A Duke in Shining Armor

“All the others as well as the great-aunts and so forth, came to the wedding,” she said. “Everybody came. Except Aunt Delia.”

“And Alice,” he said.

She turned away from the window to look at him.

“According to Blackwood, my sister felt obliged to go to our place near Guildford,” he said. “Something about Aunt Julia having one of her spells—though I’m not sure what that means, and Blackwood seemed to be equally in the dark. In any event, it’s something over twenty miles from here.”

“Twenty miles!”

“No great distance,” he said. “A few hours. If we keep to a brisk clip, we’ll arrive before nightfall. More important, Alice is there, and whatever one may say of her spouse, she’s a respectable matron. No impropriety—or our world’s fool notions of impropriety—in your staying with her.”

“Your sister,” she said. “I’m not at all sure that will do.”

“You know her.”

“Everybody knows her,” Lady Olympia said. “Whether she knows me is another matter.”

“Everybody knows you,” he said. He’d had no trouble putting face and body to the name of Ashmont’s betrothed. It dawned on him that he couldn’t say the same of most of the other young ladies, including Alice’s friends. But then, they weren’t at all intriguing. They didn’t secret themselves among the chaperons and elderly and bores of all ages. Also, none of them carried themselves in the way she did. The hint of impatience in her walk, that seemed like a dare.

“I’m famous for boring people to death, I know,” she said. “That is not quite the same thing as being properly acquainted with somebody upon whom you propose to foist me.”

“When Alice finds out you ran away from Ashmont, she’ll welcome you with open arms,” he said. “I hope she doesn’t injure any unborn offspring when she falls down laughing at the sight of your bridal corpse.”

He told Cato to lie down, and gave the postilion directions to Camberley Place.

There was no alternative.

Olympia needed a refuge of some kind, and the Duchess of Blackwood appeared to offer the only one within a reasonable distance.

Her Grace was not a complete stranger, though near enough.

They had not traveled in the same social circles. Among other things, the lady had lived abroad with her mother for several years. Then, too, though the beau monde was a small, incestuous world, there were groups within groups. The one to which Lady Alice Ancaster belonged comprised the most sought-after girls, and Olympia had, early on, found herself consigned to the opposite category.

There were pretty girls enough in Society, but not all pretty girls were popular. She still wasn’t sure what the qualifications were. In her experience, a great many sought-after girls were not interesting to talk to or even agreeable. Though she liked gossip as well as the next person, she liked other topics, as well. However, the fashionable girls seemed to have only two topics: gossip and themselves. And it was no use her trying to start another topic. None of the others was interested in anything she had to say.

Neither were the gentlemen.

After her first Season, she began drifting further and further away, to the groups of elderly, intellectual, and otherwise unfashionable people.

Not that Lady Alice had ever been rude to her, as some girls were. She hadn’t been part of Cousin Edwina’s group, the ones who’d voted Olympia Most Boring Girl of the Season. Ripley’s sister and Olympia had hardly exchanged more than a word or two. She knew a great deal less about the lady than about her disreputable brother.

All the same, Lady Alice had astonished even more au courant persons when she married the Duke of Blackwood.

“I didn’t realize you had a place near Guildford,” Olympia said.

“Belonged to my Uncle Charles,” he said. “Alice and I and our friends spent a great deal of time there in our childhood. He left it to me, but it’s Aunt Julia’s for her lifetime. A ramshackle old house, in desperate need of modernizing, but one treads carefully in that regard.”

She looked up at him. “I’m trying to picture you treading carefully. The image fails to come.”

He laughed. “I rather dote on my dotty aunt.”

“How dotty?” she said. “Does she set fire to the pillows at odd moments?”

He grinned at her.

She knew he was an easygoing man—easy morals, easily amused. All the same she reacted to that grin as though it were a gift. He made her feel as though she’d accomplished something, when all she’d done was repeat what he’d said a few hours ago. It was the sort of simple joke she might have shared with her brothers, but it wasn’t the same. This felt more intimate.

That was only charm, she told herself.

In spite of their titles and wealth, he and the other Dis-Graces would have been drummed out of the beau monde ages ago if they hadn’t charmed so many women and won over so many men. His Majesty, being a sailor with a sailor’s rough ways, had taken some time to reach the end of his tether. No doubt because they made him laugh.

“How dotty?” she repeated. “Does she keep monkeys? I draw the line at monkeys.”

“No monkeys,” he said. “No cats, because she’s a bird lover. And after the last dog died, she’s been reluctant to get another.”

“Oh, dear.” She looked out of the front window at Cato who sat, mouth open, tongue hanging out, taking in the passing scene and its scents.

“She likes dogs,” he said. “It’s only that she takes their demise hard. Don’t fret. She and my sister will welcome Cato with open arms.”

“If all is well,” she said. “If your sister didn’t come to the wedding because of your aunt, I deduce that all is not well.”

“That won’t stop anybody welcoming Cato,” he said. “A fine, well-behaved canine. Not the handsomest fellow, but good-looking enough and intelligent. If he had been one of those vile little yapping dogs, I should have dragged you away—by force, if necessary—and left him to his fate.”

“In my experience, they become vile little yapping dogs because their owners spoil them,” she said. “But nothing excuses beating an animal. You would have had an interesting time trying to drag me away, I promise you.”

“Oh, I know I would,” he said. “I get delicious chills, contemplating the prospect.”

No one got delicious chills on Olympia’s account, and she had no business having delicious chills at the thought of causing them in him.

She’d spent too much time with him, that was the trouble. More time than she’d ever spent in the company of any man not a relative. He was infecting her brain and turning it silly and hopeful and waking up old wishes and dreams.

Time to turn boring.

“Do you know what gives me delicious chills?” she said.

“Let me guess.” He closed his eyes.

“I strongly doubt—”

“The Æsopi Fabulae, from Maioli’s Library,” he said.

She became aware of her jaw dropping, but not soon enough, because he chuckled.

“Uncle Charles was a great collector of books,” he said. “I learned some things.”

“He owned the Æsopi Fabulae?”

“From Maioli’s Library. I paid attention to that one, you see, because it was Aesop’s Fables, which is more entrancing to a little boy, as you might imagine, than bibles and codices.”

“I should love to see it,” she said. “Papa sold ours—or at least I think it was that book. He did not keep proper records—or any records—and my grandfather’s papers are not quite in the order I should wish. I should have made much better progress in my cataloguing if we had not had to come to London every Season. Hope springs eternal in the parental heart, you see. And Papa is not skilled at calculating odds. If he had been, he wouldn’t have needed to sell the Aesop, or any other valuable book.”

“They don’t always fetch as much as one would think,” he said. “My uncle acquired some ancient works at little more than one pays for a half year of ‘The Library of Romance.’”

“This one you refer to,” she said. “You speak generally, not specifically. In other words, you don’t buy romances.”

“But I do,” he said. “Every month.”

“For your sister.”

“Why would I do that? She can buy her own. And now she can make Blackwood buy them. Besides, we don’t like the same books. She prefers essays and other brain-taxing works. Her last letter mentioned Bulwer’s England and the English. I grew sleepy merely reading the title and the author’s name.”

“And what doesn’t make you sleepy is . . . ?”

“Schinderhannes, the Robber of the Rhine. Second volume coming August first. Victor Hugo’s The Slave-king. Sixth volume, also on August first. Ripping good stories. I can hardly wait. The booksellers sent them to me while I was abroad, along with lists of coming publications. Smith, Elder, and Co., Cornhill, if you can ever tear yourself away from the Gutenbergs and such.”

“I quite understand the sensational appeal of some of those books,” she said.

“Do you?”

“Of course. It’s a great thing to be swept away by a story.”

“It is,” he said.

“But do you not find some of them excessively sentimental or maudlin?”

“Yes, but I vastly admire the writer with the skill to bring tears to these jaded eyes, even when I know I ought to be laughing.”

Her mind wrestled with the Duke of Ripley as a romance aficionado. “Well,” she said, “this is an interesting side of you.”