The Duke Is Mine - Eloisa James [14]
“And here’s Lucy!” he said, even more enthusiastically. Lucy was a very small, rather battered-looking dog whom Rupert had found abandoned in an alley a year or so before.
Lucy looked up at Olivia with an adoring expression, her thin, rather rat-like tail whipping from side to side like a metronome set to molto allegro.
“No meat pies today,” Olivia whispered, leaning down to pull up one of Lucy’s long ears.
Lucy had the best manners of them all. She licked Olivia’s hand even given that disappointment, and then trotted after Rupert.
He was bowing and scraping before her parents, which gave Olivia an excellent view of his potato-shaped nose and pendulous lower lip. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that she was set to marry the sort of man whom people wished were invisible. Or if not invisible, at least silent. She swallowed hard.
“Now,” His Grace announced, “I would never be clear in my conscience if I wasn’t absolutely certain that Miss Lytton wished this union with my son as dearly as we do. A promise between schoolboys should not force a young person into holy matrimony.”
“Told him that myself,” Rupert said, with palpable satisfaction. “No one could force me into marriage. My own decision. Clippings don’t answer.”
“No one is trying to clip your wings,” his father snapped.
Mr. and Mrs. Lytton looked at their prospective son-in-law with identical expressions of alarm and confusion.
“My son means to say that he is deeply enthusiastic about marrying Miss Lytton once he has returned from his military service,” the duke clarified.
Mrs. Lytton’s eyelashes fluttered madly.
“First I’m going to do our name proud,” Rupert put in. “Glory, and all that.”
The duke cleared his throat, glowering at his son. “The question of the moment is not your intent to prove your military prowess, Son, but whether Miss Lytton cares to wait for you until you have returned. The poor lady has been betrothed to you for some time.”
Rupert’s face twisted into an almost comical expression of anxiety. “Must win glory for the sake of the family name,” he said to Olivia. “What I mean to say is, I’m the last of the line. The rest all killed in the Culleron Door.”
“Culloden Moor,” his father said. “The Jacobite rising. Fools, every one of them.”
“I completely understand,” Olivia said to Rupert, resisting the impulse to draw her hand away from his.
He hung on with a tight grip. “I’ll marry you as soon as I come back. Trailing glory, you understand.”
“Of course,” Olivia managed. “Glory.”
“There is no need to worry in the slightest about my daughter,” Mrs. Lytton told Rupert. “She will wait for you without a second’s thought. For months, nay, for years.”
Olivia thought this was a bit much, but obviously she was not in charge of the timetable. If her parents had their way, she would indeed wait another five years for Rupert to wander back to England, wreathed in glory—or, more likely, ignominy. The idea of Rupert in a war was distinctly frightening: men of his type should not be handed a penknife, let alone anything as lethal as a sword.
“Now, now, my dear lady,” the duke said to Mrs. Lytton. “One can hardly trust a mother to plumb the depths of her daughter’s heart.”
Mrs. Lytton opened her mouth to dispute this statement; without question, she considered herself to have plumbed the depths of Olivia’s heart and found there nothing but an engraved plaque that read Future Duchess of Canterwick.
But the duke raised a hand, politely but firmly. Then he turned to Olivia. She dropped another perfectly calibrated curtsy.
“I shall speak to Miss Lytton in your library,” His Grace announced. “Meanwhile, Rupert”—he all but snapped his fingers—“do inform