Page 10 of To Defy a Highland Duke

From the carefully passive look on her face and the slightly hurt and uneasy gleam in her pretty eyes, it happened often enough that she’d learned to conceal her distress.

Alone in a foreign country in a household of people she didn’t know.

Much like his mother, except Mother, at least, had been a Scot.

He may not have ever known his mother, but what he’d heard of her bore the makings of a Shakespearian tragedy. She’d been despoiled—forced to marry a man she didn’t know and had no desire to wed. Afterward, a vengeful Gordan Buchannan had ignored and disdained her. Frail and homesick, and utterly unhappy, his mother had died at the tender age of eighteen, a mere month after Keane’s birth.

To this day, the ugly whispers he’d heard of his pathetic mother’s suffering rested like a festering glob in his gut.

His father had done nothing to make a difficult situation tolerable, either.

Pulling on his earlobe, he surreptitiously observed Marjorie.

How long had she lived in Scotland anyway?

Why hadn’t she returned to England when Sion died?

“Your home is magnificent, Your Grace. I’m sure there’s a great deal of history attached to the keep.” And there she went, making polite conversation to fill the yawning gap caused by the other Kennedys deserting her mere minutes after their arrival.

Did she always do what was polite and expected?

Lorne and Bothan excused themselves from the Highlanders they’d been conversing with. Faces wreathed in too bright smiles and their boot heels clacking noisily on the stone floor, they shoved and elbowed a path to Keane.

Eager for an introduction, were they?

Keane was of half a mind to take Marjorie by the arm and lead her from the room. Instead, he reflexively fisted his hands at the distinct male interest Lorne levied at Marjorie from his bulgy, thickly hooded eyes.

Thank God, Keane hadn’t inherited that particular Buchannan trait.

For her part, Marjorie’s attention remained on her surprisingly well-behaved daughters. After Keane’s first encounter with the lasses, he’d suspected they were indulged and cosseted. Spoiled by their mother, perhaps out of a misplaced sense of guilt that they were fatherless.

Observing the docile lasses, their eyes wide and inquisitive as they examined the hall, he furrowed his brow slightly. He might’ve jumped to an unwarranted conclusion, and a stab of guilt at his hasty judgment pricked him.

The girls before him were not impudent, ill-behaved imps.

He observed Marjorie as she took in the great hall, offering a reserved smile now and again. How could he not admire her poise? Her self-possession?

When he’d stepped from the keep and seen her, face upturned and breasts pointing skyward, awe had fleetingly overcome him. And he, Keane Evan Sloan Buchannan, sixth Duke of Roxdale, did not awe easily. In truth, he didn’t give place to worthless emotion or sentiment. Hence his momentary lapse when he’d first seen her outside his keep had proved all the more disconcerting.

True, he’d believed her attractive at Killeaggian Tower last August. Her mass of brilliant red hair, reflecting bronze and copper and every hue of the sunset, held him in thrall. Though red-haired women were supposed to be bad luck, her brilliant hair made the risk worthwhile.

Tall and slender, she possessed gently rounded curves in all the places a man yearned to smooth his palm over and trail his lips across. Satiny warm, soft places. Places that held delicious secrets, tantalizing sensations, and delectable promises. Her thick-lashed eyes, a shade between treacle and rich whisky, revealed kindness but also suffering.

She was attractive in an unaffected way. But when she smiled—God help him. Her smile transformed her into a blinding, mesmerizing beauty. When he’d seen her in the courtyard, her silky lashes fanning her creamy cheeks and her face a picture of serenity as snowflakes swirled around her, he’d been struck dumb.

She’d been like a fairy princess or an ethereal being.

Then she opened her eyelids and her magnificent gaze had tangled with his. And for several interminable heartbeats, something powerful and undefinable had traveled between them.

At last, his common sense had returned, slamming him back to reality, and Keane had deliberately skewed his mouth in a sardonic manner certain to put her on her guard.

Never again would a Kennedy accuse a Buchannan of unwanted or untoward attentions.

Even after Keane’s birth, and until his dying day, the former duke had privately vowed he wasn’t Keane’s father. As his mother had died when he was scarcely a month old, he’d never known the truth of his conception.

However, the man the world considered his father could scarcely stand to look upon him. When Gordan Buchannan, fifth Duke of Roxdale, breathed his last, Keane had grieved for what had never been and what could never be, not for the man’s death. A bitter, unforgiving curmudgeon who wouldn’t even permit Keane to call him father but demanded he address him as Yer Grace, so great had been his rancor toward his heir.

A niggling suspicion had always plagued Keane. A perpetual doubt he’d never voiced.