Chapter Eleven
When Meg had her fill of statues, she went into the dining room to continue with her restoration of the mural. A partial cleaning had revealed a satyr behind one of the trees, two more nymphs in a lake that had once been blue and was now gray. Pan, playing his pipes, reclined on the branch of a sturdy English oak surely never seen in Rome. Every dingy shadow hid another surprise: a red bird, a hedgehog far from home, three swans. Miniature goats on a distant hill. On a stretch of blue, a ship bobbed, looking as though it had been painted by someone having a sneezing fit.
Still, it was a pleasure to bring the painting back to life, to carefully and painstakingly scrape off years of candle smoke and soot. She was mixing a new batch of colors on her wooden palette when the dining room door slammed open. It startled her, lost as she was in her work, and she yelped. Loudly.
Indecorously, even.
The intruder yelped back. Louder. Much louder.
In point of fact, Dougal shouted like a cat whose tail had just been trod on.
Meg burst out laughing and nearly fell off her ladder. Dougal stared at her blankly for a long, long moment. Then his own laugh threatened to knock her off her ladder again. He steadied her, and their eyes met, fueling more chuckles.
When she snorted, she nearly killed a duke through an apoplectic fit.
She’d already laughed more in the house in one week than in all the years since she’d lost her parents, in her own home.
By the time they managed to contain themselves, they were slumped weakly, tilting towards each other. Meg caught her breath as Dougal grinned quietly. Which was when Meg could finally concentrate on the fact that his hand was on her leg. On her thigh, to be exact. Warm, strong. Comfortable. But it still felt right, as if he should always be touching her. As if he was touching her right now—in a rather unlikely place. She squeezed her thighs together, lightly, instinctively.
Dougal noticed. His eyes flared.
She was in great danger of toppling again, but for a very different reason.
The moment changed, just as intimate, but charged now. Heated.
She swallowed when his eyes traveled slowly up to meet hers. She could only hope her blush would be attributed to laughing like a drunken donkey.
Not precisely ladylike.
Or alluring.
But he didn’t seem to notice.
Or if he did, it did not matter.
He looked at her as though she was lovely,—better,—necessary. Even halfway up a ladder, covered in paint and her hair in her usual braided coronet because it was the easiest style to manage without a lady’s maid when one was pretending one actually had a lady’s maid. And it was tidy, practical.
And deeply, deeply unimportant right now.
All that mattered was the heat and gentle pressure of his palm. Undemanding, respectful. But still somehow hungry. The juxtaposition nearly made her moan.
He was the first to pull away.
She desperately needed him to stay where he was but also desperately needed space to regain her equilibrium. Before she embarrassed herself completely.
A soft footstep in the hall had them both turning. There was a muffled giggle. Dougal cursed once, before moving to shut the door, softly. Carefully. As if he might detonate a bomb if he were heard.
Which was not entirely wrong.
She recognized that kind of giggle. She’d heard it too many times in the last few days: single ladies, young and old, roaming the halls in search of a duke in search of a wife.
When he leaned back against the locked door, she tilted her head. “You’re hiding.”
“You’re bloody right, I am.”
“Discretion is the better part of valor?” She teased.
“It is when young ladies are sneaking into my bath.” He sounded so shocked, so like an aging spinster, that she had to bite the inside of her cheek not to laugh. “I thought debutantes were meant to be mild and sheltered.”