Page 77 of How to Cross a Marquess (The Way to a Lord's Heart 3)

Fenella nodded.

“Nearly as much as yours.”

“My respect?”

“I hope I may earn it eventually.”

Fenella looked into his eyes. During the talk with her grandmother, a new idea had suggested itself to her. Perhaps there was madly in love and then there was…gradually overtaken by love? Could that be a hope? “You do have it,” she said.

“That means a great deal.” He took her hand and held it. The tenderness in his eyes made Fenella tremble. It was marvelous to know that she hadn’t made a mistake.

The current laird of Roslyn joined them later that day. Stocky and dark-haired, he didn’t resemble his grandmother, or Fenella. As Roger acknowledged the introduction and met the other man’s shrewd brown eyes sizing him up, he wondered how much of the current situation had been conveyed to him. He didn’t have to wait for an answer. “Eloping with my cousin, man?” said the laird. He looked grim.

“Rob,” said Fenella.

Roger didn’t blame him for wanting to protect his cousin. But that role was his now, and he didn’t intend to be supplanted. “It wasn’t what we planned. I’d asked her to marry me before Mr. Fairclough’s death threw all into confusion,” he said.

“Took all my choices away from me,” said Fenella. “Even my horse.”

The laird glanced at their hostess. Some silent communication passed between the two. “Let us go in to dinner,” said Fenella’s grandmother.

They settled at table. Food was served, wine poured.

“I met Fenella when she was running up here to Scotland as a lass,” said the laird then. “Found her lost and cowering under a holly tree like a little mouse.”

“I was sheltering from the rain,” Fenella protested. “I might have been a bit lost, but I wasnotcowering.”

“‘Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,’” he replied mysteriously.

“Do not begin with your Robert Burns,” said Fenella’s grandmother. “A most improper person,” she told Roger.

“But a right proper poet was Robbie,” said the laird.

“If you are partial to low comedy.”

“Aye, and so I am,” he answered, a teasing gleam in his dark eyes. They went cool again as he turned to Roger. “She was running from you then, if I recall correctly.”

“Well, you don’t,” said Roger. He’d had enough of the fellow’s mistrust. And he wasn’t accustomed to feeling so left out where Fenella was concerned. “Our fathers were pressing her. Not I.” He met Fenella’s warm gaze. “Because I was… I didn’t.” He ran out of words, maddeningly.

Her lips moved. Did they silently form the phrasesodding sheep? Surely not. “We will leave history out of this,” she said. “Circumstances are quite different now, and there is no need to rehash all thatagain. Anyway, what I choose to do is not your affair, Rob.”

“Not even if you bring scandal down on our family? Of which I am the head, I might remind you.”

“Not of the Faircloughs,” she replied. “That would be…who? My father’s cousin Gerard? Oh, what does it matter. I’m not a Fairclough any longer. I’m—”

“Marchioness of Chatton,” interrupted Roger, thinking it was time to remind them of that point. He wasn’t some skirter or half-pay officer.

Fenella smiled. “So I am. Watch your step, Rob, or I’ll overawe you with my consequence.”

The laird examined her face. He turned to survey Roger. He exchanged another long look with his grandmother. Then, for the first time since he’d arrived, he laughed. “The first week Fenella was in Scotland, she challenged me to a bout of marksmanship,” he told Roger. “Shot the pips out of a playing card and beat me all hollow.”

“And how you hated that,” Fenella said. “You would not believe I’d actually managed it until I’d shredded half a deck.”

“Well, a crack shot wasn’t exactly usual among the girls I knew.”

“I was nothing like them. I’m still not.”

“True enough. Best mind your manners, Chatton, or she’ll lob a bullet past your ear.” He seemed only half-joking.

---