Page 44 of Reclaimed By Her Scottish Duke

“Your Grace.” Oldbrook inclined his head. “You are finding London kinder than the Pemberton, I hope.”

“Not as loud, Me Lord. And full of surprises.” Magnus bowed at the correct depth.

Then he went on to say the correct things, and all the while, a small cold instinct prickled at the back of his neck. It was the one that had kept him alive in harder rooms than this, whispered that something about the man was not right, that the stillness had meant something, that he ought to pay attention.

But across the ballroom, a lady in a wine-red gown was moving through the crowd on her brother’s arm, her head bowed under whatever poison the man was pouring in her ear.

Magnus found that the greater part of him was already there, only a fraction left to spend on the pale-eyed earl in front of him.

He would remember later that he had felt that wary prickling, that his own body had tried to tell him, and that he had not listened because he had been watching Rosaline.

CHAPTER 19

“Oh, do stop for a moment, Rosaline. Look at that window.”

Rosaline let Abigail tug her to a halt before the bookseller’s bow window, and then forgot Abigail entirely.

There, propped open on a velvet stand behind the glass, was a first edition of The Mysteries of Udolpho. The real thing, all four volumes bound in worn calf, the very book she had read to tatters by candlelight at fifteen and had never once owned.

She pressed closer to the glass without meaning to.

“You have that face,” Abigail noted. “The one you get about books and hedge mazes and nothing on this earth besides. How much is it?”

“Far too much. And I have no business wanting things.” Rosaline made herself step back. “Come, we have the ribbon shop yet.”

“Well, well, what do we have here? Two foxes loose on Bond Street of a Tuesday.”

The voice went through her before she had even turned.

Lord Rivercourt stood a few feet away, hat in hand, all easy charm. Beside him, a head taller and not smiling at all, was Magnus.

“Lord Rivercourt. Your Grace.” Rosaline curtsied, and prayed her face was doing nothing it oughtn’t. “What a coincidence.”

“Is it not?” Magnus’s eyes had already found hers. “London’s a smaller town than it lets on.”

Rivercourt carried the small talk almost single-handed, drawing Abigail into a brisk exchange about the shocking price of gloves, while Magnus said very little and looked at Rosaline rather too much. And then, because she could not help it, her gaze slipped past his shoulder to the window and the four calf-bound volumes behind the glass, and back again.

He saw her do it. She watched him see it.

“We must go,” Rosaline said quickly, before whatever was gathering in the air could arrive. “My brother expects us. Abigail?”

“Do we? Oh, we do.” Abigail, who missed very little, let herself be collected. “Your Grace. My Lord.”

They curtsied.

Magnus bowed. She felt his eyes on her the entire way into the crowd, a warmth at the back of her neck that she refused to turn and acknowledge.

She thought no more of it, or told herself so. Until that afternoon, when a footman brought a parcel up to her room. Four volumes, bound in worn calf, and a single card in a bold black hand.

For the fox who reads the world by its roots.

Tell no one. It does nothing for the reputation of a savage.

Rosaline sat down rather suddenly on the edge of her bed with the first volume open in her lap. She did not go down for an hour, and spent a good deal of that hour deciding what a person sent a duke in return.

“… and so I told Peel, My Lord, that a man who cannot manage his own tenants has no business lecturing the rest of us on the management of a nation. Do you not agree, Your Grace?”

“I’d nae dare disagree with ye, Me Lord. Ye put it far better than I could.” Magnus inclined his head at exactly the depth the old Earl required. “Though I confess I’d give a great deal to know how ye keep such order on land as fine as yours. I’ve twice the acreage and half the yield.”