This Duke is Mine (21 page)

“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 reached 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.

“What will you wear to the ball tomorrow?”

“I think the blue silk with Chantilly lace.”

“Ah,” Olivia teased. “The big weapons are coming out.”

“I have the strangest feeling that Sconce’s mother is throwing this ball as some sort of test,” her sister said. “Isn’t that odd? She seems to be interrogating both me and Althea, as if she were comparing our answers to an approved list.”

Olivia shrugged. “You will triumph, in that case. What was our childhood, if not a series of tests?”

Her sister’s brow pleated. “Do you really feel that way? And don’t shrug again!”

“Yes.”

“I suppose I see your point.”

“Everything we were scolded for, or celebrated for, was directed at just one thing,” Olivia said. “Becoming duchesses.”

“I can see why you’re bitter.”

“You can?”

“Because you never passed a single test!” her twin said, hooting with laughter and running round the sofa as Olivia dashed after her, brandishing a napkin.

Sixteen

Various Anxieties Related to Children and Canines, but Not to Canapés

W
henever the Dowager Duchess of Sconce announced a ball—even a smallish affair—plans changed at all the great houses within a forty-mile radius. No one who claimed gentry status or higher would even consider missing such an occasion, unless it were for their mother’s funeral.

And for some, even that would be a distinct wrench.

It wasn’t that a Sconce ball was especially fashionable. Her Grace never bothered to import two hundred lemon trees heavy with fruit, or blanket the ballroom with orchids, or even send to Gunter’s for specially made ices.

Rather, she followed the prescribed routine of the duchesses who had come before her: one ancestor had hosted King Henry VIII on two different occasions, greeting two different wives, and another had welcomed Queen Elizabeth three times.

To wit: The ballroom was scrubbed and polished to a fare-thee-well, a smallish orchestra was hired, a reasonable amount of food was ordered, and a great deal of excellent wine was brought up from the cellars.

And that was that.

The rest would take care of itself, to the dowager’s mind, and it always did. There was nothing more pitiable than the sight of an anxious hostess.

As was her custom, in the early evening in question she presided over a small meal, to which were invited those guests who would stay at Littlebourne overnight, having traveled a goodly distance. Following the meal, the assembled guests were asked to proceed to the music room. Some time remained before the ball was to begin, and Her Grace had judged this interval an opportune time to address another item on her suitability inventory.

To this end, she issued a command, faintly disguised as an invitation. “I believe we should all be grateful if the young ladies among us would give us some light entertainment.”

Lady Althea and Miss Georgiana immediately rose, as did the two Miss Barrys. (The Barrys lived on the other side of the county and were all very well in their way, but not eligible as daughters-in-law as a consequence of the unfortunate existence of an inebriate great-uncle. One never knew when that bad strain might pop up in the blood.) Her Grace positioned herself on a settee with a clear view to the instruments, instructing her friend Mary, Lady Voltore, to sit with her.

The Miss Barrys conducted themselves tunefully. Lady Althea sang very prettily. Miss Georgiana not only sang very well—a piece from an opera and then a light ballad—but she also accompanied herself on the harpsichord. It was eminently clear that Miss Georgiana Lytton would be an entirely commendable Duchess of Sconce. The dowager never permitted herself an excess of emotion, but she was inwardly aware that if she confessed to a weakness, it was her only son. The pain he had suffered after his first marriage was unacceptable.

“Your Grace?”

She looked up to find the Miss Barrys curtsying before her. “Yes?”

“Your Grace,” one of them said, rather breathlessly, “would you be so kind as to allow Lord Justin to sing something for the assembled company?”

The other one dropped another curtsy. “Everyone would love it, we are sure.”

The dowager allowed one eyebrow to arch. Yes, she had made the right decision when she dismissed the Barrys from her list of possible duchesses. “If Lord Justin would agree, I’m sure I have no objection,” she said rather frostily.

Naturally, her nephew didn’t take a hint from her tone, but leapt up in an unbecoming manner to sit at the pianoforte. It wasn’t proper, to her mind. Ladies sang and played musical instruments. The only men who sang, let alone played, were of the professional sort, with whom one did not associate.

In fact, Justin was unsatisfactory in more than one way. This evening, for example, he was wearing purple. To her mind, wearing purple was like singing: gentlemen one knew simply didn’t do it. But there was her own nephew (if by marriage), wearing the color of lilacs, with dove-gray lace at the cuffs, which made it worse. Vulgar was the word for it. The late duke would turn in his grave if he could see such a garment on a family member, half-French or not.

And why on earth were all those girls clustering around the pianoforte as if they were minnows nibbling on a crust of bread?

She shushed Lady Voltore, who was rambling on about a new type of rose, and turned her attention back to her nephew and his flock of admirers.

“What’s that he’s singing?” Mary bellowed. She was more than a little deaf. “It doesn’t sound like ‘Greensleeves.’ I like it when they sing ‘Greensleeves.’ Tell him to play it, will you, Amaryllis?”

The dowager tolerated being on a first-name basis with Lady Voltore only because they had known each other since they were two years of age. “I cannot simply tell him to sing that,” she said now. “I can request it, if you wish.”

“Don’t be absurd, Amaryllis. You paid for the fellow; you might as well get your money out of him.” Mary had always been a touch crass, to put it charitably.

“I didn’t pay for him,” she said reluctantly. “He’s a relative.”

“Decorative? Yes, I’d say so. Does he work for the circus? I don’t think I’d invite the circus into my house if I were you.”

The dowager contented herself with giving Mary a look.

“I don’t know where you hired that boy, but I have to say, I rather like him. Nice song. Nice face.” Mary had a quite ribald chuckle. “Not so old but that I can appreciate a face. Why, he almost looks like a gentleman, barring that coat, of course. Makes him look like an organ-grinder’s monkey.”

Justin was surrounded by a positive flowerbed of young girls. One Barry hovered at each elbow, and Lady Althea was hanging over his shoulder.

The dowager duchess cocked her ear and listened for a moment. “
She was his sun
,” Justin crooned. “
She was his earth
.” Well, that sounded foolishly innocuous enough. But given that Lady Althea had been granted the incalculable honor of even being considered for the title of Duchess of Sconce, the least she could do was to behave in a dignified manner. The truth was that Althea was dizzy as a doorknocker, and she’d never make Tarquin happy.

Justin had started a new song, something about love. Love! Love was a destructive, disagreeable thing, to her mind. Just look what it had done to Tarquin: almost torn the poor boy to pieces.

She turned away, noting with approval that Miss Georgiana was sitting beside an elderly aunt on the late duke’s side, engaging in a quiet conversation. She showed no signs of joining the throng around the piano, which said a great deal for her common sense.

And Tarquin?

It took a moment, but she managed to find her son. He was seated in a corner, and appeared to be watching Miss Lytton, who was sitting in another corner talking to the Bishop of Ramsgate. This evening Olivia Lytton looked the very picture of the future Duchess of Canterwick, the only possible objection being that her neckline was a bit daring.

The dowager squinted until she could see more clearly. The bishop, that old goat, seemed to be enjoying the view afforded by Miss Lytton’s
embonpoint
.

But it was Tarquin whose face caught her eye. The expression on his face was somehow familiar. In fact, she had seen that look before, and she had hoped never to see it again. Before she even realized it, she was halfway out of her chair.

But she eased back.

It could not have gone very far. In fact, thinking carefully over the last few days, the dowager was quite certain that the relationship, if one could call it that, couldn’t be said to exist. At least, not to Miss Lytton. That was important. Miss Lytton was already betrothed to a marquess. What’s more, she seemed to be loyal to the poor fool.

Furthermore, Canterwick himself had insinuated to her that Miss Lytton might be carrying the heir to his dukedom.

Of course, that didn’t mean that Olivia Lytton wouldn’t throw over her fiancé in a moment if she got wind of the idea that she could exchange the marquess for a duke with a full twelve eggs to the dozen.

The dowager’s fingers tightened on the arms of her chair. Miss Lytton was almost certainly another Evangeline.

Possibly carrying the duke’s heir
, even though the boy was only eighteen and as simple as they come, or so she’d heard. And now she was flirting with a bishop! Incredible.

“I must say, you have an ugly little dog, Amaryllis,” Mary said, interrupting her thoughts.

“I don’t own a canine!” Her irritation with Miss Lytton colored her voice.

“Whose is it, then?”

With a sense of misgiving, the dowager followed the direction of Mary’s lorgnette. That odd dog belonging to Miss Lytton—one could hardly call it a canine, given its size and untidiness—was sitting at her skirts. Sitting with its horrid little paw on her slipper. Again!