This Duke is Mine (24 page)

“I could.” Her voice rose. “I really could.”

“After you marry Sconce, you can buy whatever books you wish, not to mention discussing the ideas with him. It hardly need be said that neither Rupert nor I can provide you with any sort of serious intellectual conversation.”

Georgiana started down the corridor but paused. “I know I told you he was perfect, Olivia, but he’s not. There’s no spark. None.”

“Perhaps, over time?” Olivia said, forcing the words out.

“I thought . . . I truly thought that when I met the ideal man I would feel something. A wish to be with him. Passion, love, whatever you want to call it. At first, I believed that’s what I was experiencing with Sconce. I do like talking to him. But I don’t wish to call him by that ridiculous short name of his, Quin.”

“You don’t like his name?”

Georgiana began walking down the stairway. “It sounds like a piece of fruit to me, a quince by any other name.”

Olivia stared at her back, pushing away the liquid, joyful feeling of relief that was flooding her entire body.

“And even if his appearance wasn’t a cross between a zebra and a quince,” Georgiana said over her shoulder, “he doesn’t look at me the way he looks at you.”

“He doesn’t . . .” Olivia said weakly.

Georgiana turned around at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m not
stupid
,” she pointed out, unnecessarily. “I may have wanted to marry Sconce before I came to know him better. But even if I did still wish to marry him, which I do not, I am not a bone you can throw to him simply because you feel too guilty to act on your own feelings.”

“I don’t think of you as a bone!”

Her sister’s eyes sharpened. “If you want him, Olivia Lytton,
take him
. He’s a duke, for goodness’ sake. You have a chance to make Mother and yourself happy. Rupert will come back one of these days, and his brain won’t be any more powerful than when he left this country. What on earth are you waiting for?”

“Rupert,” Olivia said weakly. “I can’t betray Rupert.”

“You would betray Rupert if you gave Lucy to a passing tinker. Personally, I think it’s unlikely that he would grieve for more than five minutes over the prospect of not marrying you.”

“I thought . . .” Olivia’s throat swelled. “I thought it would betray
you
.”

Georgiana’s smile was brilliant. “If I wanted him, I would have dueled you for him. Rapiers at dawn. But I don’t.”

Olivia snatched her into a hug, careful not to muss her hair, and said, “We’ll dower you, Georgie. You know that.”

“Yes,” Georgiana said. She looked happier than she had in years as they walked in the door of the ballroom. “You had better do that. Because in case you’re wondering, I am not going to step into your shoes and marry Rupert. I still feel queasy thinking about that scene in the library. I’d rather stay an old maid. If I can find enough books to read, I shall do just that.”

“You can do whatever you wish,” Olivia said, feverish heat racing over her body. “One of us sacrificed on the ducal altar is enough.”

Georgiana broke into a merry peal of laughter that made two gentlemen turn and look. “If you’re sacrificing yourself, then we should all be so lucky.”

Olivia felt her cheeks heating up. “I know . . .”

Her sister put a fleeting finger on her cheek. “You deserve it after all the kindnesses you’ve shown Rupert. We can find him a wife, you know. Not Althea, but someone with understanding and kindness.”

“And enough intelligence to run the estate,” Olivia said. “Do you really think . . .”

Georgiana grinned and then glanced to the side. “Dear me, it looks as if the duke is dancing with Annabel Trevelyan. Now
she
would love to become his duchess.”

Olivia spun; heard her sister’s chuckle; saw Quin leaning against the wall staring moodily at the dancers.

“He remains where he can see you,” Georgiana said into her ear. “And if you walked through the room and into the library . . . he would follow.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” Olivia said, her heart in her throat.

“Is this the bravest woman I know?” Georgiana scoffed. “The woman who entered Father’s study with Rupert, knowing that the next few hours would include the most unpleasant experience any woman could endure? You have courage, Olivia. Use it.”

Olivia took a deep breath. At that moment, Quin turned his head. Georgiana was right: he was checking to see where she was.

He loved her. Or rather, to put it his way, he
cared
about her.

Rather blindly, she walked deeper into the room, trailed by the sound of Georgiana’s laughter. At just the right moment she looked at Quin and let an invitation speak through her eyes.

He straightened instantly and his eyes flared in response. So she moved on, weaving through the room, pausing to respond to greetings, extracting herself as soon as she could, declining to dance. It was like a game, the most thrilling game she had ever played.

Quin was surely behind her, following her. She would have wagered her life that he couldn’t resist the look she’d given him. Power was intoxicating . . . it sang in her blood, made her knees unsteady.

At the other end of the ballroom she went straight to the door that led into the library, opened it, and walked through.

The room was quiet, empty except for a footman. The duchess did not believe that her guests should be given the opportunity for dalliance, and to that end, posted servants in each room.

Olivia nodded to him. “Roberts. Are you having a quiet night?”

The footman relaxed his rigid pose, recognizing her. “Three couples so far,” he said, a grin splitting his face.

“Let me guess . . . the betting-book is in play?”

“For each room,” he said. “Tuppence a room. I wagered five couples would try for this one.”

The door behind her opened quietly. She didn’t have to turn; the air changed when he was near.

“Roberts,” Quin said. His deep voice sent shivers down her spine. “Her Grace doubtless has some use of you in the back of the house.”

Roberts was too well trained to show even a flicker of curiosity. He bowed and left as quietly as Quin had entered.

Only then did Olivia turn.

He was magnificent: wide shoulders, appearing even larger in a dark blue superfine coat that brought out the green of his eyes.

The look in those eyes had her retreating a step. “Quin!” she squeaked, breathless, silly, like a girl of thirteen.

“You summoned me,” he said, direct as always. “And here I am, Olivia. I hope you meant it, because I think I shall never be able to resist you.”

She couldn’t think what to say. He was so beautiful . . . lean and powerful and muscled. Even his hair was extraordinary.

Whereas she was plump and ordinary.

He closed the space between them in one stride. Having him so close just made the contrast between them even more obvious. This was impossible. He took her hands in his and raised them to his lips, sending another shiver down Olivia’s spine.

“I’m fat,” she blurted out.

“You are not fat. You’re the most beautiful, voluptuous woman I know.” His eyes moved down her body, deliberately, slowly, then back to her face. What she saw in them sent fire squirming through her stomach and lower.

“I want every inch of you,” he said, growling it. “I want to fall on my knees and worship at your hips.” He reached out, shaped her curves from breast to hips with a burning sweep of his hand that a man was allowed to give only his wife.

But Olivia couldn’t bear it if he found himself regretful later . . . if she ever saw the disenchantment in his eyes that she saw so constantly in her mother’s. She hurried on.

“I won’t make a very good duchess. I don’t think the dowager likes me very much. She would prefer that you marry Georgiana. In fact, I’m fairly sure that she would be appalled by the very idea of your marrying me.”

“That’s precisely why my estate came equipped with a dower house. I am not marrying my mother. I am marrying you.” Quin’s gray-green eyes were so . . . she’d never dreamed a man would look at her like that.

But she had a list, a mental list, of characteristics that disqualified her for the position of Duchess of Sconce. “I make coarse jokes. That is, my sense of humor is not very ducal.”

His eyes laughed, even though his face was composed. “I know only one such poem, which my cousin Peregrine taught me when we were boys.
There once was a lady from Bude, Who went swimming one day in the lake
.”

He paused, waited . . . an invitation. Olivia could feel herself turning pink.

“
A man in a punt
,” she said softly, “
Stuck his pole in the water
. . .”

He picked up the verse. “And said: ‘
You can’t swim here—it’s private
.’ The truth is that I never really understood it. Am I right in thinking that the lady is from
Bude
because she’s swimming in the
nude
rather than a lake?”

“Yes.”

“I do understand the
pole
. But once you have to explain it, the verse is not very funny. Are you certain that you want to be with someone who not only can divest every bawdy pun of its humor, but must, in order to see the point?”

“Are you certain you want to be with someone who doesn’t share your love of science? I’m afraid . . .”

“What, dear heart?”

“You’ll be bored with me.” She said it in a rush. “I can’t talk about the quality of light, and if you tell me about mathematical functions, I truly will fall asleep. I have a very trivial mind.”

“You understand emotion; I don’t. That doesn’t mean that my mind is worthless. We like different sorts of things. Why should I bore you with talking about mathematics? You can teach me to laugh instead.”

Something like a sob rose up in her throat.

“Will you teach our children bawdy verses as nursery rhymes?” he asked.

She considered. “Perhaps.”

“Then you will have to teach me some first. I’m sorry to say that Alfie never learned a single verse of poetry.”

His hands curved around her shoulders, slid up into her hair, teasing strands apart with his fingers. “Do you know that I find myself wanting to talk about Alfie for the first time since he died? I’ve said his name aloud to you and I don’t feel as if I were falling into a black pit.”

She swallowed hard.

“Perhaps,” he said delicately, “we might bestow one of our children with the miserable doorknocker of a name, Alphington? Just so that he’s . . . remembered?”

“Oh Quin,” she whispered. Then, because his question didn’t need answering, since he knew the answer as well as she: “Just how many children do you think we will have?”

“Many?” His eyes were steady on hers. “I always wanted the nursery to be full of children, so many that no one could be lonely.”

Olivia’s heart ached, for two lonely little dukes-to-be, Quin and Alfie. “Is that why you flew kites, so that Alfie wouldn’t be lonely?”

“Evangeline refused to have any more children. She was horrified by the way that her body changed. Even more so because I loved how she looked.”

“You did?”

“I thought she had never looked more beautiful; she thought she had never looked more repulsive. She wouldn’t let me touch her, or even see her unclothed, for two years.”

Olivia blinked. “So she wasn’t unfaithful the entire time you were married?”

“She was.” He said it calmly, as if he were discussing the weather. “She felt differently about me than she did about her lovers.”

Olivia thought, not for the first time, that there was no point in expressing aloud what she thought about Evangeline.

“I don’t want to talk about my former wife,” Quin said. “In fact, I’d just as soon never speak her name again.”

“Are you sure? I’m so ordinary compared to you, Quin.”

The look of complete perplexity in his eyes could not be feigned. “What the hell do you mean? You’re beautiful, and funny, and everyone in this house loves you. With,” he added punctiliously, “the possible exception of my mother, but she will learn to care about you.”

A sob came, bringing a tear or two along with it.

“No,” Quin said, pulling her into his arms. “No tears.” He started kissing them away, brushing her face over and over with his lips in the softest of caresses.

Olivia nestled into his arms.

“Do you mind telling me what exactly brought you into this room?” Quin whispered between kisses. “When I saw you an hour ago, you were ready to sacrifice me for your honor.”

Olivia laughed shakily. “I do feel terrible about Rupert. But Georgie says that we will find him the right wife: someone understanding, strong, and kind.”

“Ah, so your sister saw the truth.”

“She told me there is no spark between you.”

“Just as
I
told you.” There was deep satisfaction in his voice. “You know, your sister would make an extremely capable scientist.”

“She
is
an extremely capable scientist, and she will be a brilliant one, once we buy her all the books she wants. Father never would, you know. He thought that books were unladylike, and Mother agreed.”

Quin snorted.

She burrowed closer, reveling in the strong arms around her, the dark, spicy, masculine smell of his chest, the steel of his body . . . the hard nudge against her stomach that told her without words that he wanted her. That he thought every inch of her breasts and stomach and hips was worth kissing.

“I do feel some remorse about stealing you from Montsurrey. Stealing a man’s fiancée while he is serving his country is not entirely honorable.”

Olivia leaned against him, letting his heat warm her whole body. “Rupert lost air at birth,” she offered. “He will never be all that he could be.”

“He’s more than enough,” Quin said simply. “He’s serving his country, risking his life to protect England.”

A few more tears dropped onto Quin’s coat. “You’re right.”

“We will always be friends to him.” It was a vow of sorts. “He had you, and now I’m taking you away, and I will never forget what I forced him to give up.”

Olivia sniffled ungracefully, took the handkerchief he gave her. “Rupert might be more resentful if you took Lucy.”