with her friends, and Harriet will be wroth if you don’t take her along to the mews.”
Harriet was the best distraction Sir Fletcher could come up with on short notice.
“Her name is Harold,” Geneva said, leaping from the sofa with an athletic bound. She landed hard, the impact reverberating between Sir Fletcher’s throbbing temples. “Harold has a megrim, like you. You didn’t answer my question about Thomas. He talked funny.”
The key to the desk drawer was exactly where it should have been, under the candlestick, but no amount of reaching about or rearranging of the drawer’s contents turned up Megan Windham’s letters.
Buggering bedamned hell. Sir Fletcher had stopped at home after escorting Megan from the musicale, and lo, she’d been telling the truth: Her letters were no longer where they belonged. He’d gone on to his club in search of a quiet place to think, and perhaps relax with a hand of cards.
