Page 57 of Reclaimed By Her Scottish Duke

When Rosaline rose and turned to him, he did not embrace her. He leaned in close, under the cover of a stiff bow, and murmured, “I confess I am not even surprised. Given every chance to redeem yourself, and you contrive to find the worst match in the kingdom. A savage in a skirt. You always did have a knack for disappointing me.” He drew back a fraction, the pleasant mask still on for the onlookers. “Do enjoy the Highlands.”

Rosaline looked at her brother, at the cold handsome face that had ruled her every hour for three years, and found, to her quiet astonishment, that it no longer had the power to make her flinch.

“Be kinder to our sisters than you were to me,” she said, her voice steady. “That is the only thing I will ever ask of you again, Samuel. When you are cold to them, when you are cruel, when you decide their futures for them as though they were livestock, I want you to remember that I asked you this on my wedding day and that you had the choice.”

Samuel’s lip curled. “How very touching.”

“She asked ye a plain question, Darton.” Magnus had come to stand at her shoulder. His voice was pleasant, but his eyes were not pleasant at all. “It’s customary to answer.”

For a moment, the two men held each other’s gaze. Samuel was the one to look away first, cover it with a laugh, and turn to make his farewells to people who mattered more to him than his sister ever had.

Magnus offered Rosaline his arm. After the briefest hesitation, she took it.

The carriage ride passed almost without words.

There was too much to say and no earthly way to begin any of it, so they said nothing, the two of them sitting across from one another in the swaying quiet while London thinned to villages and the villages thinned to green.

Once, when the wheels hit a rut, and she put a hand to the strap, she found him already watching her, and he looked away first. She understood with a small pang that the great Highland duke who had faced down her brother without a flicker was, on the far side of that same afternoon, nervous about her. It was not at all what she had expected marriage to feel like on its first day.

Then again, nothing today had been.

Greythorne Hall came into view as the light turned long and gold, a great, warm pile of honey-colored stone set among old trees, nothing like the cold, grand mausoleum of Darton House. Drawn up in a neat line before the front steps was the whole staff, every servant dressed in their Sunday best, waiting.

Rosaline’s stomach dropped. She did not know how to be a duchess. She did not know how to be anything but a wallflower, a burden, the girl who managed her sisters. She stood at the foot of the steps, with her hand cold on her new husband’s arm and every eye upon her, and had no idea in the world what she was meant to do.

Magnus covered her hand with his own, warm and steadying, and did not let her stand there alone for even a moment.

“Right, ye lot.” His voice carried easily down the line, and Rosaline felt the whole yard lean toward the warmth of it, the way she had learned everyone always did. “I ken ye’ve been standin’ here since noon, and Cook’s had one eye on the roast and the other on the door, so I’ll be brief.”

He gently drew Rosaline a half-step forward, and there was no pretense in his voice now, only something plain and proud.

“This is Rosaline McCormack, the new Duchess of Greythorne. Me wife.” A pause, and then, quieter, meant as much for her as for them: “The mistress of this house, and mine to be glad of. Ye’ll treat her as such, from the least of ye to the greatest, and any soul who gives her a cold hour will answer to me for it.”

A murmur rippled down the line, and then, from somewhere near the middle, a stout woman in a snowy cap stepped forward and dropped into a curtsy. The rest immediately followed, a great soft rustle of bows and bobs, all of it aimed at Rosaline.

“Welcome home, Your Grace,” said the woman in the cap, beaming, tears brimming at the creased corners of her eyes. “We’ve waited a long time for him to bring us a duchess. We’ve nearly given up hope.”

Rosaline, who had been braced for the cold formality of the only great house she had ever known, who had come here a bargain, a rescue, a threat made good, stood in the long golden light before all those kind expectant faces and felt something in her chest quietly crack open that she had kept shut for a very long time.

She did not know yet what her marriage was. She did not know what her husband wanted from her, or what she dared to want from him, or how they were ever to speak of the hedge and the threat and the whole strange bargain that had brought her to these steps.

But it was warm here. That was the thing she had not expected. After a lifetime of cold rooms, the very first thing she had learned about her new life was that it was warm.

“Thank you,” she said to the woman in the cap, to all of them, her voice shaking only a little. “I am very glad to be here.”

And as she said it, she found that some small and startled part of her almost meant it.

CHAPTER 25

“Talk to me,” Magnus told her.

Rosaline looked up from the plate she had spent the last quarter hour rearranging rather than eating.

Down the length of the small table, the candles threw more shadow than light, and the servants had been sent away an hour past. They had been alone together before—a hedge maze, a rainy afternoon, a house after midnight—but never like this. Married, in his own dining room, with the doors shut and nothing left to pretend at and no one left to pretend to.

“About what, Your Grace?”

“Anythin’ ye like.” He set down his wine. “The soup. The weather. Whether ye think the Regent’s a fool or merely dresses like one. I find I’ve married a woman I’ve never once had a plain conversation with, and it seems a poor time to discover we’ve nothin’ to say.”