This Duke is Mine (7 page)

Her sister nodded. “I take your point. At any rate, one shouldn’t compare one’s future husband to a breeding hound.”

“
His Grace
characterized it as such. After which he informed me that he would reward me for this evening’s work with a jointure and an estate. A small estate, I believe he said. I had no idea of how rich a strumpet could become from a mere hour or two of debauchery.”

“Olivia!” But her sister’s protest had no force.

“You’re to benefit from my strumpethood, my dear. He’s told Madame Claricilla to outfit both of us
according to my new station
.”

Georgiana’s eyebrows flew up.

“The fruits of sin. I am thinking of Cyprians in a whole new light, I promise you. You and I are both getting an entire wardrobe, and I shall refuse to have a single white gown or trailing ribbon.”

“You are not a strumpet,” Georgiana protested. “You were obeying Mother and Father’s wishes.”

“To that point, may I say that I deeply resent the fact that Mother spent years insisting that a lady’s life should revolve around the protection of her chastity, only to toss out that precept the moment she thought I could have a child by Rupert?”

Georgiana chewed on her lip for a moment. Then she said, “You’re right, of course. Our parents are showing an excess of enthusiasm for this marriage, and have done so all along.”

“Given that poor Rupert is harebrained as they come, yes.” Olivia rolled over on her back again. She felt exhausted, and deeply sad; the effects of the brandy had decidedly worn off. She had realized at the age of ten that her married life would be conspicuously different from that of other women. But she hadn’t realized just how appalling the reality might be.

The very idea of having breakfast with Rupert, let alone years and years of breakfasts, made her feel despairing.

“Even if the marquess had a distinguished brain, our parents shouldn’t have been party to a distasteful encounter such as you just described,” Georgiana stated.

“His brain is distinguished, all right,” Olivia muttered. “There are very few like it. Though his poetry is truly lovely, in a fragmented sort of way.”

“I hesitate to ask,” Georgiana said, “but why was Mother so vexed, after the duke and the FF left? Her voice carried even to my chamber, so I hesitated to come down for some time. Yet it sounds as though everything went according to her best hopes; the betrothal papers are signed, and as far as she knows, you may be carrying a future duke. Not to mention her fervent reaction to the possibility of my becoming a duchess.”

“Oh,” Olivia said. “That was Lucy.” Even thinking about it made her start smiling.

“Lucy?”

“Rupert’s dog, Lucy. Surely you remember her.”

“Who could not? It’s not that she’s the only dog in the
ton
—Lord Filibert’s poodle has gained some notoriety, given its green bows—but Lucy is the only one with flea-bitten ears.”

“Unkind,” Olivia said, laughing. “I think the bite to her tail proved more detrimental to her beauty.”

“Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but one would have to be blind to praise Lucy.”

“She has very sweet eyes,” Olivia protested. “And it’s rather adorable the way her ears turn inside out when she runs.”

“That is not a characteristic I ever considered essential to an attractive dog.”

“Mother doesn’t admire it either. In fact, she was truly vexed by the idea that I might be seen with the dog by anyone of consequence.”

Georgiana raised an eyebrow. “Lucy isn’t going to Portugal? I thought Rupert was never separated from her.”

“He believes the trip might be dangerous, so he asked me to care for her in his absence.”

“Most people do say that about battlefields. So where is Lucy? She certainly wasn’t in the drawing room by the time I joined you. Is she in the stables?”

“In the kitchens, being bathed,” Olivia said. “Rupert demanded that she remain with me at all times. Of course, Mother was entirely sweet to his face, but she flew into a temper the moment the door closed. She considers Lucy to be an utterly inappropriate companion for a future duchess. Which makes her the perfect companion for me, you have to admit.”

“Lucy does not have an aristocratic air. It’s the rat tail, I think.”

“Or that long waist. She looks like a sausage with legs. But she will smell like an aristocrat. Mother sent her down to the kitchens to be bathed in buttermilk.”

Georgiana rolled her eyes. “Lucy may be enjoying the buttermilk, but the idea is preposterous.”

“Mother also suggested that bows or some sort of embellishment might make her more suitable as a lady’s companion.” In the whole, long, rather horrible day, the only bright spot was the expression on their mother’s face when Rupert, a tear rolling down his cheek, put Lucy’s leash into Olivia’s hand.

“Lucy with bows on her ears—or that tail—does not appeal,” Georgiana stated firmly.

“Do you know what’s bothering Mother the most? I think she’s afraid that everyone will call Lucy a mongrel and then think the same of me. Bows for Lucy and ribbons for me, if you see what I mean.”

“You can squash any such pretentiousness. Mother may despair of you, Olivia, but you and I both know that if you feel like playing a stiff-rumped duchess, you can do it with more flair than almost anyone.”

“It’s not always possible to disguise the truth,” Olivia said. “Look at poor Rupert and his celery stick, for example.”

“I think your experience in the library was unusual. All the conversations I’ve had with married women gave me the strong conviction that men needed nothing more than a woman and a modicum of privacy.”

“Rupert obviously needed more than a captive woman and a sofa. But I’m not sure his experience says much about the rest of mankind.”

“What did you say after you left the room?”

“Nothing. I promised Rupert that I would never tell—you don’t count. His father should have known better than to think a duck could rise to the occasion, so to speak.”

“Did Rupert obey you?”

“In every detail,” Olivia said, with a flash of triumph. “He was a bit unsteady on his legs—I think he should probably stick to cider in the future—but he managed to bow without falling over, and then to leave without revealing the fact that neither of his two most important organs are functioning.”

Georgiana sighed. “You really mustn’t.”

“I’m sorry. It just came out of my mouth.”

“Jests like those should never come out of a lady’s mouth.”

“If you’re casting aspersions on my claims to propriety, you’re not saying anything that Mother hasn’t concluded long ago,” Olivia said. “Enough about my character deficits. In all the excited talk of your aptitude for the position of Duchess of Sconce, did Mother mention Lady Cecily Bumtrinket?”

“What an extraordinary name. No.”

“Well, as Mother told you, the Duchess of Sconce, author of the
Mirror for Mooncalves
, apparently agreed with Canterwick’s suggestion that you are a suitable match for her son. And Lady Cecily, who I gather is the dowager’s sister, has been recruited to introduce us to His Grace. The only dark lining to this silver prospect is that we have to actually meet the grand arbiter of propriety herself, the duchess of decorum, the—”

“Stop!”

“I’m sorry,” Olivia said, wrinkling her nose. “I start to babble when I’m miserable. I know it’s a fault, but I can’t bear to cry, Georgie. I’d much rather laugh.”

“I would cry,” Georgiana said, scooting over and tugging gently at a lock of Olivia’s hair. “The very idea of Rupert’s taking down his breeches makes me feel tearful.”

“It was worse than I had imagined. But at the same time, Rupert is such a good soul, poor cluck. He really—there’s something very sweet about him.”

“I think it’s wonderful that you are able to respect his merits!” Georgiana said, with rather more enthusiasm than called for.

Olivia shot her a sardonic look.

“At any rate,” Georgiana added hastily, “I suspect that such intimacies are always embarrassing. Most of the dowagers refer to the experience in the most disdainful terms.”

“But think of Juliet Fallesbury and her Longfellow,” Olivia pointed out. “Obviously, she didn’t run away with a gardener because of his horticultural skills. At any rate, since Rupert is off to the wars at the crack of dawn, you, Lucy, and I will be taken to the country to meet the Duke of Sconce and his mother.”

“A lovely prospect,” Georgiana said, her eyes darkening. “I can’t wait to see the duke’s eyes roll back in his head from the utter tedium of sitting next to me.”

Olivia gave her a tap on the nose. “Just smile at him, Georgie. Forget all those rules and look at the duke as if he might be likable. Who knows, maybe he is? Just smile at him as if you were a pig and he the trough, promise?”

Georgiana smiled.

Six

Her Grace’s Matrimonial Experiment Commences

May 1812

B
ack in his study following the evening repast, Quin was dimly aware that his mother’s house party had commenced. There had been a great deal of commotion in the entryway shortly after the meal, which suggested that at least one prospective wife and her chaperone had arrived.

He had a reasonable amount of curiosity about the young women his mother considered suitable candidates for matrimony. But just at that moment a cascade of giggles bounced its way up the stairs and into his study.

The giggler would surely fail his mother’s tests regarding enjoyment, innocent or otherwise, so it would be a waste of time to greet her. He pulled off his coat and cravat, threw them over a chair, and sat back at his desk.

He had discarded polynomial equations for the moment, and returned to the problem of light. He’d been puzzling over light since he was a boy, ever since he’d met a blind man and realized that to him the world was dark. He had asked his tutor whether that meant that light existed only because we have eyes; the man had guffawed. He hadn’t understood the larger question.

For a moment Quin gazed through the window of his study at the growing darkness outside. His study faced west, and its windows held the oldest glass in the house, the kind that was bottle thick and blurred, slightly bluish in hue. Quin liked that because he was convinced that, somehow, glass held the answer to the mystery of light.

He’d been taught at Oxford that light was made up of particles streaming in one direction. But light came through his old glass in ribbons, and the ribbons didn’t act like a flowing river. It was more as if they were waves coming into the shore, bending slightly, adapting to imperfections in the glass . . .

Light came in a wave, not a flood of particles. He was convinced of it.

The problem was how to prove it. He sat down at his desk again, pulling over more foolscap. Light splits into separate color ribbons in rainbows. But rainbows are impractical and hard to pin down. He needed to . . .

By the time he raised his head again, the house was quiet and the window at his shoulder had turned black. For a moment he stared at it, then shook his head. Light was enough to worry about at the moment. The absence of light was another question. Besides, there was rain beating at the windows, a spring storm. Water . . . water was made of particles . . .

He stood up, legs stiff, and then froze in the middle of a stretch. What in the devil was causing that noise?

He heard it again, a distant thudding that sounded like the knocker on the front door. It was far too late for anyone in the household to respond. Cleese would be snug in his bed, and the last footman long since retired to the servants’ quarters on the fourth floor.

Quin snatched up the oil lamp on his desk and ran lightly down the great marble stairs that led to the entry. He put the lamp down, drew back the bolt, and swung open the heavy door. Light fell out—in ribbons—from behind his shoulder into the dark, but there was no one to be seen, merely a moving blur of white in the middle distance.

“Is someone out there?” he shouted, keeping well back from the water sluicing off the pediment above the door.

The blur he’d glimpsed in the rain turned and ran back toward him. “Oh, thank goodness you’re still awake,” a woman gasped. “I thought no one heard me.”

She moved into the circle of light falling over his shoulder, still talking, though he stopped listening. She was obviously a lady—but not just any lady. She didn’t look as if she belonged in this world, let alone the world of Littlebourne Manor. The very sight of her was a blow to a man’s senses, as if one of Homer’s sirens had somehow traversed both eons and continents, and arrived at his doorstep to bewitch him.

Dark hair fell sleekly down her shoulders, making her skin look translucent, as if it had its own source of light. He couldn’t see the color of her eyes, but her eyelashes were long and wet.

Then he suddenly realized that rain was pouring down her shoulders and she wasn’t even wearing a pelisse. She was certainly as wet as a siren, or did he mean a mermaid?

He reached out and picked her up, swinging her into the entry, out of the rain. She gasped and started to speak, but he put her down and spoke over her voice: “What on earth are you doing out there?”

“The carriage turned over, and I couldn’t find the coachman, and he didn’t respond when I called,” she said, shivering.

Quin found it hard to concentrate on what she was saying. Her hair was like skeins of wet silk, lying dark and sleek over her shoulders. Her dress was drenched, and it clung to her skin, showing every curve of her body . . . and what a body!

Belatedly he realized that her narrowed eyes indicated that she did not care for his survey.

“I can assure you that your master would not wish you to stand about parleying with me,” she said sharply.

He blinked. She thought he was a servant? Of course, he wasn’t wearing his coat or cravat, but even so, no one in his life had ever taken him for anyone but a duke (or, in the days before his father died, a duke-to-be). It was oddly freeing.

“
Parleying
?” he asked, rather idiotically. This drenched woman looked wickedly intelligent, far more so than the bran-faced debutantes he’d met back when he was last in London for the season.