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Grace could not manage more than a smile in response. She finished the peas and headed up to her bedchamber, worried her hands would begin to shake if she had nothing to occupy them.

She paused at the entrance to her room when she saw an unfamiliar gown draped over the end of the bed. It was beautiful, done in the same blues and browns as that blanket she was always wearing about like it was clothing. The hues would have looked sepulchral in a London ballroom, but here, in the moody skies of the north, it felt right. Grace loved it at once with a nearly absurd passion, given it was just a frock.

But it wasn’t just a frock, for next to it, in a hand she knew innately to be her husband’s, was a note.

Wear this to the banquet.

It was high handed and absurd—which meant, of course, that it was Caleb through and through. She found herself crushing the note to her chest before she could stop herself.

The note was secretive, too—which was also like her husband, she was increasingly coming to learn. Because no matter how many times she read it, she could not tell if this meant that he was still sending her off to the banquet on her own, albeit with his blessing, or if maybe, just maybe, he’d heard her when she’d encouraged him to try a different way.

CHAPTER 12

“Ye look fine in Blackmuir colors, if ye daenae mind me sayin’ it, Yer Grace.”

Grace looked up from patting her hair nervously at Mrs. O’Mailey’s words.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked.

Mrs. O’Mailey blinked innocently, something she did not even remotely pull off convincingly.

“Oh, did ye not realize that yon brown and blues are the color of the Blackmuir family tartan? His Grace’s maither’s family, ye ken.”

Grace hadnotrealized this, as Mrs. O’Mailey transparently knew.

“Thank you so much for mentioning this right as I’m about to leave for the banquet,” she said sweetly. “I had thought that the evening was incomplete without another heaping dose of nerves.”

“I live to serve, Yer Grace,” the woman said dryly, looking highly amused and not even bothering to hide it.

Grace thought she even heard a laugh as the woman hurried to busy herself with putting away a packet of hairpins.

Well, this was going to drive her perfectly insane, wasn’t it? Was sending her off in his house’s colors a matter of marking his claim on the wife he’d bought himself, or was it more than that? Except, of course, they were nothishouse’s colors, they were hismother’shouse’s colors. What did that mean? Given the whole debacle with the portrait gallery, not to mention her husband’s overall secrecy about his past, there was clearlysomethingbetween him and his Montgomery forefathers, but what?

Did he have the same issue with his mother’s family? It seemed not, but she didn’tknow.

Questions, she thought, drumming her fingers irritably against her dressing table.I have so many, many questions, and there are no answers in sight.

Mrs. O’Mailey hummed through the end of Grace’s toilette, entirely unperturbed by Grace’s scowl. Though, Grace supposed, the woman would have to be entirely immune to dourexpressions by now, given that she’d known Caleb nearly all his life.

Tonight, she resolved, she would not think about any of it. Tonight, she would enjoy the company of the various local people, eat, drink, and be merry. And if anyone shot her curious looks or asked why she was attending alone? Well, Grace would contract a very convenient case of temporary deafness.

And surely,surelyvarious gentry, merchants, or other well-to-do locals would not be sufficiently up to date on Scottish clan tartans to recognize that the colors of Grace’s dress meant anything? Grace hadn’t even put together when she’d looked directly at the wool blanket every night for the last nine days (not that she was counting).

She would be fine. Fine. Absolutely fine.

“Why do ye look like ye’re suckin’ on a lemon?”

Grace blinked. Caleb was, as usual, scowling. But why was he scowlinghere, in the front entrance of their home?

“Um,” she said. “Good evening. I am going to the banquet.” She gestured down to the dress.

His scowl intensified. “Aye. I know. That doesnae account for why ye look so sour. Ye needn’t go if it makes ye so miserable as all that.”

“Um,” she said again, because dear Lord above, her husband was fully decked out in formal wear, including a kilt in the same colors of the gown that she herself wore. On top, he wore his crisp red military officer’s jacket, which was partially obscured by another drape of plaid over one shoulder. He looked immense and sturdy andstrong,and it put Grace horrifyingly in mind of the way he had slung one of her knees over his broad shoulders while he had…

“You’re in uniform,” she finished, feeling like an utter idiot.

“Aye,” he said, like he, too, considered her the biggest fool north of London. Then he glanced down. “Well, mostly. I’d nae wear my plaid like this. That’s fair askin’ for disaster when ye’re facin’ battle. But otherwise aye.” His eyes flashed. “And if ye’re about to say that I’m out of the army now, and a duke, well then ye’d just best shut yer pretty little?—”