Page 78 of The Trouble With Dukes
Hamish stood very tall in the shadows. “I could fight him, Meggie. For you, I could meet him.”
That admission had cost him, clearly. “You are not a killer, Hamish MacHugh, and you are far too precious to me to be risked at Sir Fletcher’s hands.”
“So you’ll sacrifice yourself instead?” The question was quiet, bewildered, and pained.
“If I must,” Megan said. “Sir Fletcher isn’t the worst husband I could have. He’ll likely grow bored with me after a few years, and we’ll live separately as most fashionable couples do. A few sons, and he’ll lose all interest in his wife.”
She prayed that was so. Prayed she didn’t find herself married to a man who’d break her glasses and her spirit for his own entertainment.
“Megan, are you asking me to leave you to Sir Fletcher?”
She owed Hamish a resolute yes to that question. She couldn’t even nod her head. “Don’t make me cry, Hamish. Please, not now, not tonight. I can’t have any talk, and I wouldn’t want …”
“I’m precious to you, but you don’t want me,” he said. The words should have been bitter, but Hamish enfolded Megan in a gentle embrace. “You are daft, Meggie Windham, and brave and foolish—also a bad liar. Before you blow a full retreat, grant me a boon.”
Megan sensed a trap, but she was too busy savoring what might be her last moments in Hamish’s arms.
“You’re trying to charm me,” she said, her cheek against the wool of his jacket. “I have no defenses right now, Hamish. I can barely think, and any moment, one of my cousins will come strutting through that door, and I’ll want to smack him with my fan.”
“I’ll encourage you in any displays of affection you care to aim at your family, but all I’m asking you for is a truce, Megan.”
Hamish was up to something, and the waltz would soon end. “What sort of truce?”
“We neither advance nor retreat. We hold our ground, displaying neither a flag of surrender nor overt aggression. A ceasefire while we tend to our wounded and consider our options.”
Megan was wounded, and being in Hamish’s arms was the only relief for her pain. “I ought to find Sir Fletcher right now and tell him I’ll marry him. You’re contemplating something dangerous.”
“You won’t allow me to call him out, for which I’m honestly grateful, and I can’t stomach the notion of you marrying him. I’d say a ceasefire makes sense right now.”
Megan tried to think, to weigh benefits and burdens, but no great insights or stunning conclusions materialized.
“How long does this ceasefire last, Hamish? I don’t trust Sir Fletcher one bit.”
“We are agreed on that much. Give me a fortnight, and don’t be sacrificing yourself to Sir Fletcher’s schemes just yet. Give me a chance to ambush the man who’s again trying to ambush you.”
“A fortnight, then,” Megan said. Little enough for Hamish to ask. “Two weeksat most. Sir Fletcher is not a patient man.”
Fourteen days of liberty and longing for what could not be, and then she’d give Sir Fletcher her hand in holy matrimony.
Hamish spotted Colin in the corner of the card room, looking rakish and happy in a foursome of former officers playing whist. Very likely, they were more invested in their reminiscences and their hostess’s brandy than in the card play.
“I cannot for the life of me fathom what Megan Windham sees in a man who’s incapable of smiling,” the Earl of Keswick said, standing at Hamish’s elbow.
“Ask your lady wife what a man incapable of smiling might have to offer that’s worth a woman’s notice,” Hamish replied. “She’s bound to have a few ideas.”
“My countess is a font of creativity, while you have no wife at all.”
“Who’s the man partnering Sir Fletcher?” Hamish asked, rather than admit the sad truth of Keswick’s observation.
“Captain Garner Puget. One of Plyne’s spares and not quite a fortune hunter, according to—”
“Your wife,” Hamish finished. Keswick was besotted, and Hamish could only envy him. “Why does Puget look familiar?”
Hamish had seen the two together previously—at the musicale?—but why did the sight of Puget rankle, was the more pressing question. Of course, everything rankled, given the broadsides Megan had fired. She had looked so damned brave and pretty andlostwhen she’d announced Sir Fletcher’s latest perfidy.
“Puget,” Keswick said, “was one of those younger sons who made a good soldier during the Peninsular campaign. Once the Corsican was vanquished, his choices were limited to India, Canada, or mustering out. I believe he served under Sir Fletcher for at least part of his tour.”
And Puget still associated with an officer who’d been neither liked nor respected by his subordinates.
