A Scot to the Heart (Desperately Seeking Duke #2) - Caroline Linden Page 0,73
won’t say anything about it.”
She looked at him in disbelief. “She won’t mind you being here!”
“Then she can’t mind you being here with me,” he returned. “I’m a proper chaperone, ain’t I?”
“No!”
He shrugged and gave her a wink. “Just don’t cause a scandal, and all will be well. Everyone deserves a bit of fun now and then, aye?”
Reluctantly she smiled. “Yes. Thank you, Drew.”
He pretended to choke on his porter. “God bless me! A kind word from Agnes St. James! Glory be . . .”
She was still laughing at him when the food arrived, deposited by fast-moving servants with large trays, swooping in to slide platters across the table and then spin away into the crowded room. Everyone ate with relish, until—as Drew had expected—someone pushed aside a table and a man with a fiddle leapt atop it.
This time there was no mistaking it: he danced with Ilsa. Other women took his hands and he swung them around, but his eyes stayed on her.
And when the night was over, it was Ilsa to whom he offered his arm for the walk home, leaving Duncan to make the most of Agnes’s good temper. He had never felt such—such lightness, as if everything were right in the world and he was equal to any challenge. They parted on her doorstep with a kiss on her hand and a husky “Good night” from her that made him wish he didn’t have to go home with Duncan.
“You’re in a pathetic state,” Duncan remarked as they strolled toward Burnet’s Close. “Pretending you wanted to give your sister a night out and bribing us with oysters, all for the sake of getting Ilsa Ramsay to dance with you.”
Drew grinned. “Envy, is what that is. What did you do to make my sister hate you, by the by?”
Duncan cursed him the rest of the way home, and Drew enjoyed it immensely.
Ilsa fairly floated down the stairs to breakfast the next morning. She had slept extremely well, blissfully tired from her last few days of making love to Drew and dancing with him. If this is ruin, I shall never be respectable again, she thought as she went into the dining room to find her aunt poring over the latest gossip sheets. “Good morning,” she all but sang.
Jean looked up, her lips tight. “Did you know this?”
And thus ended the happiest fortnight of her life, with a breathless account splashed across the front page of the Edinburgh Tattler of Captain Andrew St. James, future Duke of Carlyle, roving through town unrecognized and unnoticed. The author of the piece mused at some length on his intentions and plans, as well as how very eligible this young, handsome, and single heir must be considered.
“Oh,” she said quietly. “Yes, I did know.”
Jean’s face grew dark with disapproval. “My dear! Why didn’t you tell me? I must speak to your father at once.”
“What?” Ilsa demanded, shocked. “Papa? Why?”
Jean held up one hand and Ilsa fell silent out of long habit. “He’s been very suspicious about this man who’s been chasing after you, even before you went on holiday with him—”
“With his sisters,” Ilsa protested. “Who have been my friends for many months!”
Her aunt ignored her. “When did you learn of his expectation? How could you not tell me?”
“The family asked me not to.”
That made Jean turn deep purple. “And your loyalty is to them over your own family?”
Ilsa began breathing deeply. This was degenerating into one of their confrontations of old, where Jean scolded her for an hour and then sent her to her room.
She was not a child any longer, though. This was her house now, where she was undisputed mistress, and she had promised herself that she would never sit and suffer an underserved rebuke again.
“I chose my own conscience,” she said, clearly and deliberately. “I was asked to keep a confidence, and I did.”
Jean did not like that. “This is the thanks I’m to have—”
Ilsa glanced up with fire in her eyes. “I do not owe you their secrets! I am not sorry, Aunt, and I will not apologize.” Her aunt’s mouth formed a tight line, an expression Ilsa knew too well. “When you came to stay with me, we made an agreement.”
Jean gasped. “Are you accusing me of breaking it?”
“You know you are.” Ilsa kept her gaze cool and steady. “I am not a child. I do not need to be managed. You do not have the right to know everything about me. You promised not to pry,