“So would mine,” Quin said comfortably, allowing his hand to drift down her back.
“Don’t!” she ordered.
He stopped, his hand hovering just at the top of a magnificent curve. “Please?” His voice had a husky quality that would have embarrassed him on the ground, but who felt embarrassment up in a tree? He slipped his lips across her cheek, nipped her ear. “Olivia Lytton, I think you will always be my favorite tree-climbing companion.”
“I expect I’m your only tree-climbing companion,” she replied, giving him a mock scowl. “And now I am going to return to terra firma.”
“Wait! I’m going down first.” He swung down to the branch below. Then he looked up, feeling a wicked curl of anticipation in his stomach. When she didn’t move, he bent backwards so he could see her face.
“You’re planning to look at my legs, aren’t you?”
“I love your legs,” he said with perfect truth. “And if I didn’t look at them I would be remiss in my duty, which in this case is to keep you from being injured.”
She snorted, and then—much faster than he could have anticipated—pivoted, swung down, and alit beside him. The branch bounced and he instinctively reached out to steady her, but in so doing he lost his own balance and crashed through two layers of branches, landing hard on the ground.
The wind was knocked clean out of him, and the pain that resulted was spectacular. Black dots swam before his closed eyelids, and he couldn’t seem to get air into his lungs at all.
“Oh, dear Lord!” he heard, before he could even see again. “Oh, Quin, oh, Quin, please don’t be dead. Why did I do that?” Olivia was down from the tree. “Please be breathing . . . You’re breathing!”
He was breathing. He was sure of it because every inhalation hurt like . . . a series of curse words crashed through his mind and only barely avoided escaping his mouth.
He felt Olivia patting him all over his chest. Although pain likely impaired his mental acuity, Quin made an instant decision to keep his eyes closed. No man in his right mind would interrupt a woman on a mission. At least, this mission. He’d rather stop breathing than discourage her.
“I don’t feel any broken ribs,” she muttered to herself, patting even more firmly.
That could be because she had moved down to patting his abdomen, where he was fairly sure there were no ribs, but he wasn’t complaining. Her hands hesitated for a moment, and then she very quickly, very lightly, gave him some pats below his abdomen.
A groan erupted from his lips before he could stop himself, and he grimaced. He wasn’t used to being so undisciplined. He had always been in complete control of all his physical reactions, even with Evangeline, his own wife.
“Oh, Lord,” Olivia cried again. “I’m going to fetch Justin. Please hold on! I’m afraid that you’ve broken something. I hope it isn’t your back. I’ll never forgive myself!”
The ragged sound of her voice made him open his eyes and snatch her arm just before she sprang to her feet. “I’m all right,” he grunted. “Just give me a moment.”
“I’m sorry!” Olivia said, her voice cracking. “It was so stupid of me, Quin. I never thought. That’s how I always get down from the tree outside my bedroom. I just swing down fast and then find my feet.”
“You climb out of your bedroom window?” He was forcing air into his lungs now and realizing that although his body ached, nothing felt as if it was broken.
“The tree is the only way one can leave my house without my mother knowing,” she said. “Can you move your toes? I’ve heard that if a person can’t move his toes, it’s a terrible sign. I can see you moving other places, but . . .”
He raised his head, wincing. She was looking toward his feet, and therefore toward that part of him which was stirring. Damn well leaping out of his breeches. “My toes can move,” he said, sitting up fast to block the view. His head spun.
Olivia didn’t look as if she even recognized what she saw in the area of his breeches. It really wasn’t clear to him whether she was merely skilled at flirtation, or more experienced.
Evangeline had not been a virgin when she came to his bed. He’d been surprised at the time, but when he got to know her better, he understood. Evangeline didn’t have a voracious sexual desire, but she did have a voracious wish to be wanted, a longing so deep that no one man could have satisfied her.
His head was pounding, but even so, he could smell Olivia, some delicate, sweet scent that was hers, and hers alone. The scent was like bottled temptation. Like need.
Just having her kneeling beside him made him feel reckless. Even now, his body bruised and his head seemingly clamped in a vise, he wanted nothing more than to topple her backwards and then crawl on top of her.
And take her.
He groaned again at the thought.
“I’m going to fetch Justin,” Olivia cried, jumping to her feet. “You’re in pain. He can carry you to the pony cart.”
“No!” Quin almost laughed at the idea of his slender cousin somehow managing to drag him along the ridge. “I can get up.” And he did, bones protesting, muscles screaming. “It wasn’t a long drop,” he said aloud, as if telling himself would make it true. “And the branches surely slowed my fall.”
“Nonsense,” Olivia said crossly. “You could have been killed. You never should have climbed that tree after me. You’re obviously too—” She stopped.
“Too old?” He gave her a scowl and started walking, slowly and painfully. He could tell already that he would be fine. But damn it, he really was too old to be climbing trees.
“Yes,” she said baldly. “You are too old.” Then she added, “How old are you?”
“Thirty-two,” he said. “But at the moment I feel as if I were sixty-three.”
“How many years ago did you lose Alfie?”
He didn’t look at her, just walked. “It will be five years in October.”
“You married quite young.”
“Yes.” But she seemed to be waiting, and words flowed from somewhere, so he said them. “I had just come back from France and Germany, and I went to London for my first season. It was Evangeline’s first season as well. I didn’t meet her the first two months, but as soon as I saw her . . .”
“Love at first sight?” she suggested.
“Something like that.” He had never thought he was capable of love. But he had certainly been capable of fascination. Not to mention obsession.
Justin was loping toward them. “Lady Cecily wants to go home!” he shouted. “You’d better walk faster, Quin. She’s as cross as a teakettle on the boil.”
Olivia gave a little moan and started trotting toward the cart.
But Quin had lived through a thousand of his aunt’s tempests, and he was in no condition to move faster. He just kept walking, thinking about what it meant to fall in love at first sight.
He knew that particular capacity was burned out of him, or perhaps it just wasn’t part of his character. He really couldn’t imagine anyone in his immediate family—other than Justin—experiencing such an emotion. Still, he couldn’t help but wish that he’d met Olivia instead of Evangeline. Olivia was the kind of woman one could fall in love with, even at first sight.
Unless one had a heart like a withered turnip, which was about the condition of his.
Fifteen
“Turdy-fancy-nasty-paty-lousy-fartical rogue!”
“So you flew a kite and then you climbed a tree?” Georgiana’s brow furrowed. “It sounds most peculiar to me.” They had retreated to her bedchamber after the evening meal.
“The kite was stuck in the tree,” Olivia explained.
Georgiana put down her cup of tea. “When are you going to grow up, Olivia?” Her tone was uncharacteristically sharp.
Olivia felt a pucker of hurt. “I consider myself to be grown up.”
“You climb trees,” Georgiana said, counting off the fingers on her left hand. “You think it’s amusing to insult a duchess. You bring Lucy into the house
when you know that you could simply put her in the stables; Rupert would never be the wiser. You jest about with Lord Justin as if you and he were the same age—and he is a very young sixteen.”
“I could not lie to Rupert about Lucy,” Olivia said, seizing on the easiest of her sister’s points to defend.
Georgiana shrugged. “Do you think that the whole table didn’t hear you and Lord Justin laughing this evening? How do you think we felt, trying to have a serious conversation when all you care about is funning? The duchess said to Lady Sibblethorp that she felt as if she should take the nursery furniture out of Holland covers. I was humiliated.”
“I’m sorry if I interrupted your conversation,” Olivia said. Her voice was stiff, despite herself. “I truly am, Georgie. I didn’t mean to. Justin was making up more silly insults and I couldn’t help but laugh.”
“You could,” her sister said stonily. “We could all hear you, and even the duke couldn’t help but listen. That long one you and Justin came up with . . . what was it?”
“Turdy-fancy-nasty-paty-lousy-fartical rogue.”
“Exactly! Turdy? Fartical? How could you, Olivia? Don’t you care for me in the slightest?”
“Of course I care for you! I didn’t label you, nor the duke, turdy. Nor even the supercilious author of The Mirror of Compliments. We were just funning!”
“You’re always funning,” Georgiana snapped, picking up her teacup again with such a sharp, angry movement that tea slopped onto her saucer. “I can’t manage this with you carrying on!”
“Can’t manage what?” Olivia asked. Part of her wanted to snap back that she had avoided adult conversation in an effort to convince the duke that she was so uninterested in him that she’d rather converse with Justin.
But another part of her, the sisterly part, took a good look at Georgiana and saw the pinched, miserable look that her sister often had after a long night of sitting with the dowagers. She knelt next to her chair. “What’s the matter, Georgie? I see I’ve been unbearably gauche. If I promise to make nothing but distinguished and righteously tedious comments for the rest of our visit, will you be happier?”
“It’s not working,” Georgiana replied, her voice catching.
“What isn’t? You don’t think you could care for Sconce?”
“I could,” her sister whispered. “I really could. He’s thoughtful and sober and everything I honor in a gentleman.”
Olivia slid her hand over her sister’s, which was clenched around the fragile bone china. “You’re going to break the cup.”
Georgiana looked down numbly and then put it away from her.
“Tell me what isn’t working? I wasn’t jesting with Justin the entire time, you know. I kept an eye on you and Sconce, and you seemed to be having an involved discussion about science. The nature of light, wasn’t it?”
Georgiana looked up. “It was fascinating.” But then she stopped.
“Well, that’s a wonderful point of concurrence between you,” Olivia prompted. “The sort of shared interest that will make a marriage long and vital. Just look at our parents.”
“What about them?”
“They have always had one shared passion: the duchification of their two daughters. I wouldn’t say they’ve been particularly successful at it in my case, but they certainly managed to turn you into a model of good breeding. After you marry Sconce, they’ll have two duchesses for daughters. I expect any sacrifices they made will be thought worth it.”
Georgiana nodded. “I think that, too. That is, I believe I would always be interested in what His Grace was investigating, whether scientific or mathematical. And he seemed interested in my ideas about chemistry as well. I don’t think he was merely being polite.”
“It’s my distinct impression that Sconce is virtually incapable of prevarication,” Olivia put in.
“Well, then, so he is interested in my potions. He even said that if I could give him the recipe for arthritis liniment, he’d like to have it made up for his head gardener. I gather the man is terribly bothered by years of being out in the damp.”
“That’s wonderful,” Olivia said, wondering if her tone sounded hollow. “Splendid! And no one deserves it as much as you do, Georgie. So why aren’t you simply ignoring your silly twit of a sister and chatting away with the handsome duke?”
“Do you think he’s handsome?”
Olivia blinked. “There’s no question. I think he’s—” She snatched back the words. The last thing she wanted to do was tell her sister that she’d never seen, even imagined, a man as beautiful as Quin. “His aspect is more than tolerable.”
“Don’t you think his hair is rather odd?”
“No,” Olivia said, thinking of the way it slid through her hands like silk, black and white together like the dual sides of life, darkness and light, good and evil, temptation and temperance. Mostly temptation.
“Well, I do. Do you suppose that if I mixed a dye myself he would allow it to be colored? Do you remember the zebra that came through in that travelling fair, Olivia? Sconce reminds me of that creature.”
“Yes, I do, and the duke doesn’t look in the slightest like a zebra. And no, he would never dye his hair. I don’t think he’s the sort of man who believes in deception. Or even knows how to engage in it.” Olivia wasn’t quite sure why she was so certain of this, but she was.
“I didn’t think he would.”
“What isn’t working?” Olivia asked again, after a moment. “It sounds first-rate to me, Georgie. You have five times the éclat of poor Althea. Her maid was exactly right to describe her as a chicken in the rain. Sconce’s mother couldn’t possibly choose her over you.”
“Dowagers always like me.” Georgiana clearly did not view this as an advantage.
“And the duke likes you.” Olivia consciously relaxed her jaw. She seemed to be developing a tendency to clench her teeth. “Yours would be a marriage made in heaven. Just think how happy Mother and Father will be.”
“Do you really think so?” Georgie’s face looked remarkably woebegone for a woman on the verge of betrothal to a duke. “It sounds possible now that we’re talking about it, but when we were at the table, I found myself so angry at you.”
“Why? That’s what I don’t understand, Georgie love. I’ve always been a bumptious fool compared to you, though I promise that I will be as hoity-toity as the best of them from now on. Why on earth were you even looking down the table at Justin and me?”
“Because he was.”
Olivia cleared her throat. “He being the duke?”
“Yes.” Georgiana’s fingers were twisting in her lap. “When you laugh, he looks at you. Every time. I could not help but notice.”
“I’m so sorry, Georgie. It’s my stupid belly laugh, as Mother used to call it. It drove her mad as well. I’ll be better tomorrow, I promise.” Shame beat a rapid tattoo in her breast, but it was nothing she wasn’t used to. “I didn’t realize I had appalled the entire company.”
“You don’t understand,” her sister said, staring at her entwined fingers. “You sit at the end of the table and we all can’t help it, we look at you. It makes me feel like a paper doll.”
Olivia frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Pale.” Georgiana paused, and added, “Fragile and powerless.”
“That is absurd! Just tell me what you want me to do, and I will. I don’t need to make jokes. What else am I doing wrong?”
“You don’t follow my point. When you laugh . . . everyone laughs.”
“You must be daft. If you saw the dowager break a smile, let alone a laugh, I must have missed it. And as for your duke, Sconce has many virtues, but I wouldn’t say that a gift for easy laughter is one of them.”
Georgiana just shook her head. “The duke does know how to laugh. He’s rather restrained about it. But I can see his eyes change when you laugh.”
“Nonsense.” Olivia said it stoutly, pretending she hadn’t noticed the same thing.
But her sister r
eached out and tugged a lock of her hair. “You have a wonderful laugh, Olivia. I’ve always thought that was one of the saddest things about Mother and Father. They were so busy trying to make you into a duchess that they never laughed with you.”
Olivia felt tears sting her eyes. “Oh, Georgie. I think that’s the nicest thing you ever said to me.”
“Your laugh has so much joy in it. If you ask me, Sconce is fascinated by you for that reason.”
Anxious remorse crept up Olivia’s backbone. She scrambled to her feet and turned around, busying herself with pouring another cup of tea. Her hands shook a little. “Of course that’s not true, Georgie. You mustn’t be absurd. I was laughing like a hyena, and the poor man probably couldn’t hear himself speak over the noise.” She put in three spoonfuls of sugar before realizing what she’d done.
She sat back down opposite her sister and stirred her tea. “Men aren’t fascinated by ribald wit, Georgie.”
“I suppose not. But anyone could see he’s attracted to you.”
“I’m a loud, fat woman who’s betrothed to someone else,” Olivia said flatly. “You misinterpret his attention because you love me.”
“You are not fat! You’re a peach, remember?”
“The truth is that I don’t mind so much. You are a beautiful, willowy person, and I’m not. Rupert doesn’t care at all.”
Georgiana opened her mouth to argue, but Olivia held up her hand. “You’re making far too much of the fact that the duke has glanced in my direction once or twice. From now on I’m going to act like the most toplofty aristocrat of them all, so there will be nothing to perturb the ducal glow that surrounds our table.”
Her sister smiled reluctantly. “I expect you’re probably right. Given the loss of his wife and son, the poor man has forgotten how to have fun, if he ever knew. That’s why he looks to you when you laugh.”
Olivia only trusted herself to nod again. Some stubborn, stupid part of her wanted to howl, scream that Quin was hers. Which was ridiculous. She knew perfectly well that she couldn’t leave Rupert. And Quin was her darling sister’s best chance to become the aristocrat she was meant to be.