Between the Devil and Ian Eversea Read Online Free PDF Page B

last time she’d ever been shy. He’d probably been intimidating even then. His wife—he’d had a different wife then—had been so pretty, she’d thought. She’d laughed so easily. She’d loved the sound of her mother and the duke’s wife laughing together in the garden.
    The very word “Lilymont” had started up an ache again. She could see it clearly: the walled garden half wild, colorful and surprising and tangled, like something from a fairy tale, at least from her perspective at three feet tall.
    And then she remembered the duke had lost that pretty, merry wife quite some time ago. Which was how he had come to be married to Genevieve.
    She stared at him curiously, as if she peered hard enough, she might see some sort of give, something that might indicate that life had battered him a bit. She saw nothing but a sleek, older, inscrutable duke.
    “I’m given to understand that you would like to marry.” He said this somewhat stiffly.
    “Yes, thank you.” Of course , she almost added. She felt herself begin to flush.
    When he paused, she saw an opportunity to intervene.
    “I thought it might be helpful to make a list of qualities I should like in a husband.”
    There was a pause, which she thought might be of the mildly nonplussed variety.
    “You’ve made a list,” he repeated carefully.
    She nodded. “Of qualities I might like to find in a husband.”
    Another little hesitation.
    “And . . . you’d like to share this list with me?”
    She couldn’t tell whether he was being ironic. “If you think it might be helpful.”
    “One never knows,” he said neutrally.
    “Very well.” She carefully unfolded the sheet of foolscap and smoothed it flat in her lap, then cleared her throat.
    She looked up at him, and he nodded encouragingly.
    “Number one: I should like him to be intelligent . . .”
    She looked up again, gauging the result of her initial requirement.
    He gave an approving nod. “Half-wits can be so tedious,” he sympathized.
    “. . . but not too intelligent.”
    She was a little worried about this one.
    “Ah.” He drummed his fingers once or twice and seemed to mull this. “Do you mean the sort who goes about quoting poetry and philosophers? Waxes rhapsodic about works of art? Uses terms like ‘waxes rhapsodic’?”
    It was precisely what she meant. She hoped the duke wasn’t the sort who went about quoting poets and philosophers. She rather liked the term “wax rhapsodic,” however. She silently tried it in a sentence. Titania Danforth waxed rhapsodic about the balcony man’s torso.
    “I think I prefer him to be . . . active. To enjoy the outdoors, and horses and shooting and such. I enjoy reading. But I’d rather not pick apart what I read. I’d rather just enjoy the pictures stories make in my head.”
    And now she was babbling.
    She hoped he didn’t think she’d sounded ridiculous. It had, rather, in her own ears.
    “Do you?” She couldn’t tell whether he was amused or thoughtful. “I’m not one for reading a good deal myself. My wife, on the other hand, enjoys it very much. I tolerate the habit in her.”
    Genevieve did have the look of the sort who would enjoy reading very much, Tansy thought glumly. He did, however, sound a little ironic.
    “What’s the next item on your list, Miss Danforth?”
    “Ah. Number two: I should like him to be of fine moral character.”
    In truth, she’d added that one because she hoped it would impress the duke. She wasn’t entirely certain how he would interpret fine moral character. She wasn’t even certain how she would interpret it or whether she in truth possessed it. It sounded dull, but necessary.
    “Of fine moral character,” he repeated slowly, as if memorizing it. “This is helpful in terms of narrowing the field,” he said gravely. “Thank you.”
    When he said nothing more, she looked down at her foolscap again.
    “Number three: I should like him to be handsome.”
    She said this somewhat tentatively.