The Duke Is Mine

For a moment Quin gazed through the window of his study at the growing darkness outside. His study faced west, and its windows held the oldest glass in the house, the kind that was bottle thick and blurred, slightly bluish in hue. Quin liked that because he was convinced that, somehow, glass held the answer to the mystery of light.

He’d been taught at Oxford that light was made up of particles streaming in one direction. But light came through his old glass in ribbons, and the ribbons didn’t act like a flowing river. It was more as if they were waves coming into the shore, bending slightly, adapting to imperfections in the glass . . .

Light came in a wave, not a flood of particles. He was convinced of it.

The problem was how to prove it. He sat down at his desk again, pulling over more foolscap. Light splits into separate color ribbons in rainbows. But rainbows are impractical and hard to pin down. He needed to . . .

By the time he raised his head again, the house was quiet and the window at his shoulder had turned black. For a moment he stared at it, then shook his head. Light was enough to worry about at the moment. The absence of light was another question. Besides, there was rain beating at the windows, a spring storm. Water . . . water was made of particles . . .

He stood up, legs stiff, and then froze in the middle of a stretch. What in the devil was causing that noise?

He heard it again, a distant thudding that sounded like the knocker on the front door. It was far too late for anyone in the household to respond. Cleese would be snug in his bed, and the last footman long since retired to the servants’ quarters on the fourth floor.

Quin snatched up the oil lamp on his desk and ran lightly down the great marble stairs that led to the entry. He put the lamp down, drew back the bolt, and swung open the heavy door. Light fell out—in ribbons—from behind his shoulder into the dark, but there was no one to be seen, merely a moving blur of white in the middle distance.

“Is someone out there?” he shouted, keeping well back from the water sluicing off the pediment above the door.

The blur he’d glimpsed in the rain turned and ran back toward him. “Oh, thank goodness you’re still awake,” a woman gasped. “I thought no one heard me.”

She moved into the circle of light falling over his shoulder, still talking, though he stopped listening. She was obviously a lady—but not just any lady. She didn’t look as if she belonged in this world, let alone the world of Littlebourne Manor. The very sight of her was a blow to a man’s senses, as if one of Homer’s sirens had somehow traversed both eons and continents, and arrived at his doorstep to bewitch him.

Dark hair fell sleekly down her shoulders, making her skin look translucent, as if it had its own source of light. He couldn’t see the color of her eyes, but her eyelashes were long and wet.

Then he suddenly realized that rain was pouring down her shoulders and she wasn’t even wearing a pelisse. She was certainly as wet as a siren, or did he mean a mermaid?

He reached out and picked her up, swinging her into the entry, out of the rain. She gasped and started to speak, but he put her down and spoke over her voice: “What on earth are you doing out there?”

“The carriage turned over, and I couldn’t find the coachman, and he didn’t respond when I called,” she said, shivering.

Quin found it hard to concentrate on what she was saying. Her hair was like skeins of wet silk, lying dark and sleek over her shoulders. Her dress was drenched, and it clung to her skin, showing every curve of her body . . . and what a body!

Belatedly he realized that her narrowed eyes indicated that she did not care for his survey.

“I can assure you that your master would not wish you to stand about parleying with me,” she said sharply.

He blinked. She thought he was a servant? Of course, he wasn’t wearing his coat or cravat, but even so, no one in his life had ever taken him for anyone but a duke (or, in the days before his father died, a duke-to-be). It was oddly freeing.

“Parleying?” he asked, rather idiotically. This drenched woman looked wickedly intelligent, far more so than the bran-faced debutantes he’d met back when he was last in London for the season.

“I am not—” She broke off the sentence. “I shall repeat my request. Would you please fetch the butler?” She sounded as though she was talking through clenched teeth.

Quin had the feeling he was having a hallucinatory experience. He’d heard of this sort of thing, when men lost their minds and suddenly kissed the vicar’s wife.

He always thought imprudence of that nature indicated a profound lack of intelligence, but as he wasn’t inclined to question his own aptitude, he’d have to change his mind. In fact, it was a good thing the mermaid wasn’t the vicar’s wife, because he would likely kiss her and never mind her sanctified husband.

“You look very chilled,” he said, observing that her teeth were chattering. No wonder she sounded as if her jaw was clenched. What she needed was a warm fire. He bent down and scooped her into his arms without a second thought.

She was soaked, and water instantly drenched his breeches . . . which just made him realize all the more sharply that his body agreed with his mind. If the mere sight of her had aroused him, now that she was in his arms the situation was made worse. She was gorgeous, a soft, fragrant, wet—

“Put me down!”

As if in punctuation, a sharp bark sounded around his ankle. He looked down and saw a very wet, very small dog with an extraordinarily long nose. The dog barked again, in a clear command.

“Does that animal belong to you?” Quin asked.

“Yes,” his visitor said. “Lucy is my dog. Will you please put me down!”

“Come,” Quin said to the dog, and “In a moment,” to the lady, who was beginning to struggle. He moved toward the drawing room only to realize that the fire in that room would be banked for the night. But there was a coal stove in Cleese’s silver room that was easily stoked.

“Where are you going?” she said indignantly as he changed direction. “The coachman is out there in the rain and—”

“Cleese will arrive in a moment,” he told her. Her lips were fascinating: full and plump, and a deeper rose color than any woman’s lips he’d seen before. “He’ll take care of your coachman.”

“Who is Cleese?” she demanded. “And—wait! Are you taking me into the servants’ quarters?”

“Don’t tell me that you’re one of those ladies who has never been through a baize door,” he said, turning so that he could back the two of them through the door, and then keeping it open for the dog. “Your dog looks rather like a rat thrown up on the banks of the Thames,” he added. The silver room was just to the left, so he kicked the door open.

“Lucy does not look like a rat! And what does that have to do with anything? I am Miss Olivia Lytton and I demand . . .”

Olivia. He liked it. He looked at her eyelashes and her plump lips. Her eyes were a beautiful color, a kind of pale sea green—or was it the color of new leaves in the spring?

“Put me down, you rudesby!” she was saying fiercely, and not for the first time.

He didn’t want to do that. In fact, he felt very strongly about the question, which was unlike him. Generally, he didn’t care strongly about anything other than polynomial equations. Or light. But Miss Lytton was rounded . . . beautifully rounded in all the right places. She felt right in his arms. He particularly liked the soft curve of her bottom. Not to mention the fact that she smelled wonderful, like rain and, faintly, of some sort of flower.