Primrose and the Dreadful Duke: Garland Cousins #1

by Larkin, Emily

  Primrose watched over the top of the Ladies’ Monthly Museum as Miss Middleton-Murray slipped from the room. Her heartbeat sped up. Was this it?

  Primrose gave Miss Middleton-Murray a head start, and then climbed up to the South wing. Everything was exactly as it had been before: no string tied around the newel post at ankle height, no young ladies hidden in alcoves. She waited five minutes, then ten, then fifteen—and then wished herself down to behind the screen in the State dressing room.

  When she returned to the blue salon, she found the door slightly ajar. Laughter and animated voices issued from the room.

  Primrose pushed the door slightly wider, and saw Miss Warrington toss her ringlets. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes sparkling. Someone out of sight uttered a tinkling, musical laugh and said, “Oh, Westfell, you are so droll.”

  Oliver had clearly decided to leave the safety of Rhodes’s bedchamber. Primrose tutted under her breath. She hoped Oliver had looked behind himself before setting foot on the stairs.

  She stepped into the salon and observed how one person could completely change the atmosphere of a room. A vivacious energy crackled in the air. Everything seemed brighter and more alive, as if Oliver had brought sunshine into the blue salon with him. Or perhaps lamplight was a better word, for Miss Warrington and Miss Middleton-Murray were fluttering around him like moths around a lantern.

  Oliver glanced over the ladies’ heads and met Primrose’s gaze. His eyebrows lifted fractionally.

  Primrose read the question there and answered with a discreet thumbs up, telling him that the stairs were safe. She crossed to the seat she’d vacated and picked up the magazine again. She turned the pages, listening while Miss Warrington tried to coax Oliver into another duet and Miss Middleton-Murray tried to change the subject.

  Despite the fact that Miss Middleton-Murray had almost certainly tripped Miss Carteris on the stairs and was quite possibly going to attempt the same trick with Miss Warrington, despite the fact that Ninian Dasenby had probably tried to poison Oliver that very afternoon, despite the fact that she was extremely worried about Rhodes’s eyes, Primrose found a bubble of wholly inappropriate and slightly hysterical laughter growing in her chest. That overheard three-way conversation was like a comedy—Miss Warrington coaxing, Oliver stalling for all he was worth, Miss Middleton-Murray trying to change the subject.

  The bubble of laughter grew bigger. Primrose bit her lip to hold it back and glanced over the top of the magazine.

  Oliver caught her gaze, and idly stroked the bridge of his nose.

  The laughter disappeared like a soap bubble popping. Oliver wanted to talk with her?

  Primrose put down the magazine. She rose from her chair. “Excuse me,” she murmured, although no one but Oliver paid her any attention.

  The route to the State apartments had become very familiar. Primrose thought that she could probably find her way blindfolded. She glanced around for servants, opened the door, and slipped into the reception room.

  She walked through the sitting room and the dressing room, and peeked into the bedroom.

  The sight of that wide bed on its dais sent her back to the dressing room. As she crossed to the window, she heard the door to the reception room quietly open and then close.

  Primrose turned her head. Her heart gave an absurd little lurch when Oliver entered the dressing room. The taste of him was suddenly on her tongue again: Madeira. She felt stupidly nervous, stupidly shy. Please don’t let me blush. But it was too late; her cheeks had grown warm.

  “You wanted to talk to me?” she said briskly, turning away from the window, hoping that the shadows would hide her blush.

  Oliver flung himself down on the Holland-covered sofa with a loud groan. “Save me, Prim.”

  “From what?”

  “Females,” he said, in the same tone that someone would say the plague.

  “I’m a female,” she reminded him. The heat was fading rapidly from her cheeks. Oliver hadn’t wanted to speak to her; he’d merely wanted a reprieve from his admirers.

  Why did that sting?

  “Females who want to marry dukes,” Oliver amended. He rested his head on the back of the sofa, gazed up at the ceiling, and gave a huge sigh.

  Was she one of those, too? Did she want to marry Oliver?

  When Oliver had walked into this room she’d felt as if she might—and then he’d opened his mouth and done what he did best: annoy her.

  “It’s your fault for leading them on,” Primrose told him. “If you’d been standoffish from the start, they wouldn’t be so zealous in their pursuit of you now.”

  Oliver rolled his head to look at her. “But where’s the fun in that?”

  “Not everything in life is a game,” she said severely.

  He grinned at her. “You really should have been a governess, Prim.”

  “And you should have been a clown!”

  Oliver laughed. He made no move to stand, just stayed where he was, sprawled on the sofa, his head resting on its back.

  “How you ever became a captain in the army is beyond comprehension.”

  “Oh, I never played the fool when I was on duty.” He smiled up at her, his eyes gleaming softly in the shadowy room.

  Primrose’s heart gave a loud thump. She knew that men could be handsome, but she’d never realized that men could be beautiful. Oliver was at this moment, quite heart-stoppingly beautiful—those soft, dark eyes, that playful smile, the shadows painting hollows under his cheekbones. What had he just said? Oh, that he never played the fool on duty. “I find that very hard to believe!”

  “I do know when to be serious, Prim. Just haven’t had much reason to be lately. Feels like I’m on furlough, being back in England. But I’ll be serious in performing my duties as Westfell, I promise—and I’ll be especially serious when the House of Lords is sitting.” Oliver spoiled this fine speech by grinning at her again.

  Primrose sniffed.

  “Come here, Prim.” He held out one hand to her.

  “Why?” She eyed his hand for a moment, and then reluctantly crossed to the sofa and placed her hand in his.

  Oliver’s fingers closed around hers, warm and strong. He pulled her down to sit alongside him. “Because you are the perfect antidote to Miss Warrington and Miss Middleton-Murray.”

  Primrose stiffened. “Because I’m prickly?”

  “Because you’re real,” he said, putting one arm around her shoulders and drawing her closer. “You don’t pretend to be something you’re not.”

  The blush flared in her cheeks again. Her heart began to beat faster. Was Oliver going to kiss her? Primrose moistened her lips nervously, while shyness and anticipation chased one another in her chest. “You pretend. You pretend to be pompous and foolish and vain. Honestly, Oliver, do you not care what people think of you?”

  “It’s just a game, Prim. And I only play it with the ones who want to catch me. Not with anyone else.”

  Did he think that this was a game, too? Meeting in these secluded, unused rooms, sometimes putting his arm around her, sometimes kissing her?

  The realization was cold and sudden: Of course he did. Of course this was a game to him.

  If it weren’t a game, he wouldn’t be so relaxed right now. His muscles would be as taut as hers were, his heart racing just as fast as hers was. But instead, he was perfectly at ease, sprawled on the sofa with his head tipped back and his arm casually around her shoulders. This might be a different game from the one he was playing with the would-be duchesses, but it was a game nonetheless.

  Mortification replaced the shyness and anticipation in her chest. How could she have been such a fool as to imagine there might be anything between them? That she might possibly be falling in love with Oliver? That he might possibly be falling in love with her?

  “You shouldn’t play so many games,” Primrose told him, and she sounded just as prickly as he’d accused her of being.

  “You disapprove?”

  “Yes!” she sai
d. “You flip-flop like a fish, Oliver. ‘Settle on the type of person you want to be and stick to it, whether alone or in company.’ Marcus Aurelius said that, and he was right.”

  Oliver tilted his head towards her. “He also said, ‘Throw away your books.’ Was he right about that, too?”

  How could he grin at her like that? Couldn’t he see that she was mortified and furious?

  Primrose pulled away from him.

  Oliver let her go. He stopped sprawling and sat up. Then he rested his forearm on the back of the sofa and leaned close. Very close. So close that his warm breath stirred her hair. “Prickly,” he whispered, in her ear.

  It didn’t sound like an insult when he said it like that. It sounded like a compliment. Like a caress.

  A shiver swept through her. Primrose’s heart began to beat even faster. She tensed. “It’s not nice to play with people, Oliver.”

  Oliver raised his head and looked at her.

  Could he see how hurt she was right now? How angry she was with herself? With him?

  Perhaps he could, because he said, “You think I’m playing with you, Prim?”

  “Of course you are!”

  He shook his head. “On my word of honor, I’m not.”

  She wanted him to be telling the truth. “Well, I don’t see how you can expect me to know that,” she said gruffly. “Not when you—”

  “Flip-flop like a fish?” He grinned, his teeth flashing in the gloom. “You do have a way with words, Prim.”

  “I was going to say, when you pretend the whole time.”

  “Not all the time,” Oliver said. “Not even half the time. And never with you.”

  Primrose remembered the Cunninghams’ ball, when Oliver had puffed out his chest and strutted while they danced.

  But he hadn’t been pretending, then, had he? He’d been teasing her quite blatantly, and they’d both known it. There had been no attempt at pretense. He had been purely—and annoyingly—Oliver Dasenby.

  Oliver touched her cheek with a fingertip—and Primrose’s thoughts froze in place. Her entire being focused on his finger. It slid slowly down her cheek, tracing a path that burned across her skin, then along her jaw to the very center of her chin, where it stopped.

  Primrose found herself unable to breathe. She couldn’t move, couldn’t look away from Oliver. There was an expression on his face that she’d never seen before, a curious intentness.

  Oliver tilted her chin up. His expression grew even more intent—and then he lowered his head and kissed her.

  Primrose knew she ought to jerk her head away . . . but she didn’t want to. Oliver’s mouth was perfect, his finger on her chin was perfect, his kiss was perfect, everything was perfect, even the rain, even the musty lavender smell of the State rooms.

  His tongue touched her lips, and then slipped into her mouth, and she lost the ability to think. She was no longer a rational creature but one ruled by instinct. Everything was action and reaction. Oliver’s tongue sliding against hers; her breathless gasp. Her teeth nipping his lower lip; his answering growl of pleasure.

  Oliver gathered her closer. Primrose gripped his waistcoat, fingers digging in without care for the delicate mother-of-pearl buttons or the fine embroidery.

  When Oliver finally broke the kiss, they were both panting.

  Oliver sat back slightly and took several breaths, then he laughed, a ragged, breathless sound. “To think I used to call you Lady Prim-and-Proper.”

  Lady Prim-and-Proper. How she’d hated that nickname. How she’d hated him when he’d called her that. It seemed impossible that Oliver had once been that boy, that she’d once been that girl.

  “It seems so long ago,” he said.

  “Nearly twenty years.” But it felt longer than that. It felt like a lifetime ago, someone else’s lifetime, as if she and Oliver had never been those two children.

  Oliver’s smile faded. He reached out and rubbed his thumb gently along her lower lip, back and forth, back and forth. “If someone had told me back then that one day we’d kiss, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

  “Neither would I,” Primrose said. “Back then, what I most wanted to do was to wring your neck.”

  Oliver grinned. He puffed out his chest and preened slightly. “I do have that effect on people.”

  Primrose couldn’t help laughing. “You are such an idiot, Daisy.”

  “I know,” he said, still grinning. “But you like it.”

  And he was right. She did like it. A lot. She liked him a lot.

  In fact, she liked him too much, because the truth of the matter was that she and Oliver Dasenby were never going to marry. He knew it. She knew it. And yet here she was, meeting with him alone, kissing him. It was shockingly disgraceful behavior. Dangerous behavior. If Rhodes ever found out . . . Worse, if her parents ever found out . . .

  Primrose stood hastily. “I should check on Rhodes. Try to keep Miss Middleton-Murray occupied, Oliver. If she’s busy trying to bewitch you, she won’t have time to set traps on stairs.”

  He pulled a face. “Spoilsport.”

  Primrose ignored this comment, and marched briskly back to the reception room and let herself out the door. What she really wanted to do was stay on the sofa with Oliver, so she made herself climb the stairs to Rhodes’s bedroom in the North wing. To her relief, her brother was in bed with a wet cloth over his eyes, listening to his valet read aloud.

  Next, she went to the South wing, where she inspected both the newel post and the alcove, but found nothing. Primrose glanced right, glanced left, and listened intently for a moment. She heard no footsteps, no creak of floorboards, no voices. Satisfied that no one was nearby, she stepped into the alcove and wished herself back down to the State dressing room.

  The world spun for a brief moment—and when it steadied she was behind the red-and-black chinoiserie screen.

  Primrose peeked around edge of it, saw an empty sofa and shadows, and stepped out into the room—and collided with someone.

  She recoiled with a small shriek. The other person uttered a choked, masculine scream and fell over backwards.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Oliver started to scramble to his feet—and froze as recognition slapped him across the face.

  The thing that had pounced on him from behind the screen—ghost, ghoul, whatever it was—was it . . . was it Primrose?

  Primrose, whom he’d seen walk out of this room almost twenty minutes ago.

  Oliver stared. And the longer he stared at that shadowy figure, that pale face, the more certain he became.

  It was Primrose, her eyes wide and shocked, both hands pressed to her chest as if her heart was trying to burst free of her ribcage.

  His own heart was certainly trying to burst free of his ribcage. His pulse thundered wildly in his ears.

  And it wasn’t only his heartbeat that he heard in his ears; his scream echoed there, too.

  “Prim?” he said cautiously, still ready to fight or run, whichever seemed wisest, if the creature wasn’t Primrose.

  “You scared me,” she said, in a voice that sounded faint and rather breathless.

  Oliver climbed slowly and not quite steadily to his feet. You scared me, too, he almost said, although that was pretty damned obvious, given that he’d screamed and fallen over.

  Screamed and fallen over.

  He wasn’t sure what bothered him most—that Primrose had heard him shriek and seen him go head over tail, or that he had absolutely no idea how she’d suddenly appeared behind that screen. He hadn’t heard a damned thing, no doors opening, no footsteps, nothing.

  “What the devil, Prim?” His voice sounded as breathless as hers, but much harsher.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t think there’d be anyone here,” she said, her hands still pressed to her chest.

  Oliver stepped around her and looked behind the screen. The only things there were shadows. He examined the wall. There was no door that he could see.

  He swung to face her. “How did yo
u get behind this screen?”

  Primrose stared at him for a long moment, then her gaze flicked to the wall, as if she, too, was looking for a door.

  “Well?”

  She moistened her lips nervously, and didn’t speak.

  Oliver put his hands on his hips. “Prim . . . how did you get in here without me seeing or hearing?”

  Her gaze turned to the wall again, as if hoping a door might have suddenly materialized.

  “There’s no door there, Prim.”

  She looked back at him, and gripped her hands together. “You won’t believe me if I tell you.”

  “Won’t I?”

  She shook her head.

  “Tell me, Prim.”

  Primrose stared at him for a long moment, and then turned on her heel. “Come with me.”

  “Where?” Oliver said, suspiciously.

  “To talk with Rhodes.”

  “Rhodes?” He strode after Primrose. “Why?”

  “Because I know you won’t believe me, but maybe you’ll believe him.”

  Oliver followed her through the State apartments and out into the corridor. They crossed the vestibule together. It was much brighter here, candles burning in the sconces. They climbed the stairs silently. Oliver went over the events of the past five minutes in his mind. Here, in the bright candlelight, everything seemed as unreal as a dream. He could almost believe it hadn’t happened. Except that it had happened. Primrose hadn’t been there one moment, and then the next, she had.

  And he’d screamed. Like a girl. And fallen over.

  They halted outside the door to Rhodes’s bedchamber. Primrose raised her hand to knock, and then lowered it. “Are you sure you can’t just forget it, Oliver?” There was entreaty in her voice, entreaty in her eyes.