“Ian, your appetite seems a bit off,” his mother accused. “Perhaps you ought to drink less.”
The duke chewed slowly. Swallowed.
And smiled.
He wasn’t admiring himself in the coffeepot.
Genevieve Eversea was her usual composed self, weary and lovely in some sort of soft shade of blue, and the hair which had poured like a dark waterfall over her shoulders last night was magically coiled and pinned up and tamed. Women did like to show their hair who was in charge.
His hand hummed with the memory of its feel. He would have it down again before the week was out.
“The day is so fine I thought we could take a journey to Rosemont,” he announced to the table. “My estate here in Sussex. I spend so much time in London that I seldom have a chance to see it. ’Tis but an hour’s journey from here, and rain hasn’t yet made an unholy mess of the roads.”
“Why, Moncrieffe, that’s downright sociable of you.”
The duke rewarded Jacob Eversea’s wryness with a very dry look.
And all of a sudden Jacob pushed the silver coffeepot over to him.
Isolde Eversea glanced at her husband and bit back a smile.
“Oh, now, sir.” Harriet the cook was irritated at having her role usurped. She swooped down and bustled over and poured the duke another cup of coffee, lest he sprain a wrist waiting upon himself.
“I didn’t know you had an estate in Sussex, Moncrieffe.”
This from Lord Harry Osborne, who attempted a smile along with it.
“I do,” the duke said easily. “And I’ve a few paintings that could benefit from the eye of an expert. I inherited the paintings. I should like to know more about them.”
Faint blue rings arced beneath Genevieve’s eyes. She hadn’t slept much, either.
She wasn’t meeting his eyes directly yet. She would.
“Perhaps Genevieve and I can be of some assistance to you there,” Harry volunteered hurriedly.
Moncrieffe ignored Harry. “I also think I might have a painting of a kitten somewhere in the house . . . but it’s been so long since I’ve visited . . .”
Millicent smiled at this. She wasn’t so simple that she didn’t know when she was being both humored and teased. But she didn’t mind.
“Remember the swans?” Genevieve said suddenly, almost enthusiastically. “Do you remember our first visit to Rosemont, Millicent? We went on a whim when the duke was away.”
“They were splendid,” Millicent agreed.
“But is the house open, Moncrieffe?” Jacob Eversea wanted to know.
“I sent word ahead a few days ago that I might spend a day or two there, and the staff no doubt has made it ready for visitors.”
Harry’s head jerked up suddenly. His fork froze midway to his mouth. His knuckles had gone white on it.
And then he gingerly laid it down on his plate. He cleared his throat.
“Do you . . .” He stopped. The tension around his jaw made it seem even more eloquently square. “I say, Lord Moncrieffe, do you . . .”
Everyone turned to Harry.
Handsome Lord Harry Osborne looked a little worse for wear after losing more than he could afford to lose to the duke at five-card loo. His eyes sagged a bit, from a poor night’s sleep. Was it simply too much brandy? Or was he, too, tossing and turning over Genevieve Eversea? Or over Lady Millicent Blenkenship? Was he running amuck, kissing Millicent’s hand after midnight?
He ought to toss and turn over Genevieve Eversea, the duke thought.
The duke had done precisely that last night.
The duke favored him with his attention. “Yes, Osborne?”
“. . . do you have a greenhouse at Rosemont?”
Harry fixed him with a surprisingly intense gaze.
A curious hush fell over the room.
Genevieve looked at Harry, eyes wide, fascinated at this turn of events. Then she flicked her eyes to the duke, and then studiously back down at her plate, admiring the pattern of roses about the edge, and her neatly eviscerated egg.
Harry was officially jealous. Or so it would seem.
The duke allowed that silence to settle in, to become significant. And then he smiled faintly, and said almost disinterestedly, “Doesn’t everybody have a greenhouse?”
He could practically hear the whirring minds of everyone at the table attempting to extract meaning from the statement.
Everyone hopped a little, startled, when Harriet dropped a fork.
“It’s lovely, Harry,” Genevieve said gently. “Rosemont is. It will be a nice short trip and diversion today. And think of the gallery. You’ll enjoy it.”
She smiled at him, and Harry smiled weakly in return.
A rogue surge of jealousy swept up over Moncrieffe. She was trying to ease the young fool’s disquiet. Because she was so damned thoughtful.
“Won’t it be amusing, Harry!” Millicent enthused. “Swans! Oh yes! Let’s all go.”
“I’ve other plans,” Ian said quickly.
“Perhaps you ought to go have a talk with your cousin Adam, Ian,” his mother suggested.
The implication being that Adam the vicar might be able to help Ian unburden his conscience or regain his appetite.
“And be certain to bring your sketchbook, Lady Millicent,” the duke urged somberly. “Because everywhere you look . . . it’s beautiful.”
He was looking now at Genevieve.
Genevieve stared back at him with those cool blue eyes. She knew his words were part of a game, and yet she suspected it wasn’t entirely a game.
And it was perhaps this confusion that put the color in her cheeks.
Or perhaps she was thinking of where his hands had been the night before.
A man could hope.
A picnic was got up, cold fowl and cakes and dates and half of a wheel of cheese packed hastily in a basket, so they needn’t feel a twinge of hunger for the few hours they would be away, and so they wouldn’t startle the duke’s staff with a need to feed a sudden small invasion of aristocrats.
Installed in the duke’s barouche, the final party, consisting of the Duke of Falconbridge, Harry, Millicent, and Genevieve (slippery Olivia had begged a previous commitment) and attending footmen, they rolled through Pennyroyal Green past Miss Marietta Endicott’s academy, past the Pig & Thistle, past the vicarage, where Adam stood outside talking to Ian and lifted an arm to wave while Ian glowered; past the two enormous oaks entwined in the town square, said to be so entwined that one could no longer stand without the other, though they battled with each other for their share of light and air and earth. And this, it was said, represented the Everseas and Redmonds.
Nearly an hour into their journey, over more rolling Sussex hills, every now and then a glimpse of the sea winking on the horizon, the duke said, “Ah. And so we’re here. On Rosemont land.”
“And how did you come to own Rosemont, Moncrieffe?” Harry wanted to know. Perhaps hoping he’d won it in a card game and could win an estate of his own one day.
“It was part of my wife’s dowry,” he said, his face turned toward the window.
The duke smiled mordantly to himself at the sudden silence. No one ever knew quite what to say when he mentioned his dead wife. It was a useful ploy when he wanted a conversation to end.
Which wasn’t necessarily the case at the moment.
“And now it’s mine.” He turned back to them brightly. “You’ll find the house isn’t grand, not like Eversea House or some of my other properties, but it is snug and the gardens are fine. Women seem to like the garden best of all. That, and the dolphin pool.”
“Satyr,” Genevieve corrected swiftly.
And then she smiled, realizing he’d said it purposely.
Moncrieffe bit his lip against a smile.
“Do you recall Vaccario’s engraving, Genevieve?” Harry added hurriedly. “The satyr watching a sleeping girl? We found it in the bookshop in London.”
“I recall it.” She looked across at Harry
. He sat next to the duke.
“Winter and Summer” she would have called any engraving of the two of them.
Except that she’d had a taste of winter, and winter, as it turned out, was incendiary.
Millicent sat next to her, and she wondered if Harry and the duke were making similar comparisons among the two women in their own heads.
“Charming bit of baroque art,” Harry pressed on, almost desperately. “Vaccario’s engraving.”
Normally Genevieve would have taken this up eagerly. “It is, indeed,” she agreed politely. She was distracted by thoughts of . . . tasting Winter.
“Oh, the two of you always talk so much about what things are. Baroque and medieval and so forth. Why don’t you simply look at them and enjoy them?”
Millicent said this good-humoredly.
They all stared at her. And this was the key to Millicent’s charm, and why, no doubt, Harry had thought he wanted to marry her. Everyone needed a reminder to simply look at things and enjoy them, without labeling them.
The house was at the end of a long road lined with bare, long, long aspens and birches, which would meet in an arch when leafed out in spring. The hills undulated like a green blanket tucked carelessly about the house, which sat on the highest of them. The vista showed them sheep and cows grazing in fields neatly bisected by hedges serving as walls.
“It’s quite lovely, Moncrieffe,” Harry said, earnestly, a bit despondently, when a jewel box of a simple redbrick house, surrounded by a circular drive, came into view.
The satyr was busy spitting water in the center of it.
“My wife did love it,” the duke told them.
Everyone suddenly wondered if that was the reason he never visited.
But he’d said it strategically. And he wasn’t patient. Moncrieffe hadn’t undertaken the trip to be sociable, truly, or to do more meandering about green Sussex land. He’d undertaken the trip for selfish reasons.
So though he didn’t quite rush them through the house when they entered—he was greeted with genuine delight by the small staff—he did set the pace for the tour, and his pace was generally always a swift one. He pointed out the marble in the foyer was Carrera, that the chairs in the sitting room were Chippendale, that the carpets had been purchased in Turkey by his wife’s father.
And then he brought them to the gallery.
“It’s this one.”
He watched Genevieve breathlessly as her eyes fell on the painting.
And then she went still. And as he watched it was if the sun itself rose inside her.
He caught his breath and turned, wonderingly, following her eyes.
What he saw was an appealing image of a nude woman stretched on a chaise. The woman’s gaze was very direct—almost as direct as the gazes his friend Wyndham painted on the women sprawled on his canvases destined for bordellos—and her breasts were bare. It was perhaps not the sort of painting mixed company ought to be staring at in a concentrated fashion. Still, the bosom, as bosoms went, was modest, and the woman’s hand rested modestly over her mons.
His wife had loved this painting.
To Moncrieffe, it was decorative and nude; it was an asset on his books.
His staff kept it dusted.
He knew what it was to Genevieve.
“It’s . . . Titian,” Genevieve breathed. “I’m sure of it.”
A slow, awestruck, disbelieving smile took over her face. Stunned pleasure shone from her eyes. And he was certain her heart was racing with the sheer delight of being in the presence of the thing.
Because his heart was racing at simply watching her love it.
She turned to look at him as if he himself had painted it. Her radiance rendered him absolutely silent. He could only bask.
One was either moved by something or one was not, he knew. Certain tastes—for fine wine or teas, for instance—could be acquired. Skill could be acquired, but talent could not. And passion was either innate . . . or it was not.
He still in truth didn’t care to know much about the painting.
He only cared about what it did to Genevieve Eversea.
And it was this that gave it its value in his eyes. Not the name of the artist, or the pigments he had used.
He felt her joy as his own.
“Venus,” he finally said.
She laughed at the obviousness of that. “Yes!”
“You can touch it.” He laughed softly. “Gently now.”
She flicked her eyes toward him, and by the slight lowering of her eyelids knew she’d heard the innuendo precisely as he’d meant her to.
“Oh, I cannot. It’s priceless.”
“Oh, it has a price. Ask my bailiff what the current valuation is. Everything has a price,” the duke said unsentimentally.
She simply quirked the corner of her mouth.
“It’s Titian, all right.” Harry peered at it critically. He said it quickly and almost nervously. He clearly wanted his voice heard, because all at once it was apparent that he and Millicent were somewhat forgotten. “Look at the pearly skin on the girl, Genevieve, and the little dog sleeping next to her. . . . That red of its hair is so singularly Titian. The dog in the painting typically represents fidelity. And you’ll notice that it’s asleep.”
The duke saw a dog sleeping next to a naked woman.
He only cared whether Genevieve cared. He liked to listen to her talk about art.
“And I believe Veronese was Titian’s assistant at one time,” Harry continued, speaking almost too quickly.
“Venus and Mars,” Genevieve and the duke said in unison.
Harry fell abruptly silent.
Millicent was staring at the painting, too. The image actually looked rather like Millicent, with the wide doe eyes and open face, but since the painting was of a nude, no one was going to say it.
In front of two women, anyway.
“It’s very pretty, but how can she just sprawl there, uncovered, for everyone to see?”
Millicent wrinkled her brow. She didn’t sound as though she were condemning it, necessarily. She sounded authentically curious and a little amused and just a bit repelled.
Millicent was perhaps the most literal young woman the duke had ever met.
Harry was looking at her incredulously. Undecided as to whether to smile or smack a hand over his forehead.
“Quite so, Lady Blenkenship,” the duke agreed somberly. “She is rather brazen. Perhaps a bit too exposed. I like a Venus one can uncover a bit at a time.”
And this was so obviously, obviously an innuendo that everyone stirred a little, disconcerted.
Genevieve went very still, as if that particular innuendo had drifted over her like gliding hands. He awaited a scorching blush, a sideways scolding look.
Genevieve suddenly turned to Harry and said hurriedly, “And look, Harry, the young ladies in the painting in the back . . . her servants. They are rummaging about in the clothes trunk.”
Harry looked very directly at her. “Perhaps they’re in a hurry to cover her. To protect her virtue.” He made it sound like an admonishment.
The implication was as bald as the woman on the painting was naked.
“I thought you loved Titian, Harry.”
He hesitated. “I do.” The words were almost—not quite, but almost—a moan.
A short, awkward, confusing silence followed. The duke decided to call a halt to this particular portion of the tour.
“You asked about the greenhouse, Osborne. Would you like to see it?”
It, too, was a gauntlet laid down. A very, very subtle one.
“Perhaps a visit to the greenhouse can wait until after we have a bit of a picnic,” Genevieve said brightly and too quickly.
She knew exactly what they would find in the greenhouse.
“I should like to see it now.” Harry was uncharacteristically firm.
“I should like to see it, too,” Millicent said in solidarity with Harry. “I like flowers! I should like to sketch any interest
ing flowers you may have.”
“I’m feeling a bit peckish,” the duke said.
And as he was a duke, he won. And so they went off to enjoy their picnic, and Genevieve won a greenhouse reprieve.
Chapter 17
The footmen and Harry carried the picnic hamper down to the grass near the lake, on which a half dozen or so enormous, irritable, gorgeous white swans floated. The willows had lost most of their leaves, otherwise they would have wept all over the banks very picturesquely. Millicent followed after Harry and the footmen, whipping out her sketchbook the way one whips out a sword, as though she couldn’t face another moment without capturing the idyllic scene.
And surely Harry wouldn’t propose to Millicent surrounded by footmen. Though now Genevieve was a bit worried he would be sorely tempted to trot off and do it in this lovely little place. She would love to receive a proposal here.
Genevieve was walking and thinking about the strained expression on Harry’s face in the gallery. His distressed rush of words. Some suspicion had just been subtly acknowledged and he disapproved.
Harry was jealous.
Or Harry was concerned about her.
She preferred to think of it as jealous.
But why should this make her unhappy? Because she only felt truly at peace when he was happy. Which, she had to admit, had been nearly all the time until the arrival of the duke.
“I could imagine being very happy here,” she said aloud. “It’s so lovely. Serene without being dull. Snug and welcoming.”
Oh, God. Please don’t say that describes me.
But the duke never did take up obvious temptations. “We never lived here long. But it was one of her favorite homes.”
We. Her. His wife.
What had she been like? What had become of his first duchess? She still didn’t feel free to ask the question. Still, she thought the house she loved said a good deal about her.
Genevieve hoped he’d been loved by his wife. She was certain he hadn’t made it easy for her to do it, however.
In the absence of banal conversation, last night’s kiss echoed in her. Today he was every inch a duke; last night he’d felt very human, vulnerable and alone. His clothes askew, his skin warm, his lips . . . she had to stop to take in a breath at the rush of pleasure that shot through her body at just the thought of his lips. She’d felt a right to him; she’d taken as much as given in that kiss.
What I Did For a Duke Page 18