An excerpt from My Last Duchess, after the Duke of Lindow sees a lady leaving a crowded ballroom and manages to talk his way into her carriage.
Because sometimes a man knows his heart’s desire on first sight.
~
The Duke of Lindow had stuffed his gloves into his pockets, and now he shrugged out of his damp greatcoat. The beautiful wool was speckled with dark spots where snowflakes had melted.
Ophelia was well aware that the person who talks most in any confrontation loses power, so she held her tongue.
He had remarkably broad shoulders. Even his neck looked powerful. He was a male animal, lithe and powerful—but one who meant her no harm. She knew that instinctively, in her bones.
His Grace was no reprobate, running around looking for adventures and woe betide any young woman who got in his way.
Once out of his heavy outerwear, he shrugged, apparently uncomfortable in his closely tailored, extravagant coat. But then, in one swift movement, he crouched in front of her.
Ophelia could feel her eyes rounding as she looked down. He didn’t touch her, but she felt as if his gaze settled around her like a warm blanket. A sharp sense of vertigo gripped her.
Men like this, dukes, had nothing to do with women like her. She had been considered tremendously lucky that her former husband chose her. She was rounded, short, and not particularly beautiful. That wasn’t even taking account of the pointed chin Maddie had mentioned.
What’s more, she wasn’t seductive or flirtatious. Not that she had ever flirted with this man before.
“Your Grace,” she said. “I gather that you have formed some sort of interest in me that is groundless and unrequited. I must ask you to behave like a gentleman and return from whence you came.”
A smile tugged at his mouth. “‘From whence I came?’”
“My meaning is clear,” Ophelia said, scowling at him. “Go. Back to the street, if you prefer plain speaking. You are not welcome in my carriage.”
She had the absurd idea that she’d hurt his feelings, but the emotion flashed by so quickly that she wasn’t sure.
“I apologize,” he said again. “I just saw you for the first time.”
Ophelia waited, but he didn’t continue, so she said, “The fact that we are unacquainted is scarcely reason for this intrusion.”
“How long were you married to Sir Peter?”
This was such an odd conversation. He hadn’t touched her, and she didn’t know him, and yet they were looking at each other with an intimacy that—
She pushed the thought away. She probably shouldn’t answer him, but she did, because what was the harm of it?
“I married in July of 1759.”
“I married Yvette in May of the same year.”
Clearly, that meant something to him, but nothing to her. “Is that why you’re following me?” she asked, a dash of humiliation suddenly turning scalding.
She’d got it wrong; he didn’t desire her. He wanted something from her. Or had she known his previous duchess? She couldn’t recall anyone by that name.
That lopsided smile appeared again. “If I hadn’t decided that Yvette looked like a good mother—a decision so misguided as to be comical—I would have gone to a few more balls, and I might have met you before you were betrothed to Sir Peter.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps you think that your presence would have affected my feelings for my late husband, whom I loved dearly? You do yourself too much honor, Your Grace.”
His smile broadened and turned into a proper grin. “I deserved that.”
“Yes, you did,” she said tartly. “Now, please stop hovering at my knee or whatever it is you are doing and take your leave before I shout at my coachman and ask him to remove you, pistol in hand.”
“Your coachman confiscated my sword,” the duke said with a broad grin.
With a start, Ophelia realized that the gilded sword that had sat so easily at his hip was no longer there. “He did?”
“You have an excellent man there. It took me the better part of ten minutes to persuade him to allow me to speak to you.”
Ophelia instantly made up her mind to speak to Bisquet herself and quite sharply, too.
“I didn’t offer a bribe, and he wouldn’t have taken one,” the duke said. “May I call on you in the morning?”
“I see no reason for that,” she replied.
He was too handsome, too witty, too everything. There was a hint of sadness at the back of his eyes, and a ruefulness in his tone when he mentioned his wife, Yvette. He was nuanced.
Men were so rarely nuanced.
