The Duke Is Mine - Eloisa James [129]
“You raise an interesting question,” Olivia said mischievously. “Could it be that the sainted Mr. Bumtrinket, late husband of Lady Cecily herself, died a questionable death, perhaps from a potion bought from a Venetian quack?”
“Olivia!” Georgiana said, shocked as always.
“Worse! What if you are driven to homicide?”
“Stop that! You are being quite improper.”
“There was a talkative old woman named Bumtrinket, Who nattered day and night like a cricket,” Olivia laughed, dancing out of the way as her sister made a grab at her sleeve. “Her tongue never ceasing, Was vastly displeasing, Until her companion smacked her bum with a picket!”
“You reprobate!” The perfect princess actually chased the imperfect princess clear around the library settee before she remembered that dignity, virtue, affability, and bearing precluded bodily assault.
Olivia’s world, like Quin’s, was firmly in place. Georgie might be going off to Oxford and eschewing the life of a duchess, but the tattered shreds of the duchification program clung to her. And Olivia was about to fulfill her mother’s dearest hope . . . although it could be said that her success was directly tied to the failures of the very same program.
Quin and Olivia walked behind the Duke of Canterwick when Rupert was buried with honors: not in the family tomb, but in Westminster Abbey, as befitted an English hero who trailed clouds of glory. His place was marked by a very simple marble tablet engraved with his name and a fragment of an odd poem.
A few years later, a young poet named Keats stood puzzling over the inscription one long afternoon. Sometime after that, a middle-aged poet named Auden found himself fascinated by it for a whole week. Fifty years later, an erudite dissertation discussed the complexities of fragmentation . . . but that was all in the future, a puzzle that lay ahead for those interested in twists of language.
For Tarquin Brook-Chatfield, Duke of Sconce, complicated words never had the same incantatory force as they had before his second marriage. He never worried if he couldn’t find just the right ones.
There were only three that truly mattered, and they bore repeating: “I love you; I love you; I love you.”
“I love you.”
Epilogue
Thirteen years later
The young girl had ebony hair with a shock of white over her brow. Lady Penelope Brook-Chatfield didn’t know it yet—although at age twelve, she was beginning to guess—but she was the most beautiful lady of her age between Kent and London and even beyond. Cherry lips, high cheekbones, and the scream of an Amazon.
“It all adds up,” Quin mumbled. “She’s going to be a terror. They’ll line up begging to marry her, and then we’ll have to give her poor husband hardship pay.”
“Pish,” Olivia said lazily, enjoying the way the summer heat hung in the air even in the shade of their favorite elm tree, the one at the end of Ladybird Ridge. Small white butterflies danced below its lowest branches.
Penelope ran by, chasing one of her cousins with a shriek that reminded one of the new steam engines. “My papa is too!” she screamed. “My papa is fierce!”
“You don’t look fierce,” Olivia said, twining her hands into Quin’s hair. He lay on the quilt next to her, whispering things into the tummy that rose in the air between them.
“I’m being nice to the new baby,” he said, dropping a kiss in the appropriate place. “I’m saving all my ferocity for Penelope’s first suitors.”
A scrambling noise could be heard in the tree above them. “Be careful,” Quin called. “Mama is here and you must be particularly careful these days, you know.”
“I know.” There had been lots of rain this summer, and the tree was thick with dark leaves. Thin legs emerged from the canopy and waved for a moment, until Quin got to his feet, took hold of their owner, and placed his son safely on the ground.
“Papa!” Penelope screeched, running back toward them, her hair streaming in the wind. She must have lost another ribbon. “Aunt Georgie says that you haven’t killed any pirates, so come and tell her that you do