In fact, she almost began to edge back toward the door . . . but her appointment. She couldn’t leave the library.
What if Mr. Marlowe didn’t wait for her?
“Your father would approve of Miss Astley,” Sir Reginald argued. “The Duke of Lindow considers her his daughter, and that’s all that really counts. What’s more, Miss Astley has been dowered by her father and by the duke.”
“I don’t need money, and I want the real Wilde,” the duke said flatly. “The other one, Joan.”
He sounded as if choosing a wife was akin to selecting ribbons. No, like choosing between pickled herring or turnips.
Viola loathed both foods—and him.
“Joan is ravishingly beautiful, but if you want to be pedantic about it, she isn’t a real Wilde either,” his uncle argued. “Hasn’t got a drop of Wilde blood in her veins. Hair is yellow as a buttercup, thanks to the Prussian who fathered her.”
Viola scowled. She hated the fact that people maligned Joan due to her mother’s infidelity.
“I don’t care about that,” the duke said, rather surprisingly. “She’s a Wilde because her father says she is. She was raised a Wilde, ergo she is a Wilde.”
“Miss Astley was raised a Wilde too, and her father was your—”
“It’s not the same,” his nephew interrupted, sounding impatient. “I need a woman who has been raised as ducal progeny, not just tossed into the nursery due to her mother’s marriage. I don’t have the faintest interest in training someone how to be a duchess.”
His uncle guffawed. “Not that you’d know how!”
The duke didn’t say anything, but Viola could imagine his well-bred upper lip curling. He really was awful.
“You’re the oddest duke ever seen in the British Isles,” Sir Reginald said, hooting. “All the rest of them went to Eton together, went to war together, went to brothels together, for Christ’s sake. But you? You never go anywhere.”
That explained why he’d never made his way to Lindow Castle. Viola had certainly never met him.
Imagining Joan leaping to her feet and declaiming, “I loathe cats,” made Viola’s heart ease. The Wildes enjoyed Joan’s performances, but her mother made certain that they were never truly unkind, and no one other than family was ever invited to join the audience. All the same, a duke this arrogant would definitely have had a lead role at family dinner.
Her stomach steadied.
He was inconsequential.
“Exactly,” the duke said now.
“Exactly what?” his uncle demanded.
“That’s what it means to be a duke.”
“Nonsense!”
“If the Duchess of Wynter wishes to waste her time at balls, she’s welcome to do so,” the duke stated. “I don’t give a damn.”
Viola believed him.
“I need someone who has a thorough, instinctive understanding of what a duchess does and doesn’t do, so she doesn’t bother me about it. I will certainly not accompany my wife into society. While I realize it is necessary to attend one to two public occasions in order to inform my choice of a bride, after marriage I shall not escort my wife to musicales, balls, or any other nonsense. She needs to be able to fend for herself.”
Hopefully no lady would accept him, including Caitlin. He didn’t deserve a wife.
“I didn’t choose Miss Astley merely due to your father’s friendship,” his uncle said, persisting. “She’s a little mouse. Perfect for you.”
Viola winced. She didn’t like the characterization, but she couldn’t say it was unfair.
“Why would you think a woman of that sort appropriate for me?” the duke growled.
“She’s pretty,” Sir Reginald added hastily. “Not mousy that way. It’s my impression that she doesn’t even know how pretty she is, which is important.”
Viola rolled her eyes.
“We can’t have a vain woman as Duchess of Wynter,” His Lordship went on. “Nor yet an overly proud one. But on the other hand, she can’t be a dowdy girl either, because she will be a duchess, and she needs to hold her own once we get her portrait up there on the third floor.”
“I’m sure I can find someone worthy of the gallery,” the duke said indifferently. “Golden hair paints well.”
Golden hair paints well indeed!
His chance of marrying Joan would be precisely zero after Viola recounted this conversation. Although she’d have to make up some excuse why she overheard his assessment. She couldn’t reveal that she’d been hiding in the library waiting for an illicit rendezvous.
The reminder made her heart bound. Who cared if the horrid Duke of Wynter thought that she didn’t belong at her own debut ball? If she had her way, she would have nothing to do with polite society in the future.
At this moment, Wynter stood up and reached a hand down to help his uncle to his feet, which finally placed him directly in Viola’s eyesight.
His face was more angular than most gentlemen’s; in fact, his features were as harsh as his voice. His heavy-lidded, arrogant look didn’t surprise her, though.
She’d seen that her whole life. Her older stepbrothers were experts at wielding superiority like a hammer. They didn’t mean it, but it was bred-in-the-bone.
He was as big as her brothers too. Rather than his coat hanging gracefully, it was snugly tailored to fit wide shoulders and powerful arms, as if he spent most of his time riding.
She preferred a willowy form.
And he was uncomfortably tall. Not like . . .
Not like the wonderful man with whom she would meet very soon, if they would please take themselves off! If only Sir Reginald would give up this useless argument and realize a ballroom full of ladies awaited his beastly nephew.
“I must be shockingly obtuse,” the duke remarked, “but I fail to see why you think that I would wish to take a mouse to wife.”
Viola made a note of that: “shockingly obtuse.” Generally, Joan did all the impressions at the dinner table but perhaps she would do this one herself.
If the duke had a pair of horns, he could stand in for Beelzebub. He was wearing a wig, but given his dark eyebrows, his hair must be black. He’d stripped off his gloves—another mark against him, because no gentleman took off his gloves at a ball unless he was eating—and his skin was tawny.
She preferred the opposite.
Porcelain skin and celestial blue eyes.
And a sweet nature, she added, smiling despite the situation.
“You always were a stubborn lad,” Sir Reginald grumbled. “The mouse is for you because she won’t want to go into society, don’t you see? Rumor has it she throws up if asked to dance, but that must be wrong, because I saw her circling the floor a while ago.”
“A point in favor of matrimony,” the duke said. “Able to dance without vomiting.”
“My point is that she won’t nag you to go to balls, and yet she’s extremely well connected. She has powerful relations and an excellent dowry.”
Sir Reginald’s analysis wasn’t entirely unreasonable.
But who cared? Even if Viola hadn’t been in love, she would never marry anyone like Wynter.
An angel on one side and Beelzebub on the other: No one in the world would be surprised by her choice.