The Taming of the Duke

"How vexing," Griselda said, turning back to Gabe almost as if Rafe had said nothing.

Rafe wasn't so cast away that he didn't notice the coquettish way that Josie's chaperone was fluttering her eyelashes at Gabe. Nothing wrong with that. Griselda was a lovely little bundle of womanhood, with a hefty estate left by her late husband. She could raise little Mary.

What's more, I like her, Rafe thought to himself. She's a good-hearted woman. Look how she hared off to Scotland with Josie and Imogen, merely because Imogen got a bee in her bonnet about saving her sister Annabel from an undesirable marriage. A journey to Scotland is nothing much in itself, but when you're the sort of person whose stomach turns topsy-turvy during a half hour's carriage ride, the trip takes on different proportions. And yet she'd accompanied Imogen on her harebrained scheme without a complaint.

Griselda would make an altogether better spouse for

Gabe than would Imogen, who was also leaning toward his brother. Of course, Imogen didn't bother with fluttering her eyelashes: not for her, a female trait so pedestrian and obvious. No, Imogen was truly dangerous. At the moment she was looking at Gabe as if the sun and moon rose in his eyes.

I've seen that look before, Rafe thought to himself, fingering his glass. Poor Draven Maitland… the last time he saw Maitland alive was just down the table from where Gabe was sitting now. And now Imogen was regarding Gabe with the same intensity. Her dark eyes were sparkling with interest; Rafe could almost see the poor man melting.

Irritably he signaled for more whiskey. Griselda was delicately attempting to discover why Rafe and Gabe had spent the last months refitting Holbrook Court's private theater.

"You do remember how enamored my mother was of her theater," Rafe said.

"Of course I was aware of the duchess's interest in the stage," Griselda said, turning to him. "Yet I fail to see how your mother's passion for the theater she built has led to its refurbishing."

Rafe had found that people tended to forget he was there, for all he was sprawled at the head of the table. Not Miss Poisonous Imogen, never she. She made sure to cast him enough disapproving looks to keep him on his toes, no matter how much whiskey he swilled.

"We've found no end of amusing items in the lumber room of the theater," he said, ignoring the fact that even he could hear that his baritone had darkened to something altogether more rasping. "Eight small canoes. At least three chandeliers. A thunder barrel."

"What's a thunder barrel?" Imogen asked.

"A few old cannonballs trapped in a wine cask. It's quite loud; I tried it."

"Perhaps you should put on a performance of Cori olanus," Imogen said. "Just think how impressive it would be when the thunder roared from the sky."

"Is that a Shakespeare play?" Rafe said, hearing his voice slur slightly. "Whatever we produce has to have a female lead."

"What has the lead to do with it?" Griselda said, turning to him. "It's true that theatrical performance is acceptable these days. One cannot forget the dear Duchess of Marlborough's interest in the theater, nor Dowager Lady Townsend's passion for her private stage. But it would be entirely unacceptable for Imogen, for example, to appear on the stage in a lead role unless it was a performance for the family only."

"Oh no," Rafe said. Unfortunately, shaking his head made him feel dizzy. From Imogen's sardonic gaze, she had guessed that his head was spinning. "We're inviting somewhere around one hundred to one hundred and fifty guests."

Imogen's right eyebrow shot up. "So many? To this point you have concealed your passion to entertain the public very well, Rafe."

"Yes, haven't I?" Rafe said, recklessly finishing his drink even though he knew well enough that he would feel like death the next morning. In fact, his stomach was already beginning to feel unhappy. He had to cut back on the whiskey.

Griselda was chattering about a performance of Moliere that the Margravine of Anspach had organized. "Now the war is over, one can certainly do a French play," she was saying, "and there can be no censure attached to a private performance. Of course, with French plays there is so often a French song, and that is highly unfortunate."

"Why?" Imogen asked. "What's the matter with French songs?"

"When a song is in French," Griselda said, turning to her, "people never understand it, even if they claim to speak fluently; that goes without saying. So either they think it is improper merely because of the language, and they look shocked, or they think it is humorous, and they laugh."

"Either way, one has to assume that they are amusing themselves," Imogen said. "Perhaps you ought to consider a play in the French language, Mr. Spenser."

"Absolutely not," Griselda said. "It is vulgar to look shocked, and tedious to laugh over songs that one merely assumes to be naughty. Invariably they aren't. I find French drama remarkably tiresome, in truth."

"Too much about adultery and not enough about courtship?" Rafe put in.

Griselda's smile was that of a widow who'd enjoyed the state for ten years without a drop of scandal attaching itself to her name. It was impossible to bait her. "Courtship is always so much more interesting than marriage," she pointed out. "The one is a comedy and the other, so frequently, a tragedy."

Her laughter went straight to Rafe's head and echoed about as if his brain were a vast empty storeroom and her laughter were the thunder barrel itself.

He pulled himself together, catching the sharp edge of Imogen's glance. She leaned over to him. "If you are going to be sick from overindulgence," she said, "I would be most grateful to be spared the sight. I'm afraid that our trip to and from Scotland was marked by the anguish of Griselda's delicate stomach."

Rafe growled at her. "That doesn't happen." It didn't sound very eloquent, but it was all he could muster. Damned if he didn't feel as if he were going to have to be dragged off, supported by the footmen. How embarrassing. An old wreck of a duke, half-dead before his time.

Imogen nodded. "I would find it embarrassing too."

"I said nothing of the sort!" he snapped at her.

"I'm showing you no sympathy," she said, unimpressed. "You certainly deserve every bit of humiliation that comes your way."

The very sharpness of it helped clear Rafe's head. "You're a virago, you know that? I thought you were turning over a new leaf."

"Oh, I am." There was a moment's pause as Imogen fiddled with her fork. "I suppose you could do the same."

Rafe drank a glass of barley water that his butler, Brinkley, thoughtfully brought him. "You'd like to declare a truce between us."

"No." She waved her hand. "Our encounters are trivial."

Of course, he agreed with her assessment. It was just perversity to feel a pang of disappointment.

"You could stop drinking," she said.

"Stop drinking?" Not that he hadn't thought of it himself. His stomach lurched again, and the idea was almost palatable. Still, he managed a sneer. "Why should I?"

She shrugged. "Why indeed?"

She had disturbing eyes. Even in a drunken haze, when his mind was vainly thrashing about for some sort of clarity, he could measure the effect of those eyes.