“Miss Burns needs air,” the duke announced, and before anyone could offer an opinion, he scooped her up in his arms and said, “I’m taking her inside.”
And just like that, all the chill left the air. Catriona allowed herself the indulgence of resting her cheek against Bretton’s chest, and as she lay there, listening to the steady beat of his heart, she could not help but think that this was where she was meant to be.
But then, of course, Lord Oakley had to spoil the whole thing. “You’re taking her inside so that she might get air?”
“Shut up,” the duke said.
Catriona had a feeling she might be falling in love.
“Wait!” Taran yelled, tramping over through the snow. “She needs a chaperone!”
“I’ll go,” Fiona offered.
Taran blinked in surprise. “You will?”
“I’m cold,” Fiona said with a deceptively placid smile. “And I still have sewing to complete before supper.”
“Do you think you might help me?” Lady Cecily asked, fidgeting beneath her cloak. “Nothing they brought down fits, and I am a terrible hand with a needle.”
“Of course,” Fiona said. “Why don’t you come with me? We’ll take tea in my room and see to the gowns.”
“You’re supposed to be chaperoning Miss Burns,” Taran reminded her.
“Oh, but Catriona will take tea with us as well,” Fiona said. She looked over at Catriona. “If that is amenable.”
“I would be delighted,” Catriona said, although not, perhaps, as delighted as this very moment, wrapped as she was in Bretton’s arms.
“Marilla, you must stay and watch the caber tossing,” Fiona instructed. Marilla looked about to argue, but then Fiona added, “The gentlemen must have an audience.”
Marilla must have decided that one earl plus one French comte equaled something more than a duke, because her expression quicksilvered into one of utter enchantment. “I cannot imagine a more pleasing activity.” She placed a delicate hand on Lord Oakley’s muscular arm. “It is all so very, very exciting.”
“Very,” Catriona thought she heard Lady Cecily say under her breath.
“Back to the caber, then!” Taran hollered. “The old laird and his nephews,” he chortled, elbowing Mr. Rocheforte in the ribs. “The way it should be, vying to impress the fairest maiden in the county.”
Mr. Rocheforte smiled, but it was a queasy thing, quite unlike his normal expression.
“That’s the one I wanted for you in the first place,” Taran said in a loud whisper. “Prettiest girl in town. She’s got some money. And she’s Scottish.”
Mr. Rocheforte said something Catriona could not hear, and then Taran’s bushy brows came together as he grumbled, “It was a whisper! Nobody heard me.”
And then, before anyone could contradict, Taran pumped a fist in the air and once again yelled, “To the caber!”
“To the house,” Fiona Chisholm said in urgent response, and she hurried off, Lady Cecily right at her heels.
As for the duke, his pace back to Finovair was much more measured. Catriona, snug and warm in his arms, could find no reason to complain.
Chapter 7
By the time Bret reached the drawing room, Miss Chisholm and Lady Cecily were nowhere to be found. “Your friends seem to have deserted us,” he said to Catriona as he set her down upon an ancient chaise longue.
“Perhaps we were meant to follow them to Fiona’s room?”
“Oh, but I could not venture into a lady’s chamber,” Bret said, placing one hand over his heart for emphasis.
Catriona gave a look that was dubious in the extreme.
“And at any rate,” he added, “I don’t know where her room is.”
Catriona cocked her head, then said, “Do you know, neither do I.”
He grinned at that. “We seem to be stuck here, then.”
“On our own,” she said, a small smile touching her lips.
“You’re not concerned for your reputation?”
She tilted her head toward the door. “The door is open.”
“Pity, that,” Bret murmured. He perched on the table directly across from her, testing it first before settling his entire weight; like everything in Finovair, it was chipped and rickety.
“Your Grace!”
“I think you should call me by my given name, don’t you?”
“Absolutely not,” she said firmly. “And at any rate, I don’t know what it is.”
“John,” he said, and he tried to remember the last time anyone had called him such. His mother did, but only occasionally. His friends all called him Bret. He thought of himself as Bret. But as he looked at Catriona Burns, who had already shifted herself to a sitting position on the chaise, he wondered what it would be like to have someone in his life who would call him John.
“I heard Lord Oakley call you Bret,” Catriona said.
“Many people do,” he said with a small shrug. He looked down, finding it suddenly awkward to meet her gaze. The conversation had made him wistful, almost self-conscious—a sensation to which he had never been accustomed.
But this feeling that seemed to wash over him whenever he was with Catriona—it was growing, changing. He’d thought it lust, then desire, and then something that was far, far sweeter. But now, swirling amid all this was an unfamiliar longing. For her, certainly for her, but also for something else. For a feeling, for an existence.
For someone to know him, completely.
And the strangest part was, he wasn’t scared.
“I couldn’t possibly call you Bret in front of the others,” Catriona said, pulling his attention back to her face.
“No,” he agreed softly. It would be improper in the extreme, not that anything in the past day had been proper, normal, or customary.
“And I should not call you Bret when we are alone,” she added, but there was the tiniest question in her voice.
He brought her hand to his lips. “I would not want that.”
Her eyes widened with surprise, and—dare he hope it?—disappointment. “You wouldn’t?”
“John,” he said, with quiet determination. “You must call me John.”
“But nobody else does,” she whispered.
He gazed at her over her hand, thinking he could stare at her forever. “I know,” he said, and at that moment something within him shifted. He knew—and by all that was holy, he hoped she knew, too—that their lives would never be the same.
Catriona stopped at her small garret before making her way to Fiona’s bedchamber for tea. She needed a moment. She needed a thousand moments.
She needed to breathe.
She needed to think.
She needed to find a way to face her friends and speak like a normal human being.
Because she did not feel like a normal human being, and she very much feared that Fiona and Lady Cecily would take one look at her and know that she’d been kissing the Duke of Bretton in the sitting room with the door open, and before he’d finally pulled away, his hands had been on her skin, and she’d liked it.
Good God above, she’d liked it.
If he hadn’t stopped, she didn’t know if she could have done so. But he had lifted his lips from hers, cradled her face in his hands, and looked into her eyes with such tenderness. And then he’d whispered, “Say my name.”
“John.” She’d barely been able to make a sound, but he was staring at her lips; surely he’d seen his name upon them.
He’d taken her hand, helped her to her feet, and said something about her joining the other ladies before they became concerned. Then he bowed and headed to the nearest exit.
“You’re going outside?” she asked. “It’s freezing out there.”
“I know,” he replied, his voice a little strange. He bowed, then said, “Until supper.”
And so Catriona made her own way through Finovair’s twisty halls, gathering her thoughts, tidying her appearance in her room, and then finally locating Fiona’s sparse bedchamber.