Much Spontaneous Kissing. And the Other Kind, Too
Olivia broke free with a gasp and turned, still in the circle of Quin’s arms. The dowager didn’t look particularly angry or judgmental. Instead, she was regarding them rather the way a small child might watch a caterpillar: with curiosity, but not revulsion.
“Tarquin,” she stated.
“Mother,” Quin replied, not moving his arms from around Olivia.
“What on earth are you doing?”
“Kissing Olivia,” Quin said. “Spontaneously.”
The duchess’s brow might have furrowed—except one had to assume that she did not hold with extravagant facial expressions of that sort. “Miss Lytton, I might ask the same of you.”
Olivia thought about saying, Being kissed, and decided that dissembling would be the more prudent course. “I expect that the exhaustion of the night has provoked a level of unwonted hilarity,” she said, piling on words in the hope that the dowager would find herself confused.
What was she thinking? This woman wrote The Mirror of Compliments. She was perfectly at home in a maze of language.
“It does not look like an expression of hilarity to me,” the dowager remarked. “Tarquin, I could remind you of the disastrous role that spontaneity played in your first marriage, but I shall not.”
“Quite right,” Quin said, his arms tightening around Olivia.
“I have no need to do so,” his mother continued, “because this young woman is promised elsewhere, and kisses, whether spontaneous, hilarious, or otherwise, will have no consequence, given that fact. Miss Lytton, before you indulged in this fit of unwonted enjoyment, did you remind my son that you are soon to be a duchess?”
Olivia had the sudden feeling that the dowager was a vulture, circling far above. Which probably made her a wounded lion. Or something even more vulnerable: a rabbit thrown aside by the wheels of a carriage.
“Yes,” she said. Then she looked at Quin. “As I informed you, Your Grace, I am indeed promised elsewhere.”
“To the Marquess of Montsurrey,” Quin said. “Once Montsurrey returns to England, you will be promised, and speedily married, to me.” He turned to his mother. “Olivia shall be Duchess of Sconce.”
“I do not agree.”
There was a long moment of charged silence. “Perhaps I should leave you to discuss this by yourselves,” Olivia said, gently freeing herself from Quin’s embrace.
The dowager ignored her entirely, keeping her eyes fixed on her son. “Miss Lytton is more than suitable for a dim-witted simpleton like Montsurrey. Moreover, she has shown a laudable loyalty toward the poor fellow, and I wrote his father myself to say so. However, she is not suitable for you.”
“I think she is,” Quin stated.
Olivia slid to the side.
The duchess turned to her. “I trust you are not going to sidle from the room, like a guilty housemaid with a broken saucer?”
Olivia’s back snapped straight. “I thought it would be more polite to allow you to continue this conversation with your son in private.”
“I would agree, except that what I have to say pertains to you—and to your sister. She is suitable to become Duchess of Sconce, which is, by the way, a far older and more august title than that of Canterwick. You are not suitable for the position.” Faced with the duchess’s direct gaze, Olivia realized that she could either drop her eyes—and never regain a position of strength again—or fight back.
“My sister would indeed be a remarkable Duchess of Sconce,” she said, hoping to avoid open warfare.
“That fact is irrelevant,” Quin said. Olivia didn’t have to turn to see that he was smiling; she could hear it in his voice. “I intend to marry Olivia, not Georgiana.”
“For love, no doubt!” The duchess said it in a burst of fury. “And what has love gotten you, Tarquin, but a reputation for horns that hasn’t left you even these many years later?” She turned to Olivia. “Do you know that he didn’t speak for an entire year after his feckless wife drowned? Didn’t speak?”
“I spoke,” Quin protested.
“Oh, you may have asked for a slice of roast beef, but you didn’t say anything worth hearing. Not for an entire year did you show interest in living.”
“It was rather like sleepwalking,” he agreed. Somewhat to Olivia’s astonishment, he didn’t sound in the least bit angry.
“Montsurrey is a noodle,” the dowager stated.
Olivia stiffened.
“That is a fact,” the dowager snapped before Olivia could say anything. “He is a fine match for you, but the same is not true for my son. You are, Miss Lytton—if you’ll excuse my bluntness—overly fleshly, coarse, and rather ill-bred. The last is particularly surprising given that your twin sister has achieved the utmost level of refinement. More to the point, you are uninteresting. You demonstrate no ability to concern yourself in matters important to my son.”
Olivia pulled her dumpy self very straight, and as tall as possible, and said with icy precision, “I will respond only to the claim that reflects on my parents, although I will note that your incivility warrants no response at all. My parents may not be members of the aristocracy themselves, Your Grace, but they are related to peers on both sides. In fact, my father’s claim to the title esquire has been held for one generation longer than the Sconces can claim. And may I add that when it comes to matters of breeding, no one in my family has married into the Bumtrinkets?”
The dowager’s bosom rose slightly into the air, resembling a balloon ascension Olivia had once seen in Hyde Park. “I was referring not to your birth,” she said, biting the words with frigid disdain, “but to your manners.”
“I like the way Olivia looks,” Quin said, intervening. For the first time, his voice had a distinct warning in it. “In fact, I adore the way she looks. And I think her manner is perfect for a duchess.”
“I’m sure you do!” the dowager snapped. There were red flags high in her cheeks and her black eyes glinted with anger.
“What do you mean by that?” Olivia demanded.
“I mean that you are made of the same stuff as his first duchess, Evangeline. He adored her appearance as well, and found out too late that all that wanton sensuality tends to mask a woman who should be flattered to be called a trollop.”
“Mother.” Quin’s voice was now as icy as his mother’s. “You go too far. I beg you, for the sake of all of us, to modify your voice and behavior.”
“I will not.” The duchess was clearly beside herself. “The Duke of Canterwick wrote me before you arrived,” she said, turning on Olivia with the look of a mother tiger facing a threat to her cub.
Olivia waited, head high.
“Have you informed my son that you may well be carrying the heir to the Canterwick title? You will note that I say nothing here about the fact that you are unmarried; that the duke is reportedly such an innocent that you almost certainly molested the poor man; nor that he is barely eighteen. Those are such deeply unpleasant facts that one can only hope that no one outside your immediate family ever learns them, Miss Lytton, because they do not speak highly of you.”
“Are you threatening me?” Olivia gasped.
The dowager actually backed up a step, but then linked her hands at her waist and stood her ground. “Certainly not. Those of us in the peerage have no need to resort to methods such as you clearly envision.”
Quin met Olivia’s eyes with a silent question.
“No heir,” she managed.
“Mother!” Quin’s voice was lethal, and cold as ice. “You will show me the courtesy to instruct your servants that you will be leaving for the dower house on the morning. I refer not to the dower house on these grounds, but that attached to Kilmarkie, our Scottish estate.”
To Olivia’s surprise, it was she—and not the dowager—who blurted out “No!” in response to this command.
The dowager was utterly silent for a heartbeat. Then she bowed her head and descended into a curtsy.
Olivia grabbed Quin’s arm and shook it. “You will not do this!” she said to him, not gently.
He frowned at her. “I don’t—”
“Your mother and I have the perfect right to disagree about what is best for you without your interfering!”
“I wasn’t interfering. I was responding to what my mother said about you. That, I cannot, and will not, tolerate from anyone.” He looked at his mother and said it again, through clenched teeth. “Anyone. You should know that any man, whether in my family or not, who implies that Olivia and Evangeline have anything in common will give me satisfaction at the end of a sword.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Olivia said, grabbing hold of his cravat, since shaking his arm had had no effect. “Could you descend the ducal mountain for one moment and pay attention? Your mother is worried sick about you, and you’re threatening to send her off to Scotland? You weren’t joking when you said that you don’t always understand emotions, were you?”
The dowager made a small noise, but Olivia didn’t look at her. She kept her eyes fastened on Quin.
He frowned at her.
“Of course your mother thinks that I resemble Evangeline—well, in everything except our figures. I came here betrothed to one duke, and when everyone expected that you would betroth yourself to my own sister, I stole you for myself. Your mother walked into a room and found the two of us unchaperoned, and lucky not to be sprawled together on the floor. I do look like the worst sort of hussy. If you are planning to duel every man who points that out, we shall have a very short marriage.”
Quin’s frown deepened.
“No time for all those children you envision,” she continued, remorselessly. “No time to do anything but run around the country attacking people who are saying the obvious. Make no mistake, they won’t just be saying it. Ten to one, they’ll be making horns behind your back as well, at least for a few years.”
Some sort of rationality was stealing into his eyes.
“Don’t you see?” she said, letting go of his cravat. “None of that matters. Your mother loves you. She wants to spare you the horns, and the whispers, and the fat wife too—” She looked at the dowager. “That’s the only part that I’m having trouble forgiving you for.”
Quin reached out, spun her back to him, and pulled her into his arms, held her tight, so tight that she could hardly breathe. “I need you,” he said, low and fierce, into her hair. “Oh, God, Olivia, how did I ever live without you?”
She reached up, pulled his face down to hers. “I’m yours, for good or ill.”
There was a little click as the door to the ballroom closed, but Olivia paid it no mind.
“You’re the missing piece of me,” Quin said. “You make me feel.”
“You have always felt. You’re one of the most sensitive, loving men I know. Anyone can tell that.”
He shook his head, so she just pulled his face to hers and gave him a kiss so searing that it said what neither of them were able to put in words . . . yet.
Without a word, Quin dropped into an armchair, taking Olivia with him. This time there was no stopping, and she knew it; he knew it. They kissed until little moans were coming again and again from her throat and she was trembling, touching him everywhere she could reach, fingers shaking.
Quin pulled gently on her bodice . . . and her breast tumbled into his hand. For a moment he froze. Then: “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever imagined, Olivia. May I?”
She wasn’t entirely sure what he meant to do, but she nodded. She would always say yes to him, though it wouldn’t be wise to let him know.
His mouth was hot and wet on the curve of her breast. She arched her back, offered herself until those searching lips reached her nipple.
Olivia wasn’t quite sure what happened next. She would have thought the most she would do was gasp at the surprise, perhaps utter a ladylike squeak, even a tiny shriek . . . no. With an entire ballroom full of aristocrats on the other side of the door, she let out a full-throated cry, an expression of need and burning want.
Without pausing, Quin clamped a hand over her mouth and then suckled harder.
Olivia bit his finger, felt giddy spirals building in her body, sending her heartbeat into her throat.
He raised his head, dropped his hand from her mouth and rubbed a rough thumb across her nipple. Olivia arched back on his arm, mad with the need of it, dazed by the wild sensations coursing through her.
“We can’t do this here,” Quin said, his voice a growl against her throat.
“No?” She jolted, shocked by her own voice, by the pleading hunger. “Of course we can’t.” She sat up, preparing to stand.
Quin looked at her, a wicked invitation in his eyes, and rubbed a thumb over her nipple again. Her spine crumpled against him again, her legs falling open in an invitation he didn’t take.
His hand stilled, finally. Olivia swallowed hard, fighting the impulse to beg for more.
“Are you quite certain that you are not carrying Montsurrey’s child?” His voice held no condemnation, merely a request for information.
She turned her head against his chest. “Yes.”
“But you and he . . .”
Olivia tried to think how to explain, while honoring her promise to Rupert. Georgiana was her twin, her other self; Rupert would understand that she had told Georgie the truth.
But Quin . . . Quin was the man who was going to take her away from Rupert. And even if Rupert didn’t actually want her, he was nevertheless accustomed to her. For a man who loved familiarity, it would be a wrench to lose her. There was no question but that Rupert wouldn’t want Quin to know about the limp celery.
“His father was concerned, because Rupert was going off to war,” she said, choosing her words carefully.
Silence.
Then: “Canterwick forced you to sleep with his simpleton of a son out of wedlock because he was worried that he would have no heir?”
It sounded terrible, put like that.
“I wasn’t forced.”
“Did you volunteer?”
“No.”
“That’s rape,” he said flatly.
“No! Rupert wasn’t . . . Rupert would never.”
“Then it was double rape of the both of you.”
Olivia let out a huff of air. “You make it sound despicable. I’m very fond of Rupert, as is he of me. We got through it as best we could. And he did tell me a poem he’d written. It was very good.”
“What was it?”
“It was about the death of a sparrow that had fallen from a tree. ‘Quick, bright, a bird falls down to us, darkness piles up in the trees.’ ”
Quin scowled. “I don’t understand that any better than the limerick Peregrine taught me. What does he mean by saying that darkness piles up in the trees? As someone who is studying light, I can tell you that rays don’t pile up anywhere.”
Olivia tugged her bodice into place, and then leaned back against his arm so she could see his face. “Rupert’s poem and the limerick aren’t supposed to be dissected. They just cause a little rush of feeling, that’s all.”
“ ‘Darkness piles up’ is a feeling?” Quin sounded adorably confused.
“He’s talking about grief: the grief he felt when the sparrow fell out of the tree. The bird was quick and bright, and then it was gone. Darkness piled up in the tree where the sparrow once sang.”
His eyes changed.
“Yes, like Alfie,” she said, and put her cheek against his chest. The emotion on his face was so raw that it was painful to witness.
They sat there for a while, Quin’s arms tight around her. Strains of a contra dance crept into the silence, drifting from the ballroom under the door. The music was joyous and sweet, as if it came from miles away, from a world in which no little boys—or sparrows—fell from trees.
Finally Quin cleared his throat. “You do realize that Montsurrey—”
“Rupert,” she corrected him. “Rupert hates to be called by his ti
tle. Were he able, he would be on intimate terms with the world.”
“You realize that Rupert is more and more dislikable? He wrote the only piece of poetry I’ve ever understood, he’s defending our country while I sleep comfortably at home, and I’m stealing his fiancée.”
“Rupert would adore the idea that you were in the least bit jealous,” Olivia said. “He may not think clearly, but he understands feelings, and it hurts him when people are dismissive.”
“He certainly understands feelings.”
“I think the damage in his brain freed him. He cries whenever he is moved, whenever he hears or sees something grievous.”
Quin digested this in silence. At last he rose, setting her on her feet. “Are you certain that you wish to marry me? I didn’t have a rush of feeling in response to that poem until you explained it. Why couldn’t it be in full sentences?”
“Rupert very rarely speaks in full sentences.”
“But he could have been more clear. Why didn’t he say: When the swift-flying sparrow died—likely of old age—and fell from the tree, I felt as if my heart grew very dark.”
Olivia wrapped her arms around him. “You forgot bright, but I think you did well with dark.”
“Bright doesn’t make sense. Birds from the Passeridae family tend to be gray or brown. I realize that my version is much longer, but it’s more precise. And grammatical.”
“But your version talks about Rupert’s feelings, whereas Rupert’s spoke to you about your feelings for Alfie.”
“Ah.” He considered, and then: “I still find the conjoining of the specific words he chose to be quite illogical.”
“Consider it the poetic equivalent of a mathematical function,” Olivia suggested. “So, do you suppose we should walk into the ballroom and pretend nothing has happened? You’ll need to tie your hair back.”
“No.”
“No to going into the ballroom, or no to pretending that nothing happened?”
“I have no objection to going into the ballroom, because that’s the only way to reach the stairs to the bedchambers. I have changed my mind.”
Olivia gave a little gasp. “Are you saying . . . ? No! That would create a terrible scandal. Absolutely not.”