A Duke in Shining Armor

“It isn’t a prank,” he said. “It’s a scene. A sort of dumb show-what-you-call-it.”

“I have no idea what you call it.”

“Like charades,” he said. “But the other thing.”

“A tableau?”

“That one. Wait.”

She watched him undo the parcel, his long fingers so adept and graceful. She remembered those fingers in her hair.

She turned her gaze away, and her obnoxious mind promptly conjured a scene. More than a year ago it had happened. Maybe two years or more: Lady Nunsthorpe’s ball. Known ironically as the Nun, according to Stephen, her ladyship clearly liked to live dangerously, for she’d invited all three of Their Dis-Graces. During their dance, his hostess had been doing her best to seduce Ripley—not that Olympia supposed this demanded much effort. But she hadn’t been able to look away. He’d moved with the power and grace of a thoroughbred, and she’d wondered what it felt like to dance with him.

The man standing in the basin had looked like a thoroughbred—splendidly proportioned, powerfully built. They could also be temperamental and dangerous, as her father had discovered at great expense.

Not that Papa ever learned from experience. She hoped she didn’t take after him in that regard. But she’d never been tested before. Never been tempted . . .

Ripley’s voice called her mind back from the treacherous place it was heading for.

“As I said before, you’ll appear on your aunt’s doorstep with your entourage,” he said. “This will comprise one canine and one disreputable duke, who will be carrying the wedding dress and veil.”

“Like a dead body,” she said. The corpse of her family’s hopes and dreams. The corpse of her brothers’ futures. She was growing hysterical. Stop it, she told herself.

“Exactly. As soon as you see your aunt, you will fall into her arms, weeping.”

It was simpler and cleverer than she’d expected. She could picture it easily. Presented with such a tableau, Aunt Delia wouldn’t expect a coherent explanation. She’d see at once what a muddle Olympia had got herself into.

But.

“I can’t weep on command,” she said.

“Think of something heartbreaking, like saying goodbye to me forever.”

If she had a sane segment of brain remaining, she’d jump up and down with delight and relief. Instead, she felt unhappy and panicky.

She looked at him. “It doesn’t seem to be working,” she said.

His black brows met over his nose. “How curious. That usually produces buckets of tears—until I produce the rubies or diamonds or whatever.”

“I told you this dress was a problem,” she said. “Because of it, you’ve confused me with one of your paramours. Weeping for jewelry is not, to my knowledge, the procedural method of a librarian.”

“Well, then, imagine a library on fire. Imagine your favorite library in flames, books curling up into black ash. Imagine it’s the library at Alexandria. Or . . . I know, the one belonging to what’s-her-name Potters—”

“Diane de Poitiers.”

“And not in flames but sailing across the ocean to the American President Jefferson, who’s bought every single volume.”

“He’s dead,” she said.

“Doesn’t signify. Picture the ship caught in a storm, and all those volumes sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.”

“Now I understand where the pranks come from,” she said. “Yours is a lively imagination.”

“It must be all the Shakespeare plays,” he said. “Yet here I am, killing books by the thousands, and you remain strangely unmoved.”

“My mind is analytical,” she said. “To a fault.”

“And to a point,” he said. “Then something gives way and you run amok. Fascinating.”

Had something given way? She had run amok. That much was indisputable. As to the rest . . .

“No one has ever called me that before,” she said.

“Amok?”

“Fascinating. But you didn’t mean I was fascinating. It was my errant behavior. When I reverted to my usual boring self, talking of my System, you fell asleep.”

“I was not the only one, I noticed.”

“I was tired,” she said.

“As was I,” he said. “Ashmont kept me up well past my bedtime.”

“I don’t see why you can’t admit you were bored, as everybody always is.”

“On the contrary, I was so excited, your books haunted my dreams,” he said. “But we’re running out of time. We need to solve the main problem. You need to sob on your aunt’s bosom. How about this: Imagine every valuable library in England sold to pay debts, and they’re all bought by Americans.” He opened his green eyes wide and made the kind of facial contortion actors did when feigning the throes of horror.

She swallowed laughter. Laughing would only encourage him and he’d already made himself more likable than was good for her.

“As long as the Americans take care of them,” she said. “They might do better, actually.”

“You had better think of a tragic scene in a book, then,” he said. “You do actually read the things, yes? Not merely sort and catalog and put large books next to small ones in an unsightly manner? Or fondle them as precious objects?”

“I will admit to a degree of fondling. But mainly those printed before 1550. In general, I read.”

“Then think of a sad scene. If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to pin our hopes on your weeping with relief to be done with me when you throw yourself upon your aunt’s mercy.”

She suspected she wouldn’t feel relieved when he was gone. Two or three hours or however long she’d spent with him, in one vehicle or another, was the most time she’d ever spent in close proximity to any man who wasn’t a member of her immediate family. She was used to males, but not used to a Male, in the extreme sense he represented. He’d given her dangerous glimpses of a world forbidden to her.

There was no getting away from him and the atmosphere he created. He dominated the carriage’s interior. She was keenly aware of every place her body touched his. In a post chaise, not touching was impossible. But he touched her mind, as well, that private place, and threw everything in it out of the neat order she’d so painstakingly created.

The things she’d done this day, so not like her.

But then this whole day had not been like her.

He’d fought a man for insulting her. Which had never happened in all her life, be

cause men didn’t notice her enough to insult her. And she’d been so excited, so happy, she’d kissed him.

She hadn’t expected to get kissed back. She hadn’t expected anything. She hadn’t been thinking sensibly. Or at all.

But he’d kissed her back. Only more so, a great deal more so. On the mouth.

With only his lips he’d done things she didn’t know could be done, such as making her feel the kiss in twenty different parts of her body but most especially in the pit of her belly.

Ashmont had kissed her when she’d said yes, and she’d believed it quite a nice kiss. Now she realized it had been friendly. She wouldn’t have recognized this had she not experienced an alternative. What Ripley had done with his mouth wasn’t friendly. It was something altogether different and stronger. Much stronger and definitely indecent.

She wished it had never happened because now she knew something she hadn’t known before. And she wished it had gone on rather longer, because she’d hardly got a sense of what it was like and what she ought to do before it stopped.

Clearly, just being near him had corrupted her mind. Either that or prolonged spinsterhood had damaged it. Whatever the reason, the Olympia of recent hours was a person she hardly recognized.

She looked straight ahead. They were nearing the gatekeeper’s lodge.

The cowardly part of her wanted to leap from the carriage and run to the house. If she could get away from him and the heated atmosphere he created, she could clear her head.

But that was craven as well as silly. She couldn’t keep running away from difficulties.

Not to mention, she’d spoil the tableau.

His tableau. She, boring Lady Olympia Hightower was letting the Duke of Ripley fabricate one of his addlepated scenes, with her in the starring role.

But after all the time she’d had to prepare for meeting her aunt, after all her thinking about it, Olympia hadn’t produced a reasonable alternative or even an unreasonable one.

“Ah, here’s the gate,” Ripley said. “And here’s the gatekeeper, come to inspect us. I trust he knows you?”