Page 41 of Reclaimed By Her Scottish Duke

She had understood nothing.

The memory had been a sketch, and this was the whole burning painting—the scrape of his beard against her jaw, the low sound he made in the back of his throat when she pressed closer, the taste of him, the sheer solid warmth of him under her hands. She gave herself over to all of it and, for one glorious reckless stretch of minutes, stopped being anywhere at all but exactly here.

It was Magnus who gentled it in the end, easing back by degrees, resting his forehead against hers while they both dragged in air. His heart was beating as hard as her own; she could feel it where her fist was still clenched in his shirt.

“Rosaline,” he said, low and wrecked, and she did not know whether it was a warning or a prayer.

The sound of her own name in that ruined voice brought her crashing back down into her mind, into the cold clear knowledge of exactly where she was and whose house this was and everything she stood to lose lying asleep and trusting across the dark city.

She let go of his shirt and stepped back so fast that she nearly stumbled.

“I have to go.” Her voice was not her own. Her lips were swollen, her whole body strung tight and tingling. “It is late. I should never have—I have to go, Your Grace. Please. The carriage.”

“Rosaline—”

“Please.”

He did not stop her. Whatever was in his eyes—and there was a great deal in them—he only stepped aside and let her pass.

Rosaline pulled her hood up with shaking hands and went out through the silent door, down the back stairs, and into the mews, where the black carriage waited to carry her to her own bed and her own dark.

Yet she already knew that she would not get a single moment’s sleep.

CHAPTER 18

“Get me a drink before I do something that ends both of us.”

“Good evening to you, too.” Leo signaled a passing footman without taking his eyes off his friend. “You have been in this house forty seconds. What can possibly have gone wrong in forty seconds?”

Magnus plucked the glass from the tray the instant it arrived, drank it down in one long swallow, and handed it back empty.

“Nothing’s gone wrong.” He said it like a man biting a coin. “I’ve a great deal on me mind, that’s all.”

“You have the face of a man who has just been told his horse is on fire.” Leo’s mouth curved. “Should I be worried, or is this the ordinary Tuesday variety of Scottish gloom?”

Magnus opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. Because the Darton party had just come through the doors at the top of the stairs, and at the center of it, on her brother’s arm, was Rosaline.

She was wearing something he had not seen before, a deep wine silk gown that fit her the way water fit a riverbed, and she came down the steps with her chin level and her shoulders squared—a woman who had finally decided to be looked at.

Half the heads near the door turned. Magnus’s did too and stayed turned, and every drop of the drink he had just swallowed did nothing whatsoever to help.

He snatched a second glass off the next passing tray and drank half of it down.

Leo closed his mouth. He followed Magnus’s gaze up the staircase to the wine-colored gown and the dark head held high, and understanding dawned on his face.

“Oh,” he said softly. “Oh, I see. That is your source of frustration.”

“There you are, you beautiful things. I have been searching this whole crush for you.” Abigail arrived in a flurry of primrose muslin and seized Rosaline’s hands. “Lord Darton, good evening.”

“Lady Abigail.” Samuel inclined his head the precise, economical degree he reserved for people whose connections were not quite worth cultivating. “You look well.”

“And you are as admirably thorough in your oversight as ever, My Lord, so all is right with the world.” She said it sweetly enough that Samuel could not be certain he had been insulted, and then she turned to Beatrice and Rosaline before he could decide. “Now, how has the Season treated you, darling Beatrice? Tell me everything. Spare me nothing.”

“It has been a delight,” Beatrice answered. “If your idea of delight is being marched before a series of gentlemen like a horse at auction while your brother critiques your teeth.”

“Beatrice.” Samuel’s voice dropped. “We do not air the family’s business at a ball. Smile.”

“I am smiling. This is my auction smile. Note the teeth.”