The Duke Is Mine - Eloisa James [19]
“No, thank you,” Olivia said. Unfortunately, what brandy she’d already taken had gone straight to her head, and she had a burning wish to giggle. She could just imagine what her mother would say to that.
“If you feel like crying, I brought three extra handkerchiefs.” Rupert displayed no particular urge to get on with the business.
“Thank you,” Olivia said again, choking down more giggles. “I never cry.”
“Really? I cry all the time,” Rupert said, blinking at her.
“I remember how you wept at the garden party when that dead sparrow fell out of a tree.”
Rupert’s face crumpled at the memory.
“It was just a bird,” she added quickly.
“Quick, bright . . . wild.”
“The sparrow?”
He seemed to have entirely forgotten what they were supposed to have been doing, even though he was on his knees, holding his tool in one hand. His eyes weren’t glassy anymore, but focused. “I wrote a poem,” he told her.
Olivia wasn’t entirely certain, but she was fairly sure that his tool wouldn’t be effective in its current state. “What sort of poem?” she asked, putting her head back on the cushion. Life with Rupert would have its own rhythm. There was no point in rushing it.
“Quick, bright,” he said again, “a bird falls down to us, darkness piles up in the trees.”
Olivia raised her head. “Is that the whole poem?”
He nodded, eyes on hers.
“It’s lovely, Rupert,” she said, and meant it. For the first time in her life, almost, she truly meant what she was saying to her fiancé. “ ‘Darkness piles up.’ I love that.”
“In the trees,” he said, nodding vigorously. “I cried for the bird. Why don’t you ever cry?”
She had never cried, even once, after meeting Rupert for the first time. She was ten years old; he was five. It was the morning when her dreams of the fairy-tale prince she was to marry crashed to the ground.
Even though he was only aged five (and she only ten), she knew something was gravely wrong with his brain.
But her mother had scoffed when she said as much. “The marquess may not be as quick as you,” Mrs. Lytton had said, “but that is like expecting a duke to learn flower arranging. You are too clever for your own good.”
“But—” Olivia had said, desperation rising in her chest.
“You are the luckiest girl in the world,” her mother had stated. The utter conviction on her face had made the words die in Olivia’s mouth.
Even all these years later, after it became clear that Rupert was lucky to have mastered speech, let alone literacy, her mother had never altered her opinion an iota.
“Perhaps you should begin,” Olivia suggested to Rupert. She waved her hand toward the general area of endeavor.
“Right,” Rupert said gamely. “On with it.” As Olivia watched, he swayed back and forth slightly. “Bit too much brandy,” he muttered, but applied himself to the appropriate place.
It bent in half.
Rupert blinked down. “It’s not working. This part is supposed to be easy.”
Olivia propped herself up on her elbows. It looked as if he were holding a piece of old celery. Bendy and—though one wouldn’t want to say so aloud—flaccid.
“Try again?” she suggested.
“I suppose this is the right place?”
“Yes,” she said firmly.
Rupert tried again, muttering to himself. Olivia let him get on with it, only slowly realizing that he was whispering, “In, in, in.” Giggles built up in her chest again, so she bit her lip hard.
After a while she said, “I’ve heard that this sort of thing never works on the first try.”
Rupert didn’t look up at her. He held his private parts in a fierce grip that looked desperately uncomfortable. “This is easy,” he repeated.
“I think it needs to be stiff in order to work,” Olivia ventured.
He blinked at her. “Do you know a great deal about the matter?” He didn’t seem in the least censorious, just curious.
“It’s just a wild stab in the dark,” Olivia replied. She was fighting giggles again because the phrase lame duck kept running through her mind.
“I thought the most important thing was size,” Rupert said.
“I believe I have heard the same,” Olivia admitted