“I thought Mr. Usher was supposed to be preparing you for the upcoming term at Oxford, rather than feeding your passion for poetry,” Quin remarked.
“He has taught me no end of important things about mathematics,” Justin said with a patent lack of veracity.
Quin frowned. “Just who is your beloved? You’ve read me a number of poems, but I believe I never asked for that salient bit of information. Perhaps a young lady you met while at Oxford?”
“Oh, I don’t have one,” Justin admitted cheerfully.
“One hundred and thirty-eight sonnets for a nonexistent lady,” Olivia said, sounding quite impressed. “Do you ever describe her—this moon person, I mean?”
“Moon Goddess,” Justin corrected. “Of course I do. She has silver hair.”
“That’s a surprise,” Olivia said. Her voice was so droll that Quin found another laugh rising up his chest. “Let me guess. Sparkling eyes?”
“Generally speaking, they glow. They do sparkle in two poems, a sonnet and a ballad.”
“She sounds a bit witchy. Aren’t you worried she’ll take on a jack-o’-lantern touch?”
“Absolutely not,” Justin said with dignity. “My lady has no resemblance whatsoever to a carved turnip. She usurps the sun and stars with her beauty.”
“What do you do about her clothing? Does she favor short-waisted gowns, or is she more old-fashioned, being a goddess and presumably long-lived?”
“I’ve heard enough of the poems to know that you should imagine Lady Godiva rather than a jack-o’-lantern,” Quin put in.
“Your Grace,” Olivia said, dimpling. “You surprise me!”
In fact, he surprised himself.
Justin rolled his eyes. “My poems are for all time. I’d merely date them if I described a gown. What if I described my moon goddess in a turban headdress? By next year she’d have turned to a frump, and I’d have wasted all that time on the poem.”
“One certainly wouldn’t want to write a poem that couldn’t be reused,” Olivia agreed. “I see that naked is best. Your Moon Goddess is making a brave strike against the tiresome rules of conduct against which I’m sure we all chafe.”
“Do we?” Quin asked, leaning toward her. “Are you revealing a touch of the Lady Godiva in yourself, Miss Lytton?” He caught her gaze again, just until he saw a faint wash of pink in her cheeks.
He leaned back, vaguely aware that his heart was thumping in his chest in a thoroughly inelegant fashion. The mere mention of Lady Godiva caused him to picture Olivia, naked and lush, breasts playing peekaboo with a sweep of dark hair, that wicked mouth of hers laughing at him.
“My Moon Goddess is not naked!” Justin rolled his eyes yet again. “I simply don’t mention her clothing. Besides, I’d rather write about how it feels to be in love. Here’s one of my favorite couplets: For you, I’d climb the highest tower; I’d dash across the sea.”
“I hate to be pedantic, but those two lines are not in iambic pentameter, nor do they rhyme,” Olivia pointed out. “I’m certain that a couplet should rhyme.”
“It seems more troublesome to me that the two activities are quite dissimilar,” Quin put in. “Quite likely you could climb a bell tower if you had to, Justin, but you could not run, let alone walk, on water.”
“Unless he’s concealing signs of divinity,” Olivia said, that dimple playing beside her mouth again. “He is star-born, after all.”
They both glanced at young Justin, and then Quin’s eyes met Olivia’s again with a deeply pleasurable shock. “No visible signs,” he commented. “No hovering halo.”
Justin was a remarkably good-natured soul. “Philistines,” he said, but without force. “Poetry need not rhyme. Only sticklers bother with that sort of thing.”
“Couplets must rhyme,” Quin said firmly. “But you’re right about description. Why tie yourself down? I understand metaphors are de rigueur when it comes to verse.”
“I suspect they are very hard to write,” Olivia said. “The only poems I’ve managed to commit to memory use a great deal of metaphors, but I could never write one myself.”
“For example?” Quin asked.
Her eyes laughed at him. “ ‘There once was a maiden from Peedle, who was extremely good with her needle . . .’ I’ll stop there, if you don’t mind. But I assure you that when it comes to metaphors, there’s nothing like a limerick.”
“I’ve heard that one,” Justin interrupted, looking at their guest with renewed respect. “I didn’t think ladies enjoyed limericks.”
“Generally speaking, they don’t,” Olivia told him. “I’m an aberration. Most ladies would swoon to receive a pretty love poem from you. Just ask His Grace. Perhaps he wrote such verses in his youth.”
Justin snorted. “Quin couldn’t write a poem if Shakespeare himself prompted him.”
“I could!” Quin protested. He was feeling rather reckless, drunk on the sparkle in Olivia’s eyes. “My lady is a pink flower, and I’m . . . I’m a high tower. At least mine rhymes.”
Olivia’s little chuckle sent a rush of heat straight to Quin’s groin. “You surprise me, Your Grace. I hadn’t expected you to exhibit such metaphorical skill. Flowers and towers are surprisingly . . . evocative.”
If he’d understood her correctly, she had just flipped his pitiful metaphor into something quite erotic. And, apparently, over his young relative’s head.
“I could possibly work with wildflower, but not with pink flower,” Justin said, frowning. “Too banal.”
“You’re right,” Olivia agreed. “I think you should stay with the architectural metaphor, Your Grace. Perhaps you could do something with castle?”
Her smile dared him.
“Castle would be difficult,” Justin said, with authority. “It doesn’t rhyme with much of anything.”
“The castle of your body is mine by right of conquest,” Quin stated, picking up his wineglass. He took a sip and then looked at Olivia, knowing that his eyes were heavy with desire.
There was such a flare of heat between them that Quin was momentarily surprised that the tablecloth didn’t spontaneously ignite.
“And the moat?” she asked, that wicked little smile playing around her lips again. “Surely . . . someone is going to—ahem—dive into the moat?”
Justin finally caught on and burst out laughing as well. “Ramparts,” he said, almost choking. “You can’t forget them, Quin!”
At this revelry, the dowager broke in. “I must ask if you have a humorous subject to share with the table.”
Justin gave her a sweet smile. “We’re discussing the architecture of medieval castles, Aunt. The subject naturally leads to merriment.”
“Battlements,” Olivia confirmed, nodding. “In the context of literature.”
The dowager narrowed her eyes. Then she pointedly asked Georgiana and Althea about the use of figured velvet in bed-curtains. One had to assume that the question was relevant to matrimony. Quin promptly turned back to Justin and Olivia.
“I prefer dramatic ideas,” Justin was saying. “For example, sixty-seven of my poems promise to do the impossible for love.”
“I suppose that’s where walking on water comes in,” Olivia said. “What other kinds of things do you promise to do?”
“Walk through fire,” Justin said. “Hold the world in my hand.”
“Those two suffer from the same incompatibility,” Quin said. “While I suppose you might walk through fire—though I think leap would be a more accurate description—you clearly have delusions of grandeur.”
“Lord Justin, if you have a divine side, this would be a good moment to reveal it.” Olivia looked hopeful.
“I think we can all agree that the two of you have sadly prosaic souls,” Justin said. “Poetry is my destiny. Mockery won’t stop me. Someday I’ll meet a lady as beautiful as the moon, and I’ll already have the poetry written.”
“I have yet to meet such a lady,” Olivia said. “Your Grace, have you been moonstruck at some point in you
r life?”
Quin looked at her and rejected the whole notion of the moon. “Too cool, pale, and insipid,” he said. “I’d prefer a goddess who produces her own light rather than merely reflecting that of another.”
“I can’t imagine you in love, but one should never say never,” Justin put in.
“Poetry might be His Grace’s destiny as well,” Olivia said, her eyes dancing. “Just look at his creative twist on a castle . . . and he didn’t even get to the ramparts. Many people don’t think of the design of fortifications in such suggestive terms.”
“In what terms?” the dowager suddenly said, turning her head.
“As buildings,” Olivia said innocently. “His Grace has an architectural turn of phrase.”
Had Quin’s mother possessed Justin’s flair for the dramatic, she would have rolled her eyes. “We shall be hosting a small ball in a few days,” she announced. “A quite small engagement, naturally. But I would be unsurprised if we commanded a hundred heads at the least.”
She must be moving on to the next phase in the testing process, Quin realized. The thought sent an icy chill down his spine.
Yes, Olivia was charming. She was certainly amusing and undeniably sensual in her appeal. It didn’t matter that she was betrothed to someone else. She was all wrong for him.
All wrong.
Quin snapped his head away and turned to Georgiana. Her eyes were clear, sweet, and a bit anxious. It couldn’t be easy, being Olivia’s twin.
Georgiana was an elegant piece of fine china, but in comparison Olivia beckoned like the promised land.
He wanted—no, he had to remember that he couldn’t trust what he wanted. What he wanted was all wrong. He had to remember the wrenching awfulness of nights when Evangeline didn’t come home, or the weary bitterness of listening to her scream at him, telling him of his manifest failures, his inability to satisfy her, to make her happy. . . .
He smiled down at Georgiana. “Now that I’ve bored all and sundry with my mathematical monologue, do tell me what pastimes you enjoy. That is,” he added, “if you have free time. I know how busy young ladies can be.”
She gave an odd little hiccup of laughter. “Tatting and sewing and the like.”
“I suppose.” Just beyond his left shoulder, her sister was laughing, and laughing made Olivia’s breasts—
He pulled his attention back in line. “Which do you enjoy most? Tatting?”
“Do you have any idea what tatting even is?”
“Of course,” Quin said, before he thought. “It’s . . . something.” He met her eyes, which were full of quiet amusement that brought a smile to his lips as well. “Sewing?” he offered.
“Tatting is a method of constructing a very sturdy kind of lace.”
“Sturdy lace,” Quin echoed. “That doesn’t sound right.”
“An oxymoron,” she agreed.
“I gather you don’t care for tatting.” She smiled again, a kind of fleeting sweetness that was night and day to her sister’s mischievous grin.
“Not as much as other things.”
“What do you like, then?” Quin asked, truly curious for the first time.
She hesitated, and then: “I like to read.”
“You’re a bluestocking?”
“I don’t think I deserve that label. I think of bluestockings as fiercely educated and extremely intelligent.”
“I would have no trouble believing that you are quite intelligent, though I cannot speak to your education.”
“I know your mother’s book by heart,” she offered.
He took her small, rather crooked smile and played it back to her. “The Mirror of Compliments is no substitute for Oxford University.”
“Which does not allow women inside its august doors.”
“That is true. So let me guess.” He looked her over. She was a perfect bundle of English femininity: demure, yet with an undeniable backbone. Her options were limited, as she did not look particularly rebellious. “You play the harp. When you are not reading books about travels along the Nile.”
Georgiana had a lovely calmness about her. He knew instinctively that she would never throw a scene, let alone china, even when she was irritated with him—as she was now. “I cannot play the harp. While I would quite enjoy reading about the Nile, I am happiest dabbling with what I believe you gentlemen call chemistry.”
“Chemistry?” He never would have thought of it.
“That is perhaps too formal a word for what I do,” she said, cocking her head to one side like a curious bird. “I like to mix potions. Olivia says that I am an apprentice witch.”
“What sort of things do you make?”
“I try to improve products that already exist,” she said. “Domestic products, for the most part. Duchesses have always—” She stopped, a lovely flush of rose sweeping up her cheeks.
“Duchesses?” he prompted.
She took a deep breath. “The ladies of great houses have always, of course, had more time and leisure than other women. So, many of them have given time to chemistry, for lack of a better word. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, is now considered the first female scientist. Actually, she’s the only woman scientist I know of, though she lived back in the seventeenth century.”
“Except for yourself,” Quin said.
“I’m nothing of the sort,” Georgiana said, looking faintly horrified. “I merely dabble.”
“Is your sister, Miss Lytton, also interested in science?” Quin inquired. “Is she also an apprentice witch?”
“Not at all,” Georgiana said. “Olivia has quite different skills than mine.”
“I suspect twins often define themselves in opposition to each other. Our local justice of the peace has two boys who are as dissimilar as they could possibly be.”
“Olivia and I would confirm your hypothesis. In fact, I am fascinated by concrete objects, whereas Olivia is much more interested by language.”
“Language? Do you mean the study of different languages?”
“We’ve studied several languages. But what Olivia truly enjoys is puns.” She looked at Quin with a rather aggressive light in her eyes. “These days, we think of language play as mere twaddle, but I am of the belief that it will be a serious subject of study in the future.”
“Puns,” Quin repeated. “Words that mean more than one thing?”
“Exactly.”
“Now that you say so, I noticed a distinct proclivity for puns during Miss Lytton’s conversation with Lord Justin.”
Georgiana colored again, to Quin’s interest. Perhaps she guessed the sort of limerick that Olivia had aired—to wit, the lady from Peedle and her needle.
But at that moment Quin’s mother cleared her throat. “I shall make final arrangements for the ball this afternoon, and I should be grateful if Miss Georgiana and Lady Althea would assist me in this matter.” She gave both girls a smile. “I am most desirous to hear your ideas for the entertainment.”
Test Number Two, Quin thought to himself.
While Lady Althea scrambled to assure the dowager that she was ready to help her in any way, Georgiana accepted in a far more dignified manner. In fact, Quin liked her.
Olivia, for her part, did not offer to help—not that her assistance had been requested nor, indeed, would be welcomed. She and Justin seemed to be making plans for some sort of excursion on horseback.
Notwithstanding the events of the night before, he had known Olivia Lytton for half an hour at the most, so it was obvious that he could not care for her. Not the way he had cared for Evangeline.
But Quin had never been any good at lying to himself. He did care.
For some inscrutable reason, he had taken one good look at Miss Lytton’s pale green eyes and her luscious body and the way she held her shoulders upright, even when she was soaking wet, and he wanted her.
She was witty, lovesome, beautiful . . . wild.
Utterly wrong for a duchess.
He leaned forward. “I have a
mare in my stables that will be perfect for you,” he told her.
“Lord Justin has promised to teach me to fly a kite,” she exclaimed. “I’ve always wanted to fly one, ever since I saw them in Hyde Park the first time. Lady Althea, Georgiana, would you like to join us on a kite-flying expedition?”
“They would not,” the dowager stated. “There can be no kite-flying today. After luncheon, we shall all walk to the village and deliver baskets to the poor. After that, the ladies will spend several hours planning the upcoming festivities.”
“I would help you, but I know that you would be unhappy to share the morning room with little Lucy, given her marked preference for you,” Olivia said, giving the dowager a beaming smile. “Perhaps familiarity will breed something warmer than contempt? No?”
“You may dabble with your kite-flying expedition tomorrow,” the dowager continued, with crushing indifference, as if she were dictating the nursery schedule. “I cannot spare Lady Sibblethorp to act as a chaperone for the excursion, as we shall still be hard at work.” She managed to make it sound as if the ladies planned to spend the afternoon digging in the mines. “It is possible that Lady Cecily will be kind enough to accompany you, Miss Lytton, if her ankle has mended appreciably. If not, I would feel comfortable were my son to accompany you on this excursion. I think we may eschew a chaperone on our own grounds.”
Quin nodded.
His mother raised her finger as they rose from the table. “One’s digestion is always the better for a brief stroll. Ladies, I would request that you join me in the Chinese drawing room as soon as you are dressed for walking, and we shall proceed to the village.”
“I’m afraid that I have other plans,” Justin said cheerfully. “Mr. Usher and I are going to be poring over some very important lessons. Latin . . . mathematics . . . it never ends.”
Quin opened his mouth to offer a similar excuse when he realized that Olivia was bending over the stone balustrade, trying to pluck a spray of clematis that was just out of her reach.
His entire body stiffened with a flare of lust so keen that he drew in his breath. Those sweet and generous curves were pure temptation. Without conscious volition, he found himself standing beside her, their bodies touching as he reached for the flower she was straining to reach.