The Duke Is Mine

“In the trees,” he said, nodding vigorously. “I cried for the bird. Why don’t you ever cry?”

She had never cried, even once, after meeting Rupert for the first time. She was ten years old; he was five. It was the morning when her dreams of the fairy-tale prince she was to marry crashed to the ground.

Even though he was only aged five (and she only ten), she knew something was gravely wrong with his brain.

But her mother had scoffed when she said as much. “The marquess may not be as quick as you,” Mrs. Lytton had said, “but that is like expecting a duke to learn flower arranging. You are too clever for your own good.”

“But—” Olivia had said, desperation rising in her chest.

“You are the luckiest girl in the world,” her mother had stated. The utter conviction on her face had made the words die in Olivia’s mouth.

Even all these years later, after it became clear that Rupert was lucky to have mastered speech, let alone literacy, her mother had never altered her opinion an iota.

“Perhaps you should begin,” Olivia suggested to Rupert. She waved her hand toward the general area of endeavor.

“Right,” Rupert said gamely. “On with it.” As Olivia watched, he swayed back and forth slightly. “Bit too much brandy,” he muttered, but applied himself to the appropriate place.

It bent in half.

Rupert blinked down. “It’s not working. This part is supposed to be easy.”

Olivia propped herself up on her elbows. It looked as if he were holding a piece of old celery. Bendy and—though one wouldn’t want to say so aloud—flaccid.

“Try again?” she suggested.

“I suppose this is the right place?”

“Yes,” she said firmly.

Rupert tried again, muttering to himself. Olivia let him get on with it, only slowly realizing that he was whispering, “In, in, in.” Giggles built up in her chest again, so she bit her lip hard.

After a while she said, “I’ve heard that this sort of thing never works on the first try.”

Rupert didn’t look up at her. He held his private parts in a fierce grip that looked desperately uncomfortable. “This is easy,” he repeated.

“I think it needs to be stiff in order to work,” Olivia ventured.

He blinked at her. “Do you know a great deal about the matter?” He didn’t seem in the least censorious, just curious.

“It’s just a wild stab in the dark,” Olivia replied. She was fighting giggles again because the phrase lame duck kept running through her mind.

“I thought the most important thing was size,” Rupert said.

“I believe I have heard the same,” Olivia admitted cautiously.

Rupert gave himself a shake. “This is big. I know that.”

“Lovely!”

“But it doesn’t work.” He dropped it and looked at her, his eyes miserable. “Another thing that doesn’t work.”

Olivia wiggled backward and managed to sit up. “Do you know how you never lie, Rupert?”

He nodded.

“We’ll just lie on the sofa together.” She patted the cushion beside her. “Then, we tell them that.”

“You mean . . . not tell?”

“It wouldn’t be a falsehood.”

“No.”

“We’ll just say that we lay together on the sofa.”

“Lay together,” he repeated. “I’d rather . . . I . . . Don’t tell Father? Others? Please?”

Olivia took his hand—the other hand. “I’ll never tell, Rupert. Never.”

His smile was quick and bright.

Considerably later the same night, Olivia scowled at her sister. “Our parents requested that Rupert and I conjoin without the benefit of matrimony, and we complied, just as if we were a pair of breeding hounds.”

“There’s no need to put it in such a depressing fashion. Although,” Georgiana added, with one of her rare smiles, “after this evening Rupert’s prospects as a breeding hound are somewhat in question.”

“If you smiled at men like that, Georgie, you’d have more proposals than you could manage.”

“I do smile,” Georgiana protested.

“But your smile often looks as if you were thinking about the fact that they are lower than the rank of duke,” Olivia pointed out. “You could try smiling at them as if they were dukes.”

Her sister nodded. “I take your point. At any rate, one shouldn’t compare one’s future husband to a breeding hound.”

“His Grace characterized it as such. After which he informed me that he would reward me for this evening’s work with a jointure and an estate. A small estate, I believe he said. I had no idea of how rich a strumpet could become from a mere hour or two of debauchery.”

“Olivia!” But her sister’s protest had no force.

“You’re to benefit from my strumpethood, my dear. He’s told Madame Claricilla to outfit both of us according to my new station.”

Georgiana’s eyebrows flew up.

“The fruits of sin. I am thinking of Cyprians in a whole new light, I promise you. You and I are both getting an entire wardrobe, and I shall refuse to have a single white gown or trailing ribbon.”

“You are not a strumpet,” Georgiana protested. “You were obeying Mother and Father’s wishes.”

“To that point, may I say that I deeply resent the fact that Mother spent years insisting that a lady’s life should revolve around the protection of her chastity, only to toss out that precept the moment she thought I could have a child by Rupert?”

Georgiana chewed on her lip for a moment. Then she said, “You’re right, of course. Our parents are showing an excess of enthusiasm for this marriage, and have done so all along.”

“Given that poor Rupert is harebrained as they come, yes.” Olivia rolled over on her back again. She felt exhausted, and deeply sad; the effects of the brandy had decidedly worn off. She had realized at the age of ten that her married life would be conspicuously different from that of other women. But she hadn’t realized just how appalling the reality might be.

The very idea of having breakfast with Rupert, let alone years and years of breakfasts, made her feel despairing.

“Even if the marquess had a distinguished brain, our parents shouldn’t have been party to a distasteful encounter such as you just described,” Georgiana stated.

“His brain is distinguished, all right,” Olivia muttered. “There are very few like it. Though his poetry is truly lovely, in a fragmented sort of way.”

“I hesitate to ask,” Georgiana said, “but why was Mother so vexed, after the duke and the FF left? Her voice carried even to my chamber, so I hesitated to come down for some time. Yet it sounds as though everything went according to her best hopes; the betrothal papers are signed, and as far as she knows, you may be carrying a future duke. Not to mention her fervent reaction to the possibility of my becoming a duchess.”

“Oh,” Olivia said. “That was Lucy.” Even thinking about it made her start smiling.

“Lucy?”

“Rupert’s dog, Lucy. Surely you remember her.”

“Who could not? It’s not that she’s the only dog in the ton—Lord Filibert’s poodle has gained some notoriety, given its green bows—but Lucy is the only one with flea-bitten ears.”