“One certainly wouldn’t want to write a poem that couldn’t be reused,” Olivia agreed. “I see that naked is best. Your Moon Goddess is making a brave strike against the tiresome rules of conduct against which I’m sure we all chafe.”
“Do we?” Quin asked, leaning toward her. “Are you revealing a touch of the Lady Godiva in yourself, Miss Lytton?” He caught her gaze again, just until he saw a faint wash of pink in her cheeks.
He leaned back, vaguely aware that his heart was thumping in his chest in a thoroughly inelegant fashion. The mere mention of Lady Godiva caused him to picture Olivia, naked and lush, breasts playing peekaboo with a sweep of dark hair, that wicked mouth of hers laughing at him.
“My Moon Goddess is not naked!” Justin rolled his eyes yet again. “I simply don’t mention her clothing. Besides, I’d rather write about how it feels to be in love. Here’s one of my favorite couplets: For you, I’d climb the highest tower; I’d dash across the sea.”
“I hate to be pedantic, but those two lines are not in iambic pentameter, nor do they rhyme,” Olivia pointed out. “I’m certain that a couplet should rhyme.”
“It seems more troublesome to me that the two activities are quite dissimilar,” Quin put in. “Quite likely you could climb a bell tower if you had to, Justin, but you could not run, let alone walk, on water.”
“Unless he’s concealing signs of divinity,” Olivia said, that dimple playing beside her mouth again. “He is star-born, after all.”
They both glanced at young Justin, and then Quin’s eyes met Olivia’s again with a deeply pleasurable shock. “No visible signs,” he commented. “No hovering halo.”
Justin was a remarkably good-natured soul. “Philistines,” he said, but without force. “Poetry need not rhyme. Only sticklers bother with that sort of thing.”
“Couplets must rhyme,” Quin said firmly. “But you’re right about description. Why tie yourself down? I understand metaphors are de rigueur when it comes to verse.”
“I suspect they are very hard to write,” Olivia said. “The only poems I’ve managed to commit to memory use a great deal of metaphors, but I could never write one myself.”
“For example?” Quin asked.
Her eyes laughed at him. “ ‘There once was a maiden from Peedle, who was extremely good with her needle . . .’ I’ll stop there, if you don’t mind. But I assure you that when it comes to metaphors, there’s nothing like a limerick.”
“I’ve heard that one,” Justin interrupted, looking at their guest with renewed respect. “I didn’t think ladies enjoyed limericks.”
“Generally speaking, they don’t,” Olivia told him. “I’m an aberration. Most ladies would swoon to receive a pretty love poem from you. Just ask His Grace. Perhaps he wrote such verses in his youth.”
Justin snorted. “Quin couldn’t write a poem if Shakespeare himself prompted him.”
“I could!” Quin protested. He was feeling rather reckless, drunk on the sparkle in Olivia’s eyes. “My lady is a pink flower, and I’m . . . I’m a high tower. At least mine rhymes.”
Olivia’s little chuckle sent a rush of heat straight to Quin’s groin. “You surprise me, Your Grace. I hadn’t expected you to exhibit such metaphorical skill. Flowers and towers are surprisingly . . . evocative.”
If he’d understood her correctly, she had just flipped his pitiful metaphor into something quite erotic. And, apparently, over his young relative’s head.
“I could possibly work with wildflower, but not with pink flower,” Justin said, frowning. “Too banal.”
“You’re right,” Olivia agreed. “I think you should stay with the architectural metaphor, Your Grace. Perhaps you could do something with castle?”
Her smile dared him.
“Castle would be difficult,” Justin said, with authority. “It doesn’t rhyme with much of anything.”
“The castle of your body is mine by right of conquest,” Quin stated, picking up his wineglass. He took a sip and then looked at Olivia, knowing that his eyes were heavy with desire.
There was such a flare of heat between them that Quin was momentarily surprised that the tablecloth didn’t spontaneously ignite.
“And the moat?” she asked, that wicked little smile playing around her lips again. “Surely . . . someone is going to—ahem—dive into the moat?”
Justin finally caught on and burst out laughing as well. “Ramparts,” he said, almost choking. “You can’t forget them, Quin!”
At this revelry, the dowager broke in. “I must ask if you have a humorous subject to share with the table.”
Justin gave her a sweet smile. “We’re discussing the architecture of medieval castles, Aunt. The subject naturally leads to merriment.”
“Battlements,” Olivia confirmed, nodding. “In the context of literature.”
The dowager narrowed her eyes. Then she pointedly asked Georgiana and Althea about the use of figured velvet in bed-curtains. One had to assume that the question was relevant to matrimony. Quin promptly turned back to Justin and Olivia.
“I prefer dramatic ideas,” Justin was saying. “For example, sixty-seven of my poems promise to do the impossible for love.”
“I suppose that’s where walking on water comes in,” Olivia said. “What other kinds of things do you promise to do?”
“Walk through fire,” Justin said. “Hold the world in my hand.”
“Those two suffer from the same incompatibility,” Quin said. “While I suppose you might walk through fire—though I think leap would be a more accurate description—you clearly have delusions of grandeur.”
“Lord Justin, if you have a divine side, this would be a good moment to reveal it.” Olivia looked hopeful.
“I think we can all agree that the two of you have sadly prosaic souls,” Justin said. “Poetry is my destiny. Mockery won’t stop me. Someday I’ll meet a lady as beautiful as the moon, and I’ll already have the poetry written.”
“I have yet to meet such a lady,” Olivia said. “Your Grace, have you been moonstruck at some point in your life?”
Quin looked at her and rejected the whole notion of the moon. “Too cool, pale, and insipid,” he said. “I’d prefer a goddess who produces her own light rather than merely reflecting that of another.”
“I can’t imagine you in love, but one should never say never,” Justin put in.
“Poetry might be His Grace’s destiny as well,” Olivia said, her eyes dancing. “Just look at his creative twist on a castle . . . and he didn’t even get to the ramparts. Many people don’t think of the design of fortifications in such suggestive terms.”
“In what terms?” the dowager suddenly said, turning her head.
“As buildings,” Olivia said innocently. “His Grace has an architectural turn of phrase.”
Had Quin’s mother possessed Justin’s flair for the dramatic, she would have rolled her eyes. “We shall be hosting a small ball in a few days,” she announced. “A quite small engagement, naturally. But I would be unsurprised if we commanded a hundred heads at the least.”