Scandal And The Duchess

“We didn’t meet.” Rose struggled to find her voice. “We stumbled into each other.”

“Aye, and I wanted to stay fallen on you forever. You’re a beautiful woman, my Scottish Rose. You could be the end of me.”

And you, of me, Rose finished silently.

Steven touched her cheeks, his hands caressing as he held her with his gaze. His eyes looked clearer now, the same color as the winter sky through the window behind him.

Love was for warmth, and spring, Rose tried to tell herself. Not for winter, and cold.

But perhaps love knew no seasons—it simply came when it was time.

“We should commence our search,” Steven said. “Before young John returns to be shocked.”

“Yes.” Again, Rose had to search for breath to form the sound. “We should.”

Steven smiled at her, which did nothing to help Rose collect herself. He released her from the comfort of his arms, but only to take her hand and lead her on up the stairs.

***

Steven hadn’t caught his breath even by the time Rose had led him up through the maze of the house to the top floor.

The manor wasn’t truly a maze—it had been built at the end of the seventeenth century, when straight lines and symmetrical architecture had been in fashion. But its occupants had, for the past two hundred years, filled it with screens, cabinetry, sofas, tables, chairs, paintings, bric-a-brac, mirrors, chests, highboys, étagères, desks, and credenzas by the score, and every room had mixed and matched styles from over the centuries. A decorator in the past had tried to break up the severity of right angles in rooms by placing the furniture together in the middle, which succeeded only in making everything more of a jumble.

Might have interested Steven more if his whole body hadn’t been burning from Rose’s nearness. One taste of her wasn’t enough, and never would be.

Steven had sensed a desperate hunger in her, one she might not even realize she possessed. Rose obviously missed her husband, but whether or not he’d satisfied her in bed was anyone’s guess. The fact that the man had died on their honeymoon could mean anything from he’d been overexcited making love to his beautiful wife to slipping and falling down the stairs. The journalists would believe the first—that Rose had killed him by being too eager in the bridegroom’s bed, but Steven had no idea what the real story was.

Rose walked through the house without worry, looking over everything her husband must have shown her, without guilt. Whoever had been to blame for the duke’s demise, it hadn’t been Rose.

They went through room after lofty room, Rose knowing her way around perfectly. Steven enjoyed imagining her leading him until he had no idea where he was, and then telling him she’d take him back out for a price of a kiss or two. For more than kisses. She’d smile when she said it, her eyes sparkling.

No, that would never happen. Rose wasn’t the sort of woman who went in for naughty games. In spite of the scandal sheets, she was a gentleman’s daughter, raised to the straight and narrow. More’s the pity.

Rose turned around so suddenly that Steven almost ran into her. Reminded him of their first meeting, he falling onto her bosom, then sliding down her welcoming body.

“I’ve thought of something,” she said.

Steven had thought of something too . . . she under him on white sheets, her golden hair trickling through his hands.

He tried to shake off the vision, but it wouldn’t leave him. Rose languid against the pillow, her fingers drifting over Steven’s skin, both of them sleek with sweat. They’d be joined, the heat between them overwhelming the winter’s chill . . .

“Did you hear me?” Rose asked, peering at him. “Are you certain you’re all right, Captain McBride?”

No, and he never would be again.

“What?” Steven managed to say. The hangover was making him be in two different places at once—in this chill, square house in reality and the curved, soft bed of his imagination. The true Rose existed in this cold, dull place, instead of in the fantasy in his head. Unfair.

“This way,” she was saying. “There was a cabinet I always loved, always raved about. Charles had promised to have it moved into my bedchamber, but he never had the chance.”

Her words ended in a sad note, echoed by the quiet swish of her dress as she walked away from him.

Steven caught up to her in the wide hallway. “I’m sorry, love,” he said. “What happened to you, I mean.”

Rose turned to him, her green eyes softening in the gloom. “You know, you are the only person who hasn’t immediately believed his death was my fault.” She paused. “Or do you?”

“No.” Steven rubbed his hand through his hair to keep himself from reaching for her. “I don’t.”

“They say I deliberately married a man with a weak heart,” Rose said. “And then . . . proved to be too much for him.” Her color heightened.

Steven knew exactly why they’d imagined that—beautiful, young Rose would throw any middle-aged man into palpitations. The journalists saw her lush body and red lips and extrapolated that her physical presence had caused the man’s death. Steven couldn’t blame them for thinking so—wasn’t he still fantasizing about having her in his bed?

But they hadn’t asked her, or the duke’s physician, for the true story. The newspapers had simply declared it, loving the scandal of the young second wife doing in the husband and sweeping up the spoils.