The Duke Is Mine - Eloisa James [59]
She smiled at the stable boy holding her horse’s reins. “Will you keep Lucy for me until I return? I do believe she thinks there might be rats in the stable.”
“She’d be right,” the boy said promptly. Lucy was nosing around at the wall, her tail stiff with delight.
“Find them,” Olivia suggested.
He grinned and handed over the reins. She deftly tightened them, nudged the mare, and set out after the duke. Quin.
They reached the house by a road that rounded a bend and placed them before the house. Littlebourne Manor had a magisterial façade, she realized, paying attention to it for the first time.
Rather than sprawling in many directions, like so many ancestral mansions that had been added to in bits and pieces, it stood upright, trim and perfectly symmetrical, surrounded by immaculately manicured lawns.
It was too neat for her. Each feature had its exact duplicate on the opposite side: windows, gables, chimneys.
“What do you think?” the duke asked, as she drew up her horse.
“It’s too orderly for my taste,” she said, with a wave of her hand at the windows marching along like tin soldiers. “I’m a quite haphazard person.”
“What does haphazard mean in architectural terms?” he asked. But she could see Lady Cecily and Justin waiting for them, so she put her mare to a trot.
“I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting, Lady Cecily,” she said, bending down once she reached the pony cart.
“You should be apologizing to me,” Justin said with some indignation. “Aunt Cecily arrived only a moment ago, whereas I’ve had time to write an entire roundel. It’s not bad either, if I say so myself.” He waved a piece of foolscap at them.
“I will look forward to hearing it,” Olivia said. “How is your ankle, Lady Cecily?”
“Excellent well! I put a poulder on it that I bought in Venice two years ago. The medicine is so powerful that it kept Helen herself young. And it’s particularly for bones; I remember that the man selling it—’twas on the square before Saint Mark’s—said that it would set your teeth and make them dance like the keys of a harpsichord. And so it did, though of course, it was my ankle, not my teeth.”
“We’ll go to Ladybird Ridge,” the duke said to Justin. “Endeavor not to tip the cart over, if you can help it.”
“It would be impossible to tip this thing over,” Justin said, looking disgusted. “Now, if you’d let me drive your phaeton, I would at least having a sporting chance to roll it—”
The duke didn’t bother to answer, instead turning to Olivia. “Shall we?”
“I wish your dear sister were with us,” Lady Cecily called up to Olivia. “I gather that she has a headache, so I sent her a dose of this poulder as well. It’s as precious as gold, I assure you, so I’m quite sure that she’s already feeling herself again. Should we send indoors and ask if she’d like to join us?”
“No,” the duke said, before Olivia could respond. “We’re leaving now.” And he wheeled his horse. It was a great black gelding that pranced forward and made a halfhearted attempt to shake him off.
Olivia turned her mare and followed.
Fourteen
The Flight of the Cherry Kite
Of course Olivia was no stranger to flirtation, let alone lust, Quin said to himself. It made complete sense. One didn’t need to conduct a third experiment to prove this hypothesis: for whatever ignoble reason, he was particularly vulnerable to women who had a liberal relationship with the concept of chastity.
Even worse, he was more besotted now than he had been with Evangeline.
Evangeline had fascinated him: he had wanted to bring her home, cherish her, and make love to her. He had thought the curl of her hair and the tinkle of her laugh enchanting. But he could not remember feeling this sort of overwhelming sensuality, a wild madness that tangled up his reason and sent all the blood in his body to a place between his legs.
He didn’t even have to look at Olivia to catalog her features. Her eyelashes were a trifle longer at the corners, which gave her a wicked air, a touch of Cleopatra. Even thinking of her body made his tighten painfully. She was all curves and plump,