This Duke is Mine (25 page)

Quin laughed.

“I mean it,” she protested. “And Georgie agrees.”

He nudged her head up, kissed her wet eyes again. Then his mouth came down on hers. And his hands were everywhere: possessive, almost rough, claiming and branding her.

Olivia melted against him as if she had always belonged there. Quin’s kiss was sweet, but under it was a hard demand, a man’s onslaught. Her arms curled around his neck and she clung to him, opening her mouth, inviting him in. Her head reeled from the smoky male smell of him, the way he tasted like champagne and something else, something intrinsically Quin.

The kiss made her feel wild and deeply alive. He had his hand on her cheek, tilting her head back, kissing her fiercely.

This was
intimacy
, she realized suddenly.

Quin nipped her lower lip, and Olivia shivered against him as if she’d been struck by a cold wind. He gave a little growl in response and tilted her head even further back. Then his mouth slid from hers to the curve of her jaw, leaving her to move restlessly against him. His arms ran more slowly down her back, pulling her closer.

Olivia actually went up on her toes, so intent on the intoxicating warmth of his arms and his lips that—

She almost didn’t hear the door opening.

Nineteen

Much Spontaneous Kissing. And the Other Kind, Too

O
livia broke free with a gasp and turned, still in the circle of Quin’s arms. The dowager didn’t look particularly angry or judgmental. Instead, she was regarding them rather the way a small child might watch a caterpillar: with curiosity, but not revulsion.

“Tarquin,” she stated.

“Mother,” Quin replied, not moving his arms from around Olivia.

“What on earth are you doing?”

“Kissing Olivia,” Quin said. “Spontaneously.”

The duchess’s brow might have furrowed—except one had to assume that she did not hold with extravagant facial expressions of that sort. “Miss Lytton, I might ask the same of you.”

Olivia thought about saying,
Being kissed
, and decided that dissembling would be the more prudent course. “I expect that the exhaustion of the night has provoked a level of unwonted hilarity,” she said, piling on words in the hope that the dowager would find herself confused.

What was she thinking? This woman wrote
The Mirror of Compliments
. She was perfectly at home in a maze of language.

“It does not look like an expression of hilarity to me,” the dowager remarked. “Tarquin, I could remind you of the disastrous role that spontaneity played in your first marriage, but I shall not.”

“Quite right,” Quin said, his arms tightening around Olivia.

“I have no need to do so,” his mother continued, “because this young woman is promised elsewhere, and kisses, whether spontaneous, hilarious, or otherwise, will have no consequence, given that fact. Miss Lytton, before you indulged in this fit of unwonted enjoyment, did you remind my son that you are soon to be a duchess?”

Olivia had the sudden feeling that the dowager was a vulture, circling far above. Which probably made her a wounded lion. Or something even more vulnerable: a rabbit thrown aside by the wheels of a carriage.

“Yes,” she said. Then she looked at Quin. “As I informed you, Your Grace, I am indeed promised elsewhere.”

“To the Marquess of Montsurrey,” Quin said. “Once Montsurrey returns to England, you will be promised, and speedily married, to me.” He turned to his mother. “Olivia shall be Duchess of Sconce.”

“I do not agree.”

There was a long moment of charged silence. “Perhaps I should leave you to discuss this by yourselves,” Olivia said, gently freeing herself from Quin’s embrace.

The dowager ignored her entirely, keeping her eyes fixed on her son. “Miss Lytton is more than suitable for a dim-witted simpleton like Montsurrey. Moreover, she has shown a laudable loyalty toward the poor fellow, and I wrote his father myself to say so. However, she is not suitable for you.”

“I think she is,” Quin stated.

Olivia slid to the side.

The duchess turned to her. “I trust you are not going to sidle from the room, like a guilty housemaid with a broken saucer?”

Olivia’s back snapped straight. “I thought it would be more polite to allow you to continue this conversation with your son in private.”

“I would agree, except that what I have to say pertains to you—and to your sister.
She
is suitable to become Duchess of Sconce, which is, by the way, a far older and more august title than that of Canterwick. You are not suitable for the position.” Faced with the duchess’s direct gaze, Olivia realized that she could either drop her eyes—and never regain a position of strength again—or fight back.

“My sister would indeed be a remarkable Duchess of Sconce,” she said, hoping to avoid open warfare.

“That fact is irrelevant,” Quin said. Olivia didn’t have to turn to see that he was smiling; she could hear it in his voice. “I intend to marry Olivia, not Georgiana.”

“For love, no doubt!” The duchess said it in a burst of fury. “And what has love gotten you, Tarquin, but a reputation for horns that hasn’t left you even these many years later?” She turned to Olivia. “Do you know that he didn’t speak for an entire year after his feckless wife drowned? Didn’t
speak
?”

“I spoke,” Quin protested.

“Oh, you may have asked for a slice of roast beef, but you didn’t say anything worth hearing. Not for an entire year did you show interest in living.”

“It was rather like sleepwalking,” he agreed. Somewhat to Olivia’s astonishment, he didn’t sound in the least bit angry.

“Montsurrey is a noodle,” the dowager stated.

Olivia stiffened.

“That is a fact,” the dowager snapped before Olivia could say anything. “He is a fine match for you, but the same is not true for my son. You are, Miss Lytton—if you’ll excuse my bluntness—overly fleshly, coarse, and rather ill-bred. The last is particularly surprising given that your twin sister has achieved the utmost level of refinement. More to the point, you are uninteresting. You demonstrate no ability to concern yourself in matters important to my son.”

Olivia pulled her dumpy self very straight, and as tall as possible, and said with icy precision, “I will respond only to the claim that reflects on my parents, although I will note that your incivility warrants no response at all. My parents may not be members of the aristocracy themselves, Your Grace, but they are related to peers on both sides. In fact, my father’s claim to the title
esquire
has been held for one generation longer than the Sconces can claim. And may I add that when it comes to matters of breeding, no one in my family has married into the
Bumtrinkets
?”

The dowager’s bosom rose slightly into the air, resembling a balloon ascension Olivia had once seen in Hyde Park. “I was referring not to your birth,” she said, biting the words with frigid disdain, “but to your manners.”

“I like the way Olivia looks,” Quin said, intervening. For the first time, his voice had a distinct warning in it. “In fact, I adore the way she looks. And I think her manner is perfect for a duchess.”

“I’m sure you do!” the dowager snapped. There were red flags high in her cheeks and her black eyes glinted with anger.

“What do you mean by that?” Olivia demanded.

“I mean that you are made of the same stuff as his first duchess, Evangeline. He
adored
her appearance as well, and found out too late that all that wanton sensuality tends to mask a woman who should be flattered to be called a trollop.”

“Mother.” Quin’s voice was now as icy as his mother’s. “You go too far. I beg you, for the sake of all of us, to modify your voice and behavior.”

“I will not.” The duchess was clearly beside herself. “The Duke of Canterwick wrote me before you arrived,” she said, turning on Olivia with the look of a mother tiger facing a threat to her cub.

Olivia waited, head high.

“Have you informed my son that you may well be carrying the heir to the Canterwick title? You will note that I say nothing here about the fact that you are unmarried; that the duke is reportedly such an innocent that you almost certainly molested the poor man; nor that he is barely eighteen. Those are such deeply unpleasant facts that one can only hope that no one outside your immediate family ever learns them, Miss Lytton, because they do not speak highly of you.”

“Are you
threatening
me?” Olivia gasped.

The dowager actually backed up a step, but then linked her hands at her waist and stood her ground. “Certainly not. Those of us in the peerage have no need to resort to methods such as you clearly envision.”

Quin met Olivia’s eyes with a silent question.

“No heir,” she managed.

“Mother!” Quin’s voice was lethal, and cold as ice. “You will show me the courtesy to instruct your servants that you will be leaving for the dower house on the morning. I refer not to the dower house on these grounds, but that attached to Kilmarkie, our Scottish estate.”

To Olivia’s surprise, it was she—and not the dowager—who blurted out “No!” in response to this command.

The dowager was utterly silent for a heartbeat. Then she bowed her head and descended into a curtsy.

Olivia grabbed Quin’s arm and shook it. “You will
not
do this!” she said to him, not gently.

He frowned at her. “I don’t—”

“Your mother and I have the perfect right to disagree about what is best for you without your interfering!”

“I wasn’t interfering. I was responding to what my mother said about you. That, I cannot, and will not, tolerate from anyone.” He looked at his mother and said it again, through clenched teeth. “
Anyone
. You should know that any man, whether in my family or not, who implies that Olivia and Evangeline have anything in common will give me satisfaction at the end of a sword.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Olivia said, grabbing hold of his cravat, since shaking his arm had had no effect. “Could you descend the ducal mountain for one moment and pay attention? Your mother is worried sick about you, and you’re threatening to send her off to Scotland? You weren’t joking when you said that you don’t always understand emotions, were you?”

The dowager made a small noise, but Olivia didn’t look at her. She kept her eyes fastened on Quin.

He frowned at her.

“Of course your mother thinks that I resemble Evangeline—well, in everything except our figures. I came here betrothed to one duke, and when everyone expected that you would betroth yourself to my own sister, I stole you for myself. Your mother walked into a room and found the two of us unchaperoned, and lucky not to be sprawled together on the floor. I do look like the worst sort of hussy. If you are planning to duel every man who points that out, we shall have a very short marriage.”

Quin’s frown deepened.

“No time for all those children you envision,” she continued, remorselessly. “No time to do anything but run around the country attacking people who are saying the obvious. Make no mistake, they won’t just be saying it. Ten to one, they’ll be making horns behind your back as well, at least for a few years.”

Some sort of rationality was stealing into his eyes.

“Don’t you see?” she said, letting go of his cravat. “None of that matters. Your mother loves you. She wants to spare you the horns, and the whispers, and the fat wife too—” She looked at the dowager. “That’s the only part that I’m having trouble forgiving you for.”

Quin reached out, spun her back to him, and pulled her into his arms, held her tight, so tight that she could hardly breathe. “I need you,” he said, low and fierce, into her hair. “Oh, God, Olivia, how did I ever live without you?”

She reached up, pulled his face down to hers. “I’m yours, for good or ill.”

There was a little click as the door to the ballroom closed, but Olivia paid it no mind.

“You’re the missing piece of me,” Quin said. “You make me
feel
.”

“You have always felt. You’re one of the most sensitive, loving men I know. Anyone can tell that.”

He shook his head, so she just pulled his face to hers and gave him a kiss so searing that it said what neither of them were able to put in words . . . yet.

Without a word, Quin dropped into an armchair, taking Olivia with him. This time there was no stopping, and she knew it; he knew it. They kissed until little moans were coming again and again from her throat and she was trembling, touching him everywhere she could reach, fingers shaking.

Quin pulled gently on her bodice . . . and her breast tumbled into his hand. For a moment he froze. Then: “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever imagined, Olivia. May I?”

She wasn’t entirely sure what he meant to do, but she nodded. She would always say yes to him, though it wouldn’t be wise to let him know.

His mouth was hot and wet on the curve of her breast. She arched her back, offered herself until those searching lips reached her nipple.

Olivia wasn’t quite sure what happened next. She would have thought the most she would do was gasp at the surprise, perhaps utter a ladylike squeak, even a tiny shriek . . . no. With an entire ballroom full of aristocrats on the other side of the door, she let out a full-throated cry, an expression of need and burning want.

Without pausing, Quin clamped a hand over her mouth and then suckled harder.

Olivia bit his finger, felt giddy spirals building in her body, sending her heartbeat into her throat.

He raised his head, dropped his hand from her mouth and rubbed a rough thumb across her nipple. Olivia arched back on his arm, mad with the need of it, dazed by the wild sensations coursing through her.

“We can’t do this here,” Quin said, his voice a growl against her throat.

“No?” She jolted, shocked by her own voice, by the pleading hunger. “Of course we can’t.” She sat up, preparing to stand.

Quin looked at her, a wicked invitation in his eyes, and rubbed a thumb over her nipple again. Her spine crumpled against him again, her legs falling open in an invitation he didn’t take.