He shrugged into his waistcoat. Devon knew there had to be other unsuitable women to dally with, though he doubted any of the others possessed the creamy skin, red-gold hair, or pure audacity of the one he’d let escape.

Damn. He turned his back on the ring and pulled his boots from beneath the bed, grimacing at the mud on the once shiny leather. Sighing, he crossed to a window and opened it, pausing as he leaned out to dust his boots onto the gardens below. The scent of the flowers and herbs rose to meet him. For all the mismanagement inside Kilkairn Castle, the gardens were glorious. The green of the grass reminded him of the eyes of the wench who’d kicked him.

Damn. I’m doing it again. Apparently he had a weakness for women with green eyes and pointed shoes. He closed the window, then held up his boots to the light. They were now mudless, but covered in some sort of gray grime. Tipton would not be pleased.

Devon swiped them with the hand towel on the night table, stomped his feet into the boots, and shrugged into his coat. The sooner he lured the serving maid into his bed, the sooner he could relax and stop worrying he might meet a paragon of feminine virtues—the exact type of woman one might feel compelled to marry.

A woman he might not be able to refuse.

Fate might be conspiring against him, but she had not beaten him yet. Devon whistled softly to himself as he stepped out of the cozy confines of the room into the hallway, pausing a moment to get his bearings.

If he had thought Kilkairn Castle disreputable during his brief view of it the night before, it was even more forlorn in the bright sunlight. At first glance, the wide stone-lined hallway benefited from a brace of large, high-set windows, the tall ceiling arching gracefully over a set of elaborate iron chandeliers. But closer inspection revealed the layering of dust that piled in the corners of the hall, and the thick bracket of cobwebs that stretched from cornice to chandelier bracket. He followed a particularly long cobweb where it stretched down to the corner of the rug that ran the center of the hallway. In all probability, the runner had once been a rich red, though now it was an indiscriminate brown.

All told, it was a strange state of affairs considering that while at Eton, Malcolm had been so fastidious about his possessions that he’d taken a ribbing from his classmates on more than one occasion. It had taken the force of Malcolm’s hot fists and ready temper to silence most of the naysayers.