Page 22 of Reclaimed By Her Scottish Duke

“Done.” He bowed to her then, a proper bow, better than the tilt of the head she was used to from him, as though he were sealing a treaty between two nations rather than a scandal between a duke and a wallflower. “We’ll begin at the next event ye attend. Wear somethin’ ye can breathe in. Ye’ll want it.”

Somewhere beyond the door, closer than was comfortable, a familiar voice called her name. “Rosaline? Rosaline, where are you?”

Beatrice.

Rosaline’s head whipped toward the sound.

When she turned back, the Duke was already moving, unhurried even now, toward the tall French doors that opened onto the garden. He paused with one hand on the glass and looked back over his shoulder at her. The smirk on his face promised a great deal more trouble than she had just agreed to.

“Until the next event, Lady Rosaline.”

Then the door was opened and shut, silently as he had promised, and he disappeared into the green.

The room held nothing but Rosaline, the wreck of her skirt, and the bargain she could scarcely believe she had struck.

The door behind her burst open.

“There you are. Oh, Rosaline.” Beatrice took in the mud, the ruined side of her gown, and her face crumpled on her sister’s behalf. “That ringleted little viper. That is what she is, a viper in a bonnet, and I hope every seam of her gown gives out at once, and she is left standing in her shift before the whole party. Tripping you up like a common guttersnipe, then simpering for someone to help. I saw the whole of it. I would have flown at her if Samuel had not had my wrist in a vise.” She was across the room and at Rosaline’s side, plucking uselessly at the ruined silk. “Are you hurt? Tell me you are not hurt. Tell me the only casualty is the gown, because the gown I can survive.”

“I am not hurt.” Rosaline let her sister fuss over her, strangely calm. “Truly, Bea. It is only mud. It will wash.”

“It is not only mud, but it is also a declaration of war, and I intend to answer it.” Beatrice pried the sodden, muddy cloth out of her sister’s fingers, dropped it into the washstand basin, and pressed a clean handkerchief into her palm in its place. “You are far too forgiving. If it were me, I would have come up out of that flowerbed swinging.”

“I know you would.” Rosaline pressed the handkerchief to her filthy palm, not really seeing it.

Her mind was three feet to the left of every word her sister said, on a green-eyed man and a garden door and a bargain that any woman with an ounce of sense would already be regretting.

She waited to feel the regret. She turned her attention toward it, the way one probed a sore tooth, expecting the ache. It did not come. What came instead, unbidden and entirely unwelcome, was the memory of how close he had stood and the low certainty in his voice when he had said she already knew how, and a small treacherous flicker of something that felt dangerously like anticipation.

She would begin at the next event. Heaven help her, she could hardly wait to.

CHAPTER 10

“Stand there. Do not move, do not touch anything, and most importantly, do not speak to anyone unless you are spoken to first.”

Samuel positioned Rosaline beside a pillar the way a man set down a parcel he was embarrassed to be carrying and stepped back to survey the room.

It was a dreadful crush. Lady Pemberton’s musicales always were, and tonight every gilt chair in the long hall had been claimed. Half of London stood behind them besides, fanning and murmuring in the heat.

Rosaline kept her back to the pillar, her eyes on the middle distance, and felt the whole room glance at her, one guest at a time.

A week had not been long enough. A month would not have been long enough.

“Do you suppose,” Beatrice murmured at her shoulder, “that if I set fire to the curtains, they would find something else to talk about?”

“Bea.”

“It would be a public service. I am prepared to be arrested for it.” Beatrice snapped her fan open with a flick of her wrist. “Look at them. Not one of them was brave enough to help you up out of that flowerbed, and now they have the gall to whisper about the state of your gown. I hope every one of them chokes on a grape.”

Somewhere behind them, a woman said flowerbed, and someone laughed.

Rosaline studied the pattern of the carpet. “It will pass,” she said. “Everything passes. They will find someone else to gossip about by Thursday.”

“It will not pass by Thursday.” Beatrice’s fan resumed its work. “Do you know what Miss Fairchild is telling people? That you were tipsy. That you had been at the ratafia and lost your footing among the roses, and that she quite selflessly called for someone to assist you.”

Rosaline’s fingers went cold inside her gloves. “She tripped me.”

“I know she tripped me. I mean, tripped you. I saw her do it. I have been telling everyone who will hold still that she did it.” Beatrice’s jaw set. “The trouble is that she is very pretty and I am very eighteen, and the world would rather believe a pretty liar than the plain truth.”