Olympia wanted to jump out of her skin.
But no. She would not let herself think about what the Duke of Ripley might have seen when she stood on his shoulders. Merely thinking about thinking about it made her dizzy. Dizzier. And vastly uneasy.
“Stop wriggling,” he said.
“I wasn’t,” she said.
“You’re not holding still,” he said. “I have to feel my way because there isn’t light enough in here for me to see properly. I can’t do it if you’re moving.”
“I can’t help the coach’s jolting,” she said. “And I’m desperately uncomfortable.” There was an understatement. She felt prickly all over. And hot. And confused.
“I’m working as fast as I can, but your maid or hairdresser has secreted the pins in the damnedest places. Is this thing glued together?”
“No, it’s only a thousand pins and some pomatum.”
“Hold out your hand and I’ll give you the pins,” he said. “We needn’t save the bits and pieces of rhododendron, I trust? At the moment, you put me in mind of Ophelia after she fell into the water.”
“The veil caught in everything,” she said. Then she realized what he’d said. “You know Hamlet?”
“I like Shakespeare’s plays,” he said. “Lots of violence and bawdy jokes.”
No surprise there.
She held out her hand. His fingers brushed hers as he dropped some pins onto her palm, and the fleeting touch skittered along her skin. She wished she’d put on her gloves before she left. The trouble was, she would have had to return to her room to get them, and somebody was bound to be waiting there: Mama, Aunt Lavinia. Olympia would have been trapped. No turning back then.
Rightfully so. She should not have waited until the last possible moment to balk. She should not have balked. What was wrong with her?
She watched flower petals, some cherry red and others palest pink, drift down into the straw. Shiny bits of green leaves fluttered after them.
What had she done?
Never mind, never mind. One thing at a time.
She’d been wrong about the number of hairpins.
Ripley reckoned there must be at least ten thousand. Still, once he ascertained the pattern, he was able to get at them more efficiently. From her thick, shiny hair rose the fragrance of lavender, with a hint of rosemary. It was a shockingly chaste scent. He was used to the rich fragrances with which actresses, courtesans, and dashing ladies of the ton infused their pomatums.
He became aware of his head bending nearer. He drew it back.
Even done efficiently, the process was a long one, not merely of removing hairpins but also of disentangling the orange blossoms and intricate lace arrangement without, at the same time, disarranging her hair completely.
Bad enough for a woman to be running about in a bridal dress. In any dress, with her hair down, she’d be taken for a prostitute or a madwoman.
A lady did not let down her hair until she prepared for bed.
Loose hair meant loose woman.
This woman would be fair game for sport, in other words, of one kind or another.
Not for him, of course. He was the bloody bridesmaid.
He couldn’t let her go anywhere without him.
Not that this was altogether bad. She was entertaining. And he was looking forward to helping her drive Ashmont frantic.
Yet Ripley did wish he had his hat.
The most wretched of paupers managed some sort of head-covering, however ragged. Small wonder that the Duke of Ripley, who regarded Society’s rules as a joke book, squirmed inwardly because he was Out in Public without a Hat.
Best not to think about his naked head.
Useful as well not to dwell too much on the fragrance rising from her head and the way it conjured images of lazing in a sunlit Tuscan garden.
No Tuscan villa in the vicinity. No naughty contessas.
Only Ashmont’s bride-to-be.
And this wasn’t Tuscany or anything like Tuscany.
This was London, raining as was its custom, while His Grace of Ripley sat playing lady’s maid in a filthy hackney coach plodding toward Battersea Bridge.
It was a new experience, at any rate.
He managed to get the headdress separated from her head without too much screaming—hers or his. But it turned out that some of the plaits belonged to her, and the side curls had loosened, and in short, everything seemed to be coming down. He snatched hairpins from her outstretched palm and hastily got the dangling bits back up, not very elegantly, but up was up.
Then at last he dropped the crown and attached veil onto her lap and sat back.
She looked down at the mass of lace and orange blossoms in her lap.
“It’s blond lace, so expensive,” she said. “It’s sure to fetch something at a pawnshop. More than enough to pay the waterman.”
“I’m not taking your bridal veil to a pawnshop,” he said.
“Did I ask you to? I’m perfectly capable—”
“Yesterday you might have been capable of many things,” he said. “This isn’t yesterday. This is today. You’re inebriated. You’re wearing a wedding dress. If you stir a step without me, you’ll be assaulted. Whatever happens to you will be my fault, and there isn’t a strong enough word for or enough words to put with bored to tell you how bored I am with duels.”
She opened her mouth—to argue, no doubt. Then she closed it and turned her gaze downward again, to the dismantled headdress.
Second thoughts? He could work with that, although—
“Do you have enough money for the waterman?” she said. “After you pay the coachman? Yes, of course you’re a duke, but in my experience, gentlemen don’t carry a great deal of money with them.”
He gazed at her for a time, at the dirt on her nose and the spots on her spectacles from tears or rain, and the bizarre arrangement he’d made of her hair.
Never since his unpleasant childhood had any woman asked whether he had enough money. For anything.
It was rather touching.
But it wasn’t his job to be touched. His job was to manage matters to come out the right way.
Simple enough, really.
Get her to her aunt, make Ashmont retrieve her, and make everybody believe it was all a typical Their Dis-Graces practical joke.
“As it happens, I brought ready money for gratuities, bribes, and other odds and ends,” he said. “Ashmont, obviously, was too . . . excited . . . about getting married to think of mundane matters.”
“Excited,” she said. “Is that what you call it? I would say he was extremely intoxicated when you three burst in upon me.”
“And pot calls kettle black,” he said.
The coach rumbled to a halt, as it had done numerous times on the interminable journey. Ripley looked out of the grimy window. Thanks to the scratches and dirt, the view might have been of anything. He pushed down the window. The rain had settled to a drizzle.
The coachman called out, “Battersea Bridge, Yer Grace.”
“We can still turn back,” Ripley said.
“No,” she said.
Chapter 3