The Duke Is Mine - Eloisa James [52]
“Are you saying that she’s light-heeled?” Olivia asked, still trying to figure out exactly how far his wordplay was meant to go. “Because she most certainly is not.”
“That would mean our Alice was a hussy,” Avery said disapprovingly. “You don’t say that about a horse.”
“You’re absolutely right,” the duke said. “I stand corrected. Alice is clearly a creature of virtue.”
“You make very little sense,” Olivia observed. “One would almost—almost!—think you implied that Alice is a high-flier.”
“And she’s not,” Avery put in. “Mr. Edgeworth says she won’t even jump the stile.”
“We think it’s because she’s got such a round belly,” Acorn put in.
“Indeed.” The duke smiled again, and Olivia was furious to feel warmth creeping up in her cheeks. He couldn’t be referring to her.
“Everything a man could desire,” he said. “A lovely, plump buttock, too.”
Yes, he could be referring to her. She stood taller, fiercely resisting the impulse to back her plump buttock out of sight. Maybe into the next county.
“It’s because of all the grass we give her,” Ant said importantly. “We tear it up on the Common and we bring her handfuls.”
“What a lucky animal,” the duke murmured. He was a devil . . . unless she was completely misunderstanding him.
How could he possibly mean what she—
“Well, Miss Lytton? Don’t you agree with our assessment of this exquisite beast?”
The words jumped out of her mouth before she thought. “A plump buttock? Since when is that something a man desires in his mount?”
Stupidly, she caught the double entendre only after she herself made it. But the duke didn’t miss the intimation. His eyes lit up with an unholy, smoldering light, a secret promise that made fire pool in her body.
“Why, Miss Lytton,” he said, his voice a deep purr, “you surprise me.”
It forcibly occurred to her that he had deliberately brought Lady Godiva into the conversation at luncheon. “Um,” she fumbled. “I surprise myself.” There was something hungry in his eyes that wasn’t for her—couldn’t be for her. She could never have what he was offering.
That hunger should be for Georgiana. From the time she was ten years old she’d known that her future didn’t include . . . this.
She couldn’t think what to say.
The children had no such hesitation. “You’re looking at Miss Lytton like the way our Annie looks at Bean,” Apple told the duke.
“I expect you’re walking out,” Apricot chimed in. “Ma did say as how the duke was like to marry, remember?”
The duke didn’t seem to be inclined to respond. One moment he had looked unemotionally ducal, for lack of a better word, and the next his face was transformed by a kind of rough sensuality.
“That’s just how Bean looks back at Annie, too,” Acorn put in, apparently taking silence as encouragement. “Like trouble, that’s what Mum says.” She turned to Olivia. “That’s why Annie won’t come out of the house. Because those purple bumps are all over her bottom, and how did they get there?”
Olivia frowned.
“Iffen she had had her clothes on,” Acorn explained.
“See, Bean is the butcher’s son, and they’re walking out,” Apricot added. “Though you shouldn’t be saying things like that to fine folk,” she told her brother with a poke to his middle. “This is a lady, and ladies don’t know anything about their own clothes.”
“We don’t?” Olivia asked.
“You can’t take ’em off yourself, can you? That’s what Mum says. Though it could be she’s wrong.”
Alas, Olivia had to confirm. “You’re right. My gowns are all buttoned up the back and I do need someone to help me undress.”
“Well, the good news is that you won’t get the purple itch, then, at least not on your bottom.”
“That is very good to know,” the duke said, gravely.
But he would never fool Olivia again. This particular duke may look as stiff as a poker, but there was something quite different inside.
A smile, a hidden smile.
Twelve
The Merits of Scrambled Custards and Gooseberries
Immediately upon the little band’s return to Littlebourne Manor—the unfortunate Annie’s rash having been inspected, diagnosed, and treated—the dowager waved all the ladies off