Page 96 of The Trouble With Dukes

He propped his fists on his hips. “That is the most skillful ambush I have ever seen, Meggie Windham. And you lot”—he glowered at polite society—“don’t you know it’s rude to stare? Where are your manners?”

He held his arms wide, and Megan flew to him as if she’d been shot forth from Cupid’s bow. Applause started from the minstrel’s gallery and became a deafening thunder as Hamish whirled her off her feet and scooped her into his arms.

“You routed the varlet, Meggie mine,” he growled. “Sent him packing with his tail between his legs. You are magnificent.”

“You’re here. I was so worried, and you were here all along.”

“I am here,” Hamish said, setting her on her feet, “with you, exactly as I always hope to be, but unless I want a certain duke—or a certain duchess—to skewer me where I stand, I have a bit of an ambush of my own to conduct.”

“Don’t kill Sir Fletcher, Hamish. I know he’s a disgrace, but he’s not worth—”

“Hush now. I had Puget pen a passionate letter in Sir Fletcher’s hand to a certain lovely viscountess. Alas, the letter will be delivered to her jealous husband by mistake. By sundown tomorrow, Sir Fletcher will be on a packet to Calais.”

“That was brilliant,” Megan said, going up on tiptoe to kiss her beloved. “Noon would be better, though, or at first light. How early does the first packet leave?”

Rather than answer her question, Hamish went down on one knee, right in the middle of the ballroom. He bowed his head as if he were a knight in some medieval ceremony, and just like that, the ballroom was silent again.

“Hamish, what are you doing?” All the joy Megan had felt in his arms became muted with bewilderment.

He took her bare hand in his. “I’m ambushing you, more or less, which is only fair, because you ambushed me first. Miss Megan Windham, you have not known me long, but you know my heart and have made that heart whole. I love you. I will always love you. Will you … Will youpleasemarry me?”

“For God’s sake, say yes!” somebody—who sounded suspiciously like Uncle Percy—bellowed. The rest of the gathering took up the chant, and resumed clapping and stomping, but none of that mattered.

What mattered was that Hamish was hers, and Megan was his.

“I’ll marry you,” Megan said, drawing him to his feet and bundling close. “Gladly, joyously, of course I’ll marry you. I love you, and you have made my heart whole too. We’ll have red-haired babies, and sing the lovely old songs, and on cold nights, we’ll have a wee dram to ward off the chill. They’ll call us duke and duchess of marital bliss.”

“We’ll have each other to ward off the chill, Meggie. Make no mistake about that.”

As it happened, they were both right—except that often, they had more than a single wee dram, and some of the songs they sang were on the bawdy side of lovely—but Megan and Hamish MacHugh were, indeed, known as the duke and duchess of marital bliss.