Page 25 of Reclaimed By Her Scottish Duke

Her breath left her. “You—” Her mouth opened and closed. “You are a cad.”

“Aye.” His eyes came back up to hers, without a flicker of apology in them. “I am. And so is every man in that hall, only they’ve better manners and worse intentions.” He pushed off the wall. “That’s me point, Rosaline. Ye can be scandalized that I looked, or ye can understand that this is the game as it’s played and start playin’ it. It’s nae fair. It’s nae fine. But it’s true.”

She wanted very much to slap him.

She wanted, far more inconveniently, to concede the point, because he was right, and she had spent three Seasons at a wall watching him be right.

Honoria Dunmore had not been prettier than her. Honoria Dunmore had simply been seen.

“Go on,” she said stiffly.

“Now, the look.” Something in his manner changed; the teasing banked, replaced by the flat attention of a man about to teach a thing he took seriously. “This is the whole of the art. Everything else is trimmin’. When a man speaks to ye, ye look at him as though there’s nae another soul on this earth. Nae the room. Nae his friends. Nae the door behind him. But him. As if he’s the only man God troubled Himself to make and ye cannae believe yer luck at havin’ found him.”

“That is absurd.”

“It has ruined kings.” He held her eyes. “Ye lower yer lashes. Slow. Then ye look up through them, slower still. And ye hold it one beat longer than ye ought. One. The beat where a proper lady would look away is the beat ye stay.”

“And that is all?”

“That’s all. It’s nothin’. It’s everything.” His mouth curved. “Try it.”

Rosaline squared her shoulders, dropped her chin, and lifted her eyes to his.

There was a pause.

“Well…” Magnus trailed off.

“What?”

“Ye look like ye’re about to sneeze.”

“I do not.”

“Ye do. Ye’ve the exact face of a woman workin’ up to a sneeze and thinkin’ better of it.” He was fighting a grin and losing badly. “Again.”

She did it again.

“Worse,” he tutted. “That’s the fish at the market. All eye and no warmth. The fish at least has an excuse—bein’ dead.”

“You are the most troublesome teacher I’ve ever had.”

“And the most handsome, I bet. Again.”

She did it again, and again, and each time he sent it back to her ruined.

Her face burned. The whole enterprise was so profoundly humiliating that she very nearly turned and walked back down the corridor to her pillar, where she belonged.

“Ye’re performin’ it,” he said, quieter now. “That’s the trouble. Ye’re doin’ a shape ye think I want to see, and it’s dead on ye. Stop that.” He leaned back against the wall. “Ye did it to me once already, ye ken. Ye did it perfectly, and ye werenae tryin’ at all.”

“I never⁠—”

“In the hedge.” His voice dropped. “A year past. Ye’d just told me how a gardener trains a young wall flat against a frame, and ye were pleased with yerself and tryin’ nae to show it. Ye looked up at me through yer lashes, exactly so, and held it. And I havenae been right in the head since.” He shrugged. “So daenae give me a shape, lass. Give me that.”

The corridor went very quiet.

Rosaline stopped thinking about her lashes. She thought instead of a black mask in the dark and a low voice saying Huh, so it does, and the strange bright pleasure of being listened to. She let her chin drop, and her eyes lift slowly. Then she held them there, one beat past the moment where a proper lady would have looked away.

Magnus did not say anything.