A Scot in the Dark (Scandal & Scoundrel #2)(48)

He looked out the window. “That won’t keep you from marrying.”

She laughed, the sound without humor. “I haven’t spent much time in Society, Your Grace. But I assure you, it will.”

“Then we double the dowry. Triple it.”

She sighed his name in the darkness, and he heard the resignation in the word. Loathed it. “I wanted to marry,” she said, and he stilled, keenly interested in the truth in the words. “I wanted the promise of family and future. And yes, of love. But if I must settle . . .” She trailed off, then returned to the idea, with more conviction. “Alec, I don’t wish to settle.”

Finally something that they could agree upon. “I won’t have you settle. I would never ask you to.”

That little laugh came again, so full of disbelief that he found it difficult to listen to. “That’s precisely what you’re asking me to do.” She paused. “Eight days is not enough for a man on that list to not be settling. Eight days is not enough for love.”

“Dammit, Lillian, how does this end?” Her head snapped back as though he’d hit her, and perhaps he had, with frustration and anger. “Let’s say I give you the funds and you run. Where do you go?”

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Again. And finally, “Away.”

He did not want her away.

“Where?”

A pause. Then, “What is Scotland to you?”

“Lillian . . .” he began.

She shook her head. “No. Honestly. Why do you prefer it?”

He shrugged. “It is home.”

“And what does that mean?” she prodded.

“It is—” Safe. “Comfortable.”

“Unlike here.”

The difference between Scotland, wild and welcoming, and London, with its rules and its propriety, was so vast it made him laugh. “It is everything here is not. It is entirely different.”

She nodded. “And that is what I want. I want away from here. From this world. Why should you have it and not me?”

He wanted to give it to her. Wanted her to know the feeling of standing in a field of heather as the skies opened and rain washed away worry.

But even Scotland could not disappear the past.

“You think this world would not find you? You think you could live as a wealthy widow somewhere? Head to Paris and reign a silken queen? Travel to America and use the money to build an empire? You cannot. This world will return to haunt you. That is what happens to—”

She waited. “To whom?”

“To those who run.”

He’d run, had he not? He’d vowed never to let them remind him of the past.

And look at tonight.

Look at his tattered clothes, his bloodstained hands.

He would never outrun it.

But if she found a husband, she might survive it.

She would survive it.

“You stay. Meet the men. See what comes.”

She threw up her hands in frustration. “Lord deliver me from meddling guardians. Fine.”

Silence fell, and Alec found himself at once grateful and exceedingly unsettled by it. Luckily, it did not last long.

“I told you the coat didn’t fit.”

He slid his gaze to hers. “What did you say?”

“Your coat. You’ve split it to shreds. Your trousers, too. You look as though you stepped out of the wilderness and right into the ballroom.”

“To be expected from the Scottish Brute,” he said.

“No,” she said instantly, surprising him. “Not brutish.”

It was a lie. He was covered in blood and his clothes were falling from his body. If he’d ever looked the part of a brute, now was it. “How do I look, then?”

She cut him a look. “Are you searching for a compliment, Duke?”

“Just the truth.”

She lifted one shoulder and let it fall in an affect he was coming to rather like. Not that he should like this woman. She was too beautiful to be anything but dangerous. “Big.”

God knew that was true. “Too big.”

“For the coat and trousers, yes,” she said, “but not too big.”

“The rest of England might disagree.”

“I am not the rest of England.” She stopped, considering her next words, and added. “I rather like how big you are.”

The words sent a thrill through him. She didn’t mean it to come out the way it sounded. It was the darkness of the night and the motion of the carriage and the enclosed space.

And it did not matter if he wanted her to say it again and again. Lillian Hargrove was not for wanting.

Now, if only his body would listen.

“I assure you, the rest of England disagrees,” he said, shifting on the seat, wondering how much further they had to go.

She smirked. “Not your countess.”

Peg. He feigned ignorance. “My countess?”

“Lady Rowley. She doesn’t think you are too big.”

Peg didn’t think that now. Not when he stood before her, the Duke of Warnick, with a higher station than she’d found for herself. But once . . . Peg had valued him much, much less. Even as he’d wanted nothing more than to belong to her.

Alec looked out the window. “She’s Lord Rowley’s countess, don’t you think?”