His bark of laughter cut her off. He ran his hands up her body until he cradled her face gently between them and brushed a tender kiss across her lips with a sigh. “Aye, I was seducing ye, lass, but moreover I was attempting to court ye as a woman should be courted.”
“Court me?” She repeated with a frown.
“Aye, ye thick-headed lass,” he acknowledged, though for a brief moment he looked as stunned as she felt by the admission. “Did none of yer other beaux ever ask ye to dance?”
“No, and I am not at all dressed for a ball.”
Leaping away from Ian, Hero started and turned to stare at her father, who stood in the dark doorway. “Papa, what are you doing out of bed? Where is Cooper?”
Beaumont looked down at himself, and she couldn’t help but do the same. He was wearing his striped nightshirt and cap but no robe. Instead he had on a red hunting jacket and satin shoes with silver buckles. “My shoes are quite all right, I think.”
“Papa.” She turned to Ian almost desperately. This interruption was by far the most ill-timed yet. She wanted to hear what he was going to say. She needed some sort of validation that when he said courting that he truly meantcourting.
“Harry, old chap,” Ian said with forced cheer to catch the duke’s wandering attention. “What brings you down so late?”
“Did I miss my invitation?” Beaumont asked before shaking his head. “No, no. That isn’t it at all. I came down to greet our guests.”
“Oh, Papa,” Hero sighed mournfully. Her father was incredibly absentminded but rarely was he delusional. “We haven’t any guests.”
“But they are arriving,” he insisted. “I saw them out my window.”
She shared a pained look with Ian. Sometimes she forgot she had other problems far greater than wondering at intentions. “Come, Papa, let’s find Cooper and get you back to bed.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Excuse me, my lord,” Boyle said from the doorway, looking not at the marquess nor at the curiously attired duke but at the ceiling, though not with the studious expression of one enraptured by the view but rather the detachment of one who doesn’t wish to acknowledge what he is actually seeing.
“What is it, Boyle?” Ian asked in exasperation, not at all appreciative of another interruption. The turn of events just moments ago required some discussion, or at least reflection. Courting? He wondered at the word. At the truth of it.
The butler hesitated uncertainly as Beaumont frowned and went to wind up the music box. “It seems you have guests.”
“So I said,” the duke boomed out. “Didn’t I just say so?”
Ian shot a surprised look at Hero, who appeared more relieved that her father hadn’t drifted into true madness after all. “At this late hour? That’s unusual. Isn’t it?”
“Very unusual,” she confirmed. “Who is it, Boyle?”
The butler’s lips pursed in the manner of a man who’s just bitten into a lemon. “It is Miss Kennedy, my lord. And her brother, Mr. Camron Kennedy.”
“Oh,” Hero pursed her lips similarly and darted a look at Ian, who seemed neither puzzled nor disturbed by the names. “Have you met?”
“We have.” He nodded. “Miss Kennedy was…er, in residence when I arrived a month ago.”
“In residence?” Hero darted a look from the marquess to the butler, who had the look of a man who wanted badly to speak his mind but was putting tremendous effort into not doing so. She looked back at Ian expectantly.
“Miss Kennedy had assumed the title a bit prematurely when Robert’s solicitor, Mr. Nash, had troubles locating me,” Ian finally said diplomatically but she understood what he was saying.
Scottish law did allow for a woman to inherit a title, and Daphne Kennedy, as the oldest child of Robert’s only sibling—his deceased sister Lucille—assumed that she did have a valid claim to the marquessate when Nash failed to promptly produce a direct male heir. Ian had told her that it had taken them almost a year to locate him in Greece, and she imagined Daphne had been eager to assume the worst, arriving at Dùn Cuilean and settling in during the interim.
Hero would be willing to wager her entire widow’s jointure that Daphne had been extremely disgruntled by Ian’s appearance. Frowning at Boyle, she scolded, “You didn’t write me of this.”
“In truth, I dared not, my lady,” Boyle said. “Miss Kennedy threatened to let the entire staff go if Mrs. Potts or I did anything to defy her authority. Without Mr. Jennings’s support against her, there was little I could do.”
“Mr. Jennings stood in support of her claim?”
Ian answered that. “I gather she’d given him some reason to believe that I would never be found.”
Hero snorted, crossing her arms over her chest. “I can imagine thereason.”
