Mr. Carnegie stepped past Leah, placing an ear to her bedroom door.
“They’re still nattering on,” he murmured. “We’ll have to wait.”
Miss Smith and Miss Well’s breathy giggles sounded outside as if to emphasize the point.
With a sigh, Mr. Carnegie sank down beside Lord Dennis, shoulders against the wall, wrists resting on the raised knees of his white breeches. Lord Dennis—dark-haired, stubble-cheeked, flush-nosed—snored again, snuffling in his sleep.
Leah stared down at them, unsure of the social mores when entertaining two gentlemen in her bedchamber.
Two gentlemen.
In. Her. Bedchamber.
Her mind stuttered. Surely this exemplified the sort of lascivious behavior Aunt Leith had warned her abounded in London.
Leah busied herself, stirring the fire to life and lighting a lamp on the wee writing desk. She rotated the desk chair—a worn wooden Windsor—to face Mr. Carnegie and sat gingerly, pulling her shawl tight around her shoulders and tucking her toes under the hem of her night rail.
Mr. Carnegie watched her, the lamplight flickering in his pale gaze and turning his blond hair into molten gold. His eyes were intensely blue, she noted. The color of Loch Muick on a cloudless day.
Unlike Lord Dennis, Mr. Carnegie no longer wore his coat. Instead, he sat against the wall in the red waistcoat of a regimental officer, his white shirt sleeves cuffed to the elbow. Swallowing, he tugged at his dark neckcloth, loosening and mussing it. Leah tried (and failed) not to stare at the shadowy outline of lean muscle rippling under the fine linen of his shirt as he moved.
No wonder gentlemen were required to remain precisely dressed at all times. A disheveled man invited all sorts of salacious thoughts. At the moment, Leah was hard-pressed to concentrate on anything other than the marvelous flex and pull of tendons across his bare forearms.
But then, Mr. Fox Carnegie had been drawing her eyes all week.
Leah was attending the house party—hosted by an English cousin, Mrs. Gordon—as Aunt Leith’s companion. It was all part of the campaign to lift Leah out of the ‘unfortunate circumstances of Isobel’s marriage.’ That, of course, referred to Leah’s deceased mother, Isobel Leith, who had married John Penn, a Scottish gentleman farmer well below her aristocratic station.
This meant that while more refined young women were stitching samplers and perfecting their posture in a side-saddle, Leah had been darning her younger brothers’ socks and galloping across the Angus glens astride her favorite gelding, helping her father and his shepherds track lost sheep.
Unfortunately, sock-darning and sheep-wrangling were not activities that gentlemen appreciated in a well-bred young lady.
But that did not deter Aunt Leith. She ruthlessly polished Leah’s manners, intending to find her niece a more appropriate husband than ‘some half-drunk Scottish blacksmith.’ Though if Aunt Leith had actuallymetthe blacksmith in Fettermill with his bulky muscles and charming wink, she would not so cavalierly dismiss the idea.
Regardless, at scarcely eighteen years old herself, Leah was at a loss as to what mendidwant in a bride. Well, aside from a large dowry and, perhaps, an equally out-sized bosom—facts she had gleaned from Miss Wells and Miss Smith as they sat giggling over luncheon.
Leah possessed none of those things—a dowry, large bosoms, or a preponderance of giggles.
But this obvious lack had not stopped her from noticing Mr. Fox Carnegie.
He had arrived in a burst of ribald laughter and youthful scuffling—Lord Dennis’s, not his own. Mr. Carnegie had stood behind his friend, arms folded, expression wry and watchful. There had been a quiet sense ofnoticingabout him, a steadiness that had instantly drawn Leah in.
Granted, it hadn’t hurt that he looked remarkably dashing in the red coat of the 64th Regiment of Foot. The crimson wool caught the auburn highlights in his blond hair and accentuated the sharp line of his jaw. Her eyes had stubbornly followed him—noting the liquid grace of his walk, the way his shoulders tilted toward a person as he listened, the kind gentleness in his tone.
Not that Mr. Carnegie had spared a glance for the awkwardly shy Scottish lass Leah knew herself to be. None of the gentlemen in attendance did.
Though . . . Mr. Carnegie appeared to be noticing her now.
In the lamplight, his gaze skimmed her, likely taking in the unadorned linen of her night rail, the homespun wool of her thick stockings, the tattered edge of her shawl. She pulled the garment closer.
Leah knew her features were a study in nondeterminate mediocrity—bland and vacillating. Her hair was not quite blond, nor brown, nor auburn, but some unflattering mix of the three. Her hazel eyes changed color with her moods—brown to green and back again. The rest of her—body, bosom, height—remained stubbornly average.
If Mr. Carnegie found her lacking, his expression didn’t show it.
He cleared his throat. “You seem to have the advantage of me, Miss . . .” His voice drifted off, a ruddy flush climbing his cheeks. “I know we were likely introduced, but my memory for faces is not the best, and I fear with all that has happened, your name has plum slipped my mind.”
He said the words kindly, but Leah experienced a sinking sensation nonetheless.
She was forgettable. She knew this, and yet . . .
