Who Wants to Marry a Duke - Sabrina Jeffries Page 0,90
. . . numbing.
He didn’t want to be numb anymore. He didn’t want to be alone anymore.
So now he would have to decide what to do about that.
Chapter Eighteen
Olivia stared out the window blindly. She’d had her fit of temper, then had a cleansing cry, and now she felt the way an element must feel when it couldn’t bond to any other element: alone and useless.
Deluded.
No, an element would never feel that. Just her.
Mama had remained quiet while Olivia cried, save to give her soothing pats and soft “there, there, now” comments, rather like what one would give a child. Olivia didn’t feel like a child right now. She felt very much like a woman wronged. And she had the wet handkerchief to prove it.
“Do you feel better now, dearest?” Mama asked.
“I suppose.”
“Do you mind telling me what you and His Grace quarreled about?”
“It will anger you,” Olivia warned.
Mama shrugged. “But at least then I would know how to help.”
Olivia didn’t want to be all alone in her misery, but some sense of discretion kept her from revealing what Thorn’s family didn’t even know. Instead, she decided to give Mama a slightly modified version of the truth.
“You know those Juncker plays we like so much? Well, Mr. Juncker is a friend of Thorn’s. Years ago, the duke revealed to Mr. Juncker his version of what happened that night at the Devonshire ball. Then Mr. Juncker created Lady Grasping and Lady Slyboots out of that. Those two characters we laugh at so much? They’re supposed to be us.”
“You don’t say!” her stepmother exclaimed. “But we’re nothing like that!”
“He thinks we are.”
“Mr. Juncker? Or the duke?”
“The duke. Well, both men, I suppose.”
She could feel Mama’s eyes on her. “I don’t think the duke thinks we’re like that,” Mama said. “At least not anymore.”
Dear heaven, Mama was practically saying what Thorn had said. It was eerie.
Olivia twisted her handkerchief into a soggy ball. “For a woman who was irate over me marrying him, you’ve certainly changed your tune.”
“I’ll admit, I didn’t approve of him when I first came rushing to Berkshire. But then I saw how he was with you and how he looked at you.”
“You mean, with calculation and disrespect?”
“With affection, perhaps even love.”
She stiffened. “Mama, I don’t know what you think you saw, but that wasn’t it.”
Mama laid a hand on her arm. “Weren’t you the least bit softened when he insisted on sending his own footmen to protect you? And arming them, too?”
“He was just . . . trying to impress you.”
“Why would he do that? You’d refused him—again—and he had every right to throw you out of his house. Instead, he didn’t want you to go.”
That was true, though she hated to admit it. “Thorn doesn’t know what he wants. It’s part of his mercurial nature.”
“Last night, he told you to plan whatever you wished for the wedding, and he would go along with it.” She snorted. “I daresay there isn’t another man alive who would do so.” When Olivia had no answer for that, Mama asked, “Why does it bother you so much that he told his friend about that night at the ball, and his friend created characters out of what he said?”
“Thorn knew we were being mocked—by his friend, I mean—and he did nothing to stop it. He just let his friend keep putting those characters in situations where people could laugh at them.”
Mama shrugged. “They were meant to be funny. Perhaps they started out as us, but I daresay his friend made them into something wholly different. I’m told that writers do those things. Especially playwrights. They need amusing bits for the audience, so people don’t get bored. Besides, the duke had a right to be a little angry back then. I did blackmail him, after all.”
“You were looking out for me,” Olivia said. But her stepmother had a point. “The thing is, he had no reason to be angry at me. I did nothing to him, except remove a stain from his waistcoat and engage in a kiss with him.”
“True. But you have no idea how much mothers are encouraged, by everyone around them, to snag a duke for their daughters. There are few enough eligible dukes around, and three are in Thornstock’s family alone, so he’s probably been warned many times that young women and their mothers are lying in wait to trap him into marriage, just for his title and wealth.”