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“Well, yes,” Torie admitted. “In the nursery. My point is that duchesses are always chattered about, so I shall have to reconcile myself to being the subject of gossip.” A happy thought occurred to her. “I can also help you find a new fiancée! I will be in an excellent position to survey the available ladies and find one who will understand Val and Florence.”

Not that she’d met such a woman yet, but there was always next Season.

“Let’s go back to your sister. How old was she when she decided to become a viscountess?” Dominic asked.

“That’s no longer relevant,” Torie replied. “In the end, Leonora chose a lord over a viscount. Her marriage to Lord Bufford must be true love.”

“I doubt that.”

“Well, you would doubt it, wouldn’t you?” Torie asked. In her experience, men rarely accepted logical conclusions. “What other explanation is there? Don’t bring up the twins, because Leonora could have forced you to put the children in school.”

“She never wanted to marry me, just the title,” Kelbourne said, acting as if he’d received a blow to the gut.

Torie sighed. “Surely this isn’t the first time you noticed the appeal of your title?” Then she felt a twinge of guilt. “Or were you in love with her?”

He shot her an incredulous glance. “I chose your sister carefully.”

“A face that inspired poetry, together with the promise of ladylike docility. You weren’t the only man to fall for it,” Torie said. “You don’t seem to have given any thought to the attributes she might have been looking for in a spouse.”

“The title of viscount,” he snarled, all too obviously wallowing in a feeling of injustice.

“True, you were lucky that Viscount Cornwell married the year before,” Torie said. “Leonora would have chosen him over you.” She was starting to enjoy the conversation. “Because of the attributes she would have preferred in a husband, given the chance. The ones you never considered.”

“Which are?”

“Golden locks and slender limbs.”

Dominic’s mouth curled with distaste. “She wanted a man who would ‘caper nimbly in his lady’s chamber to the lascivious pleasing of a lute’?”

She looked him over slowly, registering not for the first time that her list of attributes would include burly thighs and intense eyes. “You’re no Richard III, so Shakespeare’s next line is entirely inappropriate.” Heat came up in her cheeks; a lady shouldn’t mention bawdy innuendos, but her dratted memory had served up the speech in its entirety.

“Being ‘shaped for sportive tricks’?” Dominic’s slow smile was a triumph of sensuality. “I may not be good at capering, but I’m dead certain that I can manage ‘sportive tricks.’”

“Your future wife will be happy to know it,” Torie managed. “Can we please return to the subject of this conversation? We are planning how I, as Duchess of Queensberry, will help you raise the twins. For example, I would be very happy to chaperone Florence’s debut, if you haven’t married by then.”

“I would prefer that you chaperone my daughter as her mother,” Dominic said, one side of his mouth quirking into a smile. His eyes glittered at her from under heavy lids.

Torie decided to ignore that stubborn comment—and the smile. Though she was amazed at how the expression changed his face. One might think that such a bold profile would be feminized by dimples, but Torie found the opposite: they made her imagine that he might smile, even laugh—in bed.

“By the time Val and Florence are sixteen,” she said quickly, “the twins will have perfected the arts of enchantment. Further, as a ranking duchess, I will be able to secure their invitations to all of the Season’s premier events. They will rule polite society. I am certain of it.”

After a pause, Dominic conceded. “You are right.”

Torie drew a breath of red-hot air into her lungs. Of course she was happy that he had reconciled himself to the inadvisability of marrying her. She would never suit him. Even this . . . this tension between them was evidence of that.

She couldn’t be this close to him without catching a whiff of bergamot and clean man that made her body prickle awake. Leonora would have been horrified by the sensation, whereas Torie felt yearning surge inside her. She and her sister were as different as chalk and cheese—yet Leonora was the kind of woman whom Dominic wanted to marry.

He could find another bride who was both ladylike and tolerant of his condescending manner. And of the twins.

And of his thighs.

“There’s Florence now!” Torie said brightly, shoving away her irrational feeling that a woman who married him for his title wouldn’t make a good wife: a category that included her own sister.

Apparently, Valentine had been converted to steam engines, because Florence grabbed Torie’s hand and said, “You must come and extract Val. He just offered to help His Grace with some calculations. He’s forgotten that he’s only eleven!” The duke had hoisted Valentine up onto the farm wagon beside him and was talking energetically.

Dominic watched as Torie turned her back and walked away with Florence. Perhaps he shouldn’t have made that jest about being shaped for sport.

But she brought up the Shakespeare line; he didn’t. She had never seemed prudish before, but suddenly her cheeks had gone red, and she’d thrown him an irritated glance. He’d blundered.