Page 39 of Reclaimed By Her Scottish Duke

“I am certain, Sarah.” Rosaline was not certain of anything. She drew her hood forward and let her maid steady her down the dark servants’ stairs. “You have never seen me tonight. I am unwell, abed, and not to be disturbed. If Samuel asks, I took a sleeping draught and left orders. Can you hold to that?”

“To my grave, My Lady.” Sarah squeezed her hand once. “Only… come home whole.”

The carriage waited at the mouth of the mews exactly as promised, black and plain, crestless, nearly invisible against the night. The driver did not so much as turn his head. He said one word, low, into the dark: “Greythorne.”

She climbed in and closed the door behind her. The wheels lurched forward, and she rode past every sensible objection she had and did not turn back.

The carriage did not stop in front of a grand front door. It rolled down a narrow lane behind a great dark house. A plain door opened into lamplight, and a woman in a housekeeper’s cap and no expression whatsoever led her up a back stairs and down a silent corridor without once asking her name.

“His Grace is in there, miss.” She opened a door. “You will not be disturbed. There is no one in this wing tonight, but the two of you, and none of us has eyes.”

And then she disappeared into the dark of the house, soft-footed.

The room beyond was a parlor stripped nearly bare, the furniture pushed to the walls and the carpet rolled away, a wide expanse of polished floor gleaming in the light of a dozen candles.

In the middle of it, without his coat on, his shirtsleeves rolled to the forearms, stood Magnus.

“Ye came.” Something moved across his face at the sight of her that he did not trouble to hide. “I wasnae sure ye would.”

“Neither was I. Until I was in the carriage, and then it was rather too late for sense.”

“Aye.” His mouth curved. “That’s generally when I do me best thinkin’ too.” He gestured to the cleared floor. “We’ll start with me lesson. The dull one. Get the work done while we’ve the discipline for it, and save the dancin’ for when we’ve none left.”

She should have been relieved by that.

She told herself she was.

She made him rehearse for the better part of an hour, and he was, as ever, a maddening pupil.

“A man corners you at the Hartwell ball,” she said, circling him. “He smiles loud enough for others to hear and says, How novel it must be for you, Your Grace, to dine at a table instead of over one. What do you do?”

“I put his head through the nearest wall.”

“You don’t.”

“I ken I daenae. Ye asked what I want to do.” He exhaled. “Fine. I smile back and say, Aye, Me Lord, the chairs take some gettin’ used to. And I let him have his laugh.”

“Good. And when he presses, as a man like that always presses, and says something about your father?”

Magnus went still. “He’ll nae say something about me faither.”

“He might.” She kept her voice gentle, because she had felt the change in the atmosphere. “Cruel men find the tender place, Your Grace. If you cannot stand to hear it, they will use it to unmake you in front of everyone you are working to win. You must have an answer ready that costs you nothing, even when it costs you everything.”

“I havenae got one,” he said, his voice low. “Every other jab in the world I can turn. That one I cannae.”

Rosaline set down the imaginary sneer and looked at him properly, this large frustrated man who could charm an earl and could not charm this one small thing out of his chest.

“Why do you do it?” she asked. “Any of it. You loathe the bowing, the lying, the whole gilded pantomime. I have watched it cost you every single time, and yet you keep walking back in. What is worth all this to you?”

He was quiet for so long that she thought he would not answer.

“Because the answers I need are kept in rooms I cannae enter any other way,” he answered at last. “There are things I have to ken, Rosaline. Things that happened a long while ago to someone I held dear. Things that have been buried by powerful men who are still powerful, still in those rooms, still dinin’ out on it. The only road to them runs through every ballroom I despise.” He turned an absent hand, an old gesture with nothing to hold. “I’m nae learnin’ to bow because I’ve grown fond of it. I’m learnin’ it because it’s the price of the door.”

“And when you have your answers?”

“Then I’ll see justice done.” He said it simply, without a scrap of bluster, only a weight that made the words heavier than their size. “Justice for a man who never got any, and never will, unless I drag it out of these people one bow at a time.”

Rosaline said nothing for a moment.