“Well, if I must spend most of my time in bed—”
“A bed is not strictly required,” he said.
“If I am to spend most of my time engaging in conjugal relations, it’s good to know you have a lively imagination. Fantasies.”
He grinned. “I do, my dear. Shocking ones. I imagine you as my hostess—”
“Your hostess?”
“I see you giving London’s grandest balls and its most tantalizing dinner parties,” he said. “I imagine driving you through the park and riding with you. I can picture the dashing ensembles you’ll wear as a leader of fashion.”
“I’m shocked, indeed.”
“A bachelor duke is one thing,” he said. “A married duke, however, has social obligations. And I do like to entertain, as you’re well aware. But henceforth, my soirees will be the talk of the town for entirely different reasons. Imagine the jaws dropping when the beau monde reads in Foxe’s Morning Spectacle of our entertaining the King and Queen.”
“I can see the gentlemen in the clubs, falling out of their chairs in shock,” she said. “Frankly, I should have fallen out of bed if you weren’t in the way.”
She leaned over and drew her fingers through his hair.
Her touch, her touch.
Her voice.
The feel of her skin and the warm curves of her body and the way she smiled and frowned and laughed. The way she looked at him, as though he were the whole world. Why had he waited for so long? Why had he been so stupid and blind?
“And shall we dance together, at last?” she said softly.
“We shall dance,” he said.
He thought of all the promises he might break, so unwillingly, depending on what tomorrow brought. He added, “In fact, let’s start now.”
“We’ll pretend to dance, you mean,” she said.
“No.” He sat up and kissed the top of her head. And her nose.
Then he climbed down from the bed. He found her nightdress and crooked his finger at her.
“It would be naughtier to dance au naturel,” he said. “But that would be asking too much of my paltry self-denial skills.”
She slid down from the bed and he tossed the nightgown over her head. Laughing, she pushed her arms through the sleeves and tied the ribbon.
He pulled on his dressing gown and tied the sash.
“You stand by the fireplace,” he said. “Pretend to be talking to your precious Mends, and be as pedantic as you can.”
“I need my spectacles,” she said. She snatched them up from the bedside table, put them on, and walked to the fireplace in the same way she might walk across a room at a ball. That beckoning hint of impatience. The Queen of Sheba must have walked like that. And Cleopatra.
She made her face very grave and began talking to one of the mantel ornaments. It was a porcelain gentleman wearing the dress of Ripley’s grandfather’s time, who sat at a desk, writing a letter. “I believe you are mistaken, Lord Mends. It’s my understanding that the Antonio di Siena Monte Santo di Dio, with the three rare engravings by Baldini, from designs by Sandro Botticelli, is judged the earliest Book with Copperplates.”
Ripley strode across the room to her. His right ankle gave a twinge, but he refused to let himself limp.
“Lady Olympia,” he said, “I’ve come to claim my dance.”
She looked up at him with a little frown of annoyance. “I don’t recollect your asking, duke, nor my consenting.”
“I didn’t ask. This is the dance I want. And I am a duke, recollect.”
From under lowered eyelids she regarded him up and down and up again, and he was aware of his temperature climbing. That look. Those eyes.
“So you are,” she said. She sighed and turned to the porcelain gentleman. “I beg your pardon, Lord Mends, but as you see, he’s a duke, and you know how they are.”
Ripley took her hand and led her out to the center of the room. He bowed. She curtsied. He began to hum a waltz from Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra, and swept her into his arms, and they danced.
His bad ankle protested from time to time, but half-heartedly. Nothing more than a small ache.
He ignored it, and they danced as easily and naturally together as they’d made love. As easily as they’d run away together.
He wished he’d danced with her before.
So many lost opportunities.
But they danced now, barefoot, whirling round her bedchamber while he hummed the music, and now and again sang a remembered Italian phrase here and there—probably the wrong phrase in the wrong place, but no matter. They danced from one end of the large room to the other. They danced into the dressing room and out again, Olympia giggling. They danced into the boudoir and round it, and out again into the bedroom. He didn’t want it to end, but the night was short, too short, in summer, and he hadn’t much time left.
At last he brought it to an end. He promenaded with her round the room, as though it were a ballroom, but instead of bringing her back to the gentleman on the mantelpiece, Ripley led her to the bed.
He bowed.
She curtsied.
They laughed, rather breathlessly.
He cupped her face. “I love you madly,” he said.
“I love you madly,” she said.
His heart beat hard again, and not from the waltzing. He thought it would burst from his chest. He thought he might weep. But he couldn’t indulge. She wasn’t to suspect and he wouldn’t be maudlin. He had a dragon to slay, that was all. It was no reason to spoil this night for her, their first night as a married couple.
He said, “Good. Now that’s settled . . .”
He quickly untied the sash of his dressing gown, shrugged it off, and threw it aside. She untied the ribbon of her nightdress and pulled it over her head.
He picked her up and lifted her onto the bed.
He made love to her again, as sweetly and tenderly as he knew how.
This time they slept afterward.
But the knowledge of what the coming day held never left him. It ticked steadily inside, like a clock, and he was awake when the sky began to lighten. She was still sound asleep, and scarcely stirred when he gently drew away from her.
Her breathing continued steady as he slipped out of the bed and found his dressing gown. He took out from a pocket the note he’d written and left it on the bedside table. Noiselessly he made his way through the passage joining their apartments and into his own rooms.
His valet, Snow, one of the handful of people aware of the morning’s appointment, brought him coffee and a biscuit.
Ripley drank the coffee and ate the biscuit. He wanted neither. But he’d done this before. One needed coffee and something light to eat. One had to be awake, alert, and above all, not shaky with hunger or fatigue.
He dressed in black. The wise duelist always wore dark colors, to make himself a more difficult target, especially on a typically overcast London morning.
At the appointed time, he went out of the house with Snow. They walked out into South Audley Street and on into Stanhope Street, thence into Park Lane where a post chaise waited. Pershore was inside. Leaving Snow to follow in another vehicle, Ripley climbed in.
The post chaise set out for Putney Heath.
Olympia was dancing at Almack’s.
In the gallery, Weippert’s band played a waltz from Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra. She danced, in her nightdress, with Ripley. He was dressed like a Turkish pasha, mustachioed and wearing a jeweled and plumed turban, puffy trousers, and slippers that curled at the toes. They were the only ones dancing. Everybody else watched and pointed, laughing. Then somebody shouted, “Stop them! Stop them! They’re getting away!”
The scene changed, and she and Ripley were running across Battersea Bridge, chased by an immense dog whose long fangs dripped foam. They vaulted into a hackney coach, slamming the door. The dog flung himself against it, barking furiously. Inside they found Ashmont, who held a pistol. While Olympia watched, unable to speak or move, he raised the weapon and
aimed it at Ripley’s heart. Outside the coach, the dog clawed at the door, howling like a demon. Ashmont pulled the trigger.
Olympia awoke, her heart pounding as though she truly had been running from demons and found herself trapped with a murderous former fiancé.