“There would be a scandal. Perhaps we would be forced to marry immediately. Shall I create a scandal, my lady?”

His eyes were alight with something fiercer, hotter than glee. She froze, stunned by the ferocity of the emotion she saw in them. How had this happened . . . between the two of them? What was it?

Did people really fall in love like this, with no more than a few moments of conversation? Could she fall in love with a man merely because he was beautiful and looked well in a kilt? Of course, he was also intelligent, and then there was his voice, and that secret laughter, and he was funny . . . And he wanted her. He wanted her more than she could ever have imagined.

Yes.

Yes, she could.

Their hostess came to her feet; the meal was over. The gentlemen would take port in the library, while the ladies retired to the music room for tea.

She hadn’t answered his question. The duke stretched out his hand and brought her to her feet. “I don’t want to wait four more months to marry you,” he said, taking both her hands and looking as though he might throw responsibility to the winds and kiss her right there. That would be a scandal.

“My father has often said that he does not approve of short betrothals.” Edie was appalled to find that her voice was as breathless as that of any silly child of sixteen.

She drank in the expression on his face, feeling as if music reeled through her veins. “Perhaps I could convince him to change his mind.”

A great crescendo of musical notes flowed over her and danced between them. “All right,” she whispered. “All right.”

She wasn’t sure what she agreed to: but there was a flare of joy in his eyes, and that was enough.

Eleven

Gowan followed the other gentlemen into the library, quite aware that he was incapable of speech. He felt as if he’d been knocked unconscious and had reawakened in a different world.

As if he’d woken up in a play.

Maybe he was Romeo. Maybe this would end in both of their deaths.

The most shocking thing was that he could actually contemplate that without much turmoil. If Edie died . . .

What in the hell was he thinking? They weren’t even married yet. He hardly knew her. Edie’s father was standing by himself, staring down into the fireplace, so Gowan accepted a glass of port and joined him.

“Lord Gilchrist.”

“I’m no longer sure you’re the right man for my daughter,” the earl said abruptly.

“It grieves me to hear you say it, but I’m afraid it’s too late for second thoughts. I will marry Lady Edith.” The force of his ancient dukedom spoke through his tone.

But behind a flash of entitled aristocratic irritation—who was the earl to question his betrothal?—was something more primitive: Edie was his, and if he had to revert to the practices of the ancient Picts, steal her from England and carry her to Scotland on the back of his horse . . . he would.

The earl looked sharply at him, and then back at the fire. “That’s what I mean.”

“What?”

“You’re consumed by desire for her, aren’t you? She put on that red dress belonging to my wife, and now you’ve lost your head altogether.”

“Something like that,” Gowan agreed.

“It is a disaster,” Gilchrist said, his voice heavy. “A disaster.”

Gowan opened his mouth to contest his prediction, but Gilchrist continued. “I chose you precisely because I judged you unlikely to succumb to passion. I can tell you from my own experience that the passions of the flesh are no basis for marriage.”

“Ah.” Gowan was still trying to sort out how he could respond to that savage comment, when the earl launched into speech again.

“My daughter is a true musician. I wanted a marriage of the rational sort for her. One in which her husband would respect her talent—nay, genius.”

“Genius?” Gowan put his glass onto the mantelpiece.

“She plays the cello like no other woman in this country, and very few men.”

Gowan had never known any woman who played the cello—or indeed, any man, either—but he knew better than to point that out to a man whose face was alight with a combination of pride and rage.

“She plays better than I do, and I fancy that I could have had an excellent career had I been born outside the peerage. Were she not my daughter, she would be playing in the world’s greatest concert halls. Do you know who told me that?” His eyes were as ferocious as his tone.

Gowan shook his head. How in the devil could he know? He scarcely knew what a cello was.

“Robert Lindley!”

His expression must have betrayed his ignorance. “The greatest cellist in England,” Gilchrist said flatly. “Edith played for him—in private, of course—and he told me that were she not a woman, she would rival his own son. In my opinion, she would rival him, not just his son.”

“I know little about music,” Gowan said, clearing his throat, “but I am delighted to hear that my future duchess possesses such a gift.”

The earl opened his mouth, then clamped it shut again. “There was nothing else I could do,” he said, his voice despairing. “She is the one child of my lineage. She had to marry.”

The man’s face was twisted with regret. What in the hell did he think Gowan would do? Throw Edie’s cello out the window?—not that he had figured out what it was. Some sort of stringed instrument, he assumed. The only one he knew of was the fiddle.

Gowan didn’t feel like drinking port, nor did he particularly want to spend more time with Gilchrist, who was growing distraught in a way that he did not admire.

There was an undercurrent here, he thought, that had to do with the unruly relationship between the earl and his countess, and nothing to do with Edie. In fact, based on Edie’s measured and intelligent letters, he was marrying just the right woman. She had undoubtedly come to value rational communication precisely owing to her intimate view of her father’s marriage.

He bowed. “If you would excuse me, Lord Gilchrist, I believe I shall take a walk in the gardens.”

The earl nodded, without taking his eyes from the fire.

Gowan exited the library through a side door and found his way outside, where he embarked on a slow, careful inspection of Fensmore. The seat of the Earls of Chatteris was a great pile of brick and stone, added to by ancestors who were intelligent and by those who were fools.

By an hour later, he had formed a good sense of its two courtyards, its great back lawn, its tennis court and hedge maze . . . and its balconies.

There were six of these. Two looked over the inner courtyard, and four over the great lawn. They were all accessible, though he wouldn’t be foolhardy enough to risk his life climbing the ivy. Those overlooking the courtyard, he reckoned, had probably been added in relatively recent years; the four in the back were far more ancient and likely belonged to the house in its first incarnation, or shortly thereafter. Truly, Juliet’s balconies.

But he had a shrewd idea that the old balconies corresponded to the bedchambers assigned to the master and mistress, as well as the two largest and grandest guest rooms. Edie would not have been assigned one of those, as she was neither family nor a particular friend of Lady Honoria.

He returned to the courtyard and once again surveyed the two inner balconies, which were formed by marble balustrades. They were, he determined, strong enough to support a rope.