Page 30 of Reclaimed By Her Scottish Duke

“Rosaline.” Ivy caught up to them, breathless, her cheeks pink under her bonnet. “Rosaline, there is a sweet shop. Just there, the one with the blue door and the jars in the window. Miss Dean says the lemon drops are famous. May we? Oh, may we, please?”

“Certainly not,” Samuel said, without turning around. “We have the milliner, and then we are expected at your aunt’s. We have no time to stand in a shop, watching a child eat sugar.”

Ivy’s face fell, the light going out of it, and something in Rosaline that had been coiled tight for two days simply refused to bear it.

“I will take her.” The words were out before she had weighed them. “You and Beatrice go to the milliner across the street. Ivy, Miss Dean, and I will visit the shop, and we will meet you at the milliner’s in a quarter of an hour. It is ten steps, Samuel. She will hardly be ruined between here and the lemon drops.”

Samuel turned. He looked at the shop, at Ivy, at Rosaline, weighing it all with that flat assessing gaze that priced everything.

“A quarter of an hour,” he allowed. “You will keep Miss Dean with you, and you will speak to no one, and you will be at the milliner’s door before I have finished with the hats.” He was already steering Beatrice toward the crossing. “Do not make me regret it.”

Rosaline caught Beatrice’s eye as they parted, and for one instant, her sister’s face creased with something that stung, a small clear look of you would rather have Ivy than me. Then it passed. Beatrice gave her the smallest nod, mouthed something that might have been go on, then, and let Samuel lead her away toward the milliner.

Rosaline would make it up to her. She always did.

“Thank you,” Ivy breathed, seizing her hand, and towed her toward the blue door, with Miss Dean hurrying behind.

The bell above the door gave a bright little jangle. The shop opened up warm and dim, smelling of caramel and hot sugar, glass jars floor to ceiling, trays of macarons, marzipan, and sugared violets laid out under the counter like jewels. Ivy let go of her hand and darted forward with a gasp of pure joy.

And ran directly into the back of a very large man.

“Oh! Oh, I do beg your pardon, sir, I did not⁠—”

The man turned.

Rosaline stopped three steps inside the door.

The Duke of Greythorne looked down at the small, breathless girl who had just collided with him, and whatever he had been about to say rearranged itself into something gentler.

“No harm done, wee one.” He crouched until his eyes were level with Ivy’s, which did not seem to trouble him at all. “Though I’ll tell ye, ye came in like a cannonball. I nearly went straight through the toffee.”

Ivy giggled. “I did not mean to. It only smelled so good.”

“Aye, it does. It’s a dangerous shop. A man could lose his whole afternoon.” He tilted his head, studying her with mock gravity. “Now, what’s this?” He reached out and, with a small frown of concentration, drew his hand back from behind Ivy’s ear. There, between his forefinger and thumb, sat a wrapped lemon drop. “Ye’d better have a care. Ye’ve sweets growin’ out yer very head. That’s a rare condition. Caused by thinkin’ about them too hard.”

Ivy’s mouth fell open. She clapped both hands to her ears as though to check for more, and then to her mouth, her eyes wide. “How did you do that?”

“Magic.” He pressed the lemon drop solemnly into her palm. “Scottish magic. We’re famous for it. That, and the weather.”

“Do it again.”

“It doesnae work twice in a day. Ye have to save it up.” He straightened up, and it was only then that he noticed Rosaline standing frozen by the door. Something moved behind his eyes that he put away. “Lady Rosaline.”

“Your Grace.” Her voice came out steadier than she felt.

Ivy was turning the lemon drop over and over in her hand as though it were spun gold. She dipped into a small, careful curtsy. “Thank you very much for the sweet, sir. And the magic.” And then, the manners discharged and the wonder of the shop reasserting itself, she was gone, flitting toward the jars along the far wall with Miss Dean in patient pursuit, calling back over her shoulder, “Miss Dean, come and see, there are violet ones…”

Which left Rosaline standing beside the Duke among the toffees, close enough to speak, but far enough to be two strangers who had exchanged a courtesy.

“What are you doing here?” she muttered.

“I might have a sweet tooth.” He said it without shame. “A great and shameful one. I came for the marzipan, and I’ll thank ye nae to tell a soul. It does nothin’ for the reputation of a savage.”

Rosaline pressed her lips together against a smile and lost. There was something disarming about it, this enormous Scot with shoulders that filled the little shop, bending over a tray of pastel macarons with the grave attention of a man selecting a horse.

“I shall take it to my grave,” she said somberly.

“See that ye do.” He selected a green macaron and considered it. “Ye did well, the other night at the musicale. I watched the whole of it. Ye had Bracewell and the other three eatin’ out of yer hand within a quarter of an hour, and ye never once turned to stone.” He glanced at her sideways. “It was well done, Lady Rosaline. Truly.”