Page 24 of Reclaimed By Her Scottish Duke

Magnus handed him his untouched glass and braved the crowd. He did not go to her. He knew better than that, whatever else Leo believed him incapable of learning.

He cut a path through the room that would take him past her pillar at exactly the distance a stranger might pass, exchanging a nod with a man he did not know. As he walked by, the back of his hand brushed her arm, light as a moth. He did not look at her at all.

“There’s a corridor beyond the blue door,” he muttered, without breaking stride. “Five minutes.”

The blue door.

Rosaline stood perfectly still while her heart tried to climb out of her chest. She had felt him from wrist to shoulder, the whole warm length of that brush, and the words had been so low she might have imagined them. Now he was thirty feet away, laughing at something a dowager had said as though he had not come within ten yards of her all evening.

Five minutes.

Every instinct told her to stay exactly where she was. She had a pillar. She had instructions. She had a brother who had counted three separate pities tonight and a sister whose entire future was apparently hers to ruin.

And she had a bargain.

She found Samuel at the edge of a knot of men.

“Forgive me.” Her voice came out steadier than she had expected. “I should like a moment. The heat, I think. If I might sit somewhere quieter, only for a⁠—”

“Absolutely not.” He did not bother to lower his voice as far as he might have. “You will remain where I can see you. I have not spent the entire evening shoring up your reputation so that you can wander off and misplace it a second time in some⁠—”

“Oh, Samuel, thank heaven!” Beatrice materialized at his other elbow and took hold of his arm with both hands. “Lord Hartley is standing not eight feet away, and he has been staring at me for a quarter of an hour. You said I was to be seen among the right people, and you said Hartley, specifically. I distinctly recall you saying, Hartley.” She was already towing him. “You must come and introduce me before Miss Fairchild gets to him. You must. Now.”

“Beatrice—”

“Now, Samuel.”

She dragged him into the crowd, chattering the whole way, giving him no gap in which to look back. Over her shoulder, she caught Rosaline’s eye.

She knew. Rosaline saw it plainly in the glint in her gaze. Beatrice did not know what or why, but she had thrown herself into the breach regardless, because Rosaline had asked for something and Samuel had refused it, and that was reason enough.

Rosaline threw her a look that held a year’s worth of gratitude. Then she slipped away toward the blue door.

CHAPTER 11

“Ye came. I gave it even odds.”

Magnus was waiting behind the bend in the corridor, out of sight of the blue door, one shoulder leaning against the wall as though he had all the time in the world and no particular use for it.

Rosaline pressed her back against the opposite wall, as far from him as the corridor allowed, and folded her hands in front of her.

“I have four minutes.” Her whisper barely carried the width of the corridor. “Possibly three. What is the first lesson?”

“The first lesson isnae a thing ye say.” His eyes slowly slid over her from hem to throat. It was not remotely the way a gentleman looked at a lady in a corridor. “It’s what a man sees before ye ever open yer mouth. Yer gown, lass.”

Rosaline looked down at herself. Gray silk. High neck, long sleeves, not a stitch out of place.

“What is wrong with my gown?”

“Nothing at all, if ye mean to be a governess.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Ye’re dressed to be overlooked.” He tilted his head. “And ye are overlooked, and then ye stand at yer pillar and wonder at it. Ye want a lower neckline. A good deal lower. Ye want colors that arenae the color of the wall behind ye. Ye’ve a great deal to display, and ye’ve spent three Seasons hidin’ every bit of it under enough gray wool to rig a ship.”

Her arms came up and crossed over her chest before she had decided to move them. “A great deal of what, precisely?”

Magnus’s gaze dropped briefly to her folded arms.