This Duke is Mine Read Free Page B

wife, and he didn’t give a hang what criteria she applied to the task. If she thought a pea under a mattress—or under five mattresses—was the way to ascertain the suitability of his future duchess, Quin would agree, just as long as he didn’t have to bother about the question himself.
    In this crucial fashion, he was as regal—as real —as the nameless prince in the fairy tale, as dukified as Georgiana was duchified. He rarely saw a doorway without advancing through it as if he owned it. Since he owned a good many doorways, he would have pointed out that this was a reasonable assumption. He looked down his nose because he was taller than most. It was there to look down, and arrogance was his birthright. He couldn’t conceive of any other way of behaving.
    To be fair, Quin did acknowledge some personal failings. For example, he seldom knew what the people around him were feeling. He had a formidable intelligence and rarely found other people’s thought patterns very surprising. But their emotions? He greatly disliked the way people seemed to conceal their emotions, only to release them in a gassy burst of noise and a tearful exposition.
    This antipathy to displays of feeling had led him to surround himself with people like his mother and himself: to wit, those who responded to a problem by formulating a plan, often involving experimentation designed to prove a stated hypothesis. What’s more, his selected few did not cry if their hypotheses were proven incorrect.
    He rather thought that people shouldn’t have so many emotions, given that feelings were rarely logical, and therefore were of no use whatsoever. He had embarrassed himself once by falling into a slough of emotion—and it hadn’t ended well.
    In fact, it had ended miserably.
    The very thought sent a pulse of black pain through the region that he generally supposed to house his heart, but he ignored it, as was his habit. If he paid attention to how many times a month, a week—a day —he felt that little stab . . . There was no point in thinking about it.
    If there was one thing he had learned from his mother, it was that regrettable emotions are best forgotten. And if one cannot forget (he couldn’t), then that personal failing should be concealed.
    As if thinking of his mother brought her to his side, the door to his library opened and his butler, Cleese, intoned, “Her Grace.”
    “My plans are in order, Tarquin,” his mother declared, entering on the heels of Cleese’s announcement. She was followed closely by her personal assistant, Steig, and by her personal maid, Smithers. Her Grace, the dowager duchess, preferred to have a little flock of retainers in tow wherever she went, rather as if she were a bishop trailed by anxious acolytes. She was not a tall woman, but she projected such a formidable presence that she achieved the impression of height, albeit with some help from a towering wig. In fact, her wig bore a distinct resemblance to a bishop’s miter. They both advertised the wearer’s confidence in his or her rightful place in the universe: to wit, on top.
    Quin was already on his feet; now he moved from behind his desk to kiss the hand his mother held out. “Indeed?” he asked politely, while trying to remember what she was talking about.
    Fortunately, the duchess did not view responsiveness as an obligatory aspect of conversation. Given a choice, she would prefer to soliloquize, but she had learned to give addresses that could almost be classified as interactive.
    “I have selected two young ladies,” she pronounced now. “Both from excellent families, it hardly needs saying. One is from the aristocracy; the other is from the gentry, but recommended by the Duke of Canterwick. I think we both agree that to consider only the aristocracy is to show anxiety about the matter, and the Sconces need have no such emotion.”
    She paused, and Tarquin nodded obediently. He had learned as a child that anxiety—like love—was an emotion