Page 26 of Reclaimed By Her Scottish Duke

She watched his throat bob as he swallowed. She watched his grin vanish, and something replace it that had nothing to do with teaching. She felt as if all the air had been sucked out of the corridor.

“Aye.” It came out rough. He cleared his throat. “Aye. That’s the one.”

Rosaline’s pulse was doing something unforgivable. “Was that adequate?”

“Ye’re a fast learner.” He was still looking at her. “A deal faster than is convenient for me.”

A door banged at the far end of the corridor. Feminine voices spilled into the adjoining card room, three or four of them, loud with the confidence of people who believed themselves entirely alone, and the click of a latch, and a fan snapping open.

Rosaline moved without thinking. She was through the blue door and back into the heat and the noise with her heart slamming against her ribs, smoothing her skirts, arranging her face into something that had never in its life been alone in a corridor with a Scottish duke.

She did not look back to see whether he had followed.

He did not. He was far too clever for that.

Samuel was precisely where Beatrice had abandoned him, and he turned on Rosaline a glare of such hot fury that she very nearly retreated into the crowd.

He did not, however, say a word. He could not, because Beatrice was speaking.

“… which is precisely my point, My Lord. If the sonata form demands a return to the tonic, then the second movement you have just praised for its daring is doing nothing that Haydn had not already done thirty years before, and rather better.” Beatrice beamed at the young man in front of her. “So, I cannot think it daring. I can only think it late.”

Lord Hartley’s mouth opened and then closed. He had the expression of a man who had reached confidently for a step that was not there.

“I… Yes. Quite so.” He tugged at his cravat. “You must forgive me, I see my mother across the room. She must need me.”

With that, he fled.

“Beatrice.” Samuel’s voice was very low and very calm, which was always worse. “That was an earl’s heir with twelve thousand pounds a year, and you have just explained Haydn at him until he ran away.”

“He was wrong about Haydn.”

“He is permitted to be wrong about Haydn. That is precisely what eight thousand pounds a year buys a man.” Samuel pressed two fingers to his temple. “You must learn to be malleable. Agreeable. When a gentleman offers you an opinion, you receive it as you would a gift, and you thank him for it. You do not turn it over, find the chip in the rim, and hand it back to him.” He exhaled through his nose. “Heaven help me. One of you cannot speak at all, and the other cannot stop.”

Beatrice opened her mouth.

The first chords of the pianoforte saved them all.

The chairs filled. Rosaline sat between her brother and her sister with her hands folded and her spine straight, and the soprano began. For the entirety of the first aria, she kept her eyes exactly where they belonged.

Then she did not.

The Duke of Greythorne was seated across the aisle and four rows back, filling his gilt chair the way a bull filled a stall, arms folded, wearing the expression of a man being slowly and deliberately murdered by music.

She meant it to be a glance. It was a glance. He caught it and winked at her. Her eyes snapped forward so fast she felt it in her neck.

“Rosaline,” Beatrice whispered in pure delight. “Rosaline, the Scottish Duke just winked at you.”

“He did not.”

“He absolutely did. I watched him do it. His whole face did a thing.” Beatrice’s fan came up to cover the worst of her grin. “Ladies have been ruined by faces doing things like that. Why is he winking at you?”

“He is a scoundrel.” Rosaline kept her chin level and her voice profoundly bored, which required every scrap of skill she had ever possessed. “It means nothing. He would wink at any woman careless enough to look his way, and I have no doubt he winks his way through three or four an evening. I would thank you not to make it into something in front of Samuel.”

“Mm,” Beatrice said, and hummed through the rest of the aria, entirely unconvinced.

The last note died down, applause erupted, and Samuel had them both by the elbows before it had stopped.

“Fenwick’s set. Both of you. Now.” He propelled them across the floor. “Beatrice, you will agree with everything that is said to you, and I do not care how wrong it is. Rosaline, you will speak, and I do not care what about.”