The Duke Is Mine

Page 16

And he’d kissed her. She actually touched her lips, thinking of it now. Her first kiss. She sat down and Lucy leaped onto her lap. A bundle of wet fur could not make her gown any wetter than it already was, and Rupert’s little dog was shivering terribly, so she bundled her inside the coat and pulled it closed.
She had imagined that Rupert would kiss her when they consummated their betrothal. While she hadn’t been looking forward to his salutation, her imagination had been proved wrong: he hadn’t made the slightest attempt. Apparently his father had not included kissing in his instructions for marital congress.
But this duke had kissed her as if it were his right. As if he were her fiancé. And . . . he’d said she was beautiful. Olivia pulled the coat a little tighter and thought about that. She’d been complimented before, of course. She was to be a duchess someday, and on occasion men had flattered her in a halfhearted sort of way.
Still, the Duke of Sconce had had no idea of her future rank when he’d told her she was beautiful. The thought was like a bright little coal in her heart, a happy spark.
Her mind skipped to a different subject. She’d never seen hair like his. Black as midnight, except for one white streak in the front, and falling loose around his shoulders. Of course, he’d presumably been called from his bed. Undoubtedly he wore his hair tied back during the day.
Lucy made a little snorting sound, so Olivia glanced down, only to see a gleam of pink leg showing through her skirts. Perhaps that was why the duke had stared so intently. She couldn’t bear wearing corsets while riding long distances in a carriage—but generally, there was no one to see her but her sister.
Just as she peeked into the coat to see whether, in fact, her breasts were as visible as her knees, a middle-aged man trotted through the door, pulling his livery over his right shoulder. “What is it?” he panted, seeing her. “Lord, and aren’t you half-drowned, then? Has the bridge to the village gone under water again?”
“The village?” she echoed.
The moment he heard her voice, his entire demeanor changed. He straightened, and something indefinable shifted every feature in his face. He transformed from a rather annoyed, sleepy man into the butler of a great house.
“Please accept my humble apologies,” he said, bowing. “I am Cleese, the butler. On seeing you in my silver room, I assumed . . . has there been some accident?”
A footman poked his head in at the door, with another at his heels, their livery pulled on in a haphazard fashion. “Our carriage drove into the gatepost,” she explained. “Lady Cecily Bumtrinket’s ankle is injured. She is not badly wounded, but the coachman must have been thrown clear. I couldn’t find him at all. I called out, but when no one answered, my sister and I decided that I should come to the house, while she stayed with Lady Cecily.”
She suddenly felt exhausted. “I am Miss Olivia Lytton,” she continued, “and while I would not wish to disturb Her Grace, we are expected.”
“Your rooms await you,” the butler said reassuringly. “If you would accompany me, Miss Lytton, I’ll have you upstairs, dry and comfortable, in a moment. I gather your maid is not travelling with you?”
“There were two carriages with our maids and trunks, but apparently they weren’t following closely.”
“Likely the other carriages missed the turn in the dark. It’s quite common when a driver hasn’t visited the manor before.” More footmen appeared at the door, and the butler sent them flying in different directions. Then he turned back to her again. “Mrs. Snapps, the housekeeper, will dispatch a maid to your bedchamber, Miss Lytton. And I will send up a hot bath and drinks, perhaps a light repast, if you wish.”
“But what about Lady Cecily and my sister?” Olivia asked. “I can’t simply retire without knowing they are safely indoors. Not to mention the coachman, who might be lying dead in the ditch. And the horses.”
“I will send—”
But whatever suggestion the butler was about to make was interrupted by a flurry of noise in the entry. Olivia jumped to her feet. Lucy skittered to the floor, the coat slid from Olivia’s shoulders, and she saw Cleese’s eyes slide below her neck and then jerk away, as if mortified.
One downward glance revealed that her garments were doing absolutely nothing to conceal her breasts. They were perfectly outlined, nipples and all, by her wet clothing. Her cheeks hot, she managed to resecure the coat and then walked past Cleese back down the servants’ hallway.
Lady Cecily was standing in the middle of the entry, propped up on one side by the duke, who was now thoroughly drenched, and on the other by Georgiana. Her sister was a distinctly bedraggled version of her normally duchified self.
Olivia couldn’t help noticing that the duke had rather remarkable cheekbones, emphasized by his sleek hair. And that a soaking wet shirt was as revealing on him as it was on her. Fine linen clung to muscular shoulders— she tore her eyes away. What on earth was she doing, ogling the man her sister was likely to marry?
Just then the door closed behind Cleese, at her back, and the wet arrivals looked up.
“My dear Olivia, you are the heroine of the hour!” Lady Cecily called instantly. “Rushing through this tempest; why, you could have drowned—though, of course, drowning is apparently quite a pleasant death, as those things go. That is, as deaths go. Much better than being hanged, by all accounts.” She tapped the duke’s arm. “Miss Lytton, this is my nephew.”
Lady Cecily’s hair looked as if a flock of swallows had turned it into a community nest, but other than that and her sprained ankle, she seemed little the worse for the accident.
Olivia curtsied. “It is an honor to meet you again, Your Grace.”
“Indeed,” the duke said, turning to his aunt. “Miss Lytton and I have already met, in a manner of speaking. My sartorial disarray led her to the logical conclusion that I was a member of the staff.”
Olivia must have been out of her mind when she came to that conclusion. Even without a coat or cravat, the duke had a kind of ironclad self-possession that declared “aristocrat.”
In fact, he looked astonishingly ducal. She couldn’t see the slightest trace of the man who had laughed when she blurted out that hopelessly unladylike comparison between his brain and a mouse’s privates. Instead he looked like a pasteboard portrait of a duke, staring down his nose at her in a superior fashion.
So be it. He must have suffered a temporary lapse into madness, only to revert to his title. “I apologize for my misapprehension, Your Grace,” she said, sinking into a deep curtsy.
“I’m surprised that you didn’t recognize him immediately,” Lady Cecily put in cheerfully. “I always think that there’s a sort of squint about the eyes that identifies a Sconce. Even those born on the wrong side of the blanket have just a touch of it.”
The duke’s eyes may not squint, but they were as startling gray-green as Olivia remembered. And cold, with just a trace of condemnation. As if she had tempted him to kiss her. Which she certainly had not. “As a matter of fact,” she said, “I do believe I see exactly what you mean, Lady Cecily.”
Georgiana gave a little gasp, which she covered with a cough. “What my sister means, Your Grace, is that you have the unmistakable look of a Sconce.”