Who Wants to Marry a Duke - Sabrina Jeffries Page 0,88
as a friend long before you were on play number six in the series. I know you—you’re very private. You don’t mind including such details in your plays yourself because everyone thinks those things happened to Juncker. Or were well-researched. It doesn’t affect you or how people look at you. But you’d be terribly unhappy if he appropriated them.”
God, sometimes his twin was too clever for her own good. “Fine. I’ll concede the point.”
“Could we sit down for the rest of this? I’m carrying far more weight on my hips than you are. No one tells a woman about that when they encourage her to have babies.”
“Of course,” he said hastily, and led her back to her sitting room.
Once he had them both comfortably situated on her sofa, she got right to it. “Second, after I saw one of your plays, I read them all to confirm my opinion. It was easy. You have copies of them in the lower right drawer of your desk.”
“The locked drawer!”
“The key to which is in the upper drawer.” Gwyn shrugged. “It’s like you were begging to be caught.”
He scowled. “I wasn’t expecting to have my drawers rifled by my sister.”
She clasped her hand to her heart in mock horror. “Never say that sentence again, if you please. I shudder to even think about rifling your drawers.”
Belatedly, he heard what he’d just said. “So do I! And you know I meant desk drawers.”
She grinned. “I rifled your desk drawers because, having seen the one play, I wanted to determine if you owned the others. It’s really a compliment to your skill and talent as a playwright that I would be so enamored of the plays that I’d look for other copies.”
“It’s a compliment to your nosiness, you unrepentant hoyden,” he said sullenly. “That’s all it is.”
“Third,” she went on, “there’s the way you behaved around Juncker. Fourth, there’s your past with Olivia—”
“What do you know about my past with Olivia?” he asked as bile rose in his throat. It was one thing to have Olivia know the truth, but to learn that others had detected it, too . . .
“Everything, I think. I got it out of Grey when I noticed that you and she were behaving oddly around each other at my ball.”
Damn Grey. “Our half brother is becoming as much of a gossip as a woman.”
Gwyn lifted an eyebrow at him. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
“Good idea,” he said hastily. “I’m doing my best tonight to anger all the females in my life.” He sighed. “Please tell me Grey hadn’t also deduced that . . . that . . .”
“Miss Norley and her mother are Slyboots and Grasping? I daresay no one has deduced that.”
“Except you.”
She smiled crookedly. “I have the honor—and the curse—of being your twin. After I knew the history of your relationship with her, it wasn’t hard to figure out how you would have taken what happened. Why she never deduced it is anyone’s guess.”
“For one thing, she doesn’t see herself as Slyboots because she’s never been Slyboots in reality. And . . . well . . .”
“She only found out tonight that you wrote the plays.”
He shook his head. “This is becoming a bit spooky. How on earth—”
“Not that spooky. A simple deduction. She obviously didn’t know the truth the night we dined with Juncker. I would have behaved the way she did just to torment you a bit for not revealing the truth, but she isn’t me. She isn’t good at pretending or lying, a fact which I think you discovered once you went to Grey’s and spent time with her.”
He nodded. “I could never have offered for her if I hadn’t seen that. But once I did, I liked her at once. I felt a kinship with her. She and I both had trouble fitting in.” He’d dealt with it by taking up his role as rakehell, and she’d dealt with it by hiding in her laboratory. “Neither of us was ever comfortable in polite society, she even less than I.” It hit him how much he’d lost, and he buried his face in his hands. “Oh, God, Gwyn, how do I fix this?”
His sister reached over to rub his back. “Tell her the truth.”
“She knows the truth. That’s why she’s angry. And I’ve already said I’m sorry.”
“I don’t mean that truth. And a hastily spoken ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t going to wash away the enormity of what you’ve done to her. Because that’s