Page 78 of Who Wants to Marry a Duke
“I generally mean what I say,” he told her, hoping he was successful in hiding his irritation at the whole process.
Warily she came closer. “You seem annoyed.”
She might have trouble understanding people, but she certainly had no trouble understanding him. He raked his hair with one hand. “I’m simply unaccustomed to being part of this sort of thing.”
She smiled tightly. “Wedding plans? Or not always getting your way?”
“Very amusing, sweeting.” He pulled her into his arms for a hard and thorough kiss that got him hot and bothered.
And her, too, judging from her quickened breathing after she drew back. “What am I to do with you?” she asked softly.
“A number of very wicked and wanton things you probably can’t do until we are very properly and completely wed.”
A light dawned in her face. “That’swhy you want to marry so quickly.”
He smirked at her. “You certainly took your time about deducing that.”
“You didn’t explain it to me well enough.” She walked back toward the dining room door, then paused to give him a come hither look. “But now that you have, I do believe we’ll be marrying here by special license after all.”
He chuckled as she reentered the dining room. This marriage might actually work. At least he could be certain she would match his eagerness for bed sport. And surely that would be enough for him.
Olivia said good night to her mother much later than she should have, but they’d had a great deal to discuss with Gwyn, who’d just gone down the hall herself to bed. Now Olivia felt at loose ends. She wasn’t ready to retire, but neither did she feel like reading.
Perhaps she should ask Thorn what he wanted her to do with her laboratory. Would it remain here for her use? Would he prefer a building not so close to the house? If she had to pack it up tonight, that would be good to know.
You just want another fiery kiss, you wicked woman.
Yes. She did. When Thorn kissed her, he convinced her that she might not be making a mistake in marrying him. And she could use such reassurance right now. Because his continued insistence on seeing their future marriage as merely a physical and practical arrangement was starting to gnaw at her.
Looking both ways down the hall to make sure no one was around to see her, Olivia ran down the stairs and then found the door to Thorn’s study. It was a little ajar so she tapped as loudly as she dared, not wanting to draw anyone’s attention. And when he didn’t answer, she slipped inside to determine for sure if he was there.
He certainly was, but sound asleep. She walked over to look at him, where he sat with his head resting on the back of the chair and his eyes closed. Hard to believe that this handsome fellow, with his rumpled hair and well-muscled body, would soon be hers.
And what were all these papers strewn across his desk? They didn’t look like business letters or contracts or whatever other kind of work she’d assumed he was performing. With a furtive glance at Thorn to make sure he wasn’t awake, she picked a page up and stared at it.
It was written in the form of a play. One of the characters was named Felix. How odd. She picked up other pages and read them. This was definitely one of the Juncker plays . . . but not one she recognized. She’d seen—and read—them all, and this one wasn’t familiar to her.
Perhaps Thorn was reading Mr. Juncker’s latest manuscript to give the man a critique of sorts. Writers did that sometimes, didn’t they?
She carefully scanned through the pages on the desk, but she couldn’t find a single one with markings in a different handwriting. And she knew Thorn too well to think he wouldn’t have marked up Mr. Juncker’s manuscript. He would have taken a fiendish delight in correcting his friend’s mistakes.
Could Mr. Juncker have given Thorn the play as a gift, sort of like a poet offering a friend the first copy of his poem that hadn’t yet been published? If he had, it would have only been to mock Thorn for being jealous of him. While that fit with what she’d observed of their relationship, she couldn’t imagine Thorn reading Mr. Juncker’s latest play and referring to it as work he had to do.
A thought crept into her mind that was too awful to comprehend. Thorn had grown up in Germany just as Felix had. Mr. Juncker’s style of speech had been more poetic and flamboyant than the crisp wit of the dialogue in “his” plays.
Dear heaven, what if Konrad Juncker had merely given his name to Thorn’s plays? It would explain why Thorn was so grouchy around him. It would explain Thorn’s seeming jealousy. He wasn’t jealous of Mr. Juncker’s success—he was annoyed he couldn’t acknowledge his part in that success.
But why wouldn’t he at least tellher? It made no sense. If he was the true author of the plays, she would think he’d confess it if only to make her stop going on and on about Mr. Juncker’s brilliance.
She leaned over the desk to note the quill still in Thorn’s hand, and the words at the end of it on the paper in a sentence only half written. ThatThornhad been writing when he fell asleep. He was the author. He had to be.
He’d created the wonderful characters that so delighted her. Felix was surely based on him. Lady Grasping—who might she be? Not to mention the amusing Lady Slyboots, with all her attempts to snag a husband . . .
Her gasp of horror awakened Thorn.
Her. Slyboots was supposed to beher. And Grasping was Mama. They were the basis of the characters all of London laughed at and mocked.That’swhy he hadn’t told her he was the author.
“Olivia?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. Then he saw what she’d been looking at, and said, in a lower, guiltier voice, “Olivia . . . it’s not what you think.”
