Page 19 of The Texan Duke
“Mrs. Ferguson’s been poorly for a while,” she said. “She has terrible arthritis, and this winter has been very difficult on her. But I beg you, Your Grace, please do not dismiss her. She’s been with Bealadair for two decades. It would be like tossing her into a snowdrift. You can’t do it.”
“Connor,” he said with not a single bit of amusement on his face.
“What?”
“I won’t toss her into a snowdrift, Elsbeth, if you’ll dispense withYour Graceand call me Connor.”
She blinked at him, not one word coming to her rescue.
For years and years upon years she’d been lectured on proper behavior by the duchess, as if the woman was afraid that Elsbeth might shame the family somehow by saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment or by not being conversant with the rules of polite behavior. She’d done her utmost to learn.
Not one person in the whole of Scotland could ever say that she’d done anything to bring an iota of shame to the McCraights. From the moment she rose at dawn until she went to bed, she considered every single action, every word. Now, just like that, the new Duke of Lothian was demanding—commanding—that she break the habits of a lifetime.
“I couldn’t possibly,” she said, wishing he would understand. What he asked for was impossible.
“I take it Mrs. Ferguson lives here at Bealadair?”
She frowned at him. “What you are suggesting is improper,” she said.
“Why? It’s my name.”
She could just imagine what Rhona would do the first time she heard Elsbeth calling the duke by his first name.
“It’s not done, Your Grace.”
“Where do you think I can acquire a new housekeeper?”
“That’s extortion, Your Grace.”
The ghost of a smile appeared on his lips.
“Are you always so proper, Elsbeth?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” he asked.
“What do you mean, why?”
She stared at him. The fact that her heart was beating too fast was only one warning sign. She wanted, strangely, to smile at him, to prop her chin in her hand and stare at him for an hour or two, admiring everything about him.
No, she really should leave. Now. Before she made even more of a fool of herself. Proper? She wasn’t feeling the least bit proper right now.
Chapter 7
She was frowning at him again. Good. He had the feeling that keeping Elsbeth Carew a little off-kilter would be a good thing. He was tired of being called Your Grace all the time. Maybe if he ignored her for a while she would come to realize that his name was Connor and he preferred that to all the bowing and scraping.
He couldn’t help who his father had been. Who he was—not what he had accomplished or achieved on his own—had led him to Scotland, nothing else. He didn’t want to be treated differently. Yet when he’d made that remark to Sam, the older man had laughed at him.
“You’re not just yourself,” Sam had said. “You’re Connor McCraight of XIV Ranch. You’re the owner. You might be judged by what you do, but you’ll first be judged by who you are.”
What had he said in response? He couldn’t remember, only that Sam hadn’t stopped smiling.
“I understand how you feel,” the older man had said. “I can be anyone I want because people don’t know who I am. If you really want to be anonymous, then move to another country.”
Well, he was in another country, but he was far from anonymous. He was the 14th Duke of Lothian and Laird of a clan he was about to meet in a few days.
And it looked like he was going to wear that label as long as he remained here.
