Page 35 of Reclaimed By Her Scottish Duke

“Odd,” Magnus commented, “for it is the language that gave us nearly every composer worth the name.”

Rosaline’s eyes flicked to him despite herself. He had not looked up from his plate.

“I beg your pardon?” Denby huffed.

“Nothin’ at all, My Lord. Only that Herr Mozart and Herr Beethoven and Herr Haydn all managed to find a wee bit of music in it somewhere, guttural or nae.” Magnus cut into his fish with great mildness. “But then, ye’ve been to Vienna and I havenae, so I’ll defer to the man who’s seen it.”

A brief tense silence fell over their corner of the table. Denby’s color deepened. He had understood just enough to know he had been made to look foolish and not nearly enough to know how to answer it.

Rosaline broke the silence before the poor man could flounder.

“His Grace is teasing you, Lord Denby, but he makes your point for you rather than against you.” She turned the full warmth of her attention back to Denby and away from Magnus, like a door closing. “For it is one thing to know the names of composers, which any schoolboy can recite, and quite another to have stood in the rooms where they played and breathed in the air of the place, as you have. Knowledge from a book is nothing beside knowledge from the world. I would rather hear a thing from a man who has lived it.” She let that settle on Denby like a warm cloak. “You were saying, My Lord? The opera houses?”

Denby, restored and glowing, resumed speaking. He got perhaps two sentences into the architecture of the opera house before informing the table that its famous dome was the largest in all of Europe.

“Larger than St. Peter’s in Rome?” Magnus asked his plate.

“I… well… comparable. Very comparable, certainly.”

“Comparable. Aye.” Magnus reached for the salt. “That’ll be it, then.”

“How well traveled you both are,” Rosaline said warmly, before Denby’s face could finish falling, “to be comparing the great domes of the Continent across the fish. You must forgive His Grace, Lord Denby. Scotsmen are famously literal creatures. They have not our English gift for a generous approximation.”

She smiled at Denby as though the two of them were sharing a private joke at the Duke’s expense, and Denby, who a breath ago had been the butt of one, found himself suddenly on the flattering side of it and rallied magnificently.

Rosaline permitted herself one glance across the small distance to the Duke and found him watching her. She let her eyes say very clearly, I do not need your help. Sit down.

A spark kindled behind his eyes, half temper and half admiration, and she looked away before it could catch.

“You are enjoying yourself,” she heard Lord Rivercourt murmur to him under the noise. “Rather more than the situation strictly calls for. Eat your fish, Your Grace. Our side of the table misses you desperately.”

The Duke said something too low to carry. Whatever it was, Lord Rivercourt laughed.

The trouble came with dessert.

A syllabub, and a dish of glazed fruits, and tiny almond cakes so pretty it seemed a shame to disturb them. Rosaline, who had spent the whole of the fish course being charming with her voice, understood that the moment had arrived to be charming with more than that.

She thought of a dim sweet shop. She thought of a low voice saying, Ye eat like ye mean it. She took up her spoon and did not hurry.

She let the syllabub linger. She drew the spoon slowly from her lips. She caught the smallest trace of cream at the corner of her mouth with the tip of one finger, unhurried, the way she had been shown.

Across the table, Lord Denby forgot entirely what he had been saying about Vienna and turned a deep, blotchy red from his collar to his hairline.

She had done it correctly, then. She could feel that she had.

She could also feel, without looking, the exact moment the Duke stopped eating.

She risked one glance. It was a mistake. The Duke was not looking at her. He was looking at Denby’s flushed face, nothing charming left in him at all.

His jaw had set. His knuckles had gone pale where they gripped the stem of his glass, and he had the sharp look of a man deciding precisely which bone to break first.

Beside him, Lord Rivercourt had grown very alert, and she saw his hand move beneath the table. She saw the almost imperceptible pressure of it against the Duke’s arm. Then Rivercourt leaned toward him and said something short and urgent through a pleasant smile.

The Duke picked up his glass and drank from it deeply, which was, Rosaline suspected, the entire purpose of Rivercourt’s intervention.

She lowered her eyes to her syllabub and did nothing further with it. Her heart was beating far too fast, and not on account of Lord Denby.

Lady Bexley’s drawing room was vast and warm and loud with after-dinner voices.