Page 96 of The Scottish Duke
“She wouldn’t have done anything. Why are you annoyed?”
She was like a terrier. Once she had her teeth on a subject, she didn’t give it up easily. Since he was the same way, he identified the trait easily enough.
“You annoyed me.” He studied her for a moment. “Why do you look so surprised?”
“I wasn’t the one who remained away for so long. Why do you have the right to be annoyed? Because you’re a duke?”
“Now that question is annoying.”
She selected the next card. “Mine?”
“I have to rule you out,” he said. “Some of the prints I’ve taken could be yours.”
She nodded. “Mary was adamant that you’d left me for another woman. That you’d left because you were hideously embarrassed that I’d been a servant. And that you remained away because you only married me to keep Robbie from being a bastard and regretted the decision.”
He was going to have to do something about Mary, too.
“You should try to avoid her.”
Lorna’s laughter brightened the room.
“I do try to avoid her, Alex. You, yourself, should know how nearly impossible that is.”
“Then you shouldn’t listen to her.”
“If you hear a lie often enough, Alex, you begin to wonder if it’s the truth.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. The apology startled him, but once he began, he continued. “I shouldn’t have remained away. Once my business with the society was concluded, I should have come home.”
“What was your business with them?”
He wasn’t accustomed to sharing the details of his life with others, but he found it surprisingly easy to do with Lorna. She listened to him explain his treatise and why he thought someone had stolen his ideas.
“My father had just published a book when he encountered another botanist with the same subject matter,” she said. “He said it happened often in science that more than one person has the same idea at the same time. Couldn’t it be that way with your discovery of fingerprints?”
“The society will have to make that conclusion. I’ve done what I can.”
She tilted her head and regarded him. “Is it all that important that you’re the first? Wouldn’t it be just as valuable if you could add to the science?”
He considered the matter.
“Yes, it’s important to be the first,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because it’s mine.”
When she didn’t say anything, he bent down and retrieved the box he’d put beside his desk.
“I got this for you,” he said.
She frowned at him, but she took the gift, placing it on the top of the desk beside her. It took her only seconds to open it, revealing the walnut artist’s box with its gold fastenings and four drawers.
When she opened the top, she didn’t say anything, but her eyes widened. She remained speechless as her fingers danced along the sable brushes. One by one she removed the pots of watercolors, opened the top of each and examined the paints.
Still, she didn’t speak.
This was not the first gift he’d ever given a woman. He once had an arrangement with an Edinburgh jeweler where the man reminded him of birthdays and anniversaries.
