“She’s a mouse,” Meg told him. “She’ll be terrified of you.”
He visibly recoiled. “I don’t want a wife who’s scared of me.”
If she hadn’t already liked him so well, she might have loved him a little bit for that.
But she’d only known him a week.
Admiring him and wanting to lick him did not equal love.
“What about Lady Anabelle Dutton and Miss Kemp?”
“Both unobjectionable.”
“But?”
“Their fathers, again. Not particularly honorable.” And they would chafe at having Dougal for a son-in-law, duke or not. Both because of his past and the fact that they would not be able to control him. “And very snobbish.”
Dougal groaned. “I might actually have to marry one of the house tour ladies.”
She smiled, trying not to feel sad. “I suppose so.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Tell me again why you’re unmarried?”
There was a small rush of happiness that he would ask and she squashed it mercilessly. “I am not suited for marriage.”
“Hmmm.”
She could easily imagine living in this house, Dougal’s hand on her thigh, laughter and long naked nights. She wanted it more than she could admit to herself. She turned back to the mural so she wouldn’t have to meet Dougal’s all too direct and perceptive gaze.
Instead, she could have sworn that Pan winked at her.
Cheeky bastard.
Meg thoroughly inspectedthe blue parlor, checking behind every column, every crack in the wall, every shadow that might indicate a secret door and found nothing but dust and a book of naughty prints under the pink chair cushion. She hadn’t expected any different, not from a room that seemed to have been redecorated within the last decade, and she was nearly positive it was an addition to begin with. It had nothing of the abbey about it.
She found Colin lounging in the doorway to the back gardens, alone, smirking. For nearly ten consecutive minutes. Surely that much smugness was bad for the digestion.
“What on earth are you doing?” she asked.
He started, then looked over his shoulder at her with aristocratic languor. She knew without asking that he had practiced in the mirror. It was charming, but likely not in the manner he was hoping for. She wanted to tell him not to contort himself into the rigid confines of society’s expectations because it always came at a steep price. But she knew she wouldn’t have listened when she was eighteen years old either and so she only smiled.
“I am watching my brother panic.”
Meg joined him on the threshold. “Why is he—oh.”
Poor Dougal.
He stood on a gravel walk, hedged in by yew bushes, rosebushes, and a singular aspen tree too narrow to offer any kind of protection from approximately eleven women aged sixteen to seventy, all wearing dainty white dresses, holding dainty parasols, and wielding dainty smiles. They had found the evasive duke and only an act of biblical proportions would convince them to retreat now. There was a footman standing nearby but he was as lost as Dougal.
“They’ll eat him alive,” Meg murmured. “Why did he go out there? Did you dare him to?”
“He was having a cup of tea in quiet solitude and then they descended like cats at the fish market,” he said, faintly mystified. “I don’t know how they did it. I admit to being terrified. They must have jogged all the way from the pond. They’re not even out of breath.”
Dougal shifted uncomfortably, empty teacup clutched in his hand like a weapon. He was so handsome, so patient, so intent on being polite.
So utterly out of his depths.
Meg shot his brother a side glance. “Aren’t you going to rescue him?”