Who Wants to Marry a Duke - Sabrina Jeffries Page 0,78
don’t recall.” She waved her hand. “An ague perhaps?”
“There was a lot of that going around, I take it,” Thorn said dryly.
“Honestly, I’m not sure,” Lady Norley said. “But he was quite old when he married Eliza. She was his second wife, you see. He was in his seventies, I believe.”
“And she was twenty-something,” Olivia pointed out. “Poor woman, to be married to a man fifty years her senior.”
Poor woman, indeed. Unless she made a habit of getting rid of husbands—sometimes not her own.
“In any case, Duke,” Lady Norley said, “I hope you realize what a good woman you’re gaining for a wife. Olivia may be an unusual young lady, but she will be loyal to you.”
“Rather like a basset hound,” Olivia said, the corners of her eyes crinkling with merriment.
Her stepmother snorted. “That wasn’t what I meant, dear, and you know it.”
“I’m just teasing you, Mama.”
She was teasing him. But he didn’t care. He’d gained her hand in marriage. And he found that more satisfying than he’d expected.
He was just basking in that knowledge when he heard a commotion in the hall.
“I won’t do it!” a young man shouted. “And you can’t make me!”
“I can bloody well make you do whatever I please if you want to escape the gallows.”
Thorn recognized the second voice as that of Gwyn’s husband. Before Thorn could do more than rise from the settee, Major Wolfe was entering the drawing room with a young man whose hands were tied together behind him.
“We found the villain you were looking for, Thorn.” Wolfe shoved the lad forward. “This is Elias. He’s the fellow who blew up Miss Norley’s laboratory.”
Chapter Fifteen
Olivia stared at the culprit in disbelief. The man had to be younger than she—a fellow barely the age to shave, much less blow up anything.
She rose from her seat. “Why would you do such a thing, sir? I’ve never even seen you before, and I certainly haven’t done anything to you. So why would you try to kill me?”
“This, Elias, is Miss Norley,” Major Wolfe said. “The woman whose laboratory you destroyed.”
Elias paled. “I swear I didn’t try to kill nobody.”
“But you do admit you were the one to decimate her laboratory,” Major Wolfe prodded.
“I don’t know about no decimating, whatever that is,” Elias said hastily. “I was only told to throw things about and make it hard for the lady to keep on with her experiments. Nobody warned me some of them things could catch fire all by themselves. I got out right quick when that happened. But I barely got shut of it before all hell broke loose. Then ’twas like Guy Fawkes Day behind me, with explosions and flames up to the sky.”
Mama jumped to her feet to wag her finger at Elias.
“You awful creature, you! That’s my daughter you nearly murdered!”
Olivia took her by the arm. “Perhaps, Mama, you should go upstairs and get some rest. You traveled far this morning, and I’m sure you could use a nap. I daresay His Grace has already ordered your room to be made ready, and his servants are in the process of bringing up your trunk.”
“Absolutely,” Thorn said. “It’s being handled as we speak. All you need do is walk in.” When her stepmother hesitated, Thorn added, “We promise we’ll tell you everything we learn. But I fear this scoundrel’s tale will only upset you.”
“To say the least.” She glanced from Olivia to Thorn, then muttered, “Although I am tired after all this excitement,” and allowed Thorn to call for a servant to take her to her room. But before she left, she fixed Thorn with a dark look. “You make sure that wicked chap gets what’s coming to him.”
“Don’t worry, I have every intention of doing so,” Thorn told her. “His deeds will not go unpunished.”
Apparently, Thorn had thought Olivia would go, too, because he looked surprised when she didn’t accompany her mother and the servant upstairs. When he made some token protest, Olivia said, “The lad destroyed my laboratory and could have killed me and Lord knows who else. I’m staying.”
Thorn acquiesced, but he looked none too happy about it. At the moment Olivia didn’t care. This was her life, and she had to make sure nothing like this ever happened again—to her or to anyone.
“Like I said,” Elias told Olivia, jutting out his chin, “I wasn’t looking to kill nobody. And I damned well know you weren’t in or about there, miss, when I first broke in, on account of I