by Fiona Miers
*****
For the following three nights, Sarah didn’t attend a single event. By the third night, Oliver was desperate. He could not remember the last time he had attended so many balls in one week. Yet he had still turned up tonight, hoping she would come out of hiding.
“She’s not here,” came a voice to his right. Bloody Charlotte. She stepped in front of him, looking poised and beautiful in her gown of pink silk.
“Do you know why?” He was too worried to feign ignorance. His eyes searched hers for any clues.
Lady Charlotte smiled smugly, pausing for suspense. “Of course I do.”
“Well? Are you going to tell me or do I have to drag it out of you?” Oliver demanded, raising his voice and causing their neighbours to turn their heads towards them.
“Sarah has decided she needed a couple of days off the circuit, but she intends to attend the opera tomorrow evening, as my guest.”
Charlotte said this as though she had known Sarah for years. Oliver wanted to punch his fist through a wall. Charlotte barely knew Sarah and yet she knew where the girl was!
“But why did she need a couple of days off? I thought she wanted to marry as soon as possible.” Oliver dropped his voice when he noticed the interested looks they were getting.
“You’ll have to ask her, I’m afraid.” Lady Charlotte smiled smugly again and Oliver had an overwhelming urge to wrap his hands around her smug neck. He knew he’d made a blunder with Sarah, but did Charlotte have to make him feel worse than he already did?
“Oh bother.” Charlotte’s eyes widened and she fluttered her fan in front of her face.
Oliver turned to look in the direction in which she was looking.
“What’s wrong?” He looked around the ballroom for something to justify her present stricken look, but couldn’t see anything.
“Here comes your sanctimonious friend.”
Oliver had never seen that particular look on Charlotte’s face before. She looked truly uncomfortable, a faint blush rising in her normally pale cheeks and her eyebrows were low and tight over her angry sparkling blue eyes.
“Archie? What’s wrong with Archie?” Oliver asked, baffled. Charlotte could not be having such a strong reaction to his quiet friend. Could she?
“He always makes me feel like I’m a tease because I have refused more than one marriage proposal. How does he even know about them?”
“Everyone knows about the men you have turned down, Charlotte.” Oliver grinned, elated that Charlotte was the one feeling uncomfortable now.
“Well, it shouldn’t be common knowledge.” Charlotte was truly scowling now and Oliver struggled to contain his laugh.
“Archie, old boy.” Oliver greeted his friend, feeling better than he had in days.
“Your Grace, Lady Charlotte,” Archie bowed politely to them both, low enough to indicate their rank but also his intimacy to Oliver himself.
Oliver scowled at his life long friend. “If you call me Your Grace in company again, I’ll give you the cut direct.”
Archibald Turner smiled at that, the expression lighting up his rather solemn face.
“Oliver, what are you doing here? I thought you had decided one ball a month was enough? And didn’t you already fill your quota with Lady Charlotte’s ball?” Archie nodded towards Charlotte politely and she glowered in turn.
“I didn’t realize you had attended my birthday,” came Lady Charlotte’s prompt reply.
“Of course you wouldn’t. I was with your brother in the card room most of the night. Why would I need to circulate the ballroom?” Archie’s eyebrows rose with his question, which was a longer response than Oliver had gotten in years.
“Oh, I don’t know. Isn’t it good manners to greet the person for whose birthday the function was being held?” Charlotte’s eyes were fiery and Oliver noticed with interest that so were Archie’s. How strange!
“I hadn’t realized you cared if I greeted you or not, Lady Charlotte.” Archie returned politely, but his words had an edge of steel that Oliver had never heard before.
“I do not,” Charlotte snapped back. “I just assumed that, as a gentleman, you would have wanted to wish me happy birthday.” She lifted her chin and she was breathing rather quickly too. Did she really dislike Archie so much?
Archie’s brown eyes were still flickering with lightning but his face was calm and his voice polite. Oliver had always wanted the type of control Archie had. It was impressive.
“Why would I wish you happy birthday last week when your birthday isn’t until tomorrow?”
Archie raised one eyebrow and Oliver could not help chuckling softly. Archie remembered everything. His brilliant memory was one of the many reasons he did so well on the stock market.
Charlotte opened her mouth to reply, but no sound came out. Archie took the rare silence to continue talking.
“I assure you that you will receive your customary bouquet of flowers tomorrow which will only add to the fifty or so that I’m sure already decorate your home.” The tone, again, was polite, but Oliver noticed a tightening around Archie’s mouth.
Charlotte blushed furiously in acknowledgement of the truth of Archie’s words.
“I do not get… I do not expect…” At a loss for words, she stopped talking.
Oliver smothered his laugh with a cough and covered his mouth in an attempt to hide his smile as well. He had never seen Charlotte bested by anyone in a conversation. She had been trained by her mother, a true dragon of the ton.
“Excuse me,” Lady Charlotte bobbed a shallow curtsy and turned on her heel before she could say anything else.
Oliver shook his head and turned back to his friend. “What was that about? That is the first time I have ever seen Charlotte back down from a fight.”
“She probably doesn’t think I’m worth fighting with.”
Archie’s eyes were following Charlotte’s retreating figure and Oliver wondered about what he had just witnessed. If he didn’t know better, he would have thought Archie was interested in Charlotte, but he couldn’t be. Could he? Their group of friends didn’t think of her like that, having brotherly feelings towards her.
“John tells me you have shown interest in someone. Is she here?” Archie carefully pitched his voice so that no one else could hear him.
“No, she’s not. And I’m not interested in her.” He should have thought before opening his mouth.
Archie chuckled softly.
“Where is she, then?” Archie asked just as quietly.
“Not here, that is for sure. Let’s join John for a brandy in the card room. I’m in the mood for a night at the cards.”
They retreated to the card room and had a drink. Oliver didn’t stop at one drink. He gambled too much and drank more than he had in years. His plans for meeting the demi-mondaines and partying until the early hours of the morning were forgotten in the endless glasses of hard liquor. John poured him into his carriage and it was the last thing Oliver remembered. He didn’t remember getting home, he didn’t remember his butler getting him into bed. All he remembered the next day was a pounding in his head that beat to the drum of Where is Sarah?
****
Sarah had not enjoyed her days off from the ton circuit. She had spent them eating pastries, and now wondered if she would fit into the expensive wardrobe her mother had invested. She had also spent the week trying not to think about a certain Duke who invaded her thoughts even whilst she slept.
She dressed carefully for the night’s festivities. She had never been to the opera before and would most likely never get to attend again. Especially not in a ducal box, which she would be sharing with Charlotte and her older brother John tonight.
“Sarah, the Duke’s carriage has arrived.” Her mother’s shrill voice rang through the house. Sarah knew her mother was more nervous than she was, if that was possible.
“I’ll be down in a moment,” Sarah called out, smoothing her dress down her slim waist and noting the roundness of her full br
easts, which her opera dress did nothing to disguise.
“Good night mother,” Sarah kissed her mother on the cheek, grabbed her cloak and headed off into the night with Charlotte and her brother John.
“Good evening to you, Miss Collins,” John nodded his head slightly, as the carriage didn’t allow him to stand and make his bow.
“Good evening. Lord John. Good evening, Lady Charlotte.” Sarah breathed. Almost unable to get past the anxiety in her stomach, she grabbed for her friend’s hands.
“Oh, Lady Charlotte, what if I do something wrong? What am I meant to do at the opera? I have never been and I’m so nervous. Please tell me everything.”
Charlotte and John both laughed loudly, making Sarah blush crimson.
“You do not have to do anything other than be yourself. Walk in, watch the opera and walk out.” Charlotte smiled confidently and Sarah felt her stomach drop nervously again.
“But will I have to talk to anyone? Will people be able to see me?”
This time, only John laughed but Charlotte smiled.
“Of course people can see you. That is half the fun of the opera. Being able to see what everyone else is wearing and doing, but not having to talk to them.”
“Oh.”
“Is anyone else going to be there tonight whom I know?” Sarah asked quietly, dropping her eyes so her new friends would not see the emotion in them.
“None of which I am aware.”
“Oh, that is good.” Sarah said, putting on her sunniest smile.
John and Charlotte shared a glance but didn’t say anything more, so Sarah rode the rest of the way happily, listening to idle chatter and hoping that she would be noticed by her husband-to-be, whoever he may be.
When they arrived, they were personally escorted to their box by a footman and Sarah’s heart fluttered in her ribcage the whole way. She had never seen anything so grand or beautiful. The velvet curtains, the view of the stage, oh, that she had lived to see this day!
“Oh my goodness,” she cried and rushed toward the edge to see the view properly. Sarah heard John chuckle softly beside her.
“You shouldn’t get so close to the edge, Miss Collins,” he teased, putting one hand on her wrist and the other on her waist to draw her back to the safety of the first row of seats.
“Please, call me Sarah. I don’t really like being called Miss Collins,” she told John, liking the attention he was giving her but safe in the knowledge that he wasn’t pursuing her in any way.
John’s hand on her waist fell away, but he held onto her hand and raised it to his lips.
“I would be delighted, Sarah.” He bent at the waist and chastely kissed her gloved knuckles making her smile. What a gentleman!
A strangled sound in the entrance of the opera box had them both turning. Oliver stood in the entrance with a look on his face that made Sarah cower. He looked furious. John held tightly onto her fingers when she tried to withdraw them and drew her hand onto his arm.
“Good evening, Oliver, have you come to join our small group?” John was obviously ignoring Oliver’s scowl and the tightening of his fists, but she certainly couldn’t.
Sarah dug her fingers into John’s arm as the flutters of panic rose in her, but he stroked her fingers reassuringly. Oliver looked ready to murder someone. Why, she wasn’t quite sure, but she knew that look was focused on her and John. He couldn’t be jealous, could he?
When he didn’t reply, Sarah gathered her courage and slipped her hand from John’s arm and dropped into her lowest curtsy.
“Your Grace,” she said, coming up so slowly that Oliver had time to walk over to her and impatiently tap his black leather boot against the carpet, before her eyes came up to his.
“You look well considering you have been ill for a week.”
Charlotte gasped beside her and Sarah’s eyebrows rose. What sort of gentleman said something like that to a lady?
“I apologize, Miss Collins, for my rudeness. I was just shocked to see you looking so well.”
Sarah closed her gaping mouth and nodded slowly. Was she supposed to say something to that?
Oliver ground his teeth together. “Well?”
“Well?” she repeated with a slight twitch in the corner of her mouth. “Well, how are you here, looking so well?”
Oliver’s eyes widened in surprise, then a muscle in his jaw jumped, indicating he was clenching his teeth again.
“I wasn’t really sick your grace,” Sarah whispered in a conspirator tone.
“No?” he whispered back, his face softening.
“No, I was just having a week away from the circuit. I can see why you and your counterparts never attend balls,” she slid her eyes over to John to include him in the conversation. “They are just exhausting.” Sarah let out an exaggerated sigh and John chuckled.
“Well, it seems that the rest did you good. You are glowing tonight.” said Oliver.
Sarah frowned at him. What was he doing now? He’d come in to the box like a thundercloud, she’d chided him out of his bad mood and now he was complimenting her? The man appeared to be as changeable in moods as her capricious Aunt Eustacia. Her aunt was a character of extremes and Sarah sincerely hoped that this would not be the case with Oliver, as this would make him less than pleasant company in the long term.
“Shall we sit down, my lord?” Sarah asked, using John’s name intentionally and turning towards him. “I believe the opera is about to start and I would not want to miss any of it.”
John smirked and held out his arm again.
“Shall we see you at the interval, Oliver?” John asked Oliver with a raised eyebrow.
“If you do not mind, I might stay here. My mother tends to snore through the second half.”
A shiver danced along Sarah’s spine. How would she relax with him here?
****
Intermission arrived and Lord John and Lady Charlotte both made excuses to leave the box. Sarah watched Oliver carefully when they asked if she’d like to join them and he didn’t move. So right or wrong, she chose to stay.
She was a little surprised that her friends left them alone unchaperoned, but it was an open box, people could clearly see them and the lights were on.
The minute they were alone, Oliver moved into the empty seat beside her.
“So tell me the real reason you stayed at home for the past week.”
“Your Grace, I do not believe that topic is in the realm of polite conversation. Shall we discuss the opera or would you like to talk about the weather?” Sarah asked, with a deliberately false flutter of her eyelashes.
Sarah knew Oliver was a duke but he was acting like one of her five-year-old cousins. He had the nerve to question her when she was the one who was owed an apology? Well, she wasn’t standing for it.
Oliver’s eyes narrowed at her tone.
“It’s Oliver, do not ‘Your Grace’ me, I don’t like it.”
“Oh, are you sure you want to admit to being entitled to the title? It would be the first time you told me about it.” A hint of anger was creeping into her voice now too and she didn’t care. Her belly was tightening and her hands were clenched in her lap.
His face fell. “I should have told you when we first met. I’m sorry.”
Her shoulders slumped and the tightness receded. He seemed genuine and it tugged at her heart.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I only came into the title a year ago and I don’t feel like a duke. It’s not right.”
“I’m sorry about your brother, Oliver, and your father too. How horrible for you.” She placed her hand in his, the warmth of his skin passing though their gloves.
“Thank you,” Oliver choked out.
“It must have been horrible to lose both of them in the same day.” Sarah whispered again, looking into his eyes for the first time and seeing the tears shimmering in the beautiful brown depths.
Oliver nodded slowly.
“My twenty-fifth birthday.” He choked out,
trying valiantly to hold in the tears that were threatening again.
Sarah gasped and lifted her arms to embrace him.
She stopped herself before she touched him, noting the interested looks they were receiving from the surrounding boxes and the people below.
“Come with me,” she whispered, moving into the darkest corner of the booth. It was concealed from everyone and would allow her time to do what she wanted to do. She pulled a chair from the last row and set it in the corner.
Oliver stood up, moving slowly up to her, a confused frown on his face.
“Sit down,” she commanded, pointing to the chair.
He sat.
Sarah placed his hands on her waist, pulled his head to her bosom and wrapped her slim arms around him.
Sarah soon began to regret her instinctive reaction as Oliver went stiff in her arms. He needed comfort and this was how she was used to giving it. It was either too late in his life to learn how to be held, or too late in his grieving to be consoled.
Sarah pulled back and placed her hands around his jaw. Lifting his face to hers she whispered, “I am so sorry for your loss,” and brought her lips down onto his.
She felt the shiver sweep through Oliver and knew she’d chosen the right way to let him know how she felt.
His lips were warm and soft, and she held there as long as she could. Pulling away reluctantly she looked back into his eyes and saw a change. Something smoky and dangerous was emerging through the pain and a shiver ran up her spine.
Oliver surprised her when he stood up and pressed her up against the wall. She enjoyed the feel of her breasts against his chest and her hips cradling him for a moment before he swooped and devoured her.
There was no other way of describing the kiss. He pressed his lips to hers in desperation, seeking not only reassurance but a physical response and having no resistance left, she gave it to him.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her body closer to his until she heard him groan. His lips were coaxing and warm and she soon felt his tongue licking her bottom lip. She pulled back puzzled.
