Page 29 of Reclaimed By Her Scottish Duke

“I am whispering.”

“Ye’re performin’.” He turned, putting his back to the hall, and took Leo by the arm and steered him two steps toward a pillar. When he spoke again, his voice was barely above the din of the crowd. “Ye’ll nae say her name and mine in the same breath. Nae in this house. Nae anywhere there’s a soul with ears.”

Leo’s amusement vanished, and what was underneath it was rather more serious than Magnus had expected.

“Magnus, what have you done?”

“Nothin’.”

“That is not a no. That is not remotely a no.”

“I’ve done nothin’ to her, and I’ll do nothin’ to her.” The words came out harder than Magnus meant them to, so he softened his voice. “Listen to me. That lass has two younger sisters and a brother who’d sell the lot of them for a rung on a ladder, and a name that’s one whisper from bein’ a joke this town tells at supper. D’ye ken what happens to her if she’s linked to me? To me, Leo. The savage. The one who lifted Mowbray off his feet at White’s. The one with a cloud over him that half the Lords would dearly love to name aloud.” He shook his head once. “She’s spent three years tryin’ to be small enough that nobody notices her. She doesnae need me makin’ her the story of the Season.”

Leo was quiet for a moment.

“That,” he said at last, “is the most thoroughly considered thing I have ever heard you say about another person.”

“It’s arithmetic. There’s nothin’ considered about it.”

“Mm.” Leo plucked a fresh glass from a tray and handed it over. “Then let me offer you a piece of arithmetic in return, since we are being so mathematical this evening. You may certainly protect the lady’s name by refusing to be seen near her. It is a sound plan. It has, however, one flaw.” He nodded subtly across the hall. “You have not taken your eyes off her in twenty minutes, and this room contains a hundred people, and at least forty of them have nothing to do but watch a duke and wonder what he is looking at.”

Magnus looked at his friend. Then he looked, quite deliberately, at the ceiling. At the chandelier. At Lord Harold, who had cornered someone else and was telling them about a mare, judging by his gestures.

“Better,” Leo uttered.

“Say a word of this to anyone, and I’ll throw ye out a window.”

“You would never. I am the only man in London who will still be seen with you.” Leo drank. “Though I will say, purely as a matter of record, that this is not going to work.”

“What isnae?”

“Whatever it is you are doing when you look at the ceiling and pretend the arithmetic holds.” Leo’s voice was pleasant, and entirely without mercy. “Go and be charming to somebody, Magnus. Anybody. Lady Craven, a bishop, the pianoforte. Stop standing in the corner, glaring at Bracewell as though you mean to rip the man apart at the seams, because I promise you it is a great deal more legible from across the room than you imagine.”

With that, he drifted off into the crowd, insufferable to the last.

Magnus stood alone by the pillar with a glass he had no intention of drinking and made himself look at the chandelier, and the carpet, and the door.

He lasted the better part of two minutes.

When his eyes drifted back, Rosaline was laughing again, and the fair young man had gotten the second glass into her hand after all. Bracewell was speaking with quite a lot of gesticulating, and Rosaline was looking up at him through her lashes. All four men leaned in like they were warming their hands at a fire.

She was doing it perfectly, every bit of it, exactly as he had taught her.

Magnus set the glass down on the nearest surface, hard enough to make it rattle. Then he went to find someone to charm.

CHAPTER 13

“You are wearing your thinking face again. The one with the little crease. Are you quite well?”

“Perfectly.” Rosaline smoothed the crease away with a gloved fingertip and did not meet her sister’s eyes. “Only warm. It is close for May.”

Beatrice, who was walking arm in arm with her down the long parade of market stalls, clearly did not believe a word of it, but she let it go, which was a great mercy.

Ahead of them, Samuel set the pace, greeting the right people and ignoring the rest, and behind followed Ivy with her governess, Miss Dean, stopping every third stall to press her nose toward something.

The trouble was that the thinking face had a subject. The subject was a six-foot Scotsman who had winked at her across a hall two nights ago and then, according to Beatrice’s exhaustive report, spent the remainder of the evening being aggressively charming to a dowager in the corner and had not once looked her way again.

Rosaline had told herself she was relieved. She had been telling herself so for two days, with diminishing success.