Page 51 of Reclaimed By Her Scottish Duke

“Peter.” Magnus took the letters and looked at him. “How’s yer maither farin’? The cough.”

The boy blinked, thrown clean off whatever script he had rehearsed on the way up the stairs. “She’s… better, Your Grace. The doctor came. On account of the wages, Your Grace, so… um… thank you.”

“Good. Ye tell her a Scot sends his regards and orders her to mend, and that I’ll have words with her if she doesnae.” Magnus softened it with a look. “And ye can stop holdin’ that tray like it’s a live adder, laddie. I havenae bitten one this month. Ask Ross.”

Peter’s grin escaped before he could stop it, then he bobbed his head and fled.

Magnus turned to the letters, for the length of a breath feeling that he was good for something.

The feeling did not survive the correspondence.

He had a list. Leo had written it out for him in that maddening elegant hand, a dozen names ranked by influence, and beside each the soft place a clever man might press: this one’s canal shares, that one’s horses, the other’s ambitions for a son with no chin and fewer prospects.

Magnus was meant to spend the morning writing letters, seeking introductions, laying the groundwork for an alliance that was the whole reason he had come south and put on this borrowed English skin.

It was the work. It was the only work that mattered.

He got as far as writing My Lord on three separate sheets, and on all three found himself sitting with the pen gone dry in his hand, seeing instead a woman turning at a library door with her color high and her chin up, telling him she ought to want other men.

He put the pen down. He was, he decided, a disgrace to the memory of every serious ambition he had ever held.

“Your Grace.”

Halliday had appeared in the doorway with the noiseless gravity of a very good butler. He had served the house under two dukes before Magnus and plainly meant to outlast a third. His face gave away nothing, but there was a particular stillness to him this morning that put Magnus on his feet before another word could be spoken.

“There is a caller. I have shown him to the blue drawing room.” Halliday paused the exact correct length. “The Earl of Oldbrook, Your Grace.”

Everything in Magnus went quiet, cold, wide awake.

Oldbrook. Here. In his house, unannounced and uninvited, on an ordinary Thursday.

A man of Oldbrook’s standing did not call on a Scottish duke so soon unless he wanted something, or feared something, or both.

“Did he state his business?”

“He did not, Your Grace. He admired the hall.” A flicker, gone at once. “He admired it a great deal.”

“Aye, I’ll wager he did.” Magnus shrugged on his coat and made himself breathe slowly, the way he had taught a frightened woman to breathe against a library door. “Bring tea. The good service. And Halliday?”

The butler paused.

“Daenae leave us longer than ye must.”

“Alright, Your Grace.”

Oldbrook stood at the window of the blue drawing room with his hands folded behind him, silver-haired and unhurried, examining the garden with the mild proprietary interest of a landlord walking a property he meant to buy. He turned as Magnus entered, and his face arranged itself into a warmth so complete, so entirely without seam, that a lesser man would have believed it on sight.

“Your Grace. Forgive the intrusion.” His bow was precise to the half-degree. “I find I have grown too old for feigning acquaintance across a crowded ballroom, when a plain morning call will serve so much better. I hope you will not think me presumptuous.”

“Nae at all, Me Lord. Ye’re welcome to it.” Magnus indicated a chair and took the one opposite.

He rested his hands on his knees and did everything Rosaline had drilled into him. He kept his voice easy. He did not fill the silence. He let the older man come to him.

“I’ll be candid, Your Grace, for I think you are a man who prefers it.” Oldbrook sat down. “London has not been kind to you. Oh, it smiles, it accepts your invitations, but it has decided what you are before you have spoken. And it is a stubborn, incurious town. I have watched it done to better men than either of us.” He let that sink in. “I came to say that I find the general verdict lazy. A man who crossed a kingdom to take up a duty he never sought interests me a great deal more than the hundredth heir who was handed everything and has done nothing with it since.”

It was very good. It was precisely the thing Magnus most wished to hear that wanting it was in itself a warning, and he marked the warning even as the warmth of the flattery slid under his guard.

“That’s kind, Me Lord.”