With a big galoot laid out on top of her, Mary Elizabeth did not sleep. She did wriggle into a more convenient and comfortable pose, turning onto her side. Harry seemed obliging, even as he slept, but when she deemed it time to rise and find her clothes, his arm clamped around her like a vise, holding her fast.
Mary Elizabeth sighed and looked into his face. Harry was smiling, as he had been since they had made love, but now his hair was mussed and the strawberry blond of it had fluffed a bit around his head, making him look like a golden hedgehog. He was her hedgehog, and she loved him, but she needed to get out of that bed.
He did not wake and did not seem to wake even if she whispered to him. She tried to offer him a pillow in her place, but even sleeping, Harry was stubborn. He held on to her as he might have held on to a prize won in war. She had to wait an entire hour, until his sleep deepened and he turned over of his own accord, before she was able to slip away from him.
He almost woke then, and she supposed it was a good thing that his king had refused to make him a warrior, for had he been one, she never would have been able to get away. He would have woken and tied her down, or at least locked her in. But as it was, Harry had not a warrior’s instincts, and he slept on peacefully as soon as she slipped a piece of her tartan into his hand.
The sight of the blue and green muted tones tucked into the palm of her Englishman made her smile. She wondered if, by some chance, one of his marauding ancestors had gone North and plucked a Lowland woman away from her embroidery and her peat fire to make her his wife. Perhaps somewhere down the line of the lineage that he was so proud of, there was a bit of Scottish blood. She would ask him when next they met.
She hoped that would be soon.
Mary Elizabeth knew that by going home without her mother’s leave—indeed, by doing the exact opposite of what her mother said—she was stirring a hornet’s nest among the men of her family. For the most part, Da and the boys let Mother do as she pleased, in the hope that peace would be kept, at least until the next crisis. Mary Elizabeth had done her best to go along with this scheme for the last two years, but she found that she was done with that, and forever. For once, the men of her family would have to stand with her.
She had little doubt that they would. Well, perhaps a niggling doubt that ate at her heart. But if that doubt was right, and the men of her family forced her yet again to do as her mother wished, she would simply come back to Harry and hope that he would have her. He did love her, Englishman though he was.
And she loved him.
But she would not think of that now. The mail coach came into town at four in the morning, and it was closing in on three. She donned her gown, her bodice and skirt, but carried her under things in one hand. It was too early to meet a servant, and she was stealthy. If she could hunt deer in the bracken, she could avoid the ducal household.
She kissed Harry one last time before she went. His lips were soft under hers, relaxed in his sleep, and she thought for a moment he might wake, like a prince in a fairy tale. He snuffled into the blanket, but slept on, which was just as well. She had hours of riding ahead of her, and had he seen her, Harry never would have let her go.
* * *
Harry woke around seven to find that Mary Elizabeth had slipped away. He was on his feet at once, checking the sitting room and the bathing room beyond his bed, but she was nowhere to be found.
He cursed himself but did not think anything of it except that he should have hidden the key when he locked the door. He dressed with Philips’s help. He might have done a quicker job of it on his own, but his man took pride in his appearance, and he had not used him often since the Scots had come to stay.
Harry found all of them, even the married women, eating peacefully in the breakfast room. The English guests were still abed, it seemed, or perhaps they were simply afraid to break bread so early with barbarians. Harry had no such qualms, and he greeted both Mrs. Waters with a smile.
The sweet, young girl, Catherine, bowed her head to him as if in church, and the second Mrs. Waters, the former Lady Prudence Farthington, nodded to him and smiled as if he did not have a ducal coronet plastered to his temples.
Alex and Robert Waters nodded to him, caught in a discussion of London and the roads out of there. Robert and his runaway bride had just returned from Town that very morning. It seemed they were not fond of the capital city on the whole, heart of the empire or not. Harry could not fault them, for London was not his favorite spot, either.
He thought of his favorite spot—the little bit of soft skin just behind Mary Elizabeth’s left ear. The place that, when he touched it with his tongue, made her go limp with desire in his arms. He wondered how long she would sleep and when he might touch that place, among others, with his tongue again.
He supposed he should go through the formalities and ask Alex, as her eldest brother present, for her hand. Harry was about to do so when Robert Waters asked, “Where in God’s name is Mary?”
His wife gave him a look that failed to silence him.
Alex finished chewing his brioche and took a swig of tea. “I thought she was sleeping still.”
“This late?” Robert scoffed. “I doubt it.”
“Have you checked the stables, if you’re so concerned?” Lady Prudence asked. “She has a brute of a stallion that has fallen in love with her. Maybe she’s down there, giving him treats.”
The talk of stallions and treats made Harry blush, until he reminded himself that he was a duke, and dukes did not blush. And that Mary Elizabeth was marrying him as soon as he might get the license in hand.
Catherine met his eyes and smiled. “Good morning, Your Grace. I hope you enjoyed a pleasant night.”
Harry felt his skin flush again, and he cleared his throat before taking the tea a footman brought him.
“Yes,” he said, trying to sound calm and ducal. “Very pleasant.”
“You’ve something to ask me,” Alex said, his brown eyes gleaming. Mary Elizabeth’s brother smiled at him, and Catherine squeezed Alex’s hand on top of the table, a new light of joy coming into the blue of her eyes.
“I had thought to have a bite of bacon first,” Harry said. “But as it happens, I do have a question for you, when you are at leisure.”
“Let us withdraw so that you may speak freely,” Alex said, still looking pleased but also managing to look like the Wrath of God. Harry figured he had best marry his girl, and quickly, for if this one discovered their liaison, he would kill him first and bundle Mary into a carriage after.
So that her brother and his wife would not have to make a bolt for the border with Mary Elizabeth in tow, Harry nodded and began to rise as well, with only one last rueful look at the bacon and eggs even now growing cold on his plate. He stopped cold when Robert Waters spoke.
“The devil you will withdraw. Mary’s our family, too. You’ll eat your breakfasts like civilized men and ask your questions here.”
Alex Waters paused for one long moment. He looked not to his brother, but to his wife, who was dimpling at him, a picture of feminine loveliness in soft-blue muslin. Alex sighed then, and sat back down. Harry followed suit and fell to his breakfast. Thank God for the intervention of women.
“You wish to ask me for Mary Elizabeth’s hand,” Alex said.
Harry sighed, even as Lady Prudence and Catherine Waters squealed together, as if in concert. He drank another sip of tea, and this time, it was Billings who refilled his cup. Harry could not be sure, but it seemed his butler was almost smiling.
“Yes,” Harry said. “I love your sister, and I think I can safely say that she loves me—”
“Nothing’s ever safe with Mary. You’d best know that now,” Robert Waters said.
Harry simply looked at his future brother-in-law, nonplussed, and Alex said, “Hold off for a bit, Robbie. Let the man speak.”
Robert leaned back in his chair, his hand going to his waist. Harry found himself wondering if he wore a dirk and who had been the one to teach Mary Elizabeth to throw knives in the first place. Motivated both by the desire to finish his breakfast and to save his skin from puncture holes, Harry spoke.
“I would marry her, with your permission, as soon as I can get a special license.”
Alex was going to say something then, but Robert spoke for him. “Well, it’s about time, lad. While I was in London, the family carrier pigeons brought nothing but letters from mother and from this one, telling me of your amour and speculating on whether or not we’d have an Englishman in the family or if we’d have to emigrate to Nova Scotia to save our skins after we shot you. I’m not fond of the English,” Robert said. His wife slapped his hand with a fan that had suddenly appeared from beneath the table, and he winced. “But, as I was saying”—he raised both brows at his wife—“I have recently come to know one or two English a bit better—”
“More than a bit, I’d say, husband,” Lady Prudence whispered loud enough for all the table to hear.
“As you say, wife.” Robert Waters kissed his woman full on the lips in front of God and the butler. Billings, used to these shenanigans since the arrival of the Scots, did not even raise one brow.
“I find,” Robert Waters continued his oration, “that not all English are half-bad. You may marry our sister, if you wish and she consents. God help you.”
Alex stood and offered Harry his hand. Harry was finished with his bacon by then, and rose with good grace to shake it. Billings did blanch at that familiarity, but Harry supposed that his butler would have to get used to that, too.
Not to be outdone, Robert Waters rose as well, and Harry shook his hand for good measure. “As for the special license, I have it here.” Robert tossed it onto the table, next to the silver butter dish. “Uncle Raymond thought you might be needing it. It seems that even the Bishop of London has heard of the romance between the Recluse Duke and the Hellion of Hyde Park.”
In the midst of this unseemly Scottish display in the breakfast room, a footman appeared at the door. “Mr. Billings, sir.”
The butler frowned like thunder. “Do not interrupt, Franklin. His Grace is at table.”
“Yes, sir. It’s only that, the housemaids were just cleaning the library. And they found this.”
Harry turned to see a slim leather volume held in Franklin’s white-gloved hand. It was a volume of poetry by Robert Burns that he had hoped to give Mary Elizabeth, but had not yet had the chance. He accepted the volume, wondering why his well-trained staff had thought to interrupt his breakfast over a trifle, when he opened it to find a bit of blue-and-green plaid tucked into it like a bookmark. It was the same plaid he had woken to find in his bed that morning.
“Our hunting tartan,” Robert Waters said.
“How lovely,” Catherine said.
Harry thought it pretty, too, and was pleased to know that it was a gift from his bride. But it marked a place in the book over a maudlin song about a lover who would return to his beloved, though “it t’were ten thousand miles.”
He felt a bit sick even before he opened the letter from Mary Elizabeth pressed into the book. She had written in a fine hand, much better than he would have expected her ever to acquire, with all her hunting and fishing and riding horses to their doom—and his.
He did not have to read the words aloud. Indeed, he could not, so it was just as well that Robert and Alex knew their sister well enough that he need not speak at all.
“She’s done a runner,” Robert groused. He swore aloud, and his wife whacked him a second time with her otherwise useless fan. She must have kept it about her person for the sole purpose of chastising her errant husband when he went astray, which no doubt was often.
Harry found himself thinking these inane things, trying to repress the knowledge that Mary Elizabeth had left him.
In spite of his best efforts, he failed.