“Your wife and son were impaired by the same event?” Olivia blurted out, before she could catch herself.

“Aye,” the duke said. “That’s the devil of it. But Rupert has a good heart. He’s a kindly, cheerful soul, and if I don’t think about what might have been, the two of us rub along fairly well together. And my dear, I’ve talked to you about your brains and your hips, but the most important thing is that you’ve always been kind to him. It’s not easy. He tends to jabber, but you have never made fun of him.”

Olivia tightened her grip on his hand. “I promise to be kind to him,” she said, and in that moment, it was as if she said her vows.

The duke gave his odd smile again. “I’ll send him to you.”

And he was gone.

Five

Events That Warrant No Introduction

Rupert customarily entered any room with a hearty stream of greetings; having been coached as to the proper salutations, he took a clear delight in observing the appropriate rules. But now he walked into the library without a word, his eyes lighting on Olivia’s face and sliding away.

Olivia let fly a silent, if heartfelt, string of oaths directed at their parents. She had forgotten—again—to consider what Rupert might be thinking of all this. From the look on his face, she and Georgiana had been right in their surmise that Rupert had not been tutored in the particular situation he now faced.

No more than she had, actually.

But then, people had been getting through the business for years. Luckily, her father kept a brandy decanter in the library, and she handed Rupert a brimming glass and poured one for herself as well, and the devil with the fact that her mother considered spirits to be unladylike. Still without a word, they sat down on the sofa before the fire.

“Left Lucy in the sitting room,” he said suddenly. “Didn’t seem right.”

Olivia nodded. “She will be more comfortable there.”

“No, she’s not comfortable,” he stated. “My father doesn’t like her. Says that she’s fit for hunting rats and nothing else. She doesn’t wish to kill rats. She wouldn’t even know how. And your parents don’t care for her, either.”

“My parents never allowed us to have a pet of any sort,” Olivia said.

“You like dogs, though,” Rupert stated.

“Yes.”

“Said I’d do it because of that.”

Olivia blinked. “What?”

“Marriage.”

Apparently she had underestimated Rupert’s strength of will; she hadn’t realized that he was allowed any part in the choice of his duchess. Nor had she the faintest idea that the meat pies she’d saved for Lucy comprised her audition for the role.

She would have eaten them herself.

“It’s not that I don’t like you,” Rupert said earnestly. “I do. But you like Lucy too, don’t you?”

“She’s a dear dog.” They were on common ground now. She and Rupert had spent many an evening in the last year talking of Lucy.

But Rupert seemed to have exhausted the subject of Lucy, and with his silence the air turned edgy and nervous again.

“We needn’t do it, you know,” she said, after a bit.

“I must,” he said, taking a big gulp of brandy and shuddering. “Told my father I would. Be like a man. Do—be a man.” He looked confused.

Olivia took a sip and thought about how much she’d like to throw her parents and the duke off Battersea Bridge. “Shall we not, and tell them we did?” she offered.

He turned to look at her for the first time, eyes round. “Lie?”

“More like a fib.”

He shook his head. “I don’t lie. Not a gentleman’s thing to do, lying. Better to man up.” He took another shuddering gulp.

In his own way, Rupert was admirable, Olivia thought, realizing for the first time that he would have made a rather exceptional duke, if he’d had possession of all his faculties. He had his father’s strength of will, with an extra layer of honor that his father was conspicuously lacking.

“I understand,” she said.

“No time like the present,” Rupert offered.

“Shall I turn down the lamps?”

“How would I see what I was doing?”

Good question. “Of course,” Olivia said hastily.

He stood up, putting his now empty glass on a side table. “I know how to fall in. I fall in; you fall backwards.” He seemed to be reassuring himself as much as her. “Easy business. They all say.”

“Wonderful,” Olivia said. After a second’s hesitation, she stood up and then moved behind the sofa to remove her drawers. Then she came back around to the fire, wondering if she should take off her slippers.

A quick look at Rupert showed that he was not planning to do so. His breeches were pushed down around his ankles. She took another, larger sip of brandy.

“Perhaps you’d better finish your glass,” Rupert suggested.

She gulped the remains of her brandy and then looked again at her fiancé. He was rather red in the face and his eyes were slightly glassy. Apparently, he had refilled his glass while her back was turned.

“What ho,” he said, rather faintly, and drank it off as well.

Olivia took a deep breath and put her glass down. Then she lay back on the sofa, pulled her skirts up to her waist, and steeled herself.

“Right,” Rupert said. “Do you suppose I should put one knee here, next to your hip? There’s a pillow in the way.”

They wrestled with placement of their limbs for a moment or two until he was more or less in position.

“Do you want some more brandy first?” Rupert asked. “Painful for a woman. My father says.”

“No, thank you,” Olivia said. Unfortunately, what brandy she’d already taken had gone straight to her head, and she had a burning wish to giggle. She could just imagine what her mother would say to that.

“If you feel like crying, I brought three extra handkerchiefs.” Rupert displayed no particular urge to get on with the business.

“Thank you,” Olivia said again, choking down more giggles. “I never cry.”

“Really? I cry all the time,” Rupert said, blinking at her.

“I remember how you wept at the garden party when that dead sparrow fell out of a tree.”

Rupert’s face crumpled at the memory.

“It was just a bird,” she added quickly.

“Quick, bright . . . wild.”

“The sparrow?”

He seemed to have entirely forgotten what they were supposed to have been doing, even though he was on his knees, holding his tool in one hand. His eyes weren’t glassy anymore, but focused. “I wrote a poem,” he told her.

Olivia wasn’t entirely certain, but she was fairly sure that his tool wouldn’t be effective in its current state. “What sort of poem?” she asked, putting her head back on the cushion. Life with Rupert would have its own rhythm. There was no point in rushing it.

“Quick, bright,” he said again, “a bird falls down to us, darkness piles up in the trees.”

Olivia raised her head. “Is that the whole poem?”

He nodded, eyes on hers.

“It’s lovely, Rupert,” she said, and meant it. For the first time in her life, almost, she truly meant what she was saying to her fiancé. “ ‘Darkness piles up.’ I love that.”