Page 8 of The Duke of Ruin
"Why me?" she asked, after a lengthy silence, in which Ruan had wondered if perhaps he had been a bit too impatient with his plans. Actuallyaskingthe girl if she wished to be his wife, might have ingratiated him a little better with her.
"You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen," he said simply, unembarrassed by his confession. "The moment I saw you, I knew that I had to have you as my own. I desire to continue on my line, and when I do, I'd rather do it with a beautiful woman like you, rather than some insipid Miss with a dowry I don't need."
To his pleasure, a pink flush began to form on his wife's cheeks, making its way down her neck to her décolletage, and the impressive swell of her breasts. Ruan lifted his gaze from her bosom, to her eyes, which were watching him with irritated amusement.
"Most men would try to court a woman they desired as a wife," she challenged him, her eyes narrow and thoughtful. "They would write love notes, and fill her dance card. They wouldn't try to win her in a game of chance."
"I am not most men," Ruan shrugged, thinking that the courtship rituals she had listed sounded insipid and dull.
"And I am not a piece of horseflesh to be bartered with."
The last sentence was spit with such venom, that Ruan recoiled slightly. He had made many women angry over the years, in fact it was one of the things he did best, but this woman, his wife, was so furious that Ruan believed if she had been in possession of a pistol, she would have shoot him there and then.
It was alarmingly alluring.
"You are not a piece of horseflesh," he agreed, hoping to placate her anger. "You are my wife, and anything that you desire shall be yours. Don't tell me that the life that I can offer you is less certain than living at the mercy of your profligate father?"
"I believe the expression, your Grace," Olive replied, in bored tones, unimpressed by his declaration. "Is caught between the devil and the deep, blue sea."
Ruan smiled with appreciation, for it was a sailor's expression. She thought him the devil, but as a man who had spent a decade of his life on the ocean, he knew that she could not fathom the dangers of dark, endless seas. Better she was under his care, the known devil, than at the mercy of her father. Who knew who, or what type of man, might have eventually won her hand. The thought left him shaken, which perplexed him. He was not inclined toward feelings of empathy or protectiveness, but his new wife seemed to be eliciting both.
"You may call me Ruan," was all he managed to say in response, his thoughts being occupied elsewhere.
"What kind of a name is that?" she asked, watching him with sloe eyes.
"Scottish," he thought briefly of his wild mother, who had bestowed on him a Highlander's name, before disappearing to the continent with one of his father's footmen. His last memory of her was when she had tucked him in to bed the night that she had left. She had smoothed his hair, and told him that she loved him, then left his life forever. Looking back now, he recognized that his mother had only been a child herself; though the memory of her leaving still seared through his soul.
The carriage carried on moving at a brusque pace, and soon they had passed Bath and were on the road to Bristol proper.
"Have you ever been to France?" he asked, to break the silence that had fallen between them again. With Catherine, their short marriage had been filled with silence and the pressure of things unsaid; Ruan wanted this to be different. He wanted Olive to feel free to speak to him.
"No," she answered shortly, tearing her eyes away from the window and glancing at him with disdain. "Do you think a father with a predication for gambling would ever have had the money to take me to Paris? When he lost we barely had money for food."
"Of course, I apologise," Ruan frowned; now that he thought on it, Paris had probably always been beyond her grasp. "You'll like it, I promise. You can have anything your heart desires. Now that you are my Duchess, you shall not want for a thing."
Olive looked at him, with the steady gaze that women the world over had mastered, reserved specifically for the times a man dared declare that he could give her anything her heart wished for.
What do you know of my heart? He could see her thinking, and for the first time in his two and thirty years, he cursed the fact that he was born a male. Oh, to have the innate wisdom that women possessed, to feel as deeply as they did. He was a lumbering boar of a man, he knew that, and his desires were simple, not multi-layered and unobtainable - as he was sure Olive's, like every other woman's - were.
"Thank you, your Grace," his wife replied simply, her tone decidedly calm, dare he say, polite. She resumed her watch on the passing fields, leaving Ruan feeling bereft as her attention fell elsewhere.
He had no idea what it was that Olive wanted, but at that moment he would have killed to get it for her, a thought that scared him no end.
The port of Bristol was a hive of activity, dozens of tall ships were docked in their berths, and hundreds of sailors and tars milled around the cobblestoned pier, all watched over by the towering spires of St. Mary Radcliffe. Liv watched from the window of the carriage as labourers unloaded cargo from their vessels, whilst urchin children ran underfoot, seeking to collect anything that was dropped in the process.
"We're here," the Duke said, pointlessly Liv felt, for she had eyes in her head and she could see that they had arrived.
"Have you ever sailed before?" he asked again, waiting for a response. Her husband had a remarkably thick skull, Liv thought with a scowl, for patently she did not wish to speak with him, and yet he kept directing questions her way.
"I spent my childhood summers with my mother's family, on the coast of Devon," she offered, struggling to keep her face blank as memories of those glorious, hot days when she was safe and loved, resurfaced. "I have sailed in small boats, your Grace, and I am a capable swimmer, but I have never been aboard a ship."
"Ruan," he frowned at her, his gaze dark and forbidding, "I told you to call me Ruan."
"You did."
His face was awash with annoyance, apparently the Duke expected her to feel an innate familiarity with him now that they were married. Which was preposterous, because at her count, she had known him all of five hours. Soon she would know him in the Biblical sense, she thought with a slight jolt of fear. She knew little of what went on in the marital bedroom but, she glanced at the Duke from the corner of her eyes, she automatically knew that he would not be a dispassionate lover. She felt her face begin to flush at the wanton thoughts that stole over her, and was grateful when the liveried footman opened the door of the carriage for the newlyweds.
"The captain is here to meet you, your Grace," the handsome young man said, with a bow of deference to the Duke.
