The waves pulled and pushed at George and Meg, frothing like lace. They clung to each other to stay upright, laughing.
“I like her,” Colin said, no longer shouting.
“I do too.”
Charlie snorted. Dougal raised an eyebrow. “She’s not terrible,” she allowed. “But all that genteel embroidery. Ugh.”
Dougal shook his head. “Look closer.”
“What does that mean? Besides, if I do that, she’ll try to teach me how. They all do. Embroidery, dance, watercolors, French.”
“Just look closer.” It continued to amaze him how little people saw the actual Meg. She enjoyed embroidery, a genteel pastime that his sister derided, but she was just like the others in this instance. She saw only the roses and the violets and the red birds. She never noticed the wolves with red on their paws, the unicorn stitched on a hem, horn sharp as a dagger and dripping blood. The poison berries around a neckline.
“Why not marry her?” Colin asked. “Since you have to marry anyway.”
She wouldn’t have him. And why should she? She was of gentle birth, and he had been born in an alleyway. She insisted she wasn’t marriageable. But he knew he wasn’t good enough. He wasn’t good enough for the ladies on the Prince’s bloody list either, to be sure, but he didn’t crave their happiness the way he craved Meg’s. Whatever it took. Whatever it meant for his own happiness.
None of which he was likely to tell his younger siblings.
“Ducal silence,” Colin rolled his eyes. “And he’s pulling the wiser older brother face again.”
“Which means he’s almost certainly got everything backwards,” Charlie added archly.
Some people feared dukes.
Or so he’d been told.
“We’re going ahead,” Charlie tossed over her shoulder. “I mean to get an ice before you eat them all.”
The sea had darkened just enough to send George and Meg scurrying for their footwear. Meg dried her calves with her dress and Dougal told himself it was wrong to watch. His body stirred, demanded. He shifted his gaze to the horizon, thought of krakens and pirates. Meg tied to a mast, laughing teasingly. In her wet chemise.
Damn it.
He was grateful for George’s distraction, if not the topic he introduced, still out of breath from the shock of the cold, turbulent water. “How is a viscount’s daughter skinnier than a chimney sweep?” he asked quietly as Meg picked her way towards them.
He’d noticed too. Of course, he had.
“I don’t know, George,” Dougal said. “But I mean to find out.”