The Duke Is Mine

“That’s wonderful,” Olivia said, wondering if her tone sounded hollow. “Splendid! And no one deserves it as much as you do, Georgie. So why aren’t you simply ignoring your silly twit of a sister and chatting away with the handsome duke?”

“Do you think he’s handsome?”

Olivia blinked. “There’s no question. I think he’s—” She snatched back the words. The last thing she wanted to do was tell her sister that she’d never seen, even imagined, a man as beautiful as Quin. “His aspect is more than tolerable.”

“Don’t you think his hair is rather odd?”

“No,” Olivia said, thinking of the way it slid through her hands like silk, black and white together like the dual sides of life, darkness and light, good and evil, temptation and temperance. Mostly temptation.

“Well, I do. Do you suppose that if I mixed a dye myself he would allow it to be colored? Do you remember the zebra that came through in that travelling fair, Olivia? Sconce reminds me of that creature.”

“Yes, I do, and the duke doesn’t look in the slightest like a zebra. And no, he would never dye his hair. I don’t think he’s the sort of man who believes in deception. Or even knows how to engage in it.” Olivia wasn’t quite sure why she was so certain of this, but she was.

“I didn’t think he would.”

“What isn’t working?” Olivia asked again, after a moment. “It sounds first-rate to me, Georgie. You have five times the éclat of poor Althea. Her maid was exactly right to describe her as a chicken in the rain. Sconce’s mother couldn’t possibly choose her over you.”

“Dowagers always like me.” Georgiana clearly did not view this as an advantage.

“And the duke likes you.” Olivia consciously relaxed her jaw. She seemed to be developing a tendency to clench her teeth. “Yours would be a marriage made in heaven. Just think how happy Mother and Father will be.”

“Do you really think so?” Georgie’s face looked remarkably woebegone for a woman on the verge of betrothal to a duke. “It sounds possible now that we’re talking about it, but when we were at the table, I found myself so angry at you.”

“Why? That’s what I don’t understand, Georgie love. I’ve always been a bumptious fool compared to you, though I promise that I will be as hoity-toity as the best of them from now on. Why on earth were you even looking down the table at Justin and me?”

“Because he was.”

Olivia cleared her throat. “He being the duke?”

“Yes.” Georgiana’s fingers were twisting in her lap. “When you laugh, he looks at you. Every time. I could not help but notice.”

“I’m so sorry, Georgie. It’s my stupid belly laugh, as Mother used to call it. It drove her mad as well. I’ll be better tomorrow, I promise.” Shame beat a rapid tattoo in her breast, but it was nothing she wasn’t used to. “I didn’t realize I had appalled the entire company.”

“You don’t understand,” her sister said, staring at her entwined fingers. “You sit at the end of the table and we all can’t help it, we look at you. It makes me feel like a paper doll.”

Olivia frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Pale.” Georgiana paused, and added, “Fragile and powerless.”

“That is absurd! Just tell me what you want me to do, and I will. I don’t need to make jokes. What else am I doing wrong?”

“You don’t follow my point. When you laugh . . . everyone laughs.”

“You must be daft. If you saw the dowager break a smile, let alone a laugh, I must have missed it. And as for your duke, Sconce has many virtues, but I wouldn’t say that a gift for easy laughter is one of them.”

Georgiana just shook her head. “The duke does know how to laugh. He’s rather restrained about it. But I can see his eyes change when you laugh.”

“Nonsense.” Olivia said it stoutly, pretending she hadn’t noticed the same thing.

But her sister reached out and tugged a lock of her hair. “You have a wonderful laugh, Olivia. I’ve always thought that was one of the saddest things about Mother and Father. They were so busy trying to make you into a duchess that they never laughed with you.”

Olivia felt tears sting her eyes. “Oh, Georgie. I think that’s the nicest thing you ever said to me.”

“Your laugh has so much joy in it. If you ask me, Sconce is fascinated by you for that reason.”

Anxious remorse crept up Olivia’s backbone. She scrambled to her feet and turned around, busying herself with pouring another cup of tea. Her hands shook a little. “Of course that’s not true, Georgie. You mustn’t be absurd. I was laughing like a hyena, and the poor man probably couldn’t hear himself speak over the noise.” She put in three spoonfuls of sugar before realizing what she’d done.

She sat back down opposite her sister and stirred her tea. “Men aren’t fascinated by ribald wit, Georgie.”

“I suppose not. But anyone could see he’s attracted to you.”

“I’m a loud, fat woman who’s betrothed to someone else,” Olivia said flatly. “You misinterpret his attention because you love me.”

“You are not fat! You’re a peach, remember?”

“The truth is that I don’t mind so much. You are a beautiful, willowy person, and I’m not. Rupert doesn’t care at all.”

Georgiana opened her mouth to argue, but Olivia held up her hand. “You’re making far too much of the fact that the duke has glanced in my direction once or twice. From now on I’m going to act like the most toplofty aristocrat of them all, so there will be nothing to perturb the ducal glow that surrounds our table.”

Her sister smiled reluctantly. “I expect you’re probably right. Given the loss of his wife and son, the poor man has forgotten how to have fun, if he ever knew. That’s why he looks to you when you laugh.”

Olivia only trusted herself to nod again. Some stubborn, stupid part of her wanted to howl, scream that Quin was hers. Which was ridiculous. She knew perfectly well that she couldn’t leave Rupert. And Quin was her darling sister’s best chance to become the aristocrat she was meant to be.

“What will you wear to the ball tomorrow?”

“I think the blue silk with Chantilly lace.”

“Ah,” Olivia teased. “The big weapons are coming out.”

“I have the strangest feeling that Sconce’s mother is throwing this ball as some sort of test,” her sister said. “Isn’t that odd? She seems to be interrogating both me and Althea, as if she were comparing our answers to an approved list.”

Olivia shrugged. “You will triumph, in that case. What was our childhood, if not a series of tests?”

Her sister’s brow pleated. “Do you really feel that way? And don’t shrug again!”

“Yes.”

“I suppose I see your point.”

“Everything we were scolded for, or celebrated for, was directed at just one thing,” Olivia said. “Becoming duchesses.”

“I can see why you’re bitter.”

“You can?”