This Duke is Mine (18 page)

“That’s irrelevant,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean to—at any rate, it’s completely irrelevant.”

“No, it’s not. She’s here because my mother invited her.”

Olivia nodded.

“It’s not as if we were looking her over, like a horse at Tattersall’s,” he said somewhat defensively. “My first marriage went very poorly. My mother is anxious that I don’t repeat the mistake.”

Olivia touched his cheek, as lightly as a breath, but still her fingertips tingled. “Georgiana would never betray you.”

“So you have heard the gossip?” His eyes were shuttered.

“My maid mentioned your former wife’s reputation.”

“Evangeline earned her reputation, I’m afraid.” There was no shame, or condemnation in his voice. “I believe we had better continue to the stables, Miss Lytton. My aunt, not to mention young Justin, will grow restless if they are kept waiting in the pony cart.”

Olivia again took his arm. Her knees felt weak.

“I take it, then, that Montsurrey has your loyalty.”

She nodded, but realized he was looking straight ahead, and said, “Yes.” It came out a croak. “He—he would be very hurt if I were to . . . It wouldn’t do.”

“A very English response,” he said, glancing down at her. “It wouldn’t
do
. But you’re right. The very worst thing any man could do to another, especially one serving his country, would be to steal his future wife. Perhaps when he has returned safely, we might discuss this further?”

“You and I scarcely know each other,” Olivia said, keeping her voice steady only with effort.

“I want to get to know you better. That’s the point of the conversation.” His voice was dark, husky.

Georgiana’s hopeful face swam before Olivia’s eyes. She drew herself together. Rupert was one thing, but Georgiana was her twin, her other half. And she felt instinctively that her sister was right: this man was perfect for Georgie. Not for Olivia.

“One doesn’t marry on the basis of madness,” she said, dropping a cool edge into her voice.

He took another few steps without a word. Silence . . . silence just made Olivia even more conscious of the powerful body next to her.
Brother-in-law
, she said to herself.

“So are you familiar with this sort of madness?” His voice was colorless. “Does it come often to you?”

Like his wife. That’s what he’s thinking. She opened her mouth to deny it—and thought again. “Rupert and I have been betrothed since his birth. Of course I have not . . .” She tried again. “Neither of us had a choice of spouse. We both understood fidelity was not part of our fathers’ pact, at least before marriage.”

They were rounding the corner of the stables now. A stable boy peeked out the door, then popped back inside, followed by the clop of horse’s shoes as a dappled mare emerged into the sunshine.

“I’ll put you on your mount,” the duke said.

He led her to the mare, then put his hands on her waist. For a moment they both froze. His hands tightened, and he lifted her carefully up to the saddle.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” she murmured, slipping her leg around the pommel and tweaking her skirts.

“I prefer to be called Quin.”

Startled, she looked down at him. “That would be quite improper.”

“ ‘Improper’ would be if I pulled you off this horse in front of four servants and kissed you senseless.”

“You can’t!” she squeaked.

“I can.” He said it calmly enough. “And I can only assume that it wouldn’t disturb you,
Olivia
, given that you just characterized yourself as an accomplished flirt . . . to put your description in the best possible light.”

What was she supposed to say to that? “
‘Miss Lytton’ to you
?” The duke had already turned away and leapt on his horse in one smooth movement. He was angry: she could see the contained fury in his body, in the way his cheekbones looked even more sharply masculine than usual.

But she didn’t know how to respond. Everything in her—except her pride and loyalty—longed to reach out, touch his hand, catch his sleeve. Give him a feverish look, somehow, anyhow, lure him back so that he would kiss her again like that. As if she were desirable. Sensual.

Olivia glanced down and caught sight of her own leg curved around the pommel. The sight jolted her back to her senses. He wanted her now, for some reason.

But she was fat. Her leg was fat. He hadn’t seen that yet, somehow. He’d overlooked it, but he wouldn’t—
couldn’t
—if they were ever in a state of undress together.

The thought made her stomach pitch, but she welcomed the faint queasiness. It was a call to reason. Quin would be happy with Georgiana. He would forget this nonsense, this “forest fire,” as he called it.

She smiled at the stable boy holding her horse’s reins. “Will you keep Lucy for me until I return? I do believe she thinks there might be rats in the stable.”

“She’d be right,” the boy said promptly. Lucy was nosing around at the wall, her tail stiff with delight.

“Find them,” Olivia suggested.

He grinned and handed over the reins. She deftly tightened them, nudged the mare, and set out after the duke. Quin.

They reached the house by a road that rounded a bend and placed them before the house. Littlebourne Manor had a magisterial façade, she realized, paying attention to it for the first time.

Rather than sprawling in many directions, like so many ancestral mansions that had been added to in bits and pieces, it stood upright, trim and perfectly symmetrical, surrounded by immaculately manicured lawns.

It was too neat for her. Each feature had its exact duplicate on the opposite side: windows, gables, chimneys.

“What do you think?” the duke asked, as she drew up her horse.

“It’s too orderly for my taste,” she said, with a wave of her hand at the windows marching along like tin soldiers. “I’m a quite haphazard person.”

“What does haphazard mean in architectural terms?” he asked. But she could see Lady Cecily and Justin waiting for them, so she put her mare to a trot.

“I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting, Lady Cecily,” she said, bending down once she reached the pony cart.

“You should be apologizing to
me
,” Justin said with some indignation. “Aunt Cecily arrived only a moment ago, whereas I’ve had time to write an entire roundel. It’s not bad either, if I say so myself.” He waved a piece of foolscap at them.

“I will look forward to hearing it,” Olivia said. “How is your ankle, Lady Cecily?”

“Excellent well! I put a poulder on it that I bought in Venice two years ago. The medicine is so powerful that it kept Helen herself young. And it’s particularly for bones; I remember that the man selling it—’twas on the square before Saint Mark’s—said that it would set your teeth and make them dance like the keys of a harpsichord. And so it did, though of course, it was my ankle, not my teeth.”

“We’ll go to Ladybird Ridge,” the duke said to Justin. “Endeavor not to tip the cart over, if you can help it.”

“It would be impossible to tip this thing over,” Justin said, looking disgusted. “Now, if you’d let me drive your phaeton, I would at least having a sporting chance to roll it—”

The duke didn’t bother to answer, instead turning to Olivia. “Shall we?”

“I wish your dear sister were with us,” Lady Cecily called up to Olivia. “I gather that she has a headache, so I sent her a dose of this poulder as well. It’s as precious as gold, I assure you, so I’m quite sure that she’s already feeling herself again. Should we send indoors and ask if she’d like to join us?”

“No,” the duke said, before Olivia could respond. “We’re leaving now.” And he wheeled his horse. It was a great black gelding that pranced forward and made a halfhearted attempt to shake him off.

Olivia turned her mare and followed.

Fourteen

The Flight of the Cherry Kite

O
f course
Olivia was no stranger to flirtation, let alone lust, Quin said to himself. It made complete sense. One didn’t need to conduct a third experiment to prove this hypothesis: for whatever ignoble reason, he was particularly vulnerable to women who had a liberal relationship with the concept of chastity.

Even worse, he was more besotted now than he had been with Evangeline.

Evangeline had fascinated him: he had wanted to bring her home, cherish her, and make love to her. He had thought the curl of her hair and the tinkle of her laugh enchanting. But he could not remember feeling this sort of overwhelming sensuality, a wild madness that tangled up his reason and sent all the blood in his body to a place between his legs.

He didn’t even have to look at Olivia to catalog her features. Her eyelashes were a trifle longer at the corners, which gave her a wicked air, a touch of Cleopatra. Even thinking of her body made his tighten painfully. She was all curves and plump, creamy flesh.

And her eyes—they were honest. Unlike Evangeline, she told him the truth about herself, straight out. Both women were, one might say, less than chaste. But Olivia didn’t pretend otherwise.

What’s more, when he’d asked her in so many words if she would consider him rather than Montsurrey, she’d remained loyal to the marquess. He had the sense, as well, that she would always be so. No matter how coquettish she was as a young lady, once she married her returning warrior, she would be true to him.

There was another signal difference, too: Olivia was genuinely desirous. In his arms she was like a quick flame.

Evangeline . . . well, Evangeline had wanted words. That’s what she’d longed for. When they made love she would squeal and push at his chest, hating the fact that he towered over her. For her, it was all about the time before, and the time after: the words. And he was so terrible at
words
.

He had slowed his mount to a walk, and Olivia caught up with him. She had a pretty flush in her cheeks from the exercise and wind.

“I like your hat,” he said, suddenly finding a few words. It was like a cherry, perched atop a luscious mound of dark bronze-colored hair. Since it could have no useful function, it was obviously designed to make a man long to pluck it off.

She looked startled for a moment, and then beamed at him. “It wouldn’t keep off the rain.”

He turned onto a little dirt track, the pony clop-clopping behind them. “We’ll take the kites to the top of the ridge,” he told her, nodding ahead of them. “They fly best on a hill, and this is a particularly windy spot. Sometimes we can spin out ells of string before they lose the current.”

Olivia looked at him curiously. “You sound like a kite expert, which is rather like finding a grown man admitting to playing jack-stones.”

His heart gave a thump. “I used to play—” he said, before he caught himself. There was no reason to tell her the details. He was coming to terms with the fact that she wouldn’t be his. She belonged to another man, he of the patriotic bent and scrambled brain.

So he turned it into a weak retort. “Kites are not something one ever forgets how to fly.”

“I suppose not,” she said. But she looked curious, as if she saw through him.

He jumped from his horse, threw the reins over a bush, and came back to Olivia. It was ridiculous, really. He was damned sure that desire was etched on his face, which made him feel vulnerable and slightly mad. But he walked over and reached up to her waist anyway because, really, what are men? Merely animals, as subject to mating urges as any other biped. Or quadruped, for that matter.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked, shaking her skirts free as he put her down.

“Science,” he answered, somewhat less than truthfully.

“Are you interested in more than mathematical functions, then?” She looped her mount’s reins on the same bush.

“Yes. But I don’t want you to fall asleep from boredom, so I won’t elaborate; we’d have to bring you home in the pony cart.” Justin was tying up the pony. He walked over to see if his aunt would like to descend from the cart, but she declared that she had a better view from her seat.

He took the kite box from the back of the cart. The lid opened as if he’d opened it yesterday, as if all those days in between hadn’t existed. He had to take a deep breath before he pulled out the first kite: cherry red, a light and speedy one that tore through the air and generally plunged to the ground with equal velocity.

Underneath were two good, sturdy kites that had held up in wind after wind. And beneath that . . . he touched the small spines for a moment, his finger rubbing the delicate wood as if it could touch the child who used to hold it.

Then he swallowed hard and shut the box on that kite.

“I have three for us,” he said, turning. His voice came out tense and dark, and he saw Olivia’s eyes fly to his face. He forced himself to smile, grim though it probably was.

Justin hopped over. “I never liked that red one,” he said cheerfully, as if the kites had no history. “Too frisky. I’ll take one of the others.”

“You have to tie the spool on,” Quin said, handing it over.

Olivia snatched the cherry kite. “I love this one!”

“It matches your hat,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’ll tie on the spool for you.” And then he bent his head to the task, avoiding her eyes. For whatever reason, he could read Olivia’s eyes, and it seemed she might have the same power over him. He could have sworn that she saw his desolation, caught a glimpse of the black monstrous silence that lived within his chest.

“Now,” he said briskly, after tying both their spools, “we’ll walk to the top of the ridge.”

It took time, and a great deal of laughter—not on Quin’s part, but that was only because he rarely laughed—until all three kites were loose and free, bobbing in a current sweeping overhead.

“I love it!” Olivia shouted. She was running back and forth, her slippers twinkling under her hem.

As if it had been only five minutes, rather than five years, the cherry kite slid below the current, plunged down, jerked its way back up. Whereas Quin’s kite reached its zenith and then stayed there, a solid scrap of white, bobbing far above his head.