The Duke Is Mine - Eloisa James [76]
“Are you sure you wish to tell me this?”
“Why not? It’s no more than your maid would tell you if you asked.”
“And were you following her?”
“I almost killed my horse riding him hard, but I was too late. The devil of it is that I still dream of that pier. I’d missed them, and the only thing I could see was the sea, boiling with whitecaps. The boat went down only a mile or two from shore.”
There was a moment of silence. “I suppose,” Olivia said slowly, “that a future duchess should not engage in profanity, especially with regard to the dead. So I would say, Quin, while avoiding curses, that your wife was an ass.”
He could feel a twisted little smile on his lips. “It was a long time ago. Five years. Practically a lifetime.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “One never gets over the loss of a loved one. Especially a child.”
There was no point in answering that comment. It was cruelly true. “At any rate, I can’t marry Georgiana.”
Then he added, just so she understood: “Ever.”
“I think you could grow to love her—or care about her, if you prefer that term.”
“Evangeline was not faithful to me, but I was to her. I was so feverishly in lust with her that there were times when I doubted my own ability to maintain my self-control. Though, of course, I did.”
A shadow crossed her eyes. “Evangeline threw away something that every woman in this kingdom would love to have. She didn’t deserve it.”
“Deserve it or not, she had it. When I carried your sister up those stairs, I didn’t feel even a shadow of desire.”
She frowned at him. “Georgie has a perfect figure. In fact, she’s perfect in every way.”
“It felt as if I were carrying a child up the stairs, all long legs and hair.”
“She’s elegant,” Olivia stated. “I would kill to have her figure.”
“Really?”
“Of course. I have always wished to look precisely like her. Though obviously, not enough to avoid food,” she added.
“That’s madness. You have everything she doesn’t.”
Olivia opened her mouth, ready to argue.
“Everything she hasn’t.”
She frowned at him.
“Including me.”
Eighteen
Madness, in All Its Forms
Quin’s last two words—spoken with the reasoned calm that characterized him—shook Olivia to her core. “What?” she whispered. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I care about you. Embarrassingly, I seem to care about you more than I did Evangeline. It may be that I am mad.” He paused, considering. “I don’t perceive any other signs of mental weakness, though, so I am inclined to simply acknowledge this as a human weakness. I am reluctant to label it a failing.”
She shook her head, dazed.
“It could be that I am merely the sort of man who is ruled by lust.”
Olivia took a deep breath. “I am honored by what you said. I assure you that no woman dislikes being told she is an object of desire. But you must listen to me, Quin. I will not betray Rupert by leaving him while he is overseas, in battle. More to the point, I will never betray my sister. You sat out there in the garden with her for almost an hour. You carried her up the stairs. You courted her.”
“I was no more courteous to her than I would be to any other young woman under my roof.”
“Sitting on a bench for almost an hour? I can’t envision you doing that with any of your other guests.”
“Your sister is remarkably intelligent; we talked about science. It is a pleasure to converse with her. However, a forty-five-minute conversation does not require that I marry her.”
“Put together with everything else, it means that she has a reasonable expectation of marrying you. And I will not, ever, stand in the way of her wish. If the two of you do not marry, for whatever reason, so be it. I will never have it be said that I stole her chosen husband.”
She stood up. “I must pin up my hair—”
He came at her in a low, silent rush, a surge of