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.”
“Myself included.” She could not resist the words.
“I’m here, am I not? Summoned south by my ward. Surely that counts for something.”
“I didn’t summon you.”
“You might not have set pen to paper, lass, but you summoned me as simply as if you’d shouted my name across the border.”
“As I said, I’ve no need for you.”
“I’m told the world disagrees.”
“Hang the world,” she said, turning her attention to the fire as she added, “and hang you with it.”
“As I am here to save you, I would think you would be much more grateful.”
The man’s arrogance was quite remarkable. “However did I come to be so very lucky?”
He sighed, hearing the sarcasm in her words. “Despite your petulance, I am here to rectify your alleged . . .” He cast about for an appropriate word. “. . . situation.”
Her brows shot together. “My petulance.”
“Do you deny it?”
She most certainly did. “Petulance is what a child feels when she is denied sweets.”
“How would you describe yourself if not petulant?”
Furious. Foolish. Irritated. Desperate.
Ashamed.
Finally, she spoke. “It is no matter. It’s all too little, too late.” After a pause, she added, pointedly, “I’ve a plan, and you are not a part of it, Duke.”
He cut her a look. “I suppose I shouldn’t have told you I don’t like the title.”
“Never reveal your weakness to your enemy.”
“We are enemies, then?”
“We certainly aren’t friends.”
She could see his frustration. “I’ve had enough of this. Why don’t we begin here. Settlesworth tells me you have ruined yourself in front of all London.”
The words, no matter how often she thought them herself, still stung on another’s tongue. Shame flooded her, and she did everything she could not to reveal it.
She failed. “How is it that the ruination is mine and not—”
She stopped.
He heard the rest of the sentence nonetheless. “Then there was a man.”
She met his gaze. “You needn’t pretend you don’t know.”
“It is not pretending,” he said. “Settlesworth gave me very little information. But I am not an idiot, and looking at you, it’s clear that there was a man.”
“Looking at me.” He had no idea how the words stung.
He ignored her. “So. You did not ruin yourself. You were ruined.”
“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” she mumbled.
“No,” he said, firmly. “They are different.”
“Not to anyone who matters.”
A pause. “What happened?”
He did not know. It was remarkable. He did not know what she had done. How she had embarrassed herself. He had only the vagaries of a solicitor’s summons and the boundaries of his imagination. And in those vagaries she remained, somehow, free of the past.
And, though she knew it was simply a matter of time before he heard about the scandal of Lovely Lily, Lonesome Lily, Lovelorn Lily, or whatever nickname the scandal sheets thought clever today, she did not wish him to know now.
And so she did not tell him.
“Does it matter?”
He looked at her as though she was mad. “Of course it matters.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t, though. Not really. It only matters what they believe. That is how scandal works.”
“Facts matter, Lillian. Tell me what happened. If they make it worse than it is, I will paper London with truth.”
“How lucky I am to have a guardian and a champion all in one,” she said, injecting the words with sarcasm in the hopes she could irritate him into leaving his line of questioning.
He whispered something in Gaelic then, something that she did not understand but that she immediately identified as a curse. He tugged at the cravat, tied too tight around his neck, just as the coat he wore was too tight at the shoulders. The trousers too tight at the thighs. Everything about this man was larger than it should be. Perhaps that was why he knew, instantly, her truth. That he saw her flaws so clearly.