The Taming of the Duke

Page 3

"Oh, I am," Annabel said, the smile in her eyes growing.
"A baby!" Josie said. "When will it be born?"
"Not for ages yet," Annabel said. "Likely in January or February."
"I needn't return to England for the season until the end of March!"
"Your company would make me very happy," Annabel said, grinning at her little sister.
"Are you certain that you wouldn't like me to stay as well?" Imogen asked, feeling a tremendous reluctance to do so. It wasn't that she was bitter.
A surge of honesty corrected the thought. Of course she was bitter. Two of her sisters were happily married, and now Annabel was having a child. The memories of her two-week-long marriage with Draven were a cold comfort.
"I would love it if you wished to stay," Annabel said, holding out her hand to Imogen. "But I think you should go to London and drive the gentlemen mad by acting like the light widow you so emphatically are not."
"The season is over," Imogen said. "Griselda and I won't go to London. We'll stay with Rafe in the country."
"And Mayne?" Annabel asked.
Imogen shook her head. "A passing fancy," she said. "Luckily he was shrewd enough to see that before I did."
Annabel squeezed her hand.
"Perhaps over the winter you could occupy yourself by making me a list of appropriate parti," Josie suggested. "I don't want to waste my smirks on a man who is lacking in the necessary prerequisites. So many people drift through Rafe's house that you are sure to hear all the gossip."
"And those prerequisites are?" Imogen asked, amused.
"I've made a list, garnered from reading every single romantic novel published by Minerva Press." Josie consulted her book. "An estate is necessary, and a title would be nice. He should be able to read, but not too passionately. Unless he likes novels. And I don't want him to be overly fashionable."
"Don't you have any physical requirements?" Annabel asked.
Josie shrugged. "I would prefer that my husband be taller than I am. Since I am rather short, I foresee no difficulty there." She frowned. "Why are you both laughing? There's nothing ludicrous about my ambitions. My list is likely very close to yours, Imogen."
"My what?"
"Your list," Josie said. "Every woman has a list, even if she doesn't write it down."
"I don't," Imogen said, her lips tight.
"It's been almost a year since Draven died," Josie said, as usual wading in where any hardy soul would hesitate. "You'll have to think of marriage again at some point. You don't want to wither into nothing more than an aunt to Annabel's children."
She caught Imogen's sharp gaze but missed Annabel's.
"Well, for goodness sake, you certainly found it acceptable to contemplate intimacies with Mayne. From what I understand, marriage is merely a regularizing of that sort of relation."
"Josie!" Annabel moaned.
Imogen started laughing again. "Now there's a cold-hearted look at matrimony."
"Your list and mine are likely the same," Josie said. "You simply haven't clarified your demands and I have."
"Tell me again what qualities I am looking for?"
"An estate. A title, if possible. Intelligence, but not to an uncomfortable degree. The same goes with fashion. One would dislike being married to a man who always looked better than oneself."
"I think you should be a tad more specific," Imogen said. "Our own guardian would fit every category you mentioned—Rafe has an estate, a title, sufficient height, no sense of fashion whatsoever, and a reasonable amount of intelligence, if slightly pickled."
"You're right," Josie said. "I shall add an age limitation." She sat down, quill poised. "Shall I cut them off at thirty, or twenty-five?"
"My point was more that Rafe is a drunkard," Imogen said. "Your list overlooks every important characteristic that one would want in a husband."
"I suppose you are talking about steadiness of character," Josie said. "Rafe actually has that. He's attractive too, very. He's just too old for me."
Imogen suddenly noticed that both Annabel and Josie were watching her. "He's far too old and too drunk for me," she said quickly.
"You are over twenty-one, Josie said with her customary crushing truthfulness. "And you are a widow. I think it is an entirely inappropriate match, as far as age is concerned."
"Rafe may not be perfect for you, darling," Annabel said, taking Imogen's hand. "But someone will be."
A little wry smile turned the corner of Imogen's lips. "In truth," she said, "I'm one of those people who fall in love only once, Annabel."
"If we could all plan the moment when we would fall in love as easily as I am making this list," Josie said, "the world would be an altogether more tolerable place. For one thing, I would make certain to fall in love only after a man had sworn undying love."
"Good luck," Imogen said, hearing the disconsolate ring in her own voice.
Annabel squeezed her hand again.
Chapter 2
A Conversation Being Heard Out of Order, as It Took Place Some Three Months Previous
May 1817
Holbrook Court, seat of the Duke ofHolbrook
There was his nose and his jaw. Not his waistline, but definitely his eyes. Even as a man who had spent more time before the mirror at Bartholomew Fair than the glass in his own bedchamber, Rafe knew those eyes. Deeply shadowed, under straight brows. They were his. And his father's.
It was as if one of the illusion mirrors from a fair had come to life and was standing before him. At Bartholomew Fair, for example, a person with tuppence to spend can view a man with two heads, or a chicken with three legs. For another tuppence, one can turn oneself into the sideshow: the Illusion Room features a mirror that endows one's stomach with the curve of a
Christmas pudding. Rare had rather disliked the effect. Even pulling himself up and assuming a stature most suited to the Duke of Holbrook had no effect.
The Earl of Mayne had laughed at Rafe's sour expression. He was surveying his polished elegance in a mirror that made him as willowy as a nymph. "Try this one," he had said, "you'll prefer it."
Secretly, Rafe had. The image in the thinner mirror had no softness about the waist; all of a sudden he looked taut and fit, as if he never greeted the dawn with a full stomach and an aching head.
Now it was as if that second mirror image had come to life and was standing before him.
"You were born in 1781?" he asked, trying to pull his wits together.
"I'm thirty-six, having been born within a few days of yourself, as I always understood." There was just the faintest pause, and then he added, "Your Grace."
"May I offer you a whiskey?" Rafe said.
"Not at this hour."
Rafe walked over to the sideboard and poured himself a glass. Holding it in his hand made the next question easier. "So did you arrive in the world a few days before or after myself?" He didn't turn around, just stared through the mullioned windows of his library. He'd stood before them time and again, but now those little diamonds of shimmering Elizabethan glass seemed suddenly to frame the great sweep of front lawn with black-edged perfection.