The Pretender by Jaclyn Reding Page A

subsequent rescue of his daughter, two hours during which Douglas had walked the periphery and intersecting pathways of the duke’s knot garden, and then, because he didn’t have anything else to do, had walked them all again.
    He hadn’t seen Elizabeth since the incident in the study with the urn. When peace had been restored and the broken porcelain had been swept away, she’d followed her sisters from the room without giving him a backward glance. Douglas told himself to be glad of her indifference, that whenever she was near, trouble wasn’t far behind. The less he saw of her then, the better.
    Several times, however, while he’d been walking in the garden, a small part of him almost seemed to sense her presence on the gentle waft of the breeze, as if she were there but somehow hidden from view. Once, he even thought he’d caught a glimpse of her passing by a window, but decided it was probably nothing more than the flutter of a curtain, a shift of the light.
    As for her father, Sudeleigh had also retreated after their meeting and had yet to give Douglas an answer tothe proposal he’d made. After he’d freed the wee lassie from the urn, the man had said simply he needed time to consider it more closely and had holed himself up behind the closed door of his study ever since.
    If there was one thing Douglas didn’t have, it was time. He was needed at home, had been gone from there too long, and with or without the duke’s blessing, married or no, he had every intention of resuming his journey home on the morrow.
    As he neared the drawing room door, Douglas happened to catch a glimpse of himself in the hall pier glass. He was unshaven, his clothing rumpled from two days’ wear, and his shoes looked as if they’d just walked all the way from London, which indeed they had. It was no wonder they all looked on him as they had. He looked every bit the shabby, impoverished, barbaric Scot they believed him to be. But then, when he’d set out from London a handful of days before, he’d never expected he’d find himself calling at the home of the Duke of Sudeleigh. Nor had he expected to end up the man’s son-in-law, either.
    Only the duke and another gentleman, whose back was to Douglas, were present in the drawing room when he arrived. Douglas hesitated in the doorway, taking in their rich coats, tailored knee breeches, and polished shoes. Absently he ran a hand back through his hair to neaten it.
    “Ah, MacKinnon, there you are,” said Sudeleigh. “Allow me to introduce you to—”
    “Douglas! Good God, is that you?”
    “Allan,” Douglas answered, genuinely taken aback atthe sight of a familiar face in such an unfamiliar surrounding.
    It had been probably a dozen years or more since the two had seen each other, but there was no mistaking that square jaw and dimpled chin, the shrewd dark eyes that caught every detail, sign of the true artist himself. The two men shook hands warmly. “This is unexpected,” Douglas said.
    “I should say it is.”
    “You are acquainted with Mr. MacKinnon, Ramsay?” asked the duke.
    “Aye, your grace. We were at university together.”
    “University?” The man looked incredulous, as if the artist had just told him they’d once met on the face of the moon.
    “As a matter of fact, your grace,” said the artist, “Douglas’s uncle, the MacKinnon chief, was the subject of one of my first skilled portraits. I traveled all the way to Skye just to paint him. A great man he is, Iain Dubh MacKinnon.” Ramsay looked at Douglas. “How do things fare at Dunakin?”
    “Not well, I’m afraid. I’ve just learned we lost young Iain at Culloden.”
    Ramsay’s expression dimmed. “ ’Tis a terrible loss. So young. But try, if you can, to take heart in his passing. Your brother was a warrior in every sense of the word and left this world in the way he would have wanted. Fighting.”
    “Aye, what you say is true.” Noticing the duke’s interest, Douglas quickly turned the