My Last Duchess, стр. 19

“Here? Why would you stay here?”

“To get to know you better,” he said promptly. His smile had a fiendish kind of pleasure to it, a ridiculously boyish stubbornnessfor a grown man.

“You’re a duke,” she said. “You have better things to do.”

He paused just long enough to give a semblance of having thought it over. “Can’t think of anything.”

“What do you mean by ‘getting to know you’?” she asked. Suspicions crowded into her head. After all, she was sitting in bedwith him.

“Go riding together?”

“In the snow?”

“I’m trying to remember how people become friends,” he said. “It’s been years since I’ve had much to do with society, andall I remember of Marie, my first wife, was dancing, flirting, and kissing her in dark corridors.”

She elbowed him. “Remember the rule?”

“No spouses in bed,” he said obediently. “I won’t tell you how Yvette and I got to know each other.”

His voice cooled, just enough so that she noticed. She hadn’t known his second duchess, but she had heard gossip, after Yvettehad fled England. The interesting thing was that Hugo had apparently thought his wife had been a virgin when they married.

Fairness intervened. Rumors were no more than rumors.

“We often read aloud to each other,” she said, avoiding Peter’s name.

“Ah.”

“Are you a reader?”

“I am reading a book of reflections,” he said. “Translated from the French.”

“Reflections on what?”

“Ridicule.”

She glanced at him and miraculously managed not to roll her eyes. “You’re jesting.”

“Unfortunately not,” Hugo said amiably. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested.”

A flare of temper went up Ophelia’s spine. She hated that men made assumptions about what would and wouldn’t interest a woman.

She glanced at him; he had picked up her left hand and appeared to be examining her fingers. She drew her hand away. “Whywouldn’t I be interested?”

She kept her tone sweet, but Hugo’s eyes shot to hers. Perhaps being married twice had taught him something about women.

“The full title is something like this: Reflections upon Ridicule, or What It Is That Makes a Man Ridiculous, and the Means to Avoid It.”

“Are you learning from the author’s reflections?” She studiously kept her tone from implying that it was too late for whateverlessons he garnered.

Hugo sighed. “No, it’s hopelessly foolish. I lost a bet and my twin sister demanded I read it, by way of punishment.”

“You’re so lucky to have a sister.” Ophelia was aware there was a thread of wistfulness in her voice.

“Are you an only child?”

She nodded. “Much beloved and cosseted, but the only one.”

“My twin sister, Louisa, Lady Knowe, does not care for cities, so she resides in the country.” He paused. “Are you greatlyenamored of London?”

“I am not,” Ophelia replied. “Peter loved the Season, though. In particular, he loved to dance.”

Hugo winced. “I’m not a very good dancer. My sister says that I resemble a tree forced to bend in a high wind.”

“Do you creak?” Ophelia asked, laughing.

“I clomp around the ballroom, looking faintly horrified.” Hugo propped himself up on his elbow. “Do you float about like thistledown?”

Ophelia moved her shoulders uncomfortably. “I’m a good dancer.” Then she added, in a rush, “I think that’s why Peter askedfor my hand in marriage. Besides the fact that our parents approved, I mean.”

Hugo raised an eyebrow. “An odd qualifier.” His eyes drifted down her body. “There are so many reasons that a man would wantto marry you, Phee. Do you mind if I call you that?”

“I suppose not. How did you learn it?”

“Your cousin.”

“Maddie? Oh, is that how you knew to climb into my carriage?” Ophelia would have frowned at the idea her cousin shared hername and sent the duke out of the ballroom to find her . . . except a small clear voice in the back of her head informed herthat Maddie had done her a great favor.

“No,” Hugo said. “Maddie refused to tell me your last name; she merely referred to you as Phee and informed me that you werenot a governess, and I should not pursue you. I deduced that the beautiful, mysterious lady I was determined to meet was calledPhoebe.”

“Ophelia didn’t occur to you?”

“A somewhat lachrymose name,” Hugo pointed out. “Perhaps I shall call you Phoebe . . . such a cheerful name.”

“I like Ophelia,” she said.

She felt a flood of relief that she had been right to turn down the duke’s offer of marriage. He was such a dukelike man, renaming her because he didn’t like the literary connotations of her name. “I think it’s unlikely that I would takemy own life, the way Shakespeare’s Ophelia did, based on my name. If my parents had named me after Lady Macbeth, would youexpect me to turn to murder?”

“What was Lady Macbeth’s name?”

She frowned. “I don’t think anyone knows.”

“Names are important,” Hugo said, toying with a lock of her hair. “I’d bet you anything that her name wasn’t Beth.”

“Beth? Why not Beth?”

“Because Beth is a timid name.”

Ophelia shook her head. “That’s cracked.”

“Names are important,” Hugo insisted again. “I named all my children after warriors.”

“Warriors? All eight of them?”

Hugo’s mouth twisted. “Yes, in fact. My first three are Horatius, Roland—whom we call North—and Alaric, now at school, alongwith Parth, who was first my ward and became my son when his parents died. He too is named after a warrior, though I had nothingto do with that.”

“Did the naming work?”

“In a manner of speaking. They’re ungodly naughty. Satanic imps. Especially, I have to say, Parth. He eggs on the others toworse misdeeds. Besides the older boys, Yvette and I had Leonidas, Boadicea, Alexander, and Joan.”

“You named your daughter Boadicea?” Ophelia shook her head. “Why did your wife allow it? Do you know how often people have commented on my unfortunate name?”

“Boadicea was a great warrior,” Hugo protested.

“Insanity,” Ophelia muttered. Definitely she was right not to marry him, if only on the basis of crimes of nomenclature.

“I have to admit that Boadicea has threatened to eviscerate anyone who calls her by her given name, so we call her Betsy.”

“Are your second four as naughty as the first round?” Ophelia asked.

“Very