by Eloisa James
There were only three that truly mattered, and they bore repeating: “I love you; I love you; I love you.”
“I love you.”
Epilogue
Thirteen years later
The young girl had ebony hair with a shock of white over her brow. Lady Penelope Brook-Chatfield didn’t know it yet—although at age twelve, she was beginning to guess—but she was the most beautiful lady of her age between Kent and London and even beyond. Cherry lips, high cheekbones, and the scream of an Amazon.
“It all adds up,” Quin mumbled. “She’s going to be a terror. They’ll line up begging to marry her, and then we’ll have to give her poor husband hardship pay.”
“Pish,” Olivia said lazily, enjoying the way the summer heat hung in the air even in the shade of their favorite elm tree, the one at the end of Ladybird Ridge. Small white butterflies danced below its lowest branches.
Penelope ran by, chasing one of her cousins with a shriek that reminded one of the new steam engines. “My papa is too!” she screamed. “My papa is fierce!”
“You don’t look fierce,” Olivia said, twining her hands into Quin’s hair. He lay on the quilt next to her, whispering things into the tummy that rose in the air between them.
“I’m being nice to the new baby,” he said, dropping a kiss in the appropriate place. “I’m saving all my ferocity for Penelope’s first suitors.”
A scrambling noise could be heard in the tree above them. “Be careful,” Quin called. “Mama is here and you must be particularly careful these days, you know.”
“I know.” There had been lots of rain this summer, and the tree was thick with dark leaves. Thin legs emerged from the canopy and waved for a moment, until Quin got to his feet, took hold of their owner, and placed his son safely on the ground.
“Papa!” Penelope screeched, running back toward them, her hair streaming in the wind. She must have lost another ribbon. “Aunt Georgie says that you haven’t killed any pirates, so come and tell her that you do it all the time!”
“You really must give her a better understanding of what a local militia can and cannot do,” Olivia murmured.
Quin put his hands on his hips and shouted, “Tell Georgiana that it’s Uncle Justin who is good at rounding up pirates.”
Penelope arrived in a flurry of long legs and silky hair. She grabbed his hand. “That’s absurd, Papa. You know that Uncle Justin is too busy singing. If you wished to kill a pirate, you could do it before breakfast. Come tell Aunt Georgie that.” And she dragged him away.
Master Leo Rupert, who held the title of Earl of Calderon (though he didn’t know it yet), fell onto his knees beside his mother and showed her a little collection of twigs, all broken off at precisely the same length. Leo was imaginative, dreamy, and much quieter than Penelope. He was always thinking as hard as he could, harder than most five-year-olds.
“Will you build something with the twigs?” Olivia asked, pushing herself into a sitting position. “Perhaps a house?”
“I’m too young to build a house,” Leo said, with just a shadow of annoyance. “People my age don’t build houses, Mama. You should know that.” He stowed the twigs carefully in his pocket and got up from his rather grubby knees.
“What will you do with them?”
“Alfie and I will build a road. I’ll ask Uncle Justin if he will help us.” Then he gave her a smile that was all the more beautiful for being quite grave and rarely used. “Where’s Lucy?”
“She’s sitting in the pony cart,” Olivia told him. “You know Lucy doesn’t like leaving Grandmother’s knee these days.”
“I shall show these sticks to Grandmother,” he said, and wandered off.
Olivia watched him go, wondering. Her husband returned, and sat down just behind her, spreading his hands over her belly and pulling her against his warm chest. “This baby is bigger than either of the other two,” he observed.
“Quin, do you think it’s truly all right that Leo plays with a friend named Alfie all the time—and no one can see Alfie but him?”
Quin pulled her even more snugly against him and kissed her ear. “Do you think he does it simply because it makes his Papa so happy?”
Olivia tipped her head back against his shoulder. “No. Leo would say that Alfie is his own friend, just as he has said, many a time over the last year. As for the size of my belly, I begin to think I might be carrying twins.”
“You’re carrying twins?” Quin exclaimed. “Could you rethink that idea? I’m not sure we can handle two more.”
Olivia laughed. “Is this the same man who said he wanted the nursery full of children?”
“That was before I knew how loud they can be. With Georgiana’s two, and Justin’s boy arriving tomorrow—and you know that child is a perfect terror, Olivia—the house shakes at its foundations.”
“Kiss me,” Olivia asked, looking up at her beautiful warrior prince of a husband.
His first kiss was adoring, but it gradually deepened and turned into something else: a possessive, marauding kiss. His hands edged from her tummy up toward her chest, a softer and more voluptuous curve.
“You mustn’t!” Olivia said with a little gasp, sometime later. They were both breathing quickly.
“Let’s go home,” Quin said into her ear. “I want you. I want my wife on a Sunday afternoon in a sultry, sunny English summer. I want her naked and lying on our bed so that I can—”
Penelope skittered to a halt beside them. “Are you kissing again? Grandmother says it’s time to go home, and Nanny says that there are lemon tarts for tea. Come on!” She ran ahead, her half boots twinkling under her skirts.
Quin helped his beloved to her feet, took her hand, and entertained her all the way back to the pony cart with so many whispered suggestions that she was quite rosy when they at last reached the end of Ladybird Ridge.
“Humph,” the dowager said, seeing Olivia’s face. “Too hot out here, I shouldn’t wonder. Lucy is overheated as well.”
Quin bent down and gave Lucy’s ear a tug. “Then we must go home,” he said, nodding to the groom driving a second cart now full of his children and their cousins. He took the reins of the pony cart. “We mustn’t discomfort Lucy. And I think my wife would also be the better for—”
Olivia elbowed him.
“A nap,” he said, kissing her nose.
The dowager duchess looked at both of them and then away at the neat fields that spread out from the seat of the Sconces. It was not every day that she thanked God that she had chosen Georgiana to undergo that absurd series of tests she had devised, and that Georgiana had brought along Olivia.
But almost every day.
Historical Note
This novel has so many literary antecedents that I can scarcely list them: Renaissance plays, The Scarlet Pimpernel, a short story by David Foster Wallace. My primary debt, of course, is to Hans Christian Andersen’s The Princess and the Pea. His fairy story was panned by literary critics of his day as too chatty and informal, and they greatly disliked the double entendres surrounding that intrusively hard pea found in a maiden’s bed.
Andersen’s shocking pun gave me the idea of creating a heroine with a particular propensity for improper wordplay. We think of limericks as a form popularized by Edward Lear in The Book of Nonsense (1846), but in fact the form is much older than that. (For example, a fascinating example appears in the September 1717 diary entry of one John Thomlinson, a reverend who liked to record the scandals occurring in his parish.) Help with Olivia’s bawdy humor came from the Renaissance playwright Ben Jonson (“Turdy-facy-nasty-paty-lousy-fartical rogue!”), as well as the writers of the British television classic Black Adder (beardy-weirdy bottle-headed chub!)—whom Jonson would proudly claim as offspring.
I am also indebted to Jonson for the name Cecily Bumtrinket, a servant mentioned in one of his plays, whom I turned into a duke’s daughter. Another inspired name is Lord Justin Fiebvre . . . a character written for my twelve-year-old daughter’s delight;
she is among the most fervent of the Beliebers. The novel’s conclusion was inspired by The Scarlet Pimpernel. As a teenager, I adored the scene in which Sir Percy lifts his wife as easily as if she were a feather and carries her half a league to the shore so they can escape from war-torn France in his luxurious schooner, the Day Dream.
On a historical front, jack-o’-lanterns were carved from turnips, but they did exist. And the Siege of Badajoz really happened, though I altered its details to serve my purpose—to turn Rupert into a hero. In closing, I’d like to note that Rupert’s middle names are Forrest G.
G for Gump.
Acknowledgments
My books are like small children; they take a whole village to get them to a literate state. I want to offer my heartfelt thanks to my village: my editor, Carrie Feron; my agent, Kim Witherspoon; my website designers, Wax Creative; and my personal team: Kim Castillo, Franzeca Drouin, and Anne Connell. Others kindly provided specialized knowledge: more thanks go to Thomas Henkel, Ph.D., professor emeritus of physics, Wagner College; Annie Zeidman-Karpinski, science librarian, University of Oregon; and Sylvie Clemot of Rueil Malmaison, France. I am so grateful to each of you!
Questions for Readers, for Book Clubs, for Roving Page-Turners
Dear Reader,
What follows are a few notes about less obvious aspects of The Duke Is Mine that might be fun to chat about—as well as some suggestions for what you might read next.
1. In the fairy tale The Princess and the Pea, the girl who arrives at the gate in the middle of a rainstorm turns out to be a “perfect” princess. Olivia, my heroine from The Duke Is Mine, by contrast, is no perfect heroine; she’s impudent, bawdy, and plump. Do you like your heroines to be less than perfect? How did you feel about the fact that she’s curvy? If you like Olivia, you might like Josie, the heroine of Pleasure for Pleasure: she’s another woman whose figure doesn’t suit the current style, but who learns to love herself precisely as she is.
2. In a deep sense, The Duke Is Mine is about perfection, and what that means. Think about Tarquin, who has an Aspergers-like inability to express emotion and relies on logic, and Rupert, who is all emotion and little logic. Olivia teaches Quin a great deal about expressing his feelings, but so does Rupert’s poem, which gives him a way to grieve for his son. What do you think makes up a perfect hero? For me, he’s a man who can run into a burning building to save his beloved—but isn’t so constrained by his masculinity that he’s unable to express emotion. Quin and Rupert are both heroes, but in very different ways. Another hero along those lines? Simeon, the hero of When the Duke Returns, rescues his wife from a boat occupied by violent, escaped prisoners.
3. Many readers have asked me why I’m rewriting fairy tales. The answer has to do with my father, Robert Bly, and his interest in reworking fairy tales (most famously, Iron John). But I also like them because they present a challenge: can I surprise my readers when they already know the outlines of the plot? If you enjoyed tracing how the design of The Princess and the Pea appeared and disappeared in The Duke Is Mine, you might also enjoy A Kiss at Midnight, my adaptation of Cinderella, as well as my version of one of everyone’s favorite fairy tales, When Beauty Tamed the Beast. I’m often asked whether I’ll write more fairy tales; as I write this letter, I’m working on The Ugly Duchess (Duckling), and I can envision at least one more fairy tale after that.
I hope you enjoyed The Duke Is Mine—and any other books of mine that you might read. If you’d like more information about my novels, just check out my website, www.eloisajames.com. And I’m often on Facebook, at www.facebook.com/eloisajamesfans. I’d love to chat with you there.
With very best wishes,
Eloisa
Here's a sneak peek
at the newest romance from Eloisa James,
The Ugly Duchess,
available September 2012
from Avon Books
A Rather Long Preface
March 1805
45 Berkeley Square
The London residence of the Duke of Ashbrook
“You’ll have to marry her. I don’t care if you think of her like a sister: from now on, she’s the golden fleece to you.”
James Ryburn, Earl of Islay, and future Duke of Ashbrook, opened his mouth to say something, but a mixture of rage and disbelief choked his throat.
His father turned and walked toward the far wall of his library, acting as if he’d said nothing particularly out of the ordinary. “We need her fortune to repair the Staffordshire estate and pay a few debts, or we’re going to lose it all, this townhouse included.”
“What have you done?” James spat the words. A pounding, terrible feeling of dread was spreading up his limbs.
Ashbrook pivoted. “Don’t you dare speak to me in that tone!”
James was aware of rage burning up his spine and took a deep breath before answering. One of his resolutions was to master his temper before turning twenty—and his birthday was a mere three weeks away. “Excuse me, Father,” he managed through stiff lips. “Exactly how did the estate come to be in such danger, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I do mind your asking.” The duke stared back at his only son, his long, aquiline nose quivering with rage. James came by his temper naturally; he inherited it straight from his irascible, reckless father.
“In that case, I will bid you good day,” James said, keeping his tone even.
“Not unless you’re going downstairs to make eyes at that girl. I turned down an offer for her hand this week from Briscott, so I didn’t feel I had to tell her mother. But you know damn well her father left the decision over who marries his daughter to her mother—”
“I have no knowledge of the contents of Mr. Saxby’s will,” James stated. “And I fail to see why that particular provision should cause you such annoyance.”
“Because we need her damned fortune,” Ashbrook raged, walking to the fireplace and giving the unlit logs a kick. “You need to convince Dora that you’re in love with her, or her mother will never agree to the match. Just last week, Mrs. Saxby inquired about a few of my investments in a manner that I did not appreciate. Doesn’t know a woman’s place.”
“I will do nothing of the sort.”
“You’ll do exactly as I instruct you.”
“You’re instructing me to woo a young lady whom I’ve been raised to think of as a sister.”
“Irrelevant! You may have rubbed noses a few times as children, but that wouldn’t stop you from sleeping with her.”
“I can’t.”
For the first time, the duke looked a trifle sympathetic. “Dora is no beauty. But all women are the same in the—”
“Do not say that,” James snapped. “I am already appalled; I don’t wish to be disgusted.”
His father’s eyes narrowed and rusty color rose in his cheeks, a sure sign of danger. Sure enough, Ashbrook’s voice emerged as a bellow. “I don’t care if the gal is as ugly as sin, you’re taking her. And you’re going to make her fall in love with you. Otherwise, you will have no country house to inherit. None!”
“What have you done?” James repeated through clenched teeth.
“Lost it,” his father shouted back, his eyes bulging a little. “Lost it, and that’s all you need to know!”
“I won’t do it.” He stood up.
A china ornament flew past his shoulder and crashed against the wall. He barely flinched. His father was given to fits of temper, and James had grown up ducking to avoid everything from books to marble statues.
“You will, or I’ll bloody well disinherit you and name your cousin Pinkler my heir.”
James’s hand dropped from the door handle, and he turned around. He was well aware that he was on the verge of losing his temper. While he’d never had the impulse to throw objects at the wall—or his family—his ability to fire cutting remarks was equally destructive. He took another deep breath, trying to curb the fire in his belly. “While I would hesitate to instruct you on the legal system, Fathe
r, I can assure you that it is impossible to disinherit a legitimate son.”
“I’ll tell the House of Lords that you’re no child of mine,” the duke bellowed. Veins were bulging on his forehead and his cheeks had ripened from red to purple. “I’ll tell ’em that your mother was a light-heeled wench, and that I’ve discovered you’re nothing but a bastard.”
At the insult to his mother, James felt his fragile control snap altogether. “You may be a craven, dim-witted gambler, but you will not tar my mother with sorry excuses meant to cover up your own idiocy!”
“How dare you!” screamed the duke. His whole face had turned the color of a cock’s comb.
“I dare say only what every person in this kingdom knows,” James said, the words exploding from his mouth. “You’re an idiot. I have a good idea what happened to the estate; I just wanted to see whether you had the balls to admit it. And you haven’t. No surprise there. You gambled our lands on the Exchange. You invested in one ridiculous scheme after another. The canal you built that was only seven feet from another canal? What in God’s name were you thinking?”
“I didn’t know that until it was too late! My associates deceived me. A duke doesn’t go out and inspect the place where a canal is supposed to be built. He has to trust others, and I’ve always had the devil’s own luck.”
“I would have at least visited the proposed canal before I sank thousands of pounds into a waterway with no hope of traffic.”
“You’re nothing more than an impudent ass!” The duke’s hand tightened around a silver candlestick standing on the mantelpiece.
“Throw that, and I’ll leave you in this room to wallow in your own fear. You want me to marry a girl who thinks I’m her brother in order to get her fortune . . . so that you—you—can lose it? Do you know what they call you behind your back, Father? Surely you’ve heard it. The dam’fool duke!”