by Emily Larkin
Miss Warrington enjoyed the attention. She blushed prettily and managed to stand closer to Oliver with every song that they sang. By the time they were on their third duet, her arm was brushing his. She didn’t attempt to tilt her bosom at him as they sang. Her bosom wasn’t the drawcard right now; her mouth was—those plump, supple lips, that deft pink tongue, those neat, white teeth. Oliver had never given it any thought before, but he realized now that singing exposed more of a woman’s mouth than any other activity he could think of. Except perhaps sex.
“Bravo!” their audience cried, and, “Encore.”
Miss Warrington suggested Scarborough Fair. Oliver braced himself for what he guessed was to come.
He wasn’t wrong. Miss Warrington turned the ballad into something intimate between the two of them. “He shall be a true love of mine,” she sang in her throbbing contralto, her eyes fixed adoringly on his face, her mouth shaping each word lovingly, the glimpses of her teeth and tongue full of promise.
“They sound as if they were made for one another,” Lady Warrington exclaimed at the end of the song. “A perfect match!”
“Oh, Mother, don’t,” Miss Warrington said, blushing, and not quite managing to hide a smug smile.
Oliver couldn’t roll his eyes, given that almost everyone in the room was looking at him, but he glanced at Primrose and to his astonishment, she rolled her eyes. He barked out a surprised laugh, and hastily turned the sound into a cough.
“Are you all right, Westfell?” Miss Warrington asked, laying her hand solicitously on his arm.
“Too much singing, I think,” Oliver said, stepping back and politely freeing himself from her touch. He glanced at Miss Middleton-Murray, who’d been playing for them all this while. She was smiling, but he didn’t like the cold glitter of her eyes. It made him think of Miss Carteris’s not-so-accidental tumble down the stairs.
His urge to laugh was abruptly quenched. He crossed to the pianoforte and leaned one elbow on it, directing an appreciative smile at Miss Middleton-Murray. “Thank you for your accompaniment. We shouldn’t have sounded half so good without you playing for us.”
Miss Middleton-Murray accepted this compliment with a demur and a very pretty appearance of modesty, but the cold, angry glitter of her eyes didn’t abate.
Oliver looked for Primrose again. He urgently needed to talk with her—and had indeed got two paces towards her when Lady Warrington detained him again, gushing praise at him as if she were a fountain that spouted words instead of water. Oliver nodded and smiled and tried to sidle away from her, aware that the music room was slowly emptying. He glanced at the pianoforte and discovered that Miss Middleton-Murray had abandoned her seat there. In fact, she was no longer in the room.
He turned his head, searching for Primrose. She was edging towards the door.
Oliver experienced a feeling close to panic. He almost opened his mouth and bellowed Prim! Wait! but fortunately Miss Cheevers said something to her, and Primrose paused to reply.
“Yes . . . well . . .” he said to Lady Warrington, inching sideways.
But Lady Warrington was in full spate. She inched with him, still talking, while Primrose finished speaking to Miss Cheevers, stepped towards the door, and gave a last glance over her shoulder.
Oliver caught her gaze and gave her the most significant look he was capable of, trying to shout with his eyes.
It worked. Primrose halted and raised her brows slightly in a silent What?
He couldn’t mouth I need to talk with you, not while Lady Warrington was speaking to him. Instead, he lifted his hand and stroked his nose. It was a signal he and Rhodes had used at school when they had secrets to tell one another. He hoped Rhodes had shared the signal with Primrose. “Your daughter is very gifted,” he told Lady Warrington at random. “If you’ll excuse me . . .”
But the compliment set Lady Warrington gushing again. Now she was talking enough for two fountains. Oliver listened to her helplessly, while Primrose quirked her eyebrows at him. It appeared that Rhodes had not shared that signal with her.
He tried one more time, stroking his nose at Primrose—I need to talk to you—while simultaneously listening to Lady Warrington and edging towards the door.
Primrose frowned. After a moment, she rubbed her own nose with her fingers, as if trying to remove a smudge.
Oliver almost shook his head in frustration. He stroked his nose very deliberately again. Lady Warrington frowned at him. Primrose frowned at him, too. She pulled out her handkerchief and applied it to the end of her nose.
Oliver gave up trying to be polite. “Excuse me,” he told Lady Warrington, cutting across what she was saying. “I really must speak with Lady Primrose.”
He left Lady Warrington open-mouthed. It was unpardonably rude of him, but damn it, he was a duke now; he could be rude to a viscountess if the situation demanded, and this situation bloody well did. He crossed the music room in four strides, took Primrose by the elbow, and hurried her out the door.
“What’s wrong with my nose?” Primrose demanded.
“Nothing. I need to speak with you. Privately. As soon as possible.”
Her eyebrows lifted again. “Very well. Where?”
That was the question: where? He saw Lord Warrington disappear into the library, Mrs. Middleton-Murray into the yellow salon, and Lady Cheevers and Miss Cheevers into the blue one, followed a few seconds later by Ninian.
“The State apartments,” he said. “In five minutes. Don’t go upstairs first.”
“All right,” Primrose said, folding up her handkerchief and placing it in her pocket.
Oliver gave a curt, relieved nod, and watched her disappear down the corridor.
“Oliver,” someone said at his elbow.
Oliver started, and looked around. His uncle stood there, smiling genially.
“Quite a voice you have. Reminds me of your father.”
“Thank you,” Oliver said.
“Would you like a game of piquet? Just the two of us?”
“I’m sorry, Uncle, but I can’t right now. Perhaps later?”
Uncle Algy’s smile fell, and Oliver felt a stab of guilt, but only a very little one. Talking to Primrose was more important than anything else right now, and besides, if he played piquet with Uncle Algy he’d be breaking his promise to Rhodes. “If you’ll excuse me, Uncle?”
* * *
Two minutes later, Oliver stepped into the State reception room and closed the door quietly behind him. The room was empty except for its shrouded furniture. There was a faint smell of stale lavender, a scent he hadn’t noticed the first time he’d been here, full of indignation at Rhodes’s protectiveness.
Oliver paced, his feet sinking into the carpet. And paced. And paced. Doors stood open on either side of the room, leading to further chambers.
He peeked into the one on the left. It was a sitting room, with red damask on the walls and a black marble fireplace. It, too, had an open door, which led to a dressing room—also with red damask and black marble—and beyond that was the bedchamber. “Good God,” Oliver said involuntarily. Not because of the four-poster bed beneath its Holland cloth, but because of the raised dais with the gilded columns upon which it stood.
Faintly, he heard a door open and close somewhere in the State apartments.
Oliver retraced his steps rapidly and found Primrose standing in the middle of the reception room. “Where have you been?” he said. “Tell me you didn’t go upstairs.”
“You said five minutes,” Primrose said. “And it’s been five minutes exactly. What is it? What’s so important?”
“Miss Middleton-Murray,” Oliver said. “I think she’s—” He broke off and listened intently. Were those footsteps in the corridor?
Primrose turned her head towards the door. She’d heard it, too.
Oliver took Primrose’s hand and dragged her into the next room, and then the next. They tiptoed hastily, the carpet hushing their steps. An enormous lacquered chinoiserie screen stoo
d in one corner of the dressing room, red and black dragons cavorting across its panels. He drew Primrose hastily behind it.
They waited in silence while Oliver counted out a minute in his head. He heard no doors open or close, heard no footsteps. They were alone. When the minute was up, he realized he was still holding Primrose’s hand. It felt so nice that he decided not to let go. Instead, he led her out from behind the screen and over to a Holland-covered sofa.
“What is it, Oliver?” Primrose asked, as they sat side by side.
“Miss Middleton-Murray.”
“What about her?”
“I think she’s going to try her trick with the string again. You need to be careful.”
Primrose looked startled. “But what have I done to her?”
“Not you; Miss Warrington. But you use the same stairs and you could trip on a string just as easily as she could, and—”
Primrose winced. “Oliver, my hand.”
Oliver relaxed his grip from crushing to firm. “Prim, you have to be careful. On any stairs. On all stairs. Promise me!”
“I promise,” she said. “As long as you’re careful, too.”
“I’m always careful.”
Primrose was silent for a moment, frowning. “If it is true . . . if she’s going to do it again . . . she must be stopped.”
“Yes.”
“How could anyone think of such a thing, let alone do it? And not once, but twice!”
“If it’s not right, don’t do it,” Oliver said, under his breath.
He didn’t think he’d spoken loudly enough for Primrose to hear, but clearly she had, because she stared at him as if he’d sprouted a unicorn’s horn in the middle of his forehead.
“What?” Oliver said.
“If it’s not right, don’t do it. If it’s not true, don’t say it.”
“I agree,” Oliver said.
“You read Marcus Aurelius?”
Oliver had a very well-thumbed copy of Aurelius, but he enjoyed teasing Primrose, so he said, “Who?”
“Marcus Aurelius. The Roman Emperor.”
Oliver looked as blank as he could.
“You must have studied him at school,” Primrose said, a note of exasperation entering her voice. “‘If it’s not right, don’t do it. If it’s not true, don’t say it.’ That’s something he wrote.”
“Aurelius?” Oliver wrinkled his brow. “Isn’t he the fellow who wrote about vegetables?”
Primrose’s brow wrinkled, too. “What?”
“‘Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away.’ Always thought that was an odd thing to write down for posterity.”
“It was a lesson in philosophy,” Primrose told him, crossly. “He was illustrating a point.”
Oliver grinned at her. “I know. Don’t glare at me.” He laughed at her expression.
“You are an idiot, Daisy,” she said, trying to tug her hand free from his grip.
“A jingle brains,” he agreed, not letting her hand go.
“Oliver,” she said, tugging harder. “If someone should come in and see us—”
“You’d be ruined,” Oliver told her cheerfully. “Utterly and absolutely ruined. Caught in an assignation with a duke! Why, we’d have to marry to save your reputation.” He widened his eyes at her. “Now, that’s a thought, Prim. Marry me. Save me from Lady Warrington and her warbling daughter.”
“You are dreadful, Oliver! It would serve you right if I said yes.”
He grinned at her. “I think what you meant to say was that it would suit me well if you said yes.”
“Suit you? Of course not. It wouldn’t suit either of us!”
“Wouldn’t it?” Oliver pretended to consider this statement for several seconds, and then shook his head. “I disagree. I think it might suit me.”
Primrose blushed faintly. “Well, it wouldn’t suit me!” She tried to tug her hand free again. “Do be serious, Oliver. I’m the last person you’d wish to marry.”
“No, that would be Miss Middleton-Murray.”
“The second to last, then,” Primrose said, looking exasperated again.
“No, not that either.” In fact, if he seriously considered the matter—which he hadn’t until now—then Primrose Garland was probably at the top of the list of ladies he’d like to marry. Setting her physical attributes aside—which were manifold—he enjoyed her company more than any other female he knew. She was intelligent and interesting and fun to talk with—and most importantly of all, she treated him as Oliver Dasenby, not the Duke of Westfell.
He looked at her with fresh eyes. In fact, it felt as if this was the first time he’d ever looked at her properly. Not as Rhodes’s sister, not as a childhood friend, but as a woman in her own right.
Her hand was warm in his, and they were seated so closely together that he caught the faint scent of orange blossom. For some reason that scent made his pulse speed up. Primrose really was very attractive. The soft lips, that slender waist, those plump breasts. The ash-blonde hair and cool blue eyes. That sharp brain and tart tongue.
He wondered what her mouth tasted like.
Primrose’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Oliver had no idea what his expression was, but he knew what it meant: he wanted to kiss her. He, Oliver Dasenby, wanted to kiss prickly Primrose Garland.
He said that last bit out loud. “Prickly Primrose.”
Primrose flushed again and looked away from him. She tugged her hand more sharply. “Do let go of me, Oliver.”
“It wasn’t an insult.” He reached out with his free hand and touched her cheek softly. Her skin was as smooth and warm as he’d thought it would be. “I like your prickles.”
Primrose batted his hand away. “Let go of me, Oliver. If anyone saw us like this . . .”
He released her. “So prim, Primrose,” he chided.
“Sensible,” she corrected him, standing hastily, smoothing her gown. “Honestly, Oliver, do you want us to have to get married?”
Have to get married? No. But marry? Possibly.
“Do come along. We need to check that staircase. And I want to look in on my brother.”
His thoughts changed track abruptly. Good God, how had he forgotten Miss Middleton-Murray? And Rhodes?
Oliver pushed to his feet and headed for the door. “Hurry up, Prim. Stop dawdling.” He glanced back over his shoulder and grinned at her expression. “You really shouldn’t pull faces. Not ladylike at all.”
Chapter Fourteen
They knocked on Rhodes’s door. After a moment, the valet opened it. He didn’t stand back to let them enter; instead he laid one finger to his lips.
“He’s asleep?” Primrose whispered.
The man nodded, and stepped out into the corridor.
“What did the apothecary say?” Oliver asked in a low voice. “Did he have any idea what’s causing it? How to stop it happening?”
“No, sir.”
“Had he no suggestions?” Primrose asked. “Nothing at all?”
“Rosewater or milk, which we are already using.” The valet gave a helpless shrug.
“There’s one very simple solution,” Oliver said. “Leave this place.”
The valet met his eyes. “I agree, Your Grace. But his lordship refuses to consider it.”
“If he’s not better tomorrow, he won’t have any choice in the matter,” Oliver said.
The valet looked relieved. “Thank you, sir.” He retreated back into the bedchamber and closed the door.
Oliver frowned at those blank wooden panels. He didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all.
Beside him, Primrose gave a faint sigh.
Oliver knew her so well that his ears caught the tone of that exhalation: not exasperation, but worry. He looked at her, and saw that she was biting her lower lip.
“He’ll be all right.” Oliver put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her briefly.
She gave him a wan smile.
“If he’s no better t
omorrow, we’ll take him to Gloucestershire. I promise. I’ll tie him up in his bedsheets and sling him over my shoulder, like a villain making off with an heiress.”
She gave a little choke of laughter. “I’d like to see you try.”
Oliver grinned at her. “Be fun, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes.” And then she sobered. “Let’s check those stairs.”
* * *
They examined the stairs very carefully. No string had been knotted around the base of the newel post and carefully tucked out of sight, but that didn’t allay Oliver’s fears. There was a feeling in his belly—a clenching of his innards—that he’d only ever experienced in India: the natural apprehension one felt before a battle. No battle loomed in his future, but he was still afraid.
If Primrose tripped on these stairs . . .
Four steps was enough to break a bone—as Miss Carteris had proven.
Primrose wasn’t afraid, though. “I’ll check again after lunch,” she said, as they headed back to the ground floor.
“We’ll check,” he said.
“Oliver, if you keep coming up here with me, people will start talking.”
“I don’t care.” It wasn’t quite the truth. While he didn’t give a damn about his own reputation, he did care about Primrose’s—but not enough to risk her falling down those stairs.
“I’m not helpless,” she said, that familiar edge of exasperation in her voice. “Or incompetent. Or blind. I’ll check the alcove every time I go downstairs, and if Miss Middleton-Murray is in there, I’ll see her.”
“I know,” Oliver said. “But it worries me all the same.” He put an arm around her shoulders for the second time that day and gave her a hug. “Promise me you won’t come up here alone unless you absolutely have to, and that if you are alone you’ll be very, very careful.”
Primrose blew out her breath, and his ears told him that she wasn’t as exasperated as she was pretending to be. “All right. But you need to be careful, too.”
“I’m always careful.” Oliver removed his arm, although he would have preferred not to. They descended another flight of stairs. As they reached the vestibule, he remembered something. “Oh, Prim, when I do this—” he stroked his nose, “—it means that I need to speak with you as soon as possible. In the State apartments.”