“The general labeled the Canterwick Rifles the ‘Forlorn Hope,’ ” the duke went on. “That’s the term they give to a company that has no hope of success. ‘Forlorn Hope’! My son! Picton had to eat his words.”

“I expect Picton didn’t want to let them climb the ramparts,” Olivia whispered back to Georgiana. “It’s rather nice to see that even a general can’t stop Rupert once he puts his mind to something.”

“He and his men surmounted those ramparts, although every other English company had failed,” the duke bellowed. “Scaled then and held them for several days, until the Fifth Division was able to return. They’d given up, you see. Given up and moved on, thinking the French were keeping the fort at Badajoz. They weren’t, thanks to my son!”

Olivia couldn’t stop herself; she glanced to her right. Quin was looking at her; their eyes met, and it felt as if a gulf had opened between them.

“Most of the French defenders retreated to San Cristobal, and surrendered from there,” the duke said, his voice growing louder by the moment. “The marquess led his company up those ramparts, then held the fort, and captured many French soldiers. Held it. With one hundred men, he held the whole fort.” The duke leveled a ferocious look around the room. “There have been those who said things behind my son’s back. Made fun of him. Never again! They’re talking of the Order of the Bath. An honor held by twenty-four men at the most. My son!”

There was a moment of silence and then, spontaneously, applause . . . spreading from hand to hand until the whole party was cheering, even tearful in some cases.

The duke suddenly turned to the side and caught Olivia’s arm, pulled her to him. “Miss Lytton believed in him,” he said, looking around the room, fierce. “I present to you my son’s fiancée, the future Marchioness of Montsurrey.”

Olivia almost tripped, caught herself, smiled. The applause briefly grew louder, then subsided as the Dowager Duchess of Sconce advanced majestically to stand before the duke. In the perfect silence of the room, she dropped into a low, and only slightly creaky, curtsy.

“Your Grace,” she said, “it will be the honor of this nation to welcome your son back to the shores of England wreathed in rightly deserved glory.”

Olivia did not look at Quin again.

She could not look.

Twenty-three

Why Heroes Are Not as Much Fun as Dukes

The dinner that followed the arrival of the Duke of Canterwick was never forgotten by any of the delighted and—after the joyous popping of champagne corks—inebriated guests. Though there was one participant who, even years later, would remember feeling utter despair in the midst of all that celebration.

Quin wandered among the guests feeling like a ghost: a human shell with a semblance of a face but no other distinctions than incredibly bad luck when it came to women.

He danced with Georgiana after dinner. He tracked Olivia from the corner of his eye, saw how she passed from man to man, how they ogled her and laughed with her and generally fell in love with her and into envy of the marquess.

Of course, no one would voice such a shabby emotion: not tonight, not after the French had surrendered that fort, which had been so hard-sought with lost English lives.

He walked from room to room, because if he kept moving, people didn’t try to stop him and talk of the marquess. “Envy” was a pale word to describe the emotion he felt: it was more like rage, pure hatred, livid, bone-deep jealousy. His mother put a hand on his sleeve, stilled, let him go.

He didn’t know what she saw in his eyes. It didn’t matter.

The devil of it was that he would walk out of the room where Olivia was . . . and find himself walking back into it a moment later. He couldn’t fool himself that he walked randomly. He tried to walk away. . . .

He found himself looking for her again. And again.

It seemed an eternity until the majority of guests retired to their rooms and the still excited and voluble duke was escorted to the Queen’s Chamber, so called because Queen Elizabeth had slept in it on three occasions.

Quin went to his chambers and bathed. He put on his dressing gown, then dismissed Waller and dressed himself all over again. He slipped out of his room, down the corridor, opened the door to Olivia’s bedchamber and entered.

She sat with her back to him, toes stretched out toward the fire, reading a book, just as in his dream. His body became a throbbing, aching torch.

He approached silently, swept her silky hair to the side, and bent down to kiss her neck.

His heart was pounding. He recognized the emotion flooding through his veins. He may not be the best at identifying emotion, but any fool could grasp this one. It was fear.

Rupert had done it. He was a war hero, now. A war hero.

Olivia had the choice of marrying a man who stayed at home, no better than a man-milliner, or marrying a man who scaled the ramparts, held the fort, and saved the day. Hell, Rupert might even have turned the tide of the war. He and his piddling hundred men.

His lips touched her neck as he breathed in that delicate combination of flowers and mystery that was his Olivia . . . as he waited with a sense of dread that stretched from the tips of his fingers all the way to his soul, wherever that mysterious organ might be situated.

He’d been in this state before: the first night Evangeline didn’t come home. When she’d returned with the dawn light, she’d said that he was boring, with his talk of nothing but mathematics until she wanted to scream. She had spent the night with a local squire.

“I couldn’t say no,” Evangeline had said dreamily. “He had gone out on a hunt and startled a gang of smugglers, captured them all. He’s a hero.”

Even months later, when the “smugglers” came to trial and turned out to have been starving villagers, desperately trying to poach rabbits in woods the squire liked to think of as his own . . . even then she’d still thought of the man as a hero.

Now, here, Olivia’s arms rose and caught him around the neck. Cherry lips, a gleam in her eye that was for him alone . . .

“I’m sorry,” he managed to say, but not until minutes or even an hour later.

“What for?” He’d maneuvered her from the chair to the rug, firelight leaping here and there, flickering on her creamy skin. As it turned out, she was wearing nothing but a dressing gown, and though she had tried to keep it tied, he had managed to wrestle it open.

Blood raced through his body. But it had to be said. “You could have married a war hero if I hadn’t taken your virginity. Every woman loves a hero.”

“Isn’t it wonderful for Rupert?” she said, smiling.

“Absolutely.” His voice was hollow, but he kept it in check.

“We won’t have any problem finding him a wife now,” she continued. “Is something wrong, Quin? You aren’t jealous of poor Rupert, are you?”

There was only one answer to that. “Yes.”

She came up on one elbow, put a soft hand on his cheek. “Please don’t tell me that you want to go to war.”

“I can’t. Too many responsibilities. But yes, I would like to. I’ve read Machiavelli, Julius Caesar, and de Saxe. I would like to do something that makes a difference in the world.”

“I do see what you mean,” she said, lying back and folding her arms behind her head. “You’re saying that you have to stay home and take care of thousands of acres of land, and make sure hundreds of people in your care and working on your lands are fed and clothed and able to live another day . . . Wait! Is that making a difference?” She tapped her chin. “No, you’re right. Unless you can go over to France and kill some people, your life is wasted.”