A Scot in the Dark (Scandal & Scoundrel #2)(10)

She stopped. Looked back. “I beg your pardon?”

He did not move. “How old are you?”

She matched the impertinent question. “How old are you?”

“I am old enough to know that you’re older than any ward should be.”

“If only you hadn’t had such a longstanding disinterest in your guardianship, you might know the answer to your question.”

“Do not take it personally.”

“Your longstanding disinterest?”

“Now that I know you exist, I find myself quite interested.”

“I suppose you would be, now that I’m a creature under glass to watch and point to as a warning to all others.”

He raised a black brow and crossed his arms over his massive chest. “Seconds ago, you were a bird in a cage.”

“It is the mixed metaphors you are interested in?” she retorted.

He did not hesitate. “No, it’s you.”

The words warmed her. Not that they should have. “A pity, that, as I am not interested in you.”

“You should be. As I understand it, guardians have quite a bit of control over wards.”

“I’m a ward of the Warnick estate. I would not get too possessive, if I were you.”

“Am I not Warnick?”

“Perhaps not for long. You dukes do have a habit of dying.”

“I suppose you’d like that?”

“A woman can dream.” His lips twitched at the words, and if she were to tell the truth, she would have admitted that she enjoyed the fact that she’d amused him. She was not interested in the truth, however.

“Well, I am not dead yet, Lillian, so you are landed with me for the time being. You’d do best to answer my questions.” He paused, then repeated himself. “You’re rather old for a ward, nae?”

Of course she was. She’d been lost in the fray. Her father had died and left her in the care of the duke, and all had been well for several years, until the duke had died. And sixteen more, as well. And then this man—this legendary Scot who had eschewed all things English and never even turned up in Parliament to receive his letters of patent—had been in charge.

And Lily had been forgotten.

No dowry. No season. No friends.

She looked to him, wishing there were a way to tell him all of that, to make him understand his part in the mad play of her life, without rewatching the play herself. As there wasn’t, she settled upon, “I am, rather.”

She sat in a pretty little Chippendale chair, watching him as he watched her. As he tried to understand her. As though if he looked long enough, she would unlock herself.

The irony was, if he’d done the same a year earlier, she might have unlocked herself. She might have opened to him, and answered all his questions, laid herself bare to him.

Her lips twisted in a sad smile at the thought. Laid herself bare in all ways, likely. Thankfully, he was a year too late, and she was a lifetime different.

“I am ward of the estate, until such time as I marry.”

“Why haven’t you married?”

She blinked. “Many would find that inquiry inappropriate.”

He raised a brow and indicated the door to the house. “Do I seem a man who cares for propriety?”

He did not.

There were a dozen reasons why she was unmarried. Reasons that had to do with being orphaned and ignored and alone and then desperately smitten with the wrong man. But she was not going to share them. So she settled on a simpler, no less honest, truth. “I have never been asked.”

“That seems impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because men are a ha’penny a dozen when it comes to women like you.”

Women like her. She stiffened. This man made her beauty sound as it felt. “Have a care. Your flattery will spoil me, Your Grace.”

He sat then, folding himself into a matching chair, his enormous frame making it seem minuscule. “Alec.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You may call me Alec.”

“While that may be done in the wilds of Scotland, Your Grace, it is thoroughly inappropriate here.”

“Again with the invocation of propriety,” he said. “Fine. Call me Stuart then. Or any number of the other invectives you’ve no doubt been thinking,” he said. “I’ll take them all before duke.”

“But you are a duke.”

“Not by choice.” He drank then, finally, grimacing after he swallowed the amber liquid. “Christ. That’s swill.” He threw the rest of the liquid into the fire.

She raised a brow at the action. “You disdain the title and the scotch it buys.”

“First, that should not be called scotch. It is rot-gut at best.” He paused. “And second, I do not disdain the title. I dislike it.”

“Yes, you poor, put-upon man. Having one of the wealthiest and most venerable dukedoms in history simply land in your lap. How difficult it must be to live your horrid, entitled existence.” He had no idea the power he had. The privilege. What she would do to have the same.

He leaned back in the small chair. “I spend my own money, earned honestly in Scotland. I have ensured the tenants and staff who rely upon the dukedom continue to prosper, but as I did not ask for the title, I do not interact with its spoils.”