The Duke and I (13 page)

 "Is that Colin?" Anthony interrupted, his voice strangled.

 Violet blinked, then squinted her eyes. "Why, yes, it is. Isn't it lovely that he returned early? I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw him an hour ago. In fact, I—"

 'I'd better go to him," Anthony said quickly. "He looks lonely. Goodbye, Mother."

 Violet watched as Anthony ran off, presumably to escape her chattering lecture. "Silly boy," she murmured to herself. None of her children seemed to be on toany of her tricks. Just blather on about nothing in particular, and she could be rid of any of them in a trice.

 She let out a satisfied sigh and resumed her watch of her daughter, now on the other side of the ballroom, her hand nestled comfortably in the crook of the duke's elbow. They made a most handsome couple.

 Yes, Violet thought, her eyes growing misty, her daughter would make an excellent duchess.

 Then she let her gaze wander briefly over to Anthony, who was now right where she wanted him—out of her hair. She

allowed herself a secret smile. Children were so easy to manage.

 Then her smile turned to a frown as she noticed Daphne walking back toward her—on the arm of another man. Violet's

eyes immediately scanned the ballroom until she found the duke.

 Dash it all, what the devil was he doing dancing with Penelope Featherington?

 Chapter 6

 It has been reported to This Author that the Duke of Hastings mentioned no fewer than six times yestereve that he has no plans to marry. If his intention was to discourage the Ambitious Mamas, he made a grave error in judgment. They will simply view his remarks as the greatest of challenges .

 And in an interesting side note, his half dozen anti-matrimony remarks were all uttered before he made the acquaintance of the lovely and sensible Miss (Daphne) Bridgerton.

 Lady Whistledown's Society Papers,30 April 1813

 The following afternoon found Simon standing on the front steps of Daphne's home, one hand rapping the brass knocker on the door, the other wrapped around a large bouquet of fiendishly expensive tulips. It hadn't occurred to him that his little charade might require his attention during the daylight hours, but during their stroll about the ballroom the previous night, Daphne had sagely pointed out that if he did not call upon her the next day, no one—least of all her mother— would truly believe he was interested. Simon accepted her words as truth, allowingthatDaphne almost certainly had more knowledge in this area of etiquette than he did. He'd dutifully found some flowers and trudged across Grosvenor Square to Bridgerton House. He'd never courted a respectable woman before, so the ritual was foreign to him.

 The door was opened almost immediately by the Bridgertons' butler. Simon gave him his card. The butler, a tall thin man with a hawkish nose, looked at it for barely a quarter second before nodding, and murmuring, "Right this way, your grace."

 Clearly, Simon thought wryly, he had been expected.

 What was unexpected, however, was the sight that awaited him when he was shown into the Bridgertons' drawing room. Daphne, a vision in ice-blue silk
,
perched on the edge of Lady Bridgerton's green damask sofa, her face decorated with another one of those wide wide smiles.

 It would have been a lovely sight, had she not been surrounded by at least a half dozen men, one of whom had actually descended to one knee, gales of poetry spewing from his mouth.Judging from the florid nature of the prose, Simon fully expected a rosebush to sprout from the nitwit's mouth at any moment.

 The entire scene, Simon decided, was most disagreeable.

 He fixed his gaze on Daphne, who was directing her magnificent smile at the buffoon reciting poetry, and waited for her to acknowledge him.

 She didn't.

 Simon looked down at his free hand and noticed that it was curled into a tight fist. He scanned the room slowly, trying to decide on which man's face to use it.

 Daphne smiled again, and again not at him.

 The idiot poet. Definitely the idiot poet. Simontilted his head slightly to the side as he analyzed the young swain's face.

Would his fist fit best in the right eye socket or the left? Or maybe that was too violent. Maybe a light clip to the chin would be more appropriate. At the very least, it might actually shut the man up.

 'This one," the poet announced grandly, "I wrote in your honor last night."

 Simon groaned. The last poem he had recognized as a rather grandiose rendition of a Shakespearean sonnet, but an original work was more than he could bear.

 "Your grace!"

 Simon looked up to realize that Daphne had finally noticed that he had entered, the room.

 He nodded regally, his cool look very much at odds with the puppy-dog faces of her other suitors. "Miss Bridgerton."

 "How lovely to see you," she said, a delighted smile crossing her face.

 Ah, that was more like it. Simon straightened the flowers and started to walk toward her, only to realize that there were

three young suitors in his path, and none appeared inclined to move. Simon pierced the first one with his haughtiest stare, which caused the boy—really, he looked all of twenty, hardly old enough to be called a
man
—to cough in a most

unattractive manner and scurry off to an unoccupied window seat.

 Simon moved forward, ready to repeat the procedure with the next annoying young man, when the viscountess suddenly stepped into his path, wearing a dark blue frock and a smile that might possibly rival Daphne's in its brightness.

 "Your grace!" she said excitedly. "What a pleasure to see you. You honor us with your presence."

 "I could hardly imagine myself anywhere else," Simon murmured as he took her gloved hand andkissed it. "Your daughter is an exceptional young lady."

 The viscountess sighed contentedly. "And such lovely, lovely flowers," she said, once she was finished with her little revel of maternal pride. "Are they from Holland? They must have been terribly dear."

 "Mother!" Daphne said sharply. She extricated her hand from the grasp of a particularly energetic suitor and made her way over. "What can the duke possibly say to that?"

 "I could tell her how much I paid for them," he said with a devilish half-smile.

 "You wouldn't."

 He leaned forward, lowering his voice so that only Daphne could hear. "Didn't you remind me last night that I'm a duke?" he murmured. "I thought you told me I could do anything I wanted."

 "Yes, but not that," Daphne said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "You would never be so crass."

 "Of course the duke would not be crass!" her mother exclaimed, clearly horrified that Daphne would even mention the word in his presence. "What are you talking about? Why would he be crass?"

 "The flowers," Simon said. "The cost. Daphne thinks I shouldn't tell you."

 "Tell me later," the viscountess whispered out of the side of her mouth, "when she's not listening." Then she moved back over to the green damask sofa where Daphne had been sitting with her suitors and cleared it out in under three seconds. Simon had to admire the military precision with which she managed the maneuver.

 "There now," the viscountess said. "Isn't that convenient? Daphne, why don't you and the duke sit right there?"

 "You mean where Lord Railmont and Mr. Crane were sitting just moments ago?" Daphne asked innocently.

 "Precisely," her mother replied, with what Simon considered to be an admirable lack of obvious sarcasm. "Besides,

Mr. Crane said that he has to meet his mother at Gunter's at three."

 Daphne glanced at the clock. "It's only two, Mother."

 "The traffic," Violet said with a sniff, "is nothing short of dreadful these days. Far too many horses on the road."

 "It ill becomes a man," Simon said, getting into the spirit of the conversation, "to keep his mother waiting."

 "Well said, your grace." Violet beamed. "You can be sure that I have expressed that very same sentiment to my own children."

 "And in case you're not sure," Daphne said with a smile, "I'd be happy to vouch for her."

 Violet merely smiled. "If anyone should know, it would be you, Daphne. Now, if you will excuse me, I have business to attend to. Oh, Mr. Crane! Mr. Crane! Your mother would never forgive me if I did not shoo you out in time." She bustled off, taking the hapless Mr. Crane by the arm and leading him toward the door, barely giving him time to say farewell.

 Daphne turned to Simon with an amused expression. "I can't quite decide if she is being terribly polite or exquisitely rude."

 "Exquisitely polite, perhaps?" Simon asked mildly.

 She shook her head. "Oh, definitely not that."

 "The alternative, of course, is—"

 "Terribly rude?" Daphne grinned and watched as her mother looped her arm through Lord Railmont's, pointed him toward Daphne so that he could nod his goodbye, and led him from the room. And then,as if by magic, the remaining beaux murmured their hasty farewells and followed suit.

 "Remarkably efficient, isn't she?" Daphne murmured.

 "Your mother? She's a marvel."

 "She'll be back, of course."

 "Pity. And here I thought I had you well and truly in my clutches."

 Daphne laughed. "I don't know how anyone considered you a rake. Your sense of humor is far too superb."

 "And here we rakes thought we were so wickedly droll."

 "A rake's humor," Daphne stated, "is essentially cruel."

 Her comment surprised him. He stared at her intently, searching her brown eyes, and yet not really knowing what it was he was looking for. There was a narrow ring of green just outside her pupils, the color as deep and rich as moss. He'd never seen her in the daylight before, he realized.

 "Your grace?" Daphne's quiet voice snapped him out of his daze.

 Simon blinked. "I beg your pardon."

 "You looked a thousand miles away," she said, her brow wrinkling.

 "I've been a thousand miles away." He fought the urge to return his gaze to her eyes. "This is entirely different."

 Daphne let out a little laugh, the sound positively musical. "You have, haven't you? And here I've never even been past Lancashire. What a provincial I must seem."

 He brushed aside her remark. "You must forgive my woolgathering. We were discussing my lack of humor, I believe.”

 "We were not, and you well know it." Her hands found their way to her hips. "I specifically told you that you were in possession of a sense of humor far superior to that of the average rake."

 One of his brows lifted in a rather superior manner. "And you wouldn't classify your brothers as rakes?"

 "They only
think
they are rakes," she corrected. "There is a considerable difference."

 Simon snorted. "If Anthony isn't a rake, I pity the woman who meets the man who is."

 "There is more to being a rake than seducing legions of women," Daphne said blithely. "If a man can't do more than poke his tongue into a woman's mouth and kiss—"

 Simon felt his throat close up, but somehow he managed to sputter, "You should not be speaking of such things."

 She shrugged.

 "You shouldn't even
know
about them," he grunted.

 "Four brothers," she said by way of an explanation. "Well, three, I suppose. Gregory is too young to count."

 "Someone ought to tell them to hold their tongues around you."

 She shrugged again, this time with only one shoulder. "Half the time they don't even notice I'm there."

 Simon couldn't imagine
that
.

 "But we seem to have veered away from the Original Subject," she said. "All I meant to say is that a rake's humor has its basis in cruelty. He needs a victim, for he cannot imagine ever laughing at himself. You, your grace, are rather clever with the self-deprecating remark."

 "I just don't know whether to thank you or throttle you.

 "Throttle me? Good heavens, why?" She laughed again, a rich, throaty sound that Simon felt deep in his gut.

 He exhaled slowly, the long whoosh of air just barely steadying his pulse. If she continued laughing, he wasn't going to be able to answer to the consequences.

 But she just kept looking at him, her wide mouth curved into one of those smiles that looked as if it were perpetually on the verge of laughter.

 "I am going to throttle you," he growled, "on general principle."

 "And what principle is that?"

 "The general principle of
man,"
he blustered.

 Her brows lifted dubiously. "As opposed to the general principle of woman?"

 Simon looked around. "Where is your brother? You're far too cheeky. Surely someone needs to take you in hand."

 "Oh, I'm sure you'll be seeing more of Anthony. In fact I'm rather surprised he hasn't made an appearance yet. He was

quite irate last night. I was forced to listen to a full hour's lecture on your many faults and sins."