Seven Minutes in Heaven(111)
“Are you suggesting that I should pretend to be a different man—legitimate, perhaps? Or a member of the nobility?”
The duchess’s eyes softened. “Ward, you are a member of the nobility. As are all of our children. What Villiers wanted to prove in his black coat was that the private man, not the most flamboyant rake in London, was in love with me.”
“I love Eugenia,” Ward said.
“Everyone loves her,” the duchess said, with a clear look from her blue eyes. “You will need to move quickly. Evan has told his mother that he plans to make her his wife.”
A sound dangerously close to a growl rose from Ward’s chest.
“I expect her to attend the hearing tomorrow, sitting in the peeresses’ box.”
It had never occurred to him that Eugenia might be there. Not that he knew anything about the House of Lords and their not-so-private private acts.
His former fiancée, Mia, suddenly appeared. With a smile at the duchess, she nudged Ward with her elbow. “Ask me to dance, won’t you?”
“It’s refreshing to see how friendly the two of you are,” the Duchess of Villiers observed. “When I realized that Roberta had once been betrothed to Villiers, I glowered at her every chance I got.”
“We are excellent friends.” Mia twinkled at the duchess. “I intend to use Ward to make my husband jealous.”
A minute later, as they began circling the floor, she asked, “Are you quite well?”
“Not really,” Ward replied.
“You have nothing to worry about,” she said. “Just look around this ballroom. Why, if someone blew it up with gunpowder the way Guy Fawkes tried to do with Parliament, half the country’s peers would be lost.”
“You’re a novelist to the core, Mia,” Ward said, smiling down at her.
He felt a prickling in his shoulders, glanced to the side, and met the glare of Mia’s husband. The look in Pindar’s eyes actually cheered him up. “I think you’re succeeding in making your husband jealous.”
“Excellent,” Mia said, patently unconcerned. “Now, how are you planning to win back Mrs. Snowe?”
“I shall kidnap her.” He had decided to drive the carriage to Fonthill’s front door, push past that butler, and carry her out over his shoulder. But if she attended the House tomorrow, he would steal her straight from there.
Mia frowned. “I’ve written that plot twice, Ward, and it would not be romantic in reality. I always have to finesse the inconvenient fact that my heroine wouldn’t have a toothbrush or a clean chemise.”
“I brought her maid along last time.”
“Last time?” Mia squeaked.
“Vander is on the verge of doing me bodily harm,” Ward said, bringing her to a halt in front of her duke, who promptly tucked his wife under an arm and dropped a kiss on her head for good measure.
“Don’t be a bear,” Mia said, looking up at her husband. “I dragged Ward onto the floor.”
“Why?” Vander growled, in a very bearlike fashion.
Ward gave him a sardonic grin. “It seems there’s a former-fiancée clause that permits her to organize my love life.”
Mia poked Vander around the middle. “Will you please stop glowering at my former fiancé?”
Mia was small, but she obviously wasn’t allowing her out-sized husband to intimidate her. Ward considered giving her a congratulatory kiss, but that might push Vander too far.
“I want to make certain that Ward wins the hand of Eugenia Snowe,” Mia continued. “I’ve only met her twice, but I thought her absolutely enchanting.”
“Everyone does,” Ward said.
Well, with the exception of his grandmother.
“You must make a grand gesture,” Mia said earnestly. “Something Mrs. Snowe would never expect. Something that will make it clear that you love her more than you possibly could any other woman, that you treasure her just as she is.”
“I made one,” Vander said. He had both arms around his wife now.
“What did you do?” Ward inquired.
“I wrote a poem.”
“You wrote a love poem, because I write novels about love,” his wife declared. “It was your way of telling me that you respected my profession.”
From Vander’s twitch, Ward was pretty sure that His Grace hadn’t been considering his wife’s novels when he wrote that love poem.
He let a sardonic smile touch the corners of his mouth so that Vander realized that Ward had a hold over him.
The duke narrowed his eyes.
“You must do the same,” Mia said, blithely unaware of the silent conversation occurring over her head. “Your grand gesture has to convince Eugenia that you value and respect her as an intelligent woman with remarkable accomplishments.”