“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
Back 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 entr
y, 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.
“I am not—” She broke off the sentence. “I shall repeat my request. Would you please fetch the butler?” She sounded as though she was talking through clenched teeth.
Quin had the feeling he was having a hallucinatory experience. He’d heard of this sort of thing, when men lost their minds and suddenly kissed the vicar’s wife.
He always thought imprudence of that nature indicated a profound lack of intelligence, but as he wasn’t inclined to question his own aptitude, he’d have to change his mind. In fact, it was a good thing the mermaid wasn’t the vicar’s wife, because he would likely kiss her and never mind her sanctified husband.
“You look very chilled,” he said, observing that her teeth were chattering. No wonder she sounded as if her jaw was clenched. What she needed was a warm fire. He bent down and scooped her into his arms without a second thought.
She was soaked, and water instantly drenched his breeches . . . which just made him realize all the more sharply that his body agreed with his mind. If the mere sight of her had aroused him, now that she was in his arms the situation was made worse. She was gorgeous, a soft, fragrant, wet—
“Put me down!”
As if in punctuation, a sharp bark sounded around his ankle. He looked down and saw a very wet, very small dog with an extraordinarily long nose. The dog barked again, in a clear command.
“Does that animal belong to you?” Quin asked.
“Yes,” his visitor said. “Lucy is my dog. Will you please put me down!”
“Come,” Quin said to the dog, and “In a moment,” to the lady, who was beginning to struggle. He moved toward the drawing room only to realize that the fire in that room would be banked for the night. But there was a coal stove in Cleese’s silver room that was easily stoked.
“Where are you going?” she said indignantly as he changed direction. “The coachman is out there in the rain and—”
“Cleese will arrive in a moment,” he told her. Her lips were fascinating: full and plump, and a deeper rose color than any woman’s lips he’d seen before. “He’ll take care of your coachman.”
“Who is Cleese?” she demanded. “And—wait! Are you taking me into the servants’ quarters?”
“Don’t tell me that you’re one of those ladies who has never been through a baize door,” he said, turning so that he could back the two of them through the door, and then keeping it open for the dog. “Your dog looks rather like a rat thrown up on the banks of the Thames,” he added. The silver room was just to the left, so he kicked the door open.
“Lucy does not look like a rat! And what does that have to do with anything? I am Miss Olivia Lytton and I demand . . .”
Olivia. He liked it. He looked at her eyelashes and her plump lips. Her eyes were a beautiful color, a kind of pale sea green—or was it the color of new leaves in the spring?
“Put me down, you rudesby!” she was saying fiercely, and not for the first time.
He didn’t want to do that. In fact, he felt very strongly about the question, which was unlike him. Generally, he didn’t care strongly about anything other than polynomial equations. Or light. But Miss Lytton was rounded . . . beautifully rounded in all the right places. She felt right in his arms. He particularly liked the soft curve of her bottom. Not to mention the fact that she smelled wonderful, like rain and, faintly, of some sort of flower.
“I shall inform your master!” She had a definitely threatening tone. Rather like a queen.
He placed her gently on Cleese’s sofa, then threw a shovelful of coal into the stove and gave it a stir. Yellow flames surged up just as he swung the stove door shut, and they threw out enough light so that he got a good look at her face. She was furious, eyes narrowed, arms wound around her chest as if he were a ravisher.
He would be happy to oblige.
Her dog had hopped onto the sofa as well, and was perched next to Miss Lytton. The beast was only slightly larger than a Bible, but she had the fierce eyes of an attack dog.
In fact, Lucy and Miss Lytton had a certain resemblance, though not in the nose.
A person would always know what Miss Lytton was thinking, he realized, lighting the Argand lamp on Cleese’s sideboard. At the moment, her eyes were full of rage.
“If you don’t fetch your master this very moment, I shall have you let go. Dismissed, and without a reference!”
Her dog barked a sharp underline to that threat.
He felt a strange sensation bubbling up in his chest. It took a second before he realized it was laughter. “You’re going to have me dismissed?”
She leaped to her feet. “Stop looking at me like that! If you had a brain that was bigger than a mouse’s willy, you’d realize that I have been telling you something important!”
At that he surprised himself with a laugh. His mother was not going to appreciate Miss Lytton’s colorful use of the English language. “I cannot lose my position. I was born to it.”
“Even a family retainer should not be tolerated if he oversteps the bounds of propriety.”
That sounded faintly familiar, probably because it was the sort of thing his mother said. It created an odd contrast to mouse’s willy. He’d never met a lady who’d admitted to knowing terms of that sort.
Following his gut instinct, Quin took a step toward her, just enough so that he caught her enticing scent again. He expected her to scream at him, but she didn’t.
“I am not a footman,” he stated.
Their eyes met. The world of logic and reason—the world that Quin inhabited on a regular basis—peeled away. “And you are very beautiful,” he added.
She blinked. And then, just as if she were the vicar’s wife and he was a man who’d suddenly lost his mind, he bent his head and brushed his lips over hers.
They were soft and berry colored, like a raspberry tart. It was a gentle kiss, at least until he pulled her against his chest. His body turned to flame and the kiss changed, turned dark and deep. He gave a silent groan and put a hand to her cheek, tilting her head so that he could kiss her again . . .
Her cheek was very cold to the touch. He straightened, reluctantly. “I had better fetch you a blanket.”
That snapped the invisible thread that had kept them staring at each other. Just like that, all the outrage flooded back into her eyes. Quin felt a deep sense of rightness. He could read her, just like a book.
“I suppose you are the duke,” she said stiffly. “I realize now that you sound like one, though I might add that you are not behaving like one.”
“I am not the one who was throwing around references to willies, whether belonging to small rodents or other mammals. The last time I heard that word I was five years old.”
He was fascinated to see that although a trace of pink was stealing into her cheeks, she tilted her little nose firmly in the air. “Lady Cecily is out there in the rain, as is
my sister. Why aren’t you sending people to rescue them, not to mention that poor coachman? It’s cold and wet.”
She had the bearing and tone of a duchess, he thought, and then: Lady Cecily?
“Lady Cecily Bumtrinket? My aunt? Lady Cecily is out in the rain?” As she started an explanation that had to do with her carriage and the missing coachman, Quin finally snapped out of his trance. He yanked the cords connected to Cleese’s rooms, the kitchens, and the fourth floor. For good measure, he pulled open the door and bellowed, “Cleese!”
Then he turned back to Miss Lytton. She was shivering, her arms still wrapped around that magnificent chest of hers. He felt for his coat and realized that he wasn’t wearing it, nor even a waistcoat. No wonder she’d decided he was a footman. A gentleman is never seen in disarray.
Livery hung on the wall, and he grabbed a coat.
Her eyes were dark and suspicious, but she took the garment. She wasn’t fast enough, so he threw the coat around her shoulders himself and pulled it tight, even though he didn’t like seeing her luscious bosom disappear under a swaddling of black cloth.
“What happened?” he demanded.
“I’ve been trying to tell you. We hit a pillar at the end of the drive,” she said. “I think Lady Cecily is fine, but she’s injured her ankle and her ear hurts where she struck the edge of the window. My sister and I were unhurt, luckily, but I couldn’t find the coachman anywhere. The horses seem to be sound, though it was so dark I couldn’t be completely certain.”
Quin was quite aware that what he most wanted to do was scoop up his watery visitor and then sit down, with her on his lap. At the very least, he didn’t want to leave her.
The very thought was a shock. He had felt like this once before.
The first time he met Evangeline, he had felt intoxicated. He had seen her dancing, as delicate and joyful as if she were floating on the wind, and he had succumbed on the spot. Even now, after the years of disappointment and grief, he could remember the sense of wonder he’d felt.