Page 78

“The game you’re playing is with your mother, not me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your mother pulled me into the river before she summoned you to rescue her. She made certain you saw me drenched in water.”

Silvester frowned. Damn it. Stella was likely right.

He had inherited his dislike of losing from his mother. Clearly, the dowager had only pretended to give up the idea of his marrying Stella, her choice for a duchess. But in reality, his mother had been scheming to make just that happen.

“I like the dowager,” Stella continued, “but I won’t be party to her maneuverings, even if it would get me a dukedom. I don’t care about your title, Silvester. I didn’t care about Giles’s, either, and I would have refused his hand had he proposed.”

“I see,” Silvester said. Ever since he reached his majority, he’d been accosted by artful women with a grating determination to “win” a coronet. Until he met Yasmin, who, like Stella, showed no interest in his dukedom.

He had only himself to offer, but that wasn’t what Stella wanted either.

“I will find a man who adores me, or I’ll buy a house next to a bookstore and live happily by myself,” she concluded, shaking out her skirts. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Your Grace, you are dead, and I am very much alive, so I shall inform my army that we have won the battle and the laurel wreath.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Stella emerged from the shadow of the gazebo onto the lawn, forcing herself to march, although her knees felt wobbly. She had walked away from Silvester bravely enough, but inside she felt like a bowl of jelly.

He had proposed to her.

Silvester, Duke of Huntington, had offered to marry her.

If someone had asked her a day or a week ago, she would have said that marrying Silvester was the dearest, secret wish of her heart. But marrying him when he’d just been rejected by the woman he adored?

When he couldn’t even sum up a lie and pretend that she, Stella, was adorable?

No.

He must have lost his mind. Or he was bent on saving face. Or he was ruled by lust. Likely, she thought, the latter. Having lost at love, he’d decided to propose due to lust instead.

A cluster of people, including two footmen, were gathered around the dowager duchess, who was leaning back in a chair as if the battle had exhausted her. Stella had serious doubts about that.

“Oh, there you are!” Merry called. “We had to call off our game, as Her Grace grew quite tired.”

When Stella reached them, she discovered the dowager was smiling in a way that suggested she had won a more significant game. “You and my son were out of sight for a considerable period of time, Lady Stella,” she said cheerfully, straightening with all the energy of a forty-year-old. “Unchaperoned, I might add.”

“His Grace and I had an interesting discussion about the celebratory practices of Roman empires,” Stella said. “According to him, I am due not just the laurel wreath but a purple, gold-embroidered toga, because I did give him a second blow with my sword, which means the battle is over.”

The dowager narrowed her eyes.

Stella smiled at her. “We were ably chaperoned by Peter, of course.”

“We won!” Fanny screamed, realizing what happened.

Merry clapped her hands. “Champagne!”

At the other end of the garden, Silvester strolled out of the gazebo, Specs on his shoulder and Peter carrying the elderly bulldog. The dowager’s expression fell.

They sat down to glasses of champagne or lemonade. Specs dashed about the lawn, followed by Peter. At some point, George toddled over and leaned against Stella’s leg until she lifted the chunky dog into her lap. He draped his white muzzle over one of her knees and fell asleep.

“He sleeps most of the time these days,” Merry said. “Your toga will be covered with white hairs.”

“I don’t mind,” Stella said, petting George’s head as he slept. She listened quietly to the dowager sparring with Merry. Silvester was silent too.

After a while, the Duke of Trent appeared and sat down beside his wife. He had always seemed frighteningly austere to Stella, but the expression in his eyes when he looked at his wife? And at his children, cavorting on the lawn in grass-stained togas, Fanny wearing a laurel wreath tipped over one ear?