Page 4 of His Highland Duchess
So much for avoidin’ a scandal…
CHAPTER TWO
“What were you thinking, Margaret?” Catherine, the Duchess of Rosehall sighed as she rubbed her temples with both her hands, the onset of a headache already very much wreaking havoc.
“Me!” Margaret cried out. “It was nae my fault!”
“I told you not to drink that much. Did I not tell you?”
“Maybe ye shuid have warned me o’ strange men sleepin’ in beds that you had been tellin’ me would be empty!”
“Did you not see him sleeping there?” her sister moaned. Despite her Scottish heritage, Catherine had worked hard to properly adapt her accent since her marriage. Truly, Margaret found her even harder to understand this way. “How did you manage to undress and climb into bed without taking notice?”
Margaret had no good answer for that. She had run the night over in her head a dozen times, trying her best to piece it together, unable to fathom the circumstances which had led to her bedding down beside the duke without knowing she was doing so.I am never drinking again…
“You might have warned me,” Margaret protested, even if she knew this to be her fault, and not her sister’s.
“So, this is my fault?” her sister scoffed. “Of course it is.”
“You ken I have na head for wine.” She was desperate to pass the blame, and she knew it. As did her sister. “You shuid have told me nae to have as much as I did.”
“I only saw you drink the single glass,” she pointed out. “Although it was a rather odd concoction…” She frowned. “Perhaps it was mixed with something? It was very sweet.”
“It might have been nice to ken,” Margaret mumbled.
“I assumed you were an adult,” her sister responded plainly. “Perhaps that is where I was mistaken.”
“And the room ye sent me to!” Still, Margaret needed to pass the blame. “How was I to ken anyone else might have been kippin’? It was early. You assured me everyone would still be at the party.”
“Dae nae dare blame me,” Catherine warned her, slipping back into her natural brogue accent.
“Dae nae dare blame me!” Margaret shot back.
“It is neither of your faults.” Sitting beside Catherine was her husband, Sampson, the Duke of Rosehall. He ran a hand through his thick head of hair, shaking his head as he wore a look that might suggest something smelly was being held under his nose. “The fault lies with Lysander.”
“Who?” Margaret asked.
“The duke,” he explained. “Perhaps I should have suspected that he would retire to bed early.” He scoffed. “The man never was one for social gatherings. Truly, it was surprising enough that he came at all.”
“Well, that is just great.”
“And he should have handled things better,” Sampson continued, the look of disgust turning into a scowl. “As surprised as I am sure he was to find you in his bed –”
“It was me bed!”
“—There was no need for things to escalate as they did.” He groaned and his shoulders slumped as if all the energy had been sucked from his body. “What a mess.”
What a mess indeed.
It was just Margaret, her sister Catherine, and her brother-in-law, Sampson, at the moment, which Margaret was beyond grateful for as she was sick to death of being gawked at by complete strangers as if she had chosen to attend breakfast completely naked.Which might have been less embarrassin’, considerin’ whit happened. Never before had she felt so exposed, nor had she been the center of such hostile attention.
Lucky that her sister was there to rescue her, which amounted to being whisked away and thrown in the back of a carriage before Margaret had a chance to do or say anything that might have made the situation worse. Although even Margaret was not so gifted as that.
Their destination was the Dukedom of Rosehall, Catherine’s home, where Margaret had been staying as a guest for the past week. Not that she anticipated remaining for much longer, as she very much suspected that by the day’s end her sister would have the good sense to pack her things and send her back to Scotland. At which point this most heinous of incidents could hopefully be forgotten.
Or so Margaret hoped…
“I suppose it does not matter who is at fault,” Catherine sighed. At least she believed Margaret’s story, knowing her sister well enough to admit that the incident had not been purposeful and that there was no chance anything untoward had happened. “What matters is what we are to do about it.”
