The Duke Is Mine - Eloisa James [41]
It took a moment or two, but she soon had Althea babbling—in English—of her skills in Italian, German, and French.
Quin watched silently, thinking about Georgiana. Apparently she had not “taken,” whatever that meant. Evangeline had taken, of course. He had had to fight off any number of suitors, although in reality the moment Evangeline’s father got wind of a duke, the other suitors hadn’t a prayer.
He’d always thought that her success on the market could be put down to the fact that Evangeline glowed when she was happy.
What a suitor could not know was that Evangeline did not glow when unhappy, which was a good deal of the time, as he remembered it.
Miss Georgiana was not the type to glow. She had very fair skin, almost as clear and pale as her sister’s. Her nose was quite lovely too, though again, he would probably give the advantage to Olivia, by just a shade.
The only possibly unattractive note about her was that she was rather thin, more resembling a lean boy than a grown woman. Her gown had a décolleté neckline, but it could only do so much to accentuate the diminutive features that lay beneath.
Not that it mattered, he told himself quickly. A duchess is far more than her bosom. He was not a shallow man to be brought to his knees by a twist of violet silk and a pair of luscious breasts.
“I find it very interesting that you occupy yourself with the study of mathematics,” Georgiana said, turning to him as the conversation about languages wound down. She was to his right, and Olivia on his left, since Althea had been placed beside her mother. Quin was trying not to look too often in Olivia’s direction.
A gentleman does not ogle the fiancée of a man serving his country. Especially if that man is a nobleman, who could have taken the easy route, as Quin had done.
Not for the first time he felt a pang of acute guilt. It wasn’t easy to stay a moth of peace, as Shakespeare had it. When he was a boy, he had dreamed of wearing scarlet and heading up a battalion.
“The study of mathematics,” he said at length. “Yes, I am very interested in the mathematical arts.”
“I have read about Leonhard Euler’s work on mathematical functions,” Miss Georgiana said, rather shyly. “I think it fascinating.”
“You—you read about Euler?”
A slight frown creased her brow. “As far as I know, Your Grace, there is no law that says women may not read the London Gazette. Euler’s work was rather extensively surveyed there a few months ago.”
“Of course,” Quin said hastily. “I apologize for sounding so skeptical.”
Miss Georgiana had beautiful manners. She gave him a clear-eyed glance and a sweet smile. “Do you work on mathematical functions as well?”
“Yes, I do,” he said, hesitating. But she smiled again, so he launched into a description of the Babylonian method of calculating square roots.
He emerged from his discourse some ten minutes later to discover that the table had gone absolutely silent, and they were all staring at him.
He looked to Georgiana to see whether she displayed the same thinly held level of disbelief. She did not: her eyes were alert and interested. “If I understand you correctly,” she said, “you are trying to emphasize that this process will not work using a negative number.”
“That is my understanding as well,” his mother said.
Even a dimwit could have interpreted his mother’s voice. Miss Georgiana had just passed the first test. Without being a bluestocking, she was clearly intelligent and interested in matters outside the household.
Olivia, on the other hand, was looking at him with distinct amusement rather than admiration, let alone awe. She was not enthralled by his mathematical lecture.
“Tedious, I know,” he said, a bit sheepishly.
“Not at all!” Georgiana breathed.
“Yes, it certainly was,” Olivia said at precisely the same moment. “Perhaps next time you could sell tickets beforehand.