The Duke Is Mine - Eloisa James [12]
“Because he quacks? He would certainly be alone in visualizing himself as an eagle.” Olivia got to her feet and rang the bell. “I think it would behoove me—there’s a twopenny word for you, Georgie—it would behoove me to keep in mind that I’m being invited to have intimacies with a duck in my father’s library tomorrow night. And if that doesn’t sum up my relationship with our parents, I don’t know what could.”
Georgiana gave a snort.
Olivia waggled a finger at her. “Verrrrry vulgar noise you just made, my lady. Very vulgar.”
Four
That Which Is Engraved on the Heart of a Man (or Woman)
The following evening, Olivia was positioned on the sofa in the Yellow Drawing Room some two hours before the Duke of Canterwick and his son Rupert were due to arrive. Mrs. Lytton kept rushing through, squeaking this or that order to the servants. Mr. Lytton was more given to agitated pacing than to rushing. He fiddled with his cravat until it had utterly wilted, and he had to go off to change.
The truth was that her parents had prepared the whole of their married life for this moment, and even so they didn’t really believe their good fortune. She could see the incredulity in their eyes.
Would the duke truly go through with this marriage, based on a schoolboy promise years ago? Inside, they were not convinced.
“ ‘Dignity, virtue, affability, and bearing,’ ” her mother whispered to her, for the third time that evening.
Her father was more direct. “For goodness’ sake, keep your mouth shut.”
Olivia nodded. Again.
“Aren’t you the least bit nervous?” her mother hissed, sitting down beside her.
“No,” Olivia stated.
“That’s—that’s unnatural! One would almost think you didn’t want to be a duchess.” The very notion was clearly inconceivable to Mrs. Lytton.
“Insofar as I am about to formally betroth myself to a man whose brain would make a grain of sand loom large, I must wish to be a duchess,” Olivia pointed out.
“The marquess’s brain is irrelevant,” Mrs. Lytton said, frowning, and then instantly soothing her brow with her fingertips, in case a wrinkle had sprung up. “You will someday be a duchess. I never thought about brains when I married your father. The very consideration is unladylike.”
“I feel quite certain that Father evinced a normal intelligence,” Olivia said. She was sitting very still so that her ludicrously unnatural ringlets wouldn’t tangle.
“Mr. Lytton paid me a call. We danced. I never considered the question of his wits. You think too much, Olivia!”
“Which may not be a drawback, given that any woman who marries Rupert will have to do the thinking for two.”
“My heart is palpitating,” Mrs. Lytton said, with a little gasp. “Even my toes are qualmish. What if the duke changes his mind? You . . . you are not all that you could be. If only you could stop trying to be witty, Olivia. I assure you that your jests are not funny.”
“I don’t try, Mama,” Olivia said, starting to feel a little angry, even though she’d promised herself that she wouldn’t wrangle. “I simply don’t always agree with you. I see things differently.”
“You indulge in coarse wit, no matter how you wish to phrase it.”
“Then Rupert and I will make quite a pair,” Olivia said, just stopping herself from snapping. “Dim-witted and coarse-witted.”
“That’s just the sort of thing I’m talking about!” her mother accused. “It’s unnatural to jest at a moment like this, when a marquess is about to plight his troth to you.”
Olivia was calm. She knew perfectly well that Rupert’s father would arrive, at the appointed hour, and bearing whatever papers were necessary to effect the betrothal. The bridegroom’s presence hardly seemed relevant.
The Duke of Canterwick was a hardheaded man who had no interest in finding his son a compatible spouse; instead, he was looking for a nursemaid. A fertile nursemaid. He didn’t need money, and the dowry her parents had scraped together—which was more than respectable for a girl of her rank—was of no importance.
It was her hips and her brains that had prompted