The Duke of Olympia Meets His Match Read Free Page A

have the honor of sitting with you, your . . . your . . . that is . . .
Duke
?”
    The Duke of Olympia turned to the elegantly set table before them, snowy of linen and gleaming of silver—the captain’s table, toward which the captain himself was now advancing, resplendent in uniform and whiskers.
    â€œI fear I shall perish from the pleasure,” he said.
    ***
    The Duke of Olympia’s fine gold Breguet pocket watch read nearly eleven o’clock by the time he shook off the last eager American heiress and her mama and climbed in relieved solitude toward his luxurious stateroom on the topmost deck of the
Majestic
, one of only four to occupy that privileged space.
    Well, it hadn’t been quite so bad, had it? The young ladies were comely, the mamas too intimidated by his height and overall augustness to say much. Miss Morrison—the front-runner, apparently, and well aware of her advantages—had proven more charming and less nasal than he might have expected from the twenty-year-old daughter of a manufacturer of American toilet fixtures. Probably it was the influence of that woman with her, that dependent, a cousin of some kind, the one with the breeding and the quiet and watchful face. She’d conversed mostly with the party sitting next to her, a cantankerous elderly woman in an invalid’s chair and her frigid attendant, but she had listened simultaneously to every word he uttered. He knew this because he’d made some oblique reference to Abraham and his young wives, and she’d tightened her shoulders as if suppressing a burst of laughter and turned her face toward him. For the briefest instant, her amused eyes had met his, as if they were sharing a secret beyond the reach of the human beings around them.
    An odd sort of connection, that.
    He reached the final landing and turned around the corner of the staircase to the private corridor leading to his stateroom, and then he paused with his hand on the newel post. It was a remarkably gentle evening for the end of March. Perhaps he might step outside for a final breath of air.
    As a young man, the Duke of Olympia had relished travel: the farther from England—from its steady patter of sycophantic
Your Grace
s, from its patches of damp earth containing his two dead sons—the better. He had visited very achievable corner of the globe. He had trekked among the Himalayan mountains, he had crossed the Siberian steppes, he had ridden a singularly game horse across the plains of the American west. In his dotage, he was grateful for the luxury of a modern twin-screw steamship of ten thousand gross tonnage, and for his suite of well-appointed rooms perched at its apex, but he still loved the motion of the deck outside, the strong salt draft lifting his hair and reminding him that he was
moving
, he was going somewhere.
    He could use a little of that feeling just now.
    He turned and went around the other corner, to the doorway just past the first-class library, leading to the deck outside. Just as he reached for the handle, the portal flew open in a swirling gust of Atlantic air.
    â€œOh! Your Grace!” said a woman’s voice.
    Olympia blinked. “Ah! Mrs. Schuyler, I believe. I beg your pardon.”
    They did an awkward dance around each other, he on his way out and she on her way in. When they had both gotten on the right sides of each other, they paused politely.
    â€œYou were taking a walk, I presume?” he asked.
    â€œYes. I can’t go to bed without a bit of fresh air, I’m afraid.”
    â€œI am of exactly the same mind, Mrs. Schuyler,” he said, and again their gazes met, again there was that odd instant of connection. His hand remained on the door handle. He thought,
How strange, I should like very much to touch her
, and his chest seemed to grow snug. He realized he was holding his breath.
    â€œWell, then. Enjoy your stroll, sir,” said Mrs. Schuyler, and she