by Eloisa James
Or not.
It was shocking, but Devin realized that his uncle—the closest thing he had to a true father—had known precisely whom to choose for his bride. “I may not know much about friendship, but I believe it involves propinquity.”
“What?”
“Closeness. Conversing on a regular basis. Rides in Hyde Park and a dance now and again. In short, people may conclude that I am courting you, and you seem to dislike that idea,” he pointed out. “I called on you twice, and you pretended not to be home.”
“How did you know I was pretending?”
He grinned at her. “Joan told me you were in hiding.”
Viola turned a little pink. “We would have to disabuse people of the notion that your morning calls reflect more than friendship. You must find a lady to woo without further ado. The Season is only a few months long.”
“Is this haste required by my elderly status?” he asked.
She wrinkled her nose at him. “You were irritating, and I couldn’t resist saying that. But of course you’re not elderly. Just a trifle older than the twenty-year-old gentlemen whom one usually meets.”
“I’ve two more years before I’m thirty,” he said evenly.
“Thirty or no, you don’t want to attend another Season, any more than I do. We’ve scarcely been here a half hour, and my toes already hurt.”
Devin glanced down. Peeking from under Viola’s full skirts were pointed shoes with exuberant pompoms. Naturally enough, her feet were as neat and small as the rest of her. “They are very pretty,” he said, meaning her feet.
“I should be rejoicing that I don’t feel nauseated,” she said, obviously following her own train of thought. “The fear of my debut terrorized me for years, and now I find myself annoyed instead of seasick.” She threw him a helpless look. “You must think me a complete widgeon because I’m not even sure who I’m annoyed at: myself, Miss Pettigrew, your uncle . . .”
Everything in his belly tightened at the way her lips pursed. That, and the way she was treating him, not like an eligible duke, but something far dearer. He could feel desire settling in his spine.
He suspected it was a life-long condition.
“Since your feet hurt, would you like to sit?” he asked, noting that his voice had deepened, and trusting that she was too busy glaring at her shoes to notice.
“There aren’t any chairs, and besides, we should return to the drawing room.”
“You could sit on the balustrade,” he suggested, patting the wide marble slab. He picked up one of the cashmere wraps that his uncle stacked about. “We used to sit on these to play jackstones if it was cold.”
Viola’s eyes searched his face. “It’s hard to imagine you a boy. Were you any good at jackstones?”
“Not particularly, but I enjoyed the game,” he replied. “I haven’t played since my father died.”
“How old were you?”
“Old enough to stop playing games. Sixteen.”
Viola’s eyes were hazel-colored, with green flecks, and at the moment they were full of sympathy. Devin couldn’t decide how he felt about that. He was starting to think that Viola was prone to fits of pity. In fact, it was possible that her affection for Marlowe stemmed from pity due to his objectionable betrothal.
No, that was absurd. Viola had an infatuation for the man, one shared by most of the young ladies inside, as far as he could tell.
“I’m afraid I’m too short to hop onto the balustrade,” Viola said. She cast him a rueful glance. “If there’s anything that reminds me that I’m not a Wilde, it’s my lack of height.”
“I dislike tall women.”
“You do?”
“Absolutely.” It was a new opinion, but nonetheless firmly held. He moved a fraction of an inch closer. “I could easily lift you. We’ve only been outside for a few minutes. If we return directly, my uncle will consider me to have failed to make a proper attempt to woo you. That will lead him to push us together again. Stubbornness is a family trait.”
“Somehow I am unsurprised to hear that,” she said, giving him a grin. “At my ball, I thought you’d never stop insisting that you’d wanted to take me to supper.”
“You had your revenge by handing me over to Lady Caitlin,” he said. “May I?”
She glanced down at his hands, not touching her, but ready.
He thought there was a good chance that he would always be ready to hold her.
“Only because my toes hurt,” she allowed.
His hands closed around Viola’s waist and he lifted her to the balustrade in one sure movement. Her trim waist had no need of a corset. And she was as light as a feather.
There would never be that awkward moment when— He cut off that thought. She was a proper young lady. Marital relations took place in a horizontal position in the dark.
She gave a sigh of pleasure and wiggled her toes. “Your uncle is very amusing, isn’t he? I can tell that he cares for you very much.”
Devin nodded.
He was enjoying a heady bout of lust that a gentleman was never supposed to experience for a lady.
And he hadn’t, even during that appalling affaire he’d had a few years ago. Now, looking at Viola’s shining eyes, he couldn’t imagine what he’d been thinking. A man couldn’t be forced to marry a widow, of course. But Annabel had known perfectly well that as a man of honor, he wouldn’t have allowed her reputation to be ruined. What if he had married her, and then met Viola?
The thought gave him a sense of what Viola must feel like when she described being “seasick.”
Annabel had begun an affaire with him, presenting herself as a widow with no wish for a husband. But she’d entrapped him—or tried to—and after that he had even less desire to go into society than he’d had before.
“What are you thinking about?” Viola asked. “That was a fearsome scowl.”
“A bad memory,” he said.
“Where did it take place?”
“At a ball.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Funny, my worst memory took place at a ball too. Well . . . not the worst. Worst would be the memorial service for my oldest stepbrother, Horatius.”
“I’m sorry. I remember meeting him.”
“You probably didn’t like him,” she said, resigned. “He was somewhat pompous. But he was lovely to all of us in the nursery. He would come up to play pirates, with costumes and an eye patch.”
That was definitely the best thing Devin had ever heard about the stuffy heir to the Lindow duchy. “In that case, I’m doubly sorry that he passed away,” he said.
“What happened to you at a ball?”
“I would prefer to hear what happened to you.”
“You can guess,” she said. “I threw up. Are you sure you want to be friends with me? I have a perilous habit of losing my breakfast.”
“Yes, I am sure,” he said.
Viola had powdered her hair, of course, but just around her face he could see little wisps of golden-brown curls. “You have freckles,” he said.
“A few,” she said, shrugging. “I know you’re supposed to hate them, but I don’t.”
Devin discovered that he didn’t hate them either.
Chapter Twelve
Viola ought to be back in the drawing room, whispering Wilde Child to herself under her breath. But it was relaxing to be with Devin.
“Now what kind of wife should we find you?” she asked, beaming at him. “I have to tell you that there aren’t many dukes’ daughters in England, let alone unmarried and attending the Season. Are you prepared to stoop to the offspring of an earl?”
He was lounging against the balustrade, looking at her from heavy-lidded eyes.
She gave him a poke. “Stop that.”
“What?”
“Looking at me like that. Joan would call those lascivious eyes,” she said with certainty. “In your case, it probably means that you aren’t horrendously bored, but you need to practice another gaze.”
The edge
of his mouth eased upward. “Like this?”
He gave her a look of foolish adoration.
“At least that’s more respectful,” she said, hooting with laughter. “Although if you give Caitlin that look, she’ll take it as encouragement.”
The duke grimaced. “Is she obsessed by cats, or was that just my impression?”
“She is very fond of felines,” Viola said. “Perhaps her name led to her interest in them. I think she has two or three cats.”
“I can answer that after the endless supper at your ball,” the duke said. “She has three cats named Wynken, Blynken, and Nod after the nursery rhyme. She also has a collection of ceramic felines. I will never marry a person who collects objects of any kind.” He frowned and looked at her. “Though I suppose I could be convinced. Do you have any collections?”
“No, but my pet crow, Barty, does. He has a terrible habit of stealing bright shiny objects.”
“Hairpins?”
“Oh, hairpins would be fine,” Viola said, laughing. “We found a diamond earring in his cage after a harvest ball at Lindow, and no one had the faintest idea whose it could be. He was terribly affronted when we took it away. He adores one of my sisters-in-law, Lavinia, because she has a ready stock of spangles and never fails to bring him a new one.”
“Lavinia’s husband is a friend of mine,” Wynter said. “I can well imagine that she would share her spangles with your crow.” He paused and then said, “My father was a collector, which means that he was more akin to a crow stockpiling spangles than to Lavinia.”
His jaw had tightened, and Viola decided that he must have truly disliked his father. “I presume the late duke didn’t steal other people’s jewelry?” she asked. “The way the Earl of Kimp plans to steal a gargoyle, and the way that Barty steals buttons?”
“People were generally willing to hand over their wheelbarrow for a sovereign or two,” Wynter said. “But I believe that if the late duke had seen an unusual barrow standing on its own, he would have absconded with it.”
“Wheelbarrow?”
“We have fifty-five. I keep them in the country,” he said.
“Why on earth would His Grace have wanted that number?”
“Some have a wheel in the middle and others have wheels at one end,” he said. “One comes from China, and several from Rome. If you have a need for garden equipment, I could give you a wheelbarrow. Or five.”
She gurgled with laughter. “I think the gardens at Lindow have no shortage of their own carts. Was your father’s collection limited to wheelbarrows?”
“I have a large number of statues of Greek deities fashioned from marble, a room full of stuffed birds, and another filled with chiming clocks.”
“You mustn’t let your future wife know about the collections when you’re courting her,” Viola said. “A room full of stuffed birds?” She wrinkled her nose. “Next you’ll tell me that he was collecting butterflies. I cannot abide people who think it is worthwhile to kill animals merely for display.”
His eyelids flickered.
“He did!” Viola cried.
“My father wasn’t a kindly man,” the duke said, as casually as if he had remarked on the weather. “I’ll take your advice, though, and rid the estate of his collections before I bring home a bride.”
“You could keep a wheelbarrow,” Viola suggested. “And perhaps one or two Greek gods, if they are the good ones. In the nursery, we preferred Roman gods.”
“I’ve never looked closely enough to assess their characters.”
“Where do you keep the pantheon?”
“In my library.”
“You need a wife who doesn’t bore you into retreating to the library to contemplate ancient history.”
“I am the sort of man who is often found in the library by choice,” he said. “Do you think that poses a problem to marital harmony?”
“It would for Joan,” Viola said. “After our debut was delayed for a year, I thought she might spontaneously combust, since there is nothing she loves more than going to an event every night, if not two or three. She distracted herself by flirting with every unattached gentleman who walked through the castle gates, calling it practice.”
“I am very glad that I didn’t pay a visit to Lindow Castle in the last few years,” the duke said.
The tone in his voice rang unmistakably true.
Which was reassuring.
It wasn’t that Viola thought that Wynter had any real resemblance to the duke from her first ball, but like that gentleman, he was very large.
He said he liked short women—remarkable!—but she had always avoided tall men.
Yet there was something delectable about being lifted into the air with no more strain than she might lift Barty to her knee. The duke seemed to understand how much she disliked craning her neck to look up during a conversation.
“You planned to marry Joan,” Viola reminded him. “You could have met her last year and never donned that rose-covered coat until your wedding.”
“If I’d come to the castle last year, would I have met you?”
She shook her head. “Not unless you somehow found your way to the cowshed.”
“The cowshed?”
She gave him a sheepish grin. “I have two pet cows, Cleopatra and Daisy. You like to be in the library; I like to be in the cowshed.”
“A library smells a good deal sweeter,” he observed.
“Daisy and Cleopatra live like queens,” Viola admitted. “Fresh straw morning and night.”
He laughed. “You’ll be an expensive wife if every cow you encounter warrants the same treatment.”
“Gowns and jewels are truly expensive,” she said. “A cowshed is a modest expense. Not much more than the shelter for a collection of wheelbarrows.”
Wynter was looking down at Viola in a way that made her feel peculiar in the stomach—but not as if she might throw up. Instead she felt warm and prickly.
He wasn’t beautiful, the way Mr. Marlowe was.
But he was . . . he was something.
Grand, maybe. He was grand, in all the meanings of the word.
He was leaning one hip against the balustrade she was seated on, turned toward her. His features were far more rough-hewn than those of the men in the Wilde family—let alone Mr. Marlowe’s—and yet she discovered that she was beginning to like them.
“Why is your nose crooked?” she asked. “It gives you the air of a boxer.”
One side of his mouth hitched up. “Fell off my pony at age three.”
“Three! Three is very young to be on the back of a horse, even a small one.”
“I didn’t ride; I fell off directly. My father was certain that I would manifest his riding skills early, since I was his only son. Only child, in fact.”
“What does that have to do with it?” Viola asked. “My mother loves to ride, but I am a wretched coward and find myself clutching the horse’s mane and squealing like a piglet.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
His eyes smiled at her.
Viola pushed away the tingling response she had to that particular gaze. “Don’t disbelieve it,” she told him. “I’m a pathetic horsewoman. One of the many ways that I’m not suited to being a noblewoman.”
“What are the others?”
“I can’t sing. I can’t embroider either. I can unpick knitting, mostly because my Aunt Knowe is good at tangling it, but I haven’t much interest in making scarves, let alone complicated things such as mitts. I like to read, but that’s a solitary pursuit.”
“Are you any good at mathematics?”
“Absolutely not. The first time I threw up in public was when we had an end-of-the-year mathematics examination coming up.”
“I’m no good at singing, embroidering, or knitting either,” the duke said. “I don’t read novels, but I do like mathematics.” He leaned closer. “I like you.”
Viola rolled her eyes. “Irrelevant.”
“Why irrelevant? Because of the v
icar?”
“No,” she said hastily. “Because you’re searching for a duchess, remember? Even if you can’t find the daughter of a duke, you must marry a noblewoman who will be an appropriate match. I’m not a candidate.”
“You could be.”
“No, I couldn’t. I’m short and ordinary. It’s ridiculous that you thought golden hair qualified a duchess for the portrait gallery but—”
“I was being an ass,” he interjected.
“I—” She cut herself off.
His eyes glinted with amusement. “Agree with me, do you?”
“Never,” she said, unable to stop herself from smiling at him.
“I don’t think you’re ordinary,” he said.
Viola’s breath caught. If . . . if it had been Joan sitting on this balustrade, she might have thought that he was planning to kiss her.
Joan had described any number of kisses over the last three years. It was positively astonishing how often gentlemen stole kisses when a young lady’s chaperone wasn’t in direct view.
Aunt Knowe was nowhere in sight.
The Duke of Wynter was leaning closer to her, with a look in his eyes . . .
Viola had no idea how to kiss anyone. Joan had said there was more to it than pressing lips together, but she had never elaborated—and Viola had seen no need for more information.
She panicked, slid off the balustrade, and landed on her sore toes. “Time to go back inside,” she said, as the duke’s hand curled around her elbow to steady her. “Even Sir Reginald can’t think that I am capable of admiring the rhododendrons for much longer than this.”
Wynter murmured something, and she walked past him, her heart galloping. She must have been wrong. Why would the duke wish to kiss her?
The first thing she saw when she entered the room was Caitlin smiling at Mr. Marlowe with longing in her eyes. It was a little embarrassing, to be frank.
Surely she, Viola, hadn’t displayed her affection so obviously?
She suspected that perhaps she had, which led to the sudden revelation that she wouldn’t be happy if her husband had women hanging on his every word. Viola definitely didn’t want to join the crowd around Mr. Marlowe. She felt a deep reluctance to sit at his feet, awaiting crumbs of wisdom.