Page 10 of Reclaimed By Her Scottish Duke

“You must excuse me.” She drew herself up and made to step around him. “You have mistaken me for someone else.”

“Have I?” He shifted, unhurried, and the sheer size of him closed off the path as neatly as the hedge once had. “Runnin’ again. Ye do it so well, I’m almost convinced it’s me ye’re runnin’ from and no one else.”

“I am not running. I am leaving, which any lady is entitled to do without being penned into a corner by a—” She caught herself.

“By a?” His mouth curved. “Go on. Ye were doin’ so well.”

“By a great wall of a man who has clearly forgotten his manners somewhere north of the border.”

“Ah, there she is.” Something behind his eyes kindled, the same spark she had seen catch in the maze when she’d read the hedges by their roots. “I did wonder if ye’d tucked her away for good, the lass with the sharp tongue. Turns out she only comes out when she’s cornered.”

“I am not cornered.”

“Nay?” He edged a half step closer, testing her, watching her face for retreat.

She did not retreat.

That was the trouble of it, the thing she would ponder over for hours after. Her feet stayed exactly where they were. Her chin came up instead of down.

Every rule stitched into her since girlhood told her to step back, to lower her eyes, to murmur an apology, and to flee. Yet her body ignored every one of them and held its ground a hand’s breadth from his chest, near enough to feel the warmth radiating from him again, near enough to catch his scent under the candle smoke.

“You are a brute,” she scoffed.

“I am.” He said it without a flicker of shame, pleased, as though she had guessed his favorite color. “But I’m told the polish can be learned. Perhaps ye’d teach me. A season of yer good English breeding, and I might pass for a gentleman yet.” His gaze dropped to her mouth and came back up slowly. “Only I’ve a suspicion ye like me better as I am. A lady who wanted a gentleman wouldnae still be standin’ here.”

The corridor had gone very quiet. His head bent a degree. Hers, she realized, had already tipped up to meet it, the whole of the ballroom, her brother, her name, her sisters shrinking to nothing against the small warm space between them.

For one suspended breath, she was back in the hedge, with the moon down and no tomorrow waiting to claim her.

A door opened somewhere down the corridor. Voices rose, and laughter spilled out, drawing nearer.

Rosaline came back into herself all at once. She stepped back so fast that her slipper caught in the carpet, and this time, he let her go. Her hand pressed flat against her breastbone, her breath ragged for an entirely different reason than the one that had driven her from the ballroom.

What was she doing? Standing in a corridor, tilting her face up to a stranger like a girl in a penny novel, when one glimpse of them together could undo everything.

“Good evening,” she managed, before turning and walking away from him as quickly as dignity allowed.

She did not look back to see whether he was watching her go. She knew that he did. She could feel it the length of the corridor, like heat from a fire she had no business standing near.

“Your sister, Beatrice, has the conversational grace of a dropped tray,” Samuel addressed the remark to Rosaline without looking up from his correspondence.

The breakfast hall was bright and cold, the long table set for a family that ate in silence. Rosaline slid into her chair and reached for the toast as though she might make herself small enough to be overlooked.

“I laughed twice,” Beatrice said. “That is two more times than anyone else at that table managed. I consider it a public service.”

“You mocked the Fenwick girl’s gown.”

“I complimented it. That she chose to hear otherwise says a great deal about the gown.”

“You will apologize to her mother at the Alcott dinner.” Samuel set down one letter and took up another. “You are eighteen, Beatrice. You have precisely one Season’s worth of goodwill left before people stop finding your tongue amusing and start finding it a warning. See that you spend it wisely.”

Beatrice opened her mouth. Rosaline caught her eye across the marmalade and gave the smallest shake of her head, and her sister subsided, jaw working.

Then Samuel turned to Rosaline, and it was worse.

He did not scold her. He set his letter down, folded his hands, and looked at her with the particular weary patience he saved for disappointments, the look that said he had expected so little and been given even less.

“You spoke to no one of consequence,” he remarked. “You stood by the wall for an hour looking as though you wished the floor would swallow you, and when I placed you before Lord Ackerley, you gave him three words and a stare. He is a viscount, Rosaline. He earns eight thousand pounds a year, and his mother is dying to hand over her keys.” He sighed, and the sigh did more damage than shouting ever had. “I trust you have not forgotten what we discussed last night. I would hate to have to say it again in front of our sisters.”