Viscount in Love, page 10
“I have no such expectations,” Dominic said, starting to feel distinctly nettled.
The duchess picked up her monocle again and gave him a long stare. “I suspect you chose your previous fiancée based on some fool notion of a good wife.”
He managed not to flinch.
“Tried to find a woman with ladylike skills,” she chortled, pleased with herself. “The ability to stitch a sampler and paint a watery landscape doesn’t help a marriage thrive.”
“Not everyone can design a chimney,” Dominic said, dimly feeling he should defend Torie. “Miss Sutton is an excellent painter who works in oils rather than watercolors.”
“Good,” Her Grace said, distracted by the new subject. “I shall commission her to paint the steam engine. It’s our fourth iteration, and only oils can do justice to its red hue.”
“I think she mostly paints flowers, not engines,” Dominic said.
The duchess’s preferred mode of communication seemed to be a snort. “Because the woman’s never been allowed to paint anything else.” You dunce hung in the air, unspoken. “I don’t suppose you’ve escaped the House of Lords long enough to attend one of the Royal Academy’s exhibitions?”
“I have not,” Dominic replied.
“Still life is the lowest genre,” she told him. “Biblical paintings are highest, because men love to spy on Bathsheba unclothed, or depict Judith serving up Holofernes’s head on a platter. After that comes mythological, portraiture, landscape, animal paintings . . . with still life at the very bottom of the list. So, what are women allowed to paint? Anything that doesn’t move!” She snorted again. Loudly.
“Torie also paints rabbits,” Dominic said.
“If you manage to persuade her to marry you, get her a tutor, for God’s sake. We’re taking a trip to Venice, and I’d like to give a painting of the locomotive to my husband on our return.”
“I shall do my best to convince Miss Sutton to become my viscountess,” Dominic said, accepting the duchess’s point about a tutor. Certainly Sir William wouldn’t have bothered to pay for one.
“I have faith in you, viscount. I’ll wait a year or so and commission it then.”
“Miss Sutton, whether or not she becomes my wife, will paint only what she wishes,” Dominic said with frosty emphasis. “She has no need to take a commission.”
Her Grace’s lips parted, and he braced himself for a ducal setdown. Instead, she bellowed with laughter, her monocle spinning at the end of her ribbon as her bosom heaved.
He caught a whiff of Torie’s honeysuckle scent and turned just as she arrived at his side, Florence in tow. “I had no idea you could be so entertaining, Lord Kelbourne,” she murmured.
“I have moments,” Dominic said. Sunlight turned her curls to beaten silver. “You’d have to marry me to benefit from them.” He leaned over and muttered, “And my sportive tricks.”
Torie rolled her eyes at him.
“I should like you to pay me a visit in the country,” the Duchess of Huntington said to Torie. “You could bring your easel and paint some roses, though I admit that the flowerbeds at Huntington Grange have run to weed.”
“Dandelions?” Florence asked with interest. “Do you know what a dandelion is?”
“A weed of some sort,” the duchess replied.
“No, a dandy-lion is a big cat wearing a dapper hat!”
Torie broke out laughing.
“I miss that,” Florence said, slipping her hand into Dominic’s.
He looked down, eyebrow raised.
“Her laugh. Torie laughs better than anyone in the world.”
Chapter 13
The next morning, Dominic made up his mind to pay Torie a call, no matter what Sir William thought of it. Besides, he had a shrewd feeling that his lordship rarely emerged from his darkened bedchamber before afternoon.
He had to bang the knocker several times before the butler appeared, looking as if he’d slept in his slovenly attire.
“I wish to pay a call on Miss Sutton.”
“She isn’t taking callers,” the man said, pushing the door closed with one hand as he straightened his toppling wig with the other. “She’s busy.”
Dominic shouldered past and walked through a beery cloud wafting from the butler into the entry. “Is she in her studio?”
“Aye, but she’s not chaperoned—”
Dominic cut him off. “Show me to her studio, if you please.”
The butler thought about that for a while, brow furrowed, before he began trudging up the stairs. Dominic followed him, thinking that even if he wasn’t set on marrying Torie, he’d want her out of this ill-regulated household.
Was it possible to feel well-intentioned concern—and raging desire?
The butler rapped on a door and then stood aside to let Dominic enter the room before backing out without a word. The man was remarkably thoughtless. What if Dominic had designs on her virtue?
Which he did.
Torie was standing before an easel positioned in such a way that morning light poured over her shoulder, illuminating a vase of big, fluffy flowers. She wore a simple cotton gown, covered by a canvas pinafore smeared with every paint color imaginable. Her hair was caught up in a chignon, curls escaping to frame her face.
She was exquisite, even when scowling at her easel.
“Good morning, Torie,” he called, realizing she hadn’t heard the door open.
She glanced over and groaned. “Go away, Dominic. I don’t want to marry you.”
“But I want to marry you,” he argued. He walked forward so he could see her painting, instantly grateful that the Duchess of Huntington had decided not to commission a painting for at least a year, after Torie had some tutoring.
The cut flowers were fresh and colorful, but Torie’s depiction was muted and not nearly as pretty. In her depiction, the vase sat on a checkerboard table that was slightly distorted, as if she had problems with perspective.
He cleared his throat, trying to think of what to say. He wasn’t a man who attended art exhibitions, but anyone could see that Torie could benefit from a tutor.
She stuck her brush into a can of solvent and pulled off her pinafore, dropping it on a paint-splattered stool.
“Your flower painting is very nice,” he commented. That didn’t sound praiseful enough. He noticed the three fallen petals, each curled in different directions, so he added, “Meticulous and graceful.”
She had been moving toward a group of chairs on the other side of the room; her shoulders froze, and then she kept walking, throwing an amused comment over her shoulder. “I am confident of my ability to paint flowers, Dominic. You needn’t strain your vocabulary.”
Feeling a flash of remorse—but honestly, what could one say about wilting flowers?—Dominic seated himself opposite her.
“I don’t understand your persistence,” Torie said, without preamble. “Can you ill afford to lose ten thousand pounds? Marrying me won’t bring back the money. Even if my first action as your wife—which I will never be—was to fire Nanny Bracknell, you wouldn’t save much.”
He shook his head. “That’s not a problem. Your father would like to screw me out of another fifteen, which I can afford, if need be.”
Torie bit her lip.
Dominic was wearing his most autocratic expression, the one with which he likely bullied members of the House of Lords into doing his bidding.
Obviously, Florence and Valentine were still pushing him to propose. She was touched, not just by the fact that the twins cared for her, but that he cared for them enough to make repeated attempts after being rebuffed. She couldn’t imagine he’d ever had to implore a woman to pay him attention.
Just now he was giving her that intensely observant look again. As if he were truly interested in her thoughts. As if she were the only woman in the world.
She probably found it so seductive because no man had looked at her that way before.
But she did not want to marry her sister’s fiancée out of fondness for two children, finding herself relegated to a nanny and tied to an irascible peer who thought a painting that had taken her months was “nice.”
“I do feel guilty about my father’s demand,” she said, clearing her throat. “Perhaps if I weren’t so extravagant, Sir William wouldn’t have exacted money for Leonora’s betrothal. I have a weakness for colored silk, in particular, and it’s horrendously expensive.”
Dominic shook his head. “If you’ll forgive my bluntness, your father is a rogue, not to mention an inveterate gamester.”
“Be that as it may, I still refuse your proposal,” Torie said, trying to ignore the fact that her heart seemed to have migrated into her throat and was threatening to suffocate her. She couldn’t imagine how his opponents in the House of Lords withstood his demands. Against all her best instincts, some errant part of her wanted to throw herself into his arms and breathe “yes” in his ear.
“Why?” Those blue-gray eyes were known for terrifying opponents during debates. Just at the moment, they weren’t fierce as much as—as confused. “True, Queensberry has a higher title, but I have Valentine and Florence, and surely you agree that the twins trump any benefit that a higher title might bring.”
Torie swallowed convulsively. “Because you were going to marry my sister! You were betrothed to Leonora for over two years. Can’t you see how humiliating it would be for me to marry you?”
“No,” he said, uncompromisingly. “I feel I am an excellent marriage prospect.”
“I promise to remain friends with the twins,” she offered.
“Only my wife can see Valentine and Florence both morning and night,” he replied, a distinctly calculating tone to his voice. “Only my wife can be there if they fall ill, or . . . or begin missing their dead parents. Grieving for them.”
He caught her expression. “Fine, the last is unlikely. I need a wife who will love the twins and help me talk Val into going to Eton, rather than banishing them to the country.”
She felt as if her heart was being torn in two. “I wouldn’t do that unless Eton opens its doors to girls. I do love them. You know that.”
“I do.”
“However, I think of you as my brother-in-law. Can you imagine the gossip if I married my sister’s fiancé?”
He shrugged. “Who cares what people think?”
That was easy for him to say. The viscount reportedly shouted at anyone who dared disagree with him. Shaming remarks would follow her around a room, and she couldn’t bully the gossipers into silence.
It was one thing if a duke was infatuated enough to overlook her deficiencies. People seemed to find it particularly romantic that Queensberry proposed despite her addled brains.
It was quite another if she ended up married to her sister’s jilted fiancé. The duke looked at her with adoration, the viscount with calculating interest.
Everyone would be certain that Torie had been forced to accept him. That money had been involved somehow. And they would talk . . . oh, how they would talk. Most of the shame would fall on her, but people would mock him as well.
“I care,” she told him, embarrassed to be revealing the truth, because generally she pretended to blithely ignore insulting chatter. “Leonora loathes gossip, but I think I hate it even more. People have always chattered about her because she’s beautiful and intelligent. That has not been my experience.”
“No one will say disparaging things about my wife.” Dominic folded his arms, looking for all the world as if he could stop the tide from coming in to shore.
“In case you’re hoping, you will not be able to teach me to read. It won’t work. I cannot read. I will never be able to read.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t,” Torie said. “It’s not merely the question of accepting me as a substitute for my more desirable sister. They’ll mock you for marrying me. If we ever have children, they’ll be judged witless before they speak their first word. What’s more, I can’t cipher, so you’d have to hire someone to keep the household accounts.”
“My steward keeps them now, and he can continue. You’re overlooking a key point.”
She frowned at him. “Which is?”
“Your family should have been defending you. Instead, they left you to face society alone. In fact, they joined in the mockery. That will not continue when you are my wife.”
Torie couldn’t hide her curiosity. “Just how would you hope to suppress belittling on the part of non-family members?”
“Do you see this rapier?”
Since he was still in deep mourning, Dominic was clothed in black; his black sheath lay almost invisibly against his leg. When he drew out the blade, it wasn’t a gleaming silver color, but black as midnight.
“Is that a mourning rapier?” Torie asked, rather fascinated.
“Dull black for the first stage of mourning. I have five rapiers for the various stages.”
“You must be joking.”
“I never joke about rapiers.”
“Leonora said—”
“She thought I should give up the practice as it was causing my muscles to be ‘gracelessly bloated,’” he said dryly. “A direct quote. Added to your revelation about admiration for golden lads with slender thighs, my deplorable physique presumably led to her hysteria regarding our wedding night.”
“My sister can be very blunt at times,” Torie murmured. “Are you proposing to slash your way through polite society in defense of my wits?”
“I won’t stand for anyone hurting my wife’s feelings,” Dominic said, sliding the blade back into its holster. “A duel or two will solve that problem. I won’t fight to wound but to make myself clear.”
He was mistaken—such a duel would cause gossip to flourish—but Torie rather liked the idea of someone offering to defend her. She habitually fended off mockery through charm, humor, and self-deprecation, but the experience was never pleasant. She’d rather not label herself silly and frivolous.
“You will marry me because you love Valentine and Florence.” There was a surprisingly warm glint in Dominic’s eyes, given that he usually looked as chilly as the north wind.
Torie shook her head, somewhat regretfully. “As I said, I do love them, but I cannot give up my life for them. You want a nanny, not a bride.”
“We can have our own children, and by then the twins will be yours too.” He hesitated. “Though I do intend to send them to school.”
“I have different ideas about how to raise Valentine and Florence. My ideas do not involve Eton, Latin, Greek, astronomy, or ciphering half the day, as they are doing now.”
He frowned. “They need to be stimulated. They are brilliant.”
“And quite bizarre,” she pointed out. “I know something about being strange in the midst of polite society. It is not a pleasant feeling.”
Dominic’s eyes softened. “I’m sorry. But taking away their books won’t make them any less intelligent.”
Torie suppressed a snappy observation about the fact that her intelligence was constantly in question merely because she had no book-learning. “They are suffering from lack of attention. You should eat with them every single day.”
“In the nursery?” He seemed dumbfounded.
Torie belatedly realized that she did sound like a nanny. She shook her head. “Becoming a nanny would be so belittling, don’t you see? As if I was inadequate to be someone’s wife. As a duchess, I’ll know my husband prized me, not my child-raising skills.”
“You wouldn’t be a nanny,” he said stubbornly. “You’d be a viscountess.”
“You wish to marry me for one reason. No, for ten thousand and one reasons, but mostly for one. The duke will marry me because he’s infatuated, and everyone knows it. That’s an emotion celebrated by society.” She took another deep breath, because she still felt as if the room was short of air.
Rather than accept her logic, Dominic started smiling in the brash manner of men who think they know better. “You’re leaving something out of the calculation.”
“What?”
“Let’s do a test.” He moved and sat down beside her. “A scientific test. Val would approve.”
Torie scowled at him. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“I never kissed your sister. Had I tried, I would have uncovered her inclination to vomit while contemplating intimacies with me. She wouldn’t have fled to the dubious protection of Lord Bufford, because we would have mutually agreed to end the betrothal.”
Dominic wasn’t the first man to suggest that kissing was a way to prove or disprove compatibility. Torie had always refused on principle. And because she had a horror of bad breath.
Yet she could smell faint peppermint on Dominic’s breath, which suggested he used Dr. Peabody’s Solution to cleanse his teeth, just as she did. She felt a little dizzy, so perhaps all the close attention he was giving her had gone to her head. Just now, his eyes were smoldering, but not with irritation, as when she won at Riddles.
Lust, she registered. It wasn’t her first experience with male lust, but the first that her body had acknowledged. Her breathing sped up again, and a wave of heat swept down her legs.
“Kissing won’t change my mind,” she said, trying to stick to the main point. “I would still be a gossiped-about nanny.”
He frowned. “What role do you envision playing in your husband’s life?”
“I’m holding out for a love match.”
“Although you’ll drop that ambition for the title of duchess?” he said with an edge.
“Queensberry adores me, and love will come in time,” she said equally sharply. “The bride you want doesn’t resemble me.” She cleared her throat. “To put it a different way, you are planning to fight duels with your oh-so-black rapier because you are protective of your family, not because you think society’s assessment of me is incorrect.”
“I shall always be protective of my wife. You may be unable to read, but I see no reason why that fact should be repeated within my or anyone else’s earshot.”
Torie drank in the intensity of his gaze, reminding herself that her response was a reaction to novelty. Her head was spinning because Dominic looked interested in her, in her opinions and desires. It was unsettling.
