Page 28 of Reclaimed By Her Scottish Duke

Across the hall, Lord Bracewell had said something, and Rosaline had laughed. Not loudly. She did not do anything loudly. But she had tipped her chin, let her lashes fall, and lifted her eyes back up to Bracewell’s exactly as she had been taught to do it not one hour ago, in a corridor, by a man standing thirty feet away with a warm glass of champagne he had no memory of accepting.

Bracewell put a hand to his own chest, delighted, as though she had knighted him.

“Three fifty,” Lord Harold repeated. “I ask you.”

“Ye should have chopped his hand off at the wrist,” Magnus remarked.

Lord Harold blinked. “I, well, it is rather a strong position.”

“It’s a strong mare.”

“It is a very strong mare.” Lord Harold rallied, entirely unaware that the man before him had not heard a syllable in ninety seconds. “You have a good eye, Your Grace. I said so to Pemberton not an hour ago. I said, ‘Whatever they whisper about the fellow, he has an eye.’ Now, the hocks on her…”

Magnus made a sound that could be taken for interest.

There were four of them around her now. It had been two when the applause died down. Then three, when Fenwick drifted over to see what had become of Bracewell’s conversation, and now a fourth, a fair young man Magnus did not know and had already decided against, was angling in from the left with two glasses in his hands, one of them plainly meant for her.

She would take it. She would take it and thank him and lower her lashes, and the fair young man’s whole evening would rearrange itself around her, and that was precisely the point of the entire exercise.

Magnus’s back teeth had begun to ache.

“You are glaring,” Leo observed, materializing at his elbow.

“I’m nae glaring.”

“You are glaring at a group of perfectly inoffensive gentlemen with an intensity that suggests you are pricing their coffins.” Leo followed his gaze across the room. He watched for a moment. “Ah.”

Magnus turned his head. “Ah, what?”

“Nothing.” Leo sipped his champagne. “That makes sense, is all.”

“What makes sense?”

“Mm,” Leo looked serenely around the hall.

“Leo.”

“I did not say a word.”

“Ye said ah. Ye said it in that particular way ye have. That’s nae a word at all, but a wee pamphlet on the subject.”

“You are hearing things.” Leo’s mouth was doing something insufferable at one corner. “It is the heat. Musicales are terribly close.” He let the silence sit precisely as long as it took to become unbearable, then briskly changed the subject with the air of a man doing a great kindness. “Anyway, I have news, which I am delivering out of pure friendship and no other motive whatsoever. Lady Craven is here.”

“Who?”

“Who?” Leo turned to look at him properly. “Lady Craven. The widow. Handsome, wealthy, five-and-thirty, and by all accounts thoroughly finished with mourning. She spent twenty minutes at the Alcott dinner in February telling you about her late husband’s stables while looking at your shoulders, and she has just asked me, with a directness I found frankly bracing, whether you would be at cards later.” He raised his eyebrows. “You are being pursued, Magnus. It is a novel experience for you, being pursued by someone who has not first been paid to do it.”

“I’m nae entertainin’ ladies tonight.”

“You are not entertaining—” Leo stopped. He set down his glass on a passing tray, the better to give this his full attention. “Say that again?”

“Ye heard me fine.”

“I did, and I intend to have it engraved. The Duke of Greythorne, in a room containing a rich, willing, unencumbered widow with an interest in his shoulders, declines to entertain ladies this evening.” Leo folded his arms. “And would this uncharacteristic monkishness have anything to do with a certain Lady Rosaline, who has spent the last quarter of an hour becoming the most interesting woman in this hall in a manner remarkably sudden, given that a week ago she could not order a lemonade without turning to stone?”

Magnus felt the hall shift a degree closer.

“Keep yer voice down.”