Authors: Eloisa James
“I cannot
bear
your rank vulgarity!” Mrs. Lytton barked. Then, remembering that she was the mother of a duchess-to-be, she cleared her throat and took a deep breath. “There is no need for any . . .
exertion
. A man—even a gentleman—merely has to be given the impression that a woman is ready for intimacy and he will . . . that is, he will take advantage of the situation.”
And with that, Mrs. Lytton swept out the door without so much as a nod to either of her daughters.
Olivia sat down once again. Her mother had never been very interested in shows of maternal warmth, but it was painfully clear that quite soon Olivia would have no mother at all—merely an irritated, and irritating, lady-in-waiting. The thought made her throat tighten.
“I don’t want to make you uneasy,” Georgiana said, seating herself as well, “but I would guess that Mama and Papa are going to lock you in the root cellar with the FF.”
“They could move the matrimonial bed down to the study. Just to make sure that Rupert understands his duty.”
“Oh, he will understand,” Georgiana said. “Men come to it naturally, as I understand.”
“But I never had any particular sense that the FF was of that sort, did you?”
“No.” Georgiana thought for a moment. “At least, not yet. He’s like a puppy.”
“I don’t think he’ll mature by tomorrow evening.” “Puppy” wasn’t a bad description of Rupert, given that he had turned eighteen only the week before. Olivia would always fault her papa for leaping into matrimony before the duke, and then proceeding to procreate at the same headlong rate.
It was tiresome to be a woman of twenty-three, betrothed to a lad of barely eighteen. Especially a boy who was such a callow eighteen.
All through a light supper before the ball Rupert had babbled on about how the glory of his family name depended upon his performance on the battlefield—even though everyone at the table knew that he would never be allowed near a battlefield. He might have been “going to war,” but he was the scion of a duke. What’s more, he was an heir for whom there was no spare, and as such had to be kept from harm’s way. He’d probably be sent to another country. In fact, she was rather surprised that his father was allowing Rupert to travel outside England at all.
“You’ll have to take the lead,” Georgiana suggested. “Begin as you mean to go on.”
Olivia slumped a little lower on the settee. She had known, of course, that she would have to bed Rupert at some point. But she had vaguely imagined the event taking place in the dark, where she and Rupert could more easily ignore the fact that he was a good head shorter than she was and more than a stone slimmer. That didn’t seem likely if they were locked into the library.
“That’s one good thing about your figure,” Georgiana went on. “Men like curvaceous women.”
“I can’t say I’ve noticed. Except perhaps when it comes to Melchett, the new footman with the lovely shoulders.”
“You shouldn’t be ogling a footman,” Georgiana said primly.
“He ogles me, not the other way around. I am merely observant. Why do you suppose we aren’t simply getting married
now
?” Olivia asked, tucking her feet beneath her. “I know that we had to wait until Rupert turned eighteen, though frankly, I thought we might as well do it when he was out of diapers. Or at least out of the nursery. It’s not as if he’s ever going to achieve maturity as most people think of the word. Why a betrothal, and not a wedding?”
“I expect the FF doesn’t wish to marry.”
“Why not? I’m not saying that I’m a matrimonial prize. But he can’t possibly hope to escape his father’s wishes. I don’t think he’d even want to. He doesn’t have a touch of rebellion in him.”
“No man wants to marry a woman his father picked out for him. Actually, no woman either—think about Juliet.”
“Juliet Fallesbury? Whom did her father choose? All I remember is that she ran away with a gardener she nicknamed Longfellow.”
“
Romeo and Juliet
, ninny!”
“Shakespeare never wrote anything relevant to my life,” Olivia stated, “at least until they discover a long-lost tragedy called
Much Ado about Olivia and the Fool
. Rupert is no Romeo. He’s never shown the least inclination to dissolve our betrothal.”
“In that case, I expect he feels too young to be married. He wants to sow some wild oats.”
They were both silent for a moment, trying to picture Rupert’s wild oats. “Hard to imagine, isn’t it?” Olivia said, after a bit. “I simply cannot envision the FF shaking the sheets.”
“You shouldn’t be able to envision
anyone
shaking the sheets,” Georgiana said weakly.
“Save your tedious virtue for when there’s someone in the room who might care,” Olivia advised her, not unkindly. “Do you suppose that Rupert has any idea of the mechanics involved?”
“Maybe he’s hoping that by the time he comes back from France, he will be an inch or two taller.”
“Oh, believe me,” Olivia said with a shudder, “I have recurring nightmares about the two of us walking down the aisle in St. Paul’s. Mother will force me into a wedding dress adorned with bunches of tulle so I’ll be twice as tall and twice as wide as my groom. Rupert will have that absurd little dog of his trotting at his side, which will only call attention to the fact that the dog has a better waistline than I do.”
“I shall take Mother in hand when it comes to your gown,” Georgiana promised. “But your wedding dress is irrelevant to this discussion as pertains to tomorrow’s seduction.”
“ ‘
Pertains to
?’ I really think you should be careful, Georgie. Your language is tainted by that pestilent
Mirror
even when we’re alone.”
“You’ll have to think of tomorrow as a trial, like Hercules cleaning out the Augean stables.”
“I’d rather muck out the stables than seduce a man who’s a head shorter and as light as thistledown.”
“Offer him a glass of spirits,” Georgiana suggested. “Do you remember how terrified Nurse Luddle was of men who drank spirits? She said they turned into raging satyrs.”
“Rupert, the Raging Satyr,” Olivia said thoughtfully. “I can just see him skipping through the forest on his frisky little hooves.”
“Hooves might give him a distinguished air. Especially if he had a goatee. Satyrs always have goatees.”
“Rupert would have trouble with that. I told him tonight that I thought his attempt to grow a mustache was interesting, but I was lying. Don’t satyrs have little horns as well?”
“Yes, and tails.”
“A tail might—just might—give Rupert a devilish air, like one of those rakes who are rumored to have slept with half the
ton
. Maybe I’ll try to imagine him with those embellishments tomorrow evening.”
“You’ll start giggling,” Georgiana warned. “You’re not supposed to laugh at your husband during intimate moments. It might put him off.”
“For one thing, he’s not my husband. For another, one either laughs at Rupert or bursts into tears. While we were dancing tonight I asked him what his father thought about his plan to win glory, and he stopped in the middle of the ballroom and announced, ‘
The duck can dip an eagle’s wings but to no avail!
’ And then he threw out his arm and struck Lady Tunstall so hard that her wig fell off.”
“I saw that,” Georgiana said. “From the side of the room it looked as if she was making a rather unnecessary fuss. It just drew more attention.”
“Rupert handed back her wig with the charming comment that she didn’t look in the least like someone who was bald, and he never would have guessed it.”
Georgiana nodded. “An exciting moment for her, no doubt. I don’t understand the bit about the duck, though.”
“No one could. Life with Rupert is going to be a series of exciting moments requiring interpretation.”
“The duck must be the duke,” Georgiana said, still puzzling over it. “Perhaps dipping the eagle’s wings should be clipping? What do you think? That implies Rupert thinks of himself as an eagle. Personally I consider him more akin to a duck.”
“Because he quacks? He would certainly be alone in visualizing himself as an eagle.” Olivia got to her feet and rang the bell. “I think it would behoove me—there’s a twopenny word for you, Georgie—it would behoove me to keep in mind that I’m being invited to have intimacies with a duck in my father’s library tomorrow night. And if that doesn’t sum up my relationship with our parents, I don’t know what could.”
Georgiana gave a snort.
Olivia waggled a finger at her. “Verrrrry vulgar noise you just made, my lady. Very vulgar.”
Four
That Which Is Engraved on the Heart of a Man (or Woman)
T
he following evening, Olivia was positioned on the sofa in the Yellow Drawing Room some two hours before the Duke of Canterwick and his son Rupert were due to arrive. Mrs. Lytton kept rushing through, squeaking this or that order to the servants. Mr. Lytton was more given to agitated pacing than to rushing. He fiddled with his cravat until it had utterly wilted, and he had to go off to change.
The truth was that her parents had prepared the whole of their married life for this moment, and even so they didn’t really believe their good fortune. She could see the incredulity in their eyes.
Would
the duke truly go through with this marriage, based on a schoolboy promise years ago? Inside, they were not convinced.
“ ‘
Dignity, virtue, affability, and bearing
,’ ” her mother whispered to her, for the third time that evening.
Her father was more direct. “For goodness’ sake, keep your mouth shut.”
Olivia nodded. Again.
“Aren’t you the least bit nervous?” her mother hissed, sitting down beside her.
“No,” Olivia stated.
“That’s—that’s unnatural! One would almost think you didn’t want to be a duchess.” The very notion was clearly inconceivable to Mrs. Lytton.
“Insofar as I am about to formally betroth myself to a man whose brain would make a grain of sand loom large, I must wish to be a duchess,” Olivia pointed out.
“The marquess’s brain is irrelevant,” Mrs. Lytton said, frowning, and then instantly soothing her brow with her fingertips, in case a wrinkle had sprung up. “You will someday be a
duchess
. I never thought about brains when I married your father. The very consideration is unladylike.”
“I feel quite certain that Father evinced a normal intelligence,” Olivia said. She was sitting very still so that her ludicrously unnatural ringlets wouldn’t tangle.
“Mr. Lytton paid me a call. We danced. I never considered the question of his wits. You think too much, Olivia!”
“Which may not be a drawback, given that any woman who marries Rupert will have to do the thinking for two.”
“My heart is palpitating,” Mrs. Lytton said, with a little gasp. “Even my toes are qualmish. What if the duke changes his mind? You . . . you are not all that you could be. If only you could stop trying to be
witty
, Olivia. I assure you that your jests are not funny.”
“I don’t try, Mama,” Olivia said, starting to feel a little angry, even though she’d promised herself that she wouldn’t wrangle. “I simply don’t always agree with you. I see things differently.”
“You indulge in coarse wit, no matter how you wish to phrase it.”
“Then Rupert and I will make quite a pair,” Olivia said, just stopping herself from snapping. “Dim-witted and coarse-witted.”
“That’s just the sort of thing I’m talking about!” her mother accused. “It’s unnatural to jest at a moment like this, when a marquess is about to plight his troth to you.”
Olivia
was
calm. She knew perfectly well that Rupert’s father would arrive, at the appointed hour, and bearing whatever papers were necessary to effect the betrothal. The bridegroom’s presence hardly seemed relevant.
The Duke of Canterwick was a hardheaded man who had no interest in finding his son a compatible spouse; instead, he was looking for a nursemaid. A fertile nursemaid. He didn’t need money, and the dowry her parents had scraped together—which was more than respectable for a girl of her rank—was of no importance.
It was her hips and her brains that had prompted the duke to go through with his promise, as he’d told her coolly on the day she’d turned fifteen. Her parents had thrown a garden party for their daughters, and to everyone’s enormous surprise, His Grace had joined them. Rupert had not accompanied him because he’d been only eleven years old at the time, and barely out of short pants.
“My son is a buffle-headed idiot,” the duke had said to Olivia, staring at her so hard that his eyes bulged a bit.
Since her opinion accorded with the duke’s, Olivia had deemed it best to say nothing.
“And you know it,” he had said, with distinct satisfaction. “You’re the one, my girl. You’ve got the brains, and you’ve got the hips.”
She must have twitched, because he’d said, “Hips mean children. My wife was rail-thin, and look what happened to me. There are two things I want in my daughter-in-law, and one is hips and the other is brains. I don’t mind telling you that if you didn’t have those two assets, I’d toss over my promise to your father and look about until I found the right woman. But you’re the one.”
Olivia had nodded, and since then she had never doubted that she would marry Rupert someday. His Grace, the Duke of Canterwick, was not a man who permitted mere technicalities—such as Rupert’s or her feelings—to stand in the way of a decision.
As the years passed and the duke didn’t bring his son to the altar, even as her parents grew more and more nervous, Olivia still didn’t worry. Rupert was a buffle-headed fool and he wasn’t going to change.
Her hips weren’t going to change, either.
When a carriage bearing the ducal crest was finally observed to have turned into Clarges Street, her father took up a position at Olivia’s right shoulder, while her mother sat beside her, her profile to the door, and twitched her skirts into place.
The duke entered the room without allowing their butler to announce him. In fact, the Duke of Canterwick was not the sort of man who would ever allow another man—other than royalty—to precede him. He looked like what he was, a man given to labeling ninety-nine percent of the world’s population
insolent upstarts
.