by Sara Ramsey
Somerville considered him for a moment. Then, he reached into his coat and pulled out a piece of paper. “Do you recognize this?” he asked, handing the paper to Rafe.
Rafe smoothed it open. It was one of the caricatures he’d commissioned earlier in the spring — one of the worst aimed at Somerville. Octavia looked beautiful in it, in an overblown sort of way that he now regretted. Somerville cowered behind her skirts as she flirted with a group of men to win their vote.
“I saw it a few months ago,” Rafe said. “Everyone did, I believe.”
“Indeed, everyone saw it. And the others. These damned caricaturists are a menace.”
Somerville’s voice was still mild. But Rafe knew the trap had already been sprung. “Why are you making this my business?”
Somerville reached over and took the paper back, folding it carefully into quarters before returning it to his coat. “In itself, there’s nothing I can do about this. The artist was clever enough to avoid committing libel, and also clever enough to remain anonymous. However…are you sure you don’t want a drink? I can retrieve the decanters for us.”
Rafe shook his head. “You know that’s not why we’re here.”
Somerville’s smile was thinner, almost feral. “Indeed. There was a printer in London a few weeks ago who published other caricatures far more damaging than these — ones that made for a convincing charge of libel against the artist. The constable who raided the offices noticed that some of the printer’s plates were used to print the caricatures against me this spring. And he thought I might be interested in the accounting books from the printing operation. It cost me a modest sum, of course — someone should really do something about corruption in the legal ranks.”
“Your moralizing efforts in Parliament might be more worthy if they targeted corruption instead of vice,” Rafe pointed out. The noose was already around his neck; he didn’t need to maintain diplomacy.
Somerville laughed. “Touché. I’ve always found you charming. But I suppose that’s how you do it. Appearing to drink too much, never seeming to listen too closely to gossip…and then using it all against us. But what I don’t understand is why you commissioned caricatures about me and only me. My constable friend didn’t find any other records of you at the printer’s.”
“You surely recall breaking things off with Serena, don’t you?”
Somerville had the decency to look embarrassed. “I admire your sister greatly, Lord Rafael. I didn’t want to hurt her. If anything, it’s better for her if she doesn’t marry me.”
That was probably true. Rafe assumed she wanted children. From what Rafe had learned through Octavia, Somerville might not be able to give them to her.
But Serena had already recovered from Somerville’s decision to give her up. At the moment, Octavia was the one he needed to protect.
“Let’s come to an agreement, then,” Rafe said. His voice was cold, emotionless — prepared for a negotiation, since there would be no outright victory for him in this case. “What do you want?”
“I want to destroy you,” Somerville said.
Rafe feigned a yawn. “There’s not much you can do to me. I never crossed the line into libel. Thorington would destroy you if you tried to harm me or our siblings — he has enough wealth to buy your ruin.”
That wasn’t true, but no one had heard yet that Thorington’s wealth was mostly gone. Somerville, however, nodded. “I’m aware of the limitations. And I don’t want to draw attention to you. The furor from those caricatures has mostly died down. If I marry, and if you disappear, no one will remember them at all by next season.”
“If I disappear?” Rafe repeated.
“Not physically, of course, although I would happily see you transported for this,” Somerville said. “Can’t be done, more’s the pity. But I will leave you alone and never breathe a word of this to anyone if you guarantee me two points: that you will never incite another caricature of me, and that you will never see Octavia again.”
Rafe didn’t respond. He couldn’t. Agreeing to stop caricaturing Somerville was one thing. But to never see Octavia again?
“You gave her up,” Rafe said. “You can’t control who she sees.”
“She won’t want to see you if she knows you drew this,” Somerville said, patting his pocket. “And I’m still fond of her. I wouldn’t want her associating with someone as disreputable as yourself.”
Rafe snorted. “You turned an unmarried girl into your mistress and you dare to judge me for my morals?”
“It was a good arrangement for both of us,” Somerville said. “Unlike your arrangement with her, which I can only assume was meant to gather information against me.”
“And if I don’t agree to your points?” Rafe asked. “As I said, you have no leverage against me.”
“Perhaps not. But if you continue to pursue her, I will stay at Maidenstone. And I’ll spread the rumor that she isn’t just unfit to be in society — she’s unfit even to be a mistress. Octavia will never move in polite circles again if you don’t leave her be.”
Somerville had to be bluffing. But his eyes were serious. He didn’t fidget, but he also wasn’t tense — he was relaxed, as though he’d long ago made peace with threatening people he used to care for in exchange for political gain.
If this were any other negotiation, Rafe would have already concluded that his opponent had reached their final offer and would not budge.
But this was a shock.
Rafe was cornered and he knew it. He wanted to lash out. If he confronted Somerville with the knowledge that Octavia had been a virgin, would the man crack? Somerville was determined to keep Rafe away from Octavia. The reason why she’d been a virgin must be tied to one of his deepest secrets — one that would give Rafe all the leverage he needed to ruin him.
But he couldn’t say anything without divulging that he had already slept with Octavia. Somerville could use that knowledge to destroy her.
It was more important to keep her safe. And anyway, Rafe would have to let her go whether Somerville threatened him or not. Somerville wasn’t the only man trying to keep Rafe away from her. Ferguson would ensure that she didn’t inherit Maidenstone as long as she had Rafe by her side.
There was no good reason for her to choose Rafe — not when a whole lifetime of security and acceptance waited for her if she gave him up.
So it was easy to say to Somerville, “I’ll say my farewells to her tonight, and then I’ll leave her alone.”
“Excellent,” Somerville said.
He rose to leave. Rafe stood and blocked his path. He rarely used threats when charm could work, but right now, in this moment, threats felt good. “Mark my words, Somerville. If you harm Octavia in any way, at any time, and I hear about it — you’ll find yourself ruined. Possibly dead. And no one will ever guess it was me who did it.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Her feet hurt. Octavia hadn’t danced in weeks, and the hunting lodge had put her out of the practice of wearing high-heeled slippers.
She flexed her toes. She was barefoot now, sitting on the floor of her bedchamber. She had danced every dance after leaving Lady Portia. She had taken supper with the son of a viscount — the impoverished son of a viscount, of course, but still. He was a decent enough conversationalist. She could do worse than that.
Years ago, she would have turned her nose up at a viscount’s poor son.
She ran her hands over the case she had found in her dressing room. It had been where she’d left it four years earlier, tucked away on the highest shelf, but it was mostly dust-free. The maids must have cleaned her room regularly — it hadn’t needed any airing at all, even though she was never supposed to have slept there again.
She had ignored the case the night before, when she was too occupied with dreams of Rafe to dig in to her past. Tonight, though, the past hovered over her. The ball had ended an hour earlier, but it was only two in the morning and Octavia was too restless to sleep. She certainly couldn’t sleep ea
sily in the bed that had been hers as a girl — the one she’d spent weeks in after Julian’s death, when she couldn’t bear to leave it.
She hadn’t thought of Julian as much that day as she thought she might have. She had thought of Lucy, though. And, oddly, Lord Chapman, and all the events that had led to her ruin. Maybe it was the ball that had done it. The last time she had danced with women of her own class was the night Chapman had kissed her. That night, she had thought, with the naïveté of eighteen, that her life was perfect and could only get better from there.
She opened the latch. There was a trace of the perfume she had preferred when she was eighteen — the musty odor of roses, sweet and innocent. The top layer was covered by sheets of tissue. When she had originally packed it, she had thrown things in haphazardly as events occurred. Agnes or another servant must have repacked it at some point to protect the items within.
She pulled the tissue aside. The first thing she found was a bouquet of dead flowers, held together by a pink ribbon. The bouquet was the first one that had been sent to her the morning after her debut in London. She’d received eleven more that very day, but she’d saved this one.
The man who had given it to her had seemed entirely sweet that season. When she had appeared in the demimonde on Somerville’s arm the following year, he had tried to grope her in Somerville’s garden. She wished she could have saved the slap she had given him — that was a more fitting memory than the bouquet.
She tossed the flowers into the fire. It was too warm for a fire in August, but she had stripped down to a thin, sleeveless nightrail — one of the garments she had bought before she realized that Somerville never intended to share her bed. Agnes had laid the fire without comment after helping Octavia to undress and left her alone for the night. Octavia would have to find a way to keep paying the woman if she didn’t win Maidenstone — it would be hard to find another lady’s maid who was so understanding of her moods.
The bouquet flared up and burned out quickly. The ribbon smoked a bit before finally igniting. She lost interest when the flowers were gone and went back to the case.
There were packets and packets of letters and invitations. She’d been invited to nearly every gathering in London in the spring of 1809. Her prized vouchers to Almack’s were on top. She threw those at the fire immediately and smiled grimly when they went up in flames. She wouldn’t be invited back to Almack’s anytime soon.
The other letters were notes from lovelorn suitors and greetings from the friends she had thought she’d made. None of them had contacted her after Julian’s death, not even to send condolences.
She consigned them all to the fire.
The slippers she’d worn to her first ball were next. She had nearly worn through the soles, delirious with the joy of having enough partners to dance with. Even Lucy had seemed to enjoy herself that night. It was early in their time in London, before Lucy had withdrawn…before Lucy had begun to judge Octavia’s flirtations quite so harshly.
She didn’t burn those, or the ostrich feathers from her presentation at court — the smell might attract notice, and Lucy’s room was too close. She might investigate if she thought Octavia was trying to burn the house down.
But maybe Lucy wouldn’t investigate. She hadn’t said anything to Octavia all night. She hadn’t apologized for not inviting her, or for inviting Somerville — but she also hadn’t made any attempt to gloat. It was almost like she had decided to handle the problem of Octavia’s presence by ignoring her completely.
Octavia couldn’t burn her opera glasses either. She burned the handbill that she had saved, though. She had gone to that opera with Chapman and Lucy only a week before the kiss that had changed everything.
There were other memories in the box — a pair of long gloves, lightly stained from the first night she’d had too much ratafia. Lucy had laughed at her, but she’d sat with Octavia the next day and hadn’t said a word about Octavia’s aching head. Dried flowers, pressed into a book, from the first time she and Lucy had gone to Hyde Park. The shawl she had carried when she and Lucy and their friends had taken a barge up the Thames for a fireworks display.
And Julian’s favorite throwing dice. They weren’t her memory, exactly, but she’d kept them. She held them in her hand. He’d been a gambler and a drinker and an inveterate rogue — the kind of man who would call someone out without thinking of the consequences, simply because it felt like the right thing to do in the moment.
Her brother had, in some ways, ruined her life.
But he had loved her without judgment or expectation.
Her eyes filled with tears.
In the hunting lodge, a similar box sat among the piles of belongings she’d brought back from London. Flowers, ribbons, scraps of velvet from her favorite gowns, letters from men whose favor she curried for Somerville. She wanted to burn all of that too.
Burn it all, and start over, somewhere where she wasn’t Miss Briarley or Madame Octavia. Where she wasn’t destined to be merely someone’s mistress or someone’s wife.
There was a tap on the door. She brushed the tears from her eyes before responding, but the handle turned before she could answer it. Rafe slipped into the room.
“I thought it better not to wait outside your door in case I was caught,” he said, keeping his voice low as he shut the door behind himself.
Octavia’s room was at the end of the wing. Her grandfather’s empty room was directly across from hers, and Lady Maidenstone’s room was next to it. The doors were solid; sound wouldn’t carry across the hallway if conversations were kept low. Octavia’s dressing room was between her bedchamber and Lucy’s — it was unlikely that Lucy would hear them.
But she spoke softly, not wanting to risk it. “What are you doing here?”
He looked down at her. “I think I should know what you’re doing before I answer that.”
She carefully returned Julian’s dice to the box, but she pulled out another posy and threw it toward the fire. It fell apart as it flew through the air, showering crumbled petals and dusty leaves on the carpet, but the bulk of it reached the fireplace and ignited. “I felt like burning something. How does anyone survive months of balls and parties?”
He surprised her by sitting beside her on the floor. “You’ve been going to parties for years. What happened tonight? Did Somerville talk to you?”
“No,” she said. “He avoided me. So did Lucy. So did you. I suppose I should be thankful for that.”
Rafe was silent as she dug through the box, not reacting to her implied insult. She found a ticket for Vauxhall. She and Lucy had gone there with Julian and his friends, but Lucy had insisted on going home before midnight — she didn’t think it was good for them to be there.
Octavia threw the ticket into the fire.
“If I were guessing, I would think that you are mourning something,” Rafe said.
She turned to face him. He was as somber as she felt, but his grey eyes were sympathetic. So sympathetic that she didn’t mind, really, that she was wearing a thin chemise and he still wore his evening suit.
Still, she adjusted the linen over her knees, making sure she was as decent as she could be given the circumstances. “Perhaps I am,” she said. “But that doesn’t answer the question of why you’re here.”
“Are you mourning Miss Briarley? Or are you mourning Madame Octavia?”
He was too perceptive by half. She sighed. “Both? Neither? I don’t know anymore.”
Their eye contact lingered, grew more intense. She wanted to lean in and kiss him. But the memory of the previous night held her back.
“Why are you here, Rafe?” she asked again.
“I’ve come to say goodbye.”
The floor dropped out from under her.
“What? Why? Where are you going?”
“Away. Serena and Portia want to go to Brighton. It will take a few days to make arrangements, but we can’t leave until Thorington is married anyway. He sent for a special license tonight, but i
t will take three or four days for the messenger to reach the archbishop and return with the papers.”
He still sounded so calm. “Then why are you saying goodbye now?” she asked.
“You don’t need me anymore. I can’t help you win Maidenstone. In fact, all signs point to the fact that the more you interact with me, the worse your chances are for winning. I am happy for Thorington, of course — Callie is the best match he could have made. But you know, and I know, that Ferguson will never let you inherit if you associate with me.”
“What if I don’t want to inherit?”
He laughed. “You wouldn’t let Lucy inherit, would you?”
She looked at the pile of ashes in the fireplace — all the memories of times when she and Lucy had been together. She never would have guessed, then, how badly Lucy could have betrayed her.
But then, all those memories were of activities that Octavia had wanted to do — activities she had often cajoled Lucy into accompanying her to, since their chaperone usually wouldn’t let Octavia go to a party unless Lucy agreed. There were no clippings from botanical gardens or treatises about horticulture because they had never done any of those things in London. What else might Lucy have wanted to do that season, if Octavia hadn’t been so determined to enjoy herself?
How long, before the first betrayal, had Lucy wanted to hurt her?
And why hadn’t Octavia cared enough to notice, before it became unfixable, that Lucy was unhappy?
Julian was still dead, and Octavia still blamed Lucy for it. But for a moment, Octavia wondered whether she shared some of the blame for what Lucy had done to her.
“I don’t suppose I can let her inherit,” she said, feeling less certain than she had before. “What would you do?”
“Either win Maidenstone or burn it to the ground. Perhaps even burn it down after winning it. But my training happened in Spain — you’re not waging war here, my love.”
Her breath caught at his endearment, but he said it casually, as though he hadn’t even realized he’d said it.
