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Or had he?

He could swear there was desire in her eyes when she looked him over. Leonora might have wished for a husband with slender limbs—which was true of Bufford if you overlooked his barrel-shaped middle—but Torie didn’t. She liked the muscular shape of his legs.

A cautious optimism filtered through him. He could use that to his advantage. No bride wanted to vomit on her wedding night.

The Duchess of Huntington had escorted Florence to Torie’s side, but rather than return to the locomotive, she nodded. “Odd children you have. I like them.”

“So do I,” Dominic said.

“Someone told me a few years ago that you were betrothed, but Florence says she hopes you marry Miss Sutton.”

“My former fiancée chose someone else. After she fell in love,” Dominic added, disliking the duchess’s shrewd gaze. Like everyone else, Her Grace probably thought that the jilting was the fault of his temper.

“In my day, happiness in marriage was a matter of chance,” Her Grace observed. “I got to know my husband in the carriage after our marriage ceremony.”

She couldn’t possibly mean what he thought she meant.

The glint in her eye suggested that was precisely what she meant.

“I expect marriage is always a gamble,” Dominic said cautiously.

“Domestic fetters are hard for a woman to accept,” the duchess told him. “You could do worse than Miss Sutton.”

“Thank you for the advice.”

“I suppose you want to be worshipped? Revered? Treated as a mystical being? I doubt she’ll do that. She’s not the type.”

“I have no such expectations,” Dominic said, starting to feel distinctly nettled.

The duchess picked up her monocle again and gave him a long stare. “I suspect you chose your previous fiancée based on some fool notion of a good wife.”

He managed not to flinch.

“Tried to find a woman with ladylike skills,” she chortled, pleased with herself. “The ability to stitch a sampler and paint a watery landscape doesn’t help a marriage thrive.”

“Not everyone can design a chimney,” Dominic said, dimly feeling he should defend Torie. “Miss Sutton is an excellent painter who works in oils rather than watercolors.”

“Good,” Her Grace said, distracted by the new subject. “I shall commission her to paint the steam engine. It’s our fourth iteration, and only oils can do justice to its red hue.”

“I think she mostly paints flowers, not engines,” Dominic said.

The duchess’s preferred mode of communication seemed to be a snort. “Because the woman’s never been allowed to paint anything else.” You dunce hung in the air, unspoken. “I don’t suppose you’ve escaped the House of Lords long enough to attend one of the Royal Academy’s exhibitions?”

“I have not,” Dominic replied.

“Still life is the lowest genre,” she told him. “Biblical paintings are highest, because men love to spy on Bathsheba unclothed, or depict Judith serving up Holofernes’s head on a platter. After that comes mythological, portraiture, landscape, animal paintings . . . with still life at the very bottom of the list. So, what are women allowed to paint? Anything that doesn’t move!” She snorted again. Loudly.

“Torie also paints rabbits,” Dominic said.

“If you manage to persuade her to marry you, get her a tutor, for God’s sake. We’re taking a trip to Venice, and I’d like to give a painting of the locomotive to my husband on our return.”

“I shall do my best to convince Miss Sutton to become my viscountess,” Dominic said, accepting the duchess’s point about a tutor. Certainly Sir William wouldn’t have bothered to pay for one.

“I have faith in you, viscount. I’ll wait a year or so and commission it then.”

“Miss Sutton, whether or not she becomes my wife, will paint only what she wishes,” Dominic said with frosty emphasis. “She has no need to take a commission.”

Her Grace’s lips parted, and he braced himself for a ducal setdown. Instead, she bellowed with laughter, her monocle spinning at the end of her ribbon as her bosom heaved.