The Duke of Olympia Meets His Match Read Free Page B

turned and walked toward the stairway, so quietly that he couldn’t hear her footfalls on the carpet, just the faint swish of her skirts around her legs. She reached perhaps medium height, and her dark hair shone under the electric lights. He glimpsed her profile as she rounded the corner of the staircase, and what caught his notice wasn’t the neat line of her forehead and nose, or the quiet and unshowy symmetry of her chin, but the remarkable smoothness and clarity of her skin, for a woman in perhaps her fifth decade of life. The serenity of her.
    Then she was gone, disappeared below the deck, and instead of turning to the door he moved forward to follow her down the staircase.
    â€œYour Grace!”
    Olympia stopped and turned his head. “Mr. Simmons,” he said, endeavoring not to sigh. “Have you got something for me?”
    â€œI don’t know, sir.” The first officer held out his hand, which contained a slight, ratty scrap of paper. He glanced at the staircase and spoke in a soft, confidential voice. “One of the stewards just brought this to my attention. Perhaps you can make sense of it.”
    ***
    A small white rectangle lay on the carpet, just inside the stateroom door. Penelope bent and picked it up.
    Miss Ruby Morrison
, the envelope proclaimed, in calm black handwriting.
    She held it out to Ruby, who was just entering behind her. “For you.”
    â€œFor me?” Ruby’s eyebrows arched upward. She took the paper between her fingers and opened the flap of the envelope.
    Penelope proceeded to the small washstand, where she unscrewed her garnet earrings (a gift from her late husband, deemed too insignificant for the lawyers to bother with) and began to remove the pins from her heavy, dark hair. John had always loved her hair. Her skin might be taking on lines, and her bosom no longer resided at quite the same height as in happier days, but her hair remained thick. And her eyes were bright, she thought, staring intently into the mirror. Not so luminous as Ruby’s wide hazel mantraps, perhaps, but then she wasn’t trying to trap a man, was she?
    No, of course she wasn’t. At her age, in her lowly condition. The idea.
    She glanced to the side, where Ruby’s reflection hovered over her shoulder. The Cupid lips had formed into a pink-rimmed O, slightly parted in the center.
    â€œSomething interesting?” Penelope asked.
    Ruby’s mouth closed. She looked up, smiling, and folded up the paper and stuffed it back into the envelope. “Not really. That awful Miss Crawley we met at tea wants to go walking with me tomorrow morning.”
    â€œWalking where?”
    â€œThe promenade deck, I suppose. If the weather holds.” Ruby stifled a yawn. Her cheeks were flushed. “My goodness, I’m exhausted! What a great effort it is, talking to a duke all evening. Watching every word.”
    â€œ
You?
Watching your words?” The last pin came free, and Penelope picked up her brush.
    Ruby laughed her tinkling young laugh. “Well, comparatively speaking, of course. He wasn’t so awful, I’ll admit. But I’m not going to let Mama marry me off to him.”
    Penelope set down the brush and turned around to unbutton Ruby’s dress. “Don’t leap ahead of yourself, my dear. After all, before you can claim the glory of refusing the Duke of Olympia’s hand in marriage, he first has to offer it.”
    Ruby was dead right about exhaustion, however. Whether because of the duke at dinner, or the cold salt air on deck, or the previous week of frantic preparation, Penelope couldn’t even remember drawing up the covers and falling asleep in her berth.
    She only found herself startling awake into the night, some unknown time later, under the distinct impression that something––or someone––was moving about the cabin.
    The air was perfectly black. Not a single particle of light contaminated the darkness,