Page 18 of Tamed By her Duke

Which made her feel that it wasn’t a loss when she was first to break the silence.

“So, Northumberland.”

“Northumberland,” he agreed unhelpfully.

“But you are Scottish.”

This time he just grunted. It took Grace considerable effort not to kick him. Judging by his size, however, she’d just end up hurting her toes and he wouldn’t even notice.

“Are you really this obtuse or are you just being purposefully difficult?” she demanded.

To herunendingirritation, this comment did not seem to bother him.

“The latter,” he said.

Grace mentally recited all the foul oaths she’d overheard while trapped with the Packards—which was alot.

“What I meant to say is,” she said with deliberate sweetness, for damn his eyes, this manwould not break her,“how did it come to be that you, a Scot, became heir to an English title.”

“English father,” he said with no variation in his tone.

She frowned. “But that would make you En?—”

“No,” he interrupted. “It wouldn’t.”

Well, well. That was clearly a sensitive topic—which made it another weapon in Grace’s arsenal, not that she yet knew how to best use it. To keep him on the back foot—a term she’d overheard her brother once use about boxing and which she felt reasonably certain she was deploying correctly—she switched topics.

“Tell me about Montgomery Estate,” she commanded.

A misstep. She knew that even before he spoke, for a flash of glee—or whatever passed for glee among stodgy, rude Scots—flickered through her husband’s eyes.

“See for yourself,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the window in a gesture more suitable to a fishmonger than a duke. “We’re here.”

Grace couldn’t even be annoyed at herself for the conversational opening she’d given him, because at his gesture, she turned and looked.

“That’s acastle,” she said, voice hushed with shock.

“It’s bloody old, if that’s what you mean,” her husband commented in the voice of a man determined to be unimpressed.

“It’s not and you know it.” Grace didn’t even care. Let him be ironic and unflappable.

This wasa castle.

And she was going tolive in it.

Oh, yes, Grace knew the impracticalities of ancient stone keeps like this one. They were impossible to keep warm—an issue that would strike twice as hard this far north, certainly—and for each century they’d stood, they offered another problem or five that was in perpetual need of fixing. Many families, even ancient ones, were left with no choice but to let the buildings crumblearound their ears, given the incalculable expense of maintaining them. Grace supposed that could have been why the duke had married her, his crude comments about seeking a broodmare aside. Her dowry, substantial as it was, could fund a great number of improvements around a place like this.

She dismissed the thought as quickly as it came, however. Though the building was rough around the edges, Grace could see even from a distance that there had been effort put in to modernize it. The low stone wall that surrounded the larger property, for example, looked new and in good condition. A large stable yard was midway through being constructed—which would be a foolish way to apply funds if there were other parts of the building in desperate need.

Grace might have already formed several opinions about her husband thus far, and few of them flattering. Even so, nothing had told her that he was a fool.

Which meant, of course, that she had to be careful. She guarded her expression, not eager to show how much she was impressed by the massive square stone keep, nor the windmill whose blades floated lazily in the sea breeze.

Nor, she told herself, was she impressed by the sight of the North Sea, its powerful, dreary gray waves pounding against a slice of shoreline.

She might have stared at it a bit, though. Just a bit. She was, after all, only human.

“You must spend a fortune in firewood,” was all she said.

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