He raised his free hand and brushed cold, impersonal fingers across her mouth.
Meghan shook her head—grateful beyond measure that August had not claimed her lips as he had her wrist. Had he marked her mouth, she would have borne the evidence plainly. And she was a terrible liar.
The duke studied her, his gaze intent and unreadable.
He finally spoke. “I believe there is only one way to ascertain,” he murmured. “Kiss me.”
His was another ducal command.
Her stomach fell. “K-kiss you?”
“Yes. Get on with it, Miss Smith.”
Stiffly, Meghan leaned close. Her heart lodged in her throat as she forced herself to place her lips against his. His remained rigid and unyielding beneath hers.
She eased away at once.
His expression met hers—dark with amusement. And beneath it, something else. Satisfaction.
“Very good,” he said. “Miss Smith, you will do.”
He patted her back as one might a child who had earned praise, then set her off his lap. This time, he opened the carriage door himself, stepped down, and assisted her after him.
She’d be damned if she scurried off like a chastened child. She had run enough this night. She’d have the final words—with none at all.
Meghan pushed her shoulders back and proceeded in measured steps.
And yet, all the while, the voice of reason in her head screamed at her to run—from him, from the marriage awaiting her.
Chapter 6
Culross had never been more eager for an offensive.
Everything lay within his reach.
On the dawn of his most ruthless undertaking yet, Culross would take it all. He would once and for all end the line that the Tremaines, McQuoids, and Ellsbys had drawn around him.
The younger women would weep. Meghan, however, would not break. She was his.
Some might claim revenge drove Culross. They would be wrong. Revenge was a child’s game.
Power and control were what compelled him.
From aboard his mount Kraken, he scanned the horizon.
Snow fell without sound.
It muffled the road, the trees, the world itself—pressing everything into stillness. Culross stood just beyond the reach of moonlight, the dark of the trees swallowing him whole. Breath left his mouth in a thin plume of white. He did not move.
The Roman road lay before him, narrow and unforgiving. One way in. One way out.
Snow this early, while the sky remained pitch black and the moon hung low, felt almost deliberate. As though that absurd German fable of St. Nicholas and his Yuletide indulgences had conspired in his favor. Only instead of sweetmeats and sugared plums, Culross had been handed the keys to a kingdom.
With the aid of his two most loyal crewmen, he had designed a three-pronged assault to abduct the last three unmarried McQuoid sisters and prevent them from ever being used as pawns again.
Since forming the plan, he had been filled with a restless, sharpened anticipation.
A church bell tolled somewhere in the distance—low, hollow. It carried through the trees and faded, leaving silence in its wake. Culross welcomed it. Silence revealed more than noise ever could.
