Page 74 of The Trouble With Dukes
“Into my bedroom, into my heart,” Megan muttered against Hamish’s mouth.
“But I missed you, and I knew you’d be waiting, and I can’t—dear God, Megan Windham.”
She’d shifted, and in one brilliant, bold maneuver, gloved Hamish with her heat. He went from struggling to find the resolve to part from her, to struggling for breath.
“You were saying?” she murmured, moving on him.
“I was saying …” Something, something important, and honorable, and … damn. “Don’t stop, Meggie. Not yet.”
Her teeth gleamed in a smile, and she didn’t stop. Not for a long, long time.
Love brought Megan insights, not all of them happy. Twenty-four hours after sharing intimacies with Hamish, she was still contemplating those insights from beside yet another dance floor in yet another ballroom.
Megan’s beloved, for example, woke up as nimbly as a starving cat shifts from watching its prey to pouncing. Still one moment, in mid-leap the next. Hamish was not cheerful upon rising either. As best Megan had been able to decipher his expression the previous night, he’d awakened prepared to kill—or die.
Fortunately, she was learning to set less and less store by appearances. Hamish looked fierce, but his touch … oh, his touch. Hamish MacHugh’s caresses were insight on top of revelation wrapped in wonderment.
“Megs, take pity on me and come for a turn on the terrace,” Devlin St. Just, Earl of Rosecroft, said, extending a hand to her. “The noise in this ballroom is enough to give a stout-hearted fellow a bilious stomach.”
Megan accepted her cousin’s hand—he’d apparently been assigned guard duty this evening—and rose from her bench.
“A breath of fresh air appeals,” Megan said, for she couldn’t spend the entire evening watching Hamish dance with her sisters and cousins. “I’m promised for the supper waltz.”
“If you weren’t, I’d be having a talk with your duke.”
“He’s not my duke yet,” Megan said as Rosecroft led her through the wallflowers, dandies, and dowagers milling among benches. Rosecroft comported himself in a crowd the same way he did everything else, with a decisive efficiency that brooked no obstacles.
He soon had Megan out in the lovely night air, where, indeed, quiet was to be had.
“I would never argue with a lady,” Rosecroft said, tucking Megan’s hand around his arm, “but I might quibble with a cousin. Murdoch is very much your duke. He makes you sparkle.”
“Would that I could make him sparkle,” Megan said. “Hamish is a private man and he carries shadows.”
“We all carry shadows, Megan. What of Sir Fletcher? He was all set to be your swain of choice, and now he’s least in sight.”
Sir Fletcher was Megan’s shadow, but he no longer had the power to frighten her. “Sir Fletcher is among the gathering this evening, along with two of his sisters. He and I are … civil.”
For a moment Megan and her cousin strolled along the gravel walk in silence, the sound of the ballroom fading as they moved toward the back of the garden. The torches were spaced farther apart here, and the night air bore a teasing hint of lilacs.
A lovely evening, but last night had been lovelier.
“I don’t like how Sir Fletcher watches you,” Rosecroft said. “Westhaven has declared me overly protective, and Valentine says I’m anticipating the day when my girls make their bows, but I’m here if you need me, Megs, as are Westhaven and Valentine.”
The reassurance was as lovely as it was disquieting. “Why would I need you?”
He patted her hand. “Maybe you don’t, but we like to be needed. You will never, ever tell Moreland I admitted to that. He’s smug enough as it is.”
Uncle Percy was shrewd, or Aunt Esther and Uncle Percy were a shrewd combination. “My thanks for the concern, but it’s not needed. Hamish is an entirely worthy fellow, and he has attached my affections.”
Rosecroft snorted.
“What does that ungentlemanly rejoinder imply?” For it had been a cousinly snort, not a dignified father, husband, and respected titleholder snort.
“You’re in the courting bedroom, I hear, and Murdoch looks like an athletic specimen. Scaling the maple and hopping the balcony shouldn’t be too much challenge for him.”
Gracious days—and nights. “I will pretend I did not hear that observation, and pretend I am not blushing fit to light up the night sky, Devlin St. Just.”
“If Her Grace raises with you the topic of certain purchases one can send one’s maid to make at the apothecary,” Rosecroft went on—parenting girls had apparently given him entire arsenals of ruthlessness—“you will blush and stammer and look mortified but intrigued. The intrigued part is important. Ask me how I know this.”
