Page 63 of Reclaimed By Her Scottish Duke

“Which of these,” he asked slowly, sorting through the cards, “puts me nearest the men worth watchin’?”

Leo’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “Business, then, and not pleasure. I did wonder.” He leaned in and began to sift through the cards with a practiced hand. “This one is dull. This one is duller. This one is a marriage-market cattle auction and beneath you now. This—” He paused and drew a thick cream card from the stack, his face sobering. “This one might interest you. It came yesterday. A subscription dinner, in aid of the soldiers’ widows fund.” He set it on the desk between them. “Chaired by the Marquess of Oldbrook, who has apparently decided, now that you are respectable, to renew that invitation he extended you some weeks ago. He asks most particularly that you bring your wife.”

Magnus looked at the expensive card, the door he had been seeking for a year swinging open at last on well-oiled hinges, with his enemy’s hand on the latch and his enemy’s most particular request that he bring Rosaline into the room.

“Aye,” he said, and his quiet tone made Leo glance up. “I’ll accept that one.”

CHAPTER 28

“Ye’re certain ye remember the way, Duchess? Only I’d hate for ye to get lost in a hedge and fall into the arms of some strange Scot.” Magnus handed her down from the carriage, and the fox mask dangling from his fingers caught the September light. “I’m told it happens.”

“I am told the strange Scots are the greater hazard.” Rosaline took the mask from him and could not for the life of her stop smiling. She had been unable to stop for weeks. “One wanders into a maze a perfectly sensible woman and wanders out betrothed to a man in a kilt. A cautionary tale.”

“A love story, surely.”

“The jury is still deliberating.” But she let him tuck her hand into the crook of his arm, and the warmth that ran up her own at the simple contact was answer enough.

“Confess it,” he murmured as they crossed the lawn. “Ye came back to this maze hopin’ to be led astray again.”

“I came back because my husband insisted, and because I mean to win it this year, and because you look absurdly handsome in a fox mask and I am shallow enough to enjoy it.”

“Ah, the truth at last.” He looked entirely too pleased with himself. “Shallow suits ye, Duchess. I’ll have ye wicked yet.”

The Reynard’s Chase looked exactly as it had over a year ago, with the great hedge maze rising green and ancient behind the house, the lawns strung with the same masked and glittering crowd.

It was not, in truth, quite the same event at all. A year ago, Reynard’s Chase had been a close-kept secret, an invitation whispered to a chosen few, every guest sworn to their masks and their anonymity, half the pleasure of it the not-knowing.

Its success had ruined that.

Word had spread the way word does, and what had been a hidden game was now the most coveted card of the Season, and the host had bowed to the change with good grace, throwing the doors wider and letting the masks become ornament rather than armor. That suited the ton, which had never in its life truly wished to be anonymous, only to be seen being exclusive.

Only Rosaline was entirely changed.

Last fall, she had crept along these edges as a wallflower, slipped into the maze to hide, and come out something else. This year, she walked in on a duke’s arm in a gown the color of claret, with her chin up and her face bare of any mask, and watched the whole bright crowd turn to look and did not shrink from a single stare.

“Rosaline.” Beatrice reached her first, and there was something suspiciously bright in her sharp eyes as she took in her sister from head to foot. “You look well. You look appallingly well, in point of fact. It is quite disgusting, and I could not be happier about it.”

Behind her, Samuel inclined his head the barest fraction of courtesy allowed. “Your Grace.” The word cost him. Rosaline was above him now, past his reach, and it lived in every stiff line of him. “I trust Greythorne is treating you as you deserve.”

“He is treating me a great deal better than I was ever taught to expect,” Rosaline said pleasantly, and had the rare joy of watching the shot land clean and her brother find nothing to say to it.

“Blackholm. And the elusive Duchess.” Magnus’s voice warmed, and Rosaline turned to find the Duke and Duchess of Blackholm approaching, the Duchess already smiling at her as though they were old friends.

“Greythorne, you great fraud, you told no one you were getting married.” Evander Brightshaw clasped Magnus’s hand. “I had to learn it from a scandal sheet, like a servant.”

“I told ye, ye were three sheets to the wind at the time and remember nothin’.”

“That is slander, and probably true.” Evander turned to Rosaline and bowed. “Duchess. Ignore every word my friend has told you about me. Whatever it was, it is worse than that.”

“Do not let him frighten you.” The Duchess took both of Rosaline’s hands with a frankness that undid a knot of nerves Rosaline had not known she was holding. “I am Mary. I spent my first months as a duchess quite certain I would be discovered as a fraud at any moment and sent home in disgrace. I promise you that feeling passes, and that, in the meantime, there is at least one other woman in every room who has felt exactly the same and would like, enormously, to be your friend. Come and call on me. I mean it.”

“I… yes.” Rosaline found herself smiling helplessly. “I should like that very much.”

It was only as the Blackholms drifted on that the crowd near them shifted and parted, and a silver-haired gentleman stepped smoothly into the space they left. Rosaline felt her husband go still as stone beneath her hand.

“Your Grace. And Lady Rosaline—forgive me, Your Grace, now.” The Earl’s smile deepened. “We spoke once before. I had no notion then that you would prove to be the woman who has worked such a transformation in him.” The Earl of Oldbrook bowed over Rosaline’s hand.

His manner was flawless, warm, grandfatherly. But his eyes, when they lifted to hers, were the coldest thing she had ever looked into. He did not once stop smiling.