8
" What are your pleasures and pursuits, Lord Moncrieffe?" Miss Eversea asked too brightly, when the silence had gone on for more than was strictly comfortable or polite.
That creaky conversation lubricant. It irritated him again that she was humoring him.
"Well, I'm partial to whores."
Her head whipped toward him like a weather-vane in a hurricane. Her eyes, he noted, were enormous, and such a dark blue they were nearly purple. Her mouth dropped, and the lower lip was quivering with shock or... or...
"Whor... whores...?" She choked out the word as if she'd just inhaled it like bad cigar smoke.
He widened his own eyes with alarm, recoiling slightly.
"I... I beg your pardon - Horses. Honestly, Miss Eversea," he stammered. "I do wonder what you think of me if that's what you heard. "
― Julie Anne Long , What I Did for a Duke (Pennyroyal Green, #5)
9
" It's only that... well, if Olivia cannot be with the man she loves, as he has vanished like a bloody 'cowardly'..."
She stopped talking abruptly. Yanking herself back like a dog on a leash.
Which was a pity, as the words had acquired a fascinating whiff of venom and had begun to escalate in volume. She would have done some squeaking of her own.
Genevieve Eversea was beginning to interest him.
"If she cannot be with the man she loves..." he prompted.
"I do believe she can only to be with someone... impressive."
"Impressive..." He pretended to ponder this. "I hope you do not think I presume, but I cannot help but wonder if you're referring to me. Given my rank and fortune, some might describe me as such. And I'm flattered indeed, given that there really are so many other words you could have chosen to describe me."
A pause followed. The girl was most definitely a 'thinker.'
"We have only just become acquainted, Lord Moncrieffe. I might elect to use other words to describe you should I come to know you better."
Exquisite and refined as convent lace, her manners, her delivery.
And still he could have sworn she was having one over on him.
She seemed to be watching her feet now. The scenery didn't interest her, or it caused her discomfort.
And as he watched her, something unfamiliar stirred.
He was... 'genuinely' interested in what she might say next. "
― Julie Anne Long , What I Did for a Duke (Pennyroyal Green, #5)
11
" He was polite; he was cool; he was enigmatic. He was every bit what they expected and wanted the storied Duke of Falconbridge to be, because it amused him to be so.
In truth, his eyes were on the stairs. He waited with the patience of a cat near a mouse hole for Genevieve Eversea to arrive.
He almost didn't recognize her when she did appear.
Her dress was a glossy silk of midnight blue, cut very low, and the "sleeves"- really scraps of net- clung to her pale, flawless shoulders, as though she'd tumbled down through clouds to get here and brought a few sheds of sky with her.
Her neck was long. Her collarbone had that smooth pristine temptation of a bank of new-fallen snow. It was interrupted only by a drop of a blue stone on a chain that pointed directly at quite confident cleavage, as if the owner knew full well it was splendid and was accustomed to exposing it. Her sleek dark hair was dressed up high and away from her face, and tiny diamanté sparks were scattered through it. Her face beneath it was revealed in delicate simplicity. A smooth, pale, high forehead, etched cheekbones. Elegant as Wedgwood, set off by that dark, dark hair and those vivid eyes.
He stared.
He wasn't precisely... nonplussed. Still, this particular vision of Genevieve Eversea required reconciling with the quiet girl in the morning dress, the moor pony with the determined gait. As though they were not quite the same thing, or were perhaps 'variations' of the same thing, like verb tenses. He felt a bit like a boy who needed to erase his morning lessons and begin again. "
― Julie Anne Long , What I Did for a Duke (Pennyroyal Green, #5)
12
" What are you about, Moncrieffe?" Eversea did look decidedly ill.
"What am I about...? Well, I'm 'about' to enjoy, or at least drink, a cup of ratafia. Or brandy if I can get it. I'm about to join your father for a brief discussion of an investment opportunity in his study. I'm about to divest your neighbors and guests of their money in five-card loo. But that's later. More importantly, I'm about to dance with your sister."
It was the smile Moncrieffe offered here, and the way he said "sister," that had Ian reaching, in a reflex almost as old as time, for a sword he wasn't wearing.
He forced his hand to ease.
For Moncrieffe had seen it; he casually placed his own hand inside his coat. A pistol was never far from his person. "
― Julie Anne Long , What I Did for a Duke (Pennyroyal Green, #5)
13
" He grinned because he'd made her say something ridiculous. The grin was wicked, white and tilted.
She panicked, because she thought of sun-shot ponds and sunlight coming down through trees when she looked in his eyes now, and judging from the temperature of her cheeks he was a devil sent up from Hades, not a bloody poem.
She might be turning any number of colors, from scarlet to parchment to all those shades of rose in-between, but he regarded her evenly.
He was older, bolder. He knew of whores and wars, violence and vendettas. He knew precisely what he wanted, always.
He wanted her. "
― Julie Anne Long , What I Did for a Duke (Pennyroyal Green, #5)
15
" Fear. Alex knew he was a fine one to pontificate about fear. He'd issued the world's most tepid, careful marriage proposal. Because he'd been afraid to tell Genevieve he loved her.
Not that it would have made much of a difference.
She loved Harry.
Harry in his youthful innocence had put his finger right on it. And Moncrieffe pushed the realization away. He took in a sharp breath.
Harry took Moncrieffe's silence as a reason to go on.
"God help me, it was only because I was afraid of losing her. And I honestly didn't feel I deserved her, for I had nothing to give her. I simply needed to know whether she loved me. I'm not proud of it, but I have never loved anyone more."
Moncrieffe could still scarcely get the words out.
"I just can't believe you would 'do' such a thing to someone you... loved."
Osborne was very, very drunk, but he wasn't stupid. "But I couldn't hurt her, could I, if she didn't love me?"
And now Harry's blue eyes fixed on him almost searchingly.
Moncrieffe couldn't believe he had almost shown his hand.
"You just said you weren't certain whether she did love you. And if she does love you anywhere as much as you claim to love her, imagine the pain you may have caused her with your whole charade."
Harry looked up at him and blinked. And as he thought about it, his face slowly went white.
After a moment he swallowed.
"'Gallant' of you," Moncrieffe drawled, twisting the knife.
Moncrieffe knew a surge of hatred for himself for saying it. But he wanted Harry to feel what he'd done to Genevieve. "
― Julie Anne Long , What I Did for a Duke (Pennyroyal Green, #5)
16
" It's a new direction for you, though, isn't it? Menacing waterfowl?"
"I think I prefer the kittens," Harry said. He'd been silent until then.
"You dislike moody animals, even if they're beautiful, Harry?" Genevieve teased.
"I dislike believing things are one way when they're really another way entirely."
And if that wasn't an innuendo, Genevieve didn't know what one was.
She just didn't know if he was referring to his own heart, or to 'her', in general.
But that could very well be her conscience interpreting it.
She sighed. She felt a certain kinship with that swan. Everyone thought Genevieve Eversea was serenity and purity itself. When she really was capable of... alarmingly original behavior. "
― Julie Anne Long , What I Did for a Duke (Pennyroyal Green, #5)
19
" Can you really see different things in a painting from day to day?" This seemed to genuinely interest the duke. She wasn't certain which part of it fascinated him most, the fact that a painting could change or that she thought it could.
"Well, it isn't like a crystal ball. Whereby you see shifting images and the like. But haven't you ever looked at a painting for a length of time, or on more than one occasion, and experienced it differently each time?"
Where to begin explaining art to someone who seemed to know nothing about it? Now, if she were dancing with Harry...
"Of course. As a young man touring the Continent, I once looked at 'length' at a painting called 'Venus and Mars' by an Italian painter called Veronese. Do you know it? Venus is nude as the day she was born, and Mars is entirely clothed and down on his knees in front of her, and it looks as though Mars is about to give her a pleasuring. And there are cherubs hanging about. I looked at it for quite some time."
A... pleasuring. 'God above.'
He had her attention now.
She was speechless.
Everything was astonishing about what he'd just said. She stared up at him, her mind exploding with vivid images, her cheeks going increasingly hotter. She knew the painting. She knew 'precisely' where Mars was kneeling in front of Venus.
The duke had said it purposely.
Suddenly she was acutely aware of her five senses, as though they were blinking on, one by one, like fireflies in the dark. Most particularly vivid was touch. She was potently aware of his hands: the one resting with firm assurance against her waist, warm there now through the fine silk of her gown, the other enfolding hers. She was acutely aware of his size, and everything that was masculine to her feminine.
Goodness. He could certainly look at her for a long time without blinking. "
― Julie Anne Long , What I Did for a Duke (Pennyroyal Green, #5)
