Suppose he didn’t give her a second chance?
Not that she was sure she wanted one . . . and then, to look on the bright side of his rejecting her, there was Lord Mends.
At this point he might seem to her parents a less monstrous candidate than before. If he was still willing to be a candidate. For all Olympia knew, he might have found another woman eager to be his librarian.
True, he was elderly and pedantic. True, Mama and Papa had been outraged to the point of hysteria at the idea of their one, precious daughter marrying a man nearly old enough to be her grandfather. If Olympia had truly loved him, she might have brought them round. But she only loved his books.
While her parents had declined his invitation to bring Olympia to see his library, she felt as though she knew it intimately, based on what she’d read and what he’d told her. Though he sadly admitted it couldn’t compare to those of the late Dukes of Marlborough or Roxburghe, a catalogue he’d had privately printed had brought her close to swooning: the Psalmorum Enchiridion, in the beautiful binding by Clovis Eve for Marguerite De Valois, the works from Maioli’s Library . . .
In any event, within days of her parents’ rejecting Lord Mends, Olympia had had her fatal encounter with the Duke of Ashmont.
And now . . .
A fatal encounter with the Duke of Ripley’s naked bottom. And other parts . . . and the realization that the Duke of Ashmont would have naked parts, too, and so would Lord Mends, and contemplating marital intimacy with either of the latter made her want to jump from her chair—and possibly out of the window.
At this moment, the door opened and the Duke of Ripley sauntered in.
She blocked all the other images from her mind and focused on where she was and who she was and him, because there he was and she could hardly see anything else.
“You’re not done yet?” he said.
“No,” she said. “And you’re not to tell me to make haste. I and this army of women have been making all the haste that’s humanly possible. It’s hideously unfair of men, who haven’t nearly as complicated a dressing process, to complain of the time required. Do you not recall all the time it took you to get that thing off my head?” She nodded at the corpse of the bridal crown and veil. “Do you think restoring a measure of sanity to my coiffure can be done in an instant?”
“I see we’ve reached the crosspatch stage.”
That was putting it mildly.
“Is it at all possible, duke, or do I ask too much, for Your Grace to attempt to be a little—only a fraction of a fraction—less provoking?”
“Far too much,” he said. “What do you think?” He made a sweeping gesture over his attire, which sharpened the image she couldn’t banish from her mind, of what he looked like without any clothes on.
Studying him wasn’t good for her, she was sure. She’d done it all too zealously a little while ago, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever recover.
Eating seemed to have restored her to sobriety, though she couldn’t be certain, not having a basis for comparison. With a somewhat clearer head, she felt even more strongly aware of the sheer physical-ness of him.
The stallion came into her mind, the one she’d watched cover the mare that time.
Stop it, stop it.
Be sensible, she told herself. Look at the facts. The simple fact was, it was hard to distance oneself from the physicality of a man when one sat looking up at him.
She lowered her gaze and from under her lashes surveyed him from head to toe: from the big shoulders stretching the black coat’s seams, down over the pleated shirt and striped waistcoat, and down, quickly, over the white trousers to the scuffed black shoes. He carried a hat in his right hand.
She stared at the hat and tried to occupy her overactive mind with remembering the names of men’s hats and trying to identify this one.
“Naturally it doesn’t fit,” he said. “Out of the question, given time constraints, though the tailor did the best he could. It’s by no means the wool I would have chosen, and the linen is of mediocre quality.”
She tried to pretend he was a shop mannequin. A strangely dressed one. “It’s unexceptionable,” she said. “I agree that nothing fits properly, but at least the trousers cover your ankles. And as long as you don’t have to heave women in and out of boats or rivers, the coat seams should hold.”
“But the pièce de résistance,” he said. He approached, and the other women retreated.
He stopped at the horse dressing glass and set the hat on his head. He frowned and tilted it this way, then that, then tried it straight.
“Vile,” he said. “I look like a bank clerk. But it was the only one that came close to fitting. How the devil do fellows buy these things ready-made?”
“You do not look like a bank clerk,” she said. “If you wore a bargeman’s cap you would not look like a bargeman. You look like a nobleman . . .” She thought. “In disguise. Not a very good disguise, admittedly.” She gave a dismissive wave. “You’ll do. You can wear anything and you’ll remain tall, dark, and handsome—”
“Hand—”
“Men are deemed attractive when they’re middle-aged and paunchy,” she went on. “Men may go grey and sag with impunity. We women are allowed to look well until about age twenty at most. After that, we’re crones.”
The women about her protested.
“The lady is out of sorts,” Ripley told them. “You’ve done a fine job. Her ladyship doesn’t look nearly as crone-like as usual. Now, if you would all quit dawdling with the hair, we really must be away. Her ladyship is on fire to be off.”
She was. The question was, Where to?
“Yes,” she said.
Handsome.
No one had ever accused Ripley of that before.
She must still be drunk. Not being used to drinking, she didn’t get over it as quickly as a more experienced person. Furthermore, she was a gentlewoman, a maiden.
But the way she’d surveyed Ripley from under her lashes was not what one expected from innocent maidens. Who knew that a virginal bluestocking could employ a half-hidden gaze like that, or cause a man to simmer under it. Apparently, he had something to learn about bluestocking virgins.
He hadn’t long to simmer. She turned her head slightly, and the firelight glinted off her spectacles, and then he couldn’t see her eyes at all.
Not that he needed to, he told himself.
She’d seen quite enough of him and he didn’t need to see anything more of her. Best not to, in present circumstances. Thanks to his monk-like existence of recent months, he was all too quick to heat.
He’d cure the ailment this very evening. As soon as he returned bride to bridegroom.
Along with the usual improper thoughts natural to a nonvirtuous male, this was what passed through his mind as he waited, foot tapping, for the women to place a hat on Lady Olympia’s head and tie the ribbons just so. When the hat ritual ended at last, and the bridal garments had been wrapped up in linen, he hustled her out of the room and, eventually, out of the hotel and into the inn yard where a post chaise waited.