Who Wants to Marry a Duke

by Sabrina Jeffries

  “Yes! You do understand.”

  She shook her head. “I understand you decided to take your anger out on the two women you thought had treated you ill: me and Mama. I understand you made us into . . . caricatures for people to laugh at. What I don’t understand is what I did to deserve that.”

  He just stared at her, a flush rising in his cheeks.

  “You had a right to be angry at Mama. She blackmailed you, humiliated you by forcing you to offer for me.” Tears clogged her throat, and she swallowed them ruthlessly, determined not to let him see how badly he’d hurt her. “But all I did was turn down the marriage proposal you didn’t even want to make! Why was that such an awful thing?”

  “It’s . . . hard to explain.”

  “No, it isn’t.” She choked down bile. “You’ve already admitted you weren’t ready for marriage. Well, neither was I. It was the wrong time for us, that’s all. Yet you made it into some vendetta I had against you. You made me into Slyboots. I—I did nothing to deserve that!”

  “Olivia . . .” he murmured, and tugged on her shoulder as if intending to pull her into his arms.

  “Oh, no, Your Grace,” she said, wriggling free of his grip. “You will not try to kiss this away. It’s unforgivable.”

  “Surely not,” he said hoarsely. “I meant to tell you, but—”

  “You had ample opportunity, yet you didn’t say a word.” Something occurred to her that made everything even worse. “I suppose this”—she flicked her hand toward the desk—“this is what you meant when you said you had secret hobbies! No wonder you didn’t want me to know about it.”

  “I didn’t want anyone to know about it. No one in my family does, not even my mother. Dukes aren’t supposed to write plays, as you well know.”

  “Even so, I thought you and I . . . we were close enough that . . .” She shook her head. “I guess I was wrong.” A weight descended on her chest, making it hard for her to breathe. “Either that or you simply didn’t want me to catch on to your game.”

  He scowled. “What game?”

  “How you must have laughed at me when I gushed about loving your plays. You must have found my . . . inability to see that Slyboots was based on me absolutely hilarious, especially when I said she and her mother were my favorite characters! Did you exult in the fact that as usual, I hadn’t even understood I was being m-mocked?”

  His face now bore a stricken expression. “I did none of that, I swear. And I am sorrier than you could ever know that I didn’t tell you.”

  “Only because you got caught.” She stared at him, her heart breaking, just as she’d known it would eventually. Better to have it happen now while she still had her pride. “How can I believe anything you say? You pretended not to be who you are. You let me go on and on about your plays like some dim-witted fool—”

  “You are not a dim-witted fool. I never saw you as such, and I certainly don’t see you as such now.”

  She ignored his claims. What else was he to say now that he’d been cornered? “If you can keep this secret, I have to wonder how many other secrets you’re keeping. For all I know, you have mistresses strewn across London! Oh, Lord, was . . . was your behavior toward me, your determination to bed me, just part of some larger scheme for revenge?”

  “Certainly not,” he said brokenly. “How can you even think it?”

  “I can think it because I don’t know you anymore, if I ever did.” She steadied her shoulders. “The wedding is off.”

  “Come now, Olivia, don’t make a rash decision that will affect our whole lives. I ruined you!”

  “For any other man, true. But not in the way you mean. You’ve ruined men for me. I don’t know . . . if I could trust one again.”

  He winced. “At least take a day to consider the ramifications.”

  “I don’t need a day,” she said softly. “I have already considered the ramifications. It’s clear I will never gain your respect, much less your love. And I find I require both of those for a marriage, after all.”

  As she walked away, feeling as if her chest was caving in, she realized she’d gone and fallen in love with him despite all her cautions. This mad urge to run back and say she forgave him, when she knew she shouldn’t, matched the tales about unrequited love she’d read for years. Apparently pain was the other side to love.

  She had once told him that science and hearts had nothing to do with each other. And now she knew how right she’d been. Because if they had, by now someone would surely have invented a cure for heartbreak.

  Chapter Seventeen

  With his stomach churning, Thorn watched Olivia walk away. She couldn’t mean it, not after the way they’d made love, the dangers they’d endured together. Didn’t any of that count?

  Not if she thinks this has all been an elaborate ruse to humiliate her in revenge for how she humiliated you.

  Surely she understood . . .

  That you’re an arse? A coward? You had all those chances to tell her, to explain, but you were too afraid about this very thing happening, to do what you should have. Because you didn’t trust her to keep your secret. Because you didn’t trust her to understand.

  He ordered his conscience to shut up, and his legs to follow her. But when he went into the hall, he didn’t see her anywhere.

  Right, her room was upstairs. Taking the steps two at a time, he arrived on the next floor just in time to see her go into her mother’s room. Damn, this was bad. Very bad.

  Sure enough, when he walked up to the door and knocked, he got no answer. So he knocked again. On the third knock, the door swung open and Lady Norley stood there with her arm around Olivia.

  “I already told you, Your Grace,” Olivia said, her face a blank slate with no sign of caring for him etched upon it. “I cannot marry you.”

  Lady Norley looked grim. “We’re leaving now, sir. Thank you for your hospitality, but I must ask you to have your servants bring my carriage around. We’ll send for our things later.”

  “You can’t leave now,” he said, his throat raw. “Especially not in the dead of night, when thieves prowl the roads. We don’t know for sure that the villain who hired Elias isn’t prowling around himself, especially now that Elias hasn’t reported to him. You could be in danger.” He looked at Lady Norley. “You must convince her to wait until morning at least.” And that would surely give him a chance to change her mind.

  His reminder of what Elias had tried to do apparently affected Lady Norley, even if it looked as if it had done nothing to shake Olivia’s resolve, for the baroness gazed at her daughter with earnest concern. “My dear, perhaps we should wait until dawn. The roads can be very dark at night.”

  “You brought two of our footmen as usual, didn’t you, Mama?” Olivia said. “That should be sufficient.”

  “Are they armed?” Thorn asked. “Because they won’t be much use if they’re not.”

  Her gaze locked with his. “We’re leaving, and that’s final. It’s a full moon, and the route to London is one taken by the mail coaches, so there will be plenty of traff ic even at night.”

  He bit back a vile oath. “Very well. Then I will send two of my footmen with you, too, and they will be armed.” When Olivia looked as if she might protest, he added, “That isn’t open for discussion.”

  “As usual,” she muttered.

  Her mother was more gracious. “Thank you, Your Grace. That is very kind of you.”

  The next hour was spent in making the arrangements for travel, but though he tried to speak to Olivia again, her mother kept him at bay. Lady Norley even said once, “Give her time.”

  He wondered if Olivia had managed to tell her that she was Lady Grasping in the plays. Because somehow he didn’t think she’d be looking on him quite so kindly if she knew.

  Bloody hell, what a mess. He knew how to put an end to this madness. Tell Olivia he loved her. But he’d be damned if he buckled under to her demands. He wasn’t in love, and he wasn’t going to claim otherwise. Why should he? He’d
already begged her forgiveness.

  That gave him pause. He had, hadn’t he?

  Well, he knew for sure he’d said he was sorry. That was the same thing as begging her forgiveness.

  It damned well is not.

  “Shut up,” he said to his conscience.

  “Are you talking to yourself again?”

  He turned to find Gwyn now awake. “Always.”

  Gwyn was draped in a wrapper that didn’t hide her pregnancy as well as her gowns had been doing. She had a decided bump in her belly area.

  Seeing it had an odd effect on him, reminding him that without Olivia, he might never have children himself. He might have ruined Olivia for men, but she had definitely spoiled him for women. No one but Olivia would do, it seemed.

  The panic he felt now was decidedly different from the one he’d felt at dinner. What if he never was able to get her back? What if he died a hoary old bachelor like Olivia’s uncle, the chemist? Another member of her family he hadn’t yet met. He didn’t even know the fellow’s name! God, he should have asked her more questions.

  He would do so once he got her back. Because he would get her back. He must. He would heed her mother’s words to “give her time,” and then approach her again. Although how much time he should give her was anyone’s guess.

  “What’s going on?” Gwyn asked, as two footmen came past carrying a trunk.

  He’d talked Lady Norley into going ahead and packing their things with the maids’ help, in an effort to slow down the departing process. Obviously it hadn’t slowed it down by much. “Lady Norley and Olivia are leaving.”

  “In the middle of the night?” She narrowed her eyes on him. “What did you do?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Why do you assume I did anything?”

  “Because it’s your particular talent—pushing away the people you care for.”

  Beyond his sister, Lady Norley approached. “We’re leaving, Your Grace. Thank you again for your hospitality.” She flashed Gwyn a smile, then added, “Both of you. Olivia is already in the carriage, and she would prefer that I . . . say her good-byes for her.”

  “Of course,” he choked out.

  Lady Norley patted his arm. “I don’t know what happened between you, but I’ll talk to her.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” he said, though he suspected that once she did know, she would be as up in arms as her daughter.

  With a nod, she started to walk away, then stopped to add, “Oh, and I’ll send your footmen back as soon as we reach home.”

  “Home? You’re going to Surrey and not London?” He didn’t even know where they lived when they weren’t in London. The thought that he hadn’t bothered to find out, either, made him cringe.

  “Yes, home,” she said. “But it’s not too far from here. I’m sure your footmen will be back by tomorrow evening.”

  He let out a breath. His footmen would be able to tell him exactly where she lived.

  Lady Norley headed down the stairs, and as if drawn by one of the magnets in Olivia’s laboratory, Thorn walked over to the window to determine if he could see her in the coach. He was barely able to make out her profile. Even as they pulled away, she didn’t look up.

  “You really must have angered her,” Gwyn said as she stared out over his shoulder. “That is one infuriated lady.”

  “You can go back to bed any time you like, sis,” he said, turning from the window.

  “Not until you tell me what happened. I won’t let you push me away this time, Thorn. It’s taken us a while to mend our broken relationship from before, and I refuse to go back to where we were barely speaking. I understand you better than you know.”

  “Then you don’t need me to tell you what happened, do you?” He eyed her closely. “I’ll make it easy for you. If you can guess what the issue is, I’ll give you all the gory details.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I would think it was something to do with her desire to continue as a chemist, except that I can’t imagine you taking too much issue with that beyond the possible dangers.”

  He stared at her with his best deadpan face. He prided himself on having a good one, since it had served him well all these years of occasional gambling.

  “So,” she continued, “if it’s not that, then it must be the plays.”

  “What plays?” Too late. He was fairly sure he’d let his deadpan face slip.

  “The ones you write and have Mr. Juncker stand in as playwright for.”

  Shifting his gaze away, he said, “A lucky guess.”

  She snorted. “Please don’t insult my intelligence. I’ve known for weeks.”

  “Weeks?” He gaped at her. “How?”

  She began ticking things off on her fingers. “First, I saw one of them, which included so many references to our childhood in Berlin that it was impossible not to notice.”

  “Juncker is my friend. I could have told him those.”

  “He may be your friend, but if he had included in his writing that many personal details of your life you would have cut him off as a friend long before you were on play number six in the series. I know you—you’re very private. You don’t mind including such details in your plays yourself because everyone thinks those things happened to Juncker. Or were well-researched. It doesn’t affect you or how people look at you. But you’d be terribly unhappy if he appropriated them.”

  God, sometimes his twin was too clever for her own good. “Fine. I’ll concede the point.”

  “Could we sit down for the rest of this? I’m carrying far more weight on my hips than you are. No one tells a woman about that when they encourage her to have babies.”

  “Of course,” he said hastily, and led her back to her sitting room.

  Once he had them both comfortably situated on her sofa, she got right to it. “Second, after I saw one of your plays, I read them all to confirm my opinion. It was easy. You have copies of them in the lower right drawer of your desk.”

  “The locked drawer!”

  “The key to which is in the upper drawer.” Gwyn shrugged. “It’s like you were begging to be caught.”

  He scowled. “I wasn’t expecting to have my drawers rifled by my sister.”

  She clasped her hand to her heart in mock horror. “Never say that sentence again, if you please. I shudder to even think about rifling your drawers.”

  Belatedly, he heard what he’d just said. “So do I! And you know I meant desk drawers.”

  She grinned. “I rifled your desk drawers because, having seen the one play, I wanted to determine if you owned the others. It’s really a compliment to your skill and talent as a playwright that I would be so enamored of the plays that I’d look for other copies.”

  “It’s a compliment to your nosiness, you unrepentant hoyden,” he said sullenly. “That’s all it is.”

  “Third,” she went on, “there’s the way you behaved around Juncker. Fourth, there’s your past with Olivia—”

  “What do you know about my past with Olivia?” he asked as bile rose in his throat. It was one thing to have Olivia know the truth, but to learn that others had detected it, too . . .

  “Everything, I think. I got it out of Grey when I noticed that you and she were behaving oddly around each other at my ball.”

  Damn Grey. “Our half brother is becoming as much of a gossip as a woman.”

  Gwyn lifted an eyebrow at him. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”

  “Good idea,” he said hastily. “I’m doing my best tonight to anger all the females in my life.” He sighed. “Please tell me Grey hadn’t also deduced that . . . that . . .”

  “Miss Norley and her mother are Slyboots and Grasping? I daresay no one has deduced that.”

  “Except you.”

  She smiled crookedly. “I have the honor—and the curse—of being your twin. After I knew the history of your relationship with her, it wasn’t hard to figure out how you would have taken what happened. Why she never deduced it is anyone’s gu
ess.”

  “For one thing, she doesn’t see herself as Slyboots because she’s never been Slyboots in reality. And . . . well . . .”

  “She only found out tonight that you wrote the plays.”

  He shook his head. “This is becoming a bit spooky. How on earth—”

  “Not that spooky. A simple deduction. She obviously didn’t know the truth the night we dined with Juncker. I would have behaved the way she did just to torment you a bit for not revealing the truth, but she isn’t me. She isn’t good at pretending or lying, a fact which I think you discovered once you went to Grey’s and spent time with her.”

  He nodded. “I could never have offered for her if I hadn’t seen that. But once I did, I liked her at once. I felt a kinship with her. She and I both had trouble fitting in.” He’d dealt with it by taking up his role as rakehell, and she’d dealt with it by hiding in her laboratory. “Neither of us was ever comfortable in polite society, she even less than I.” It hit him how much he’d lost, and he buried his face in his hands. “Oh, God, Gwyn, how do I fix this?”

  His sister reached over to rub his back. “Tell her the truth.”

  “She knows the truth. That’s why she’s angry. And I’ve already said I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t mean that truth. And a hastily spoken ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t going to wash away the enormity of what you’ve done to her. Because that’s not the real reason she’s angry. She’s envisioning the whole world laughing behind her back. Until now, she thought you were on her side, both of you not fitting in. The fact that you were a duke and she a mere miss only reinforced how remarkable it was that the two of you felt that kinship. Now suddenly you’ve switched sides, and she’s all alone save for her mother, the other victim of your mockery.”

  Shame swamped him. “Oh, God, you’re right. All Olivia could speak of was the mockery. I hurt her very badly. I don’t know how she can forgive me.”

  “You must do whatever it takes to reassure her you’re still on her side.”

  “How?” he asked.