Page 49

Yet there was something delectable about being lifted into the air with no more strain than she might lift Barty to her knee. The duke seemed to understand how much she disliked craning her neck to look up during a conversation.

“You planned to marry Joan,” Viola reminded him. “You could have met her last year and never donned that rose-covered coat until your wedding.”

“If I’d come to the castle last year, would I have met you?”

She shook her head. “Not unless you somehow found your way to the cowshed.”

“The cowshed?”

She gave him a sheepish grin. “I have two pet cows, Cleopatra and Daisy. You like to be in the library; I like to be in the cowshed.”

“A library smells a good deal sweeter,” he observed.

“Daisy and Cleopatra live like queens,” Viola admitted. “Fresh straw morning and night.”

He laughed. “You’ll be an expensive wife if every cow you encounter warrants the same treatment.”

“Gowns and jewels are truly expensive,” she said. “A cowshed is a modest expense. Not much more than the shelter for a collection of wheelbarrows.”

Wynter was looking down at Viola in a way that made her feel peculiar in the stomach—but not as if she might throw up. Instead she felt warm and prickly.

He wasn’t beautiful, the way Mr. Marlowe was.

But he was . . . he was something.

Grand, maybe. He was grand, in all the meanings of the word.

He was leaning one hip against the balustrade she was seated on, turned toward her. His features were far more rough-hewn than those of the men in the Wilde family—let alone Mr. Marlowe’s—and yet she discovered that she was beginning to like them.

“Why is your nose crooked?” she asked. “It gives you the air of a boxer.”

One side of his mouth hitched up. “Fell off my pony at age three.”

“Three! Three is very young to be on the back of a horse, even a small one.”

“I didn’t ride; I fell off directly. My father was certain that I would manifest his riding skills early, since I was his only son. Only child, in fact.”

“What does that have to do with it?” Viola asked. “My mother loves to ride, but I am a wretched coward and find myself clutching the horse’s mane and squealing like a piglet.”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

His eyes smiled at her.

Viola pushed away the tingling response she had to that particular gaze. “Don’t disbelieve it,” she told him. “I’m a pathetic horsewoman. One of the many ways that I’m not suited to being a noblewoman.”

“What are the others?”

“I can’t sing. I can’t embroider either. I can unpick knitting, mostly because my Aunt Knowe is good at tangling it, but I haven’t much interest in making scarves, let alone complicated things such as mitts. I like to read, but that’s a solitary pursuit.”

“Are you any good at mathematics?”

“Absolutely not. The first time I threw up in public was when we had an end-of-the-year mathematics examination coming up.”

“I’m no good at singing, embroidering, or knitting either,” the duke said. “I don’t read novels, but I do like mathematics.” He leaned closer. “I like you.”

Viola rolled her eyes. “Irrelevant.”

“Why irrelevant? Because of the vicar?”