My Last Duchess, стр. 8
Broad shoulders blocked the doorway as a man climbed into her carriage.
Ophelia shrank back, suddenly aware of how alone she was. Her heart stuttered, and a scream caught in her throat as she flungher hand to the roof, intending to yank open the trapdoor between herself and her coachman.
“I apologize.” His voice filled the small space like one deep note from a cello: calm, resonant, safe.
Air slipped out of Ophelia’s lungs. Her hand fell back and she leaned, boneless, against the back of her carriage seat.
The Duke of Lindow closed the door behind himself and sat down opposite her, his intense green eyes fastened on her face.There wasn’t a shred of shame in his expression. There was regret for having frightened her, but the fact he’d invaded hercarriage without an invitation?
No, he had all the bravado of a pirate boarding a ship and informing the captain that he had every right to be there.
She felt a welcome spark of anger at the base of her spine and sat up straight again. She was a dowager baroness. He mightbe far above her in England’s hierarchy, but that didn’t give him the right to frighten her.
To invade her carriage.
“I did not invite you to join me,” she stated, adding, after a pointed pause, “Your Grace.”
The duke had stuffed his gloves into his pockets, and now he shrugged out of his damp greatcoat without answering. The beautifulwool was speckled with dark spots where snowflakes had melted.
Ophelia was well aware that the person who talks most in any confrontation loses power, so she held her tongue.
He had remarkably broad shoulders. Even his neck looked powerful. He was a male animal, lithe and powerful—but one who meanther no harm. She knew that instinctively, in her bones.
His Grace was no Francis Clive, running around looking for adventures and woe betide any young woman who got in his way.
Once out of his heavy outerwear, he shrugged, apparently uncomfortable in his closely tailored, extravagant coat. But then,in one swift movement, he crouched in front of her.
Ophelia could feel her eyes rounding as she looked down. He didn’t touch her, but she felt as if his gaze settled around herlike a warm blanket. A sharp sense of vertigo gripped her.
Men like this, dukes, had nothing to do with women like her. She had been considered tremendously lucky that Peter chose her. She was rounded,short, and not particularly beautiful. That wasn’t even taking account of the pointed chin Maddie had mentioned.
What’s more, she wasn’t seductive or flirtatious. Not that she had ever flirted with this man before.
“Your Grace,” she said. “I gather that you have formed some sort of interest in me that is groundless and unrequited. I mustask you to behave like a gentleman and return from whence you came.”
A smile tugged at his mouth. “From whence I came?”
“My meaning is clear,” Ophelia said, scowling at him. “Go. Back to the street, if you prefer plain speaking. You are not welcomein my carriage.”
She had the absurd idea that she’d hurt his feelings, but the emotion flashed by so quickly that she wasn’t sure.
“I apologize,” he said again. “I just saw you for the first time.”
Ophelia waited, but he didn’t continue, so she said, “The fact that we are unacquainted is scarcely reason for this intrusion.”
“How long were you married to Sir Peter?” he asked.
This was such an odd conversation. He hadn’t touched her, and she didn’t know him, and yet they were looking at each otherwith an intimacy that—
She pushed the thought away. She probably shouldn’t answer him, but she did, because what was the harm of it?
“I married in July of 1759,” she replied.
“I married Yvette in May of the same year.”
Clearly, that meant something to him, but nothing to her. “Is that why you’re following me?” she asked, a dash of humiliationsuddenly turning scalding.
She’d got it wrong; he didn’t desire her. He wanted something from her. Or had she known his previous duchess? She couldn’t recall anyone by that name.
His lopsided smile appeared again. “If I hadn’t decided that Yvette looked like a good mother—a decision so misguided as tobe comical—I would have gone to a few more balls, and I might have met you before you were betrothed to Sir Peter.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps you think that your presence would have affected my feelings for my late husband, whom I loveddearly? You do yourself too much honor, Your Grace.”
His smile broadened. “I deserved that.”
“Yes, you did,” she said tartly. “Now, please stop hovering at my knee or whatever it is you are doing and take your leavebefore I shout at my coachman and ask him to remove you, pistol in hand.”
“Bisquet confiscated my sword,” the duke said with a grin.
With a start, Ophelia realized that the silver hilt that had sat so easily at his hip was no longer there. “He did?”
“You have an excellent coachman. It took me the better part of ten minutes to persuade him to allow me to speak to you.”
Ophelia instantly made up her mind to speak to Bisquet herself and quite sharply too.
“I didn’t offer a bribe, and he wouldn’t have taken one,” the duke said. “May I call on you in the morning?”
“I see no reason for that,” she replied.
He was too handsome, too witty, too everything. There was a hint of sadness at the backs of his eyes, and a ruefulness inhis tone when he mentioned his wife Yvette. He was nuanced.
Men were so rarely nuanced.
The word reminded her that he was something else as well: divorced. Any woman associated with him would become notorious,and not merely if Ophelia became his third duchess. Everyone would watch to see if she too would find him insufficient, runaway, or carry on a flagrant affaire.
Yvette had been, presumably, as passionate in her