She shook her head, unable to speak.
“I saw a ray of light for you. You were free of my willful, spoilt son, and my guilt lifted.”
“Guilt?”
“I could have stopped your marriage. I could have saved you from the misery of it.”
“We would have found a way. Percy wasn’t the only willful, spoilt child in our relationship.”
“Over the years, I watched you grow and blossom into an accomplished woman, a woman who I was and remain proud to call daughter. Then Percy rose from the dead, and I’ve never been more grateful to God in my life.”
“Of course.”
“But when you told me the news, I heard the tremor of your voice, saw the tremble in your hands. Before me stood a woman fearful, but determined, to set her own course. At once, I knew I would move heaven and earth to see you free to pursue the life you wanted, not the one imposed on you by an unhappy marriage.”
“Even if it meant helping me divorce your son.”
“Percy was . . . is my son, but you, my dear, are my daughter.”
Wind sharp with the last remnants of winter gusted across the rooftop, and Olivia closed her eyes, allowing the Duke’s words to surround her in warmth and love. As a newlywed, she’d come into his house, and he’d accepted her like a long lost daughter.
The feeling, however, was short-lived when he cleared his throat and said, “Now, getting back to that one pesky word, courage.”
Her eyes flew open, and she steeled herself.
“It takes a good bit of courage to pursue a free and happy life. I thought you understood that.”
A hot, shamed blush flared across her skin, pinpricks of perspiration pushing to its surface.
“May I be bold?”
“Please,” she replied, bracing herself against the shifting sand of this conversation.
“St. Alban is no Percy. Percy was a boy, not yet formed into a man. In fact, I haven’t the faintest clue what sort of Percy will someday find his way back to London. But St. Alban is very much a man who can be depended upon. The sort of man who will make an excellent viscount and an even better husband. According to Lucretia, quite a few chits have set their caps at him.”
“I’m sure they have. Perhaps one will even convince Jake to fall in love with her.”
“Love?” the Duke scoffed. “How many unions of our class have naught to do with love? Jake”—She heard the emphasis on the word, understanding at once that she’d given herself away—“knows his responsibility and won’t shirk it. He will marry for reasons other than love, if he must.”
“I’m not certain how much you’ve gathered about my relations with Lord St. Alban”—It appeared more than a bit—“but a future between us is impossible. His daughter needs a stepmother of impeccable reputation and social standing.”
“And you think you can’t be that stepmother?”
“I know it.”
“Well, I agree with you on that front, but I think you’re viewing the matter from the wrong angle,” the Duke said. “I met the young lady in question yesterday at Lucretia’s manse. She’s a remarkable girl, but an unconventional girl, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Most definitely.”
Her mind traveled back to the night of the Duke’s ball. Of the way she’d found Mina in the study with Hugh, after she’d called him a simpleton. How Olivia wished she could’ve seen the impact of that word on his face.
“So what sort of stepmother does Miss Radclyffe need?” the Duke continued. “One who would render her into an unoriginal copy of a thousand other young ladies?”
Olivia remained silent, even as butterflies began fluttering in her stomach. What was he getting at?
“Would she be happy with the life a conventional stepmother would impose upon her?”
“I . . . I,” Olivia stammered, “I can’t imagine.”
“What Miss Radclyffe needs is a stepmother who will nurture and reinforce the remarkable young lady she is. One unafraid of the unconventional and extraordinary. Viewed from this angle, the stepmother Miss Radclyffe needs is—”
Olivia interrupted the Duke without a single, staying thought. “Me.”
Chapter 30
“I am the right stepmother for Mina,” Olivia said for good measure, the idea gaining traction with each word she spoke. The strong maternal feeling she’d experienced for the girl was no fluke. She was exactly the correct stepmother for Mina. The concept sank in with the uncomplicated weight of truth.
The Duke smiled. “I do believe you are.”
Long unused muscles stretched across Olivia’s face. She was smiling, possibly like a madwoman, but smiling nonetheless. “Which means”—Now that the words had begun flowing, she couldn’t hold them in. There were truths that would see light—“I’m the right wife for Jake. My feelings for him weren’t wrong. A woman could give herself fully to a man like him without fear. In fact, she would be a fool not to.”
Another truth would be spoken.
“I’ve been a fool.”
“He will have a viscountess before the year is done, mark my words,” the Duke predicted. “Now ask yourself: have you truly seized the opportunity to move forward?”
Her smile grew hard and determined. “No one else will have him.”
“No one else?” the Duke asked, a canny twinkle in his eyes. She’d played right into his hands.
“No one else,” she all but growled. She’d never felt so ferocious.
“Now, what will you do about it?” he asked, the question the nudge she needed.
The heavy numbness that had been plaguing her since the night of the Duke’s ball lightened and lifted away. An airy and buoyant being was she, untethered by the physical world. It was entirely possible she might up and float off this rooftop.
This was her chance to truly live, and this chance at happiness far outweighed the risk. She must seize it this very instant. What was the alternative? That she would live a life of uncertainty and unhappiness?
That was the life she was living now.
Her prison tower, dependent on no one and nothing for support, listed to the side and, at last, toppled over, crumbling to dust.
The only life worth living was one dependent on another. A person worthy of trust and love . . .
Jake.
Her view went from limited and confining to unlimited and utterly wide open all the way up to the stars.
Oh, the stars . . . He’d been right about them, too.
Her heart accelerated, and she flung off the last vestiges of the haze that had hung about her this last month. She was alive, truly alive, her edges distinct. She shuffled backward, and the Duke released her hand. “How can I ever thank you?”
A discerning smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. “If your father is still out of the country, allow me to walk you down the aisle?”
She nodded once before striking out across the garden and down the stairs, her feet a swift tattoo of lightly descending steps. One foot moved faster than the last, her pace and resolve increasing with each successive stair. She reached for the front door lock and jerked it open with an impatient twist. She shot through the doorway with nary a backward glance.
And with nary a consideration for overcoat, bonnet, parasol, sensible boots, or reticule. Clad in nothing more substantial than a muslin morning dress and paper-thin slippers, her feet hit the sidewalk at a near run. The fact that the Duke’s carriage stood waiting and could be at her disposal never crossed her mind.
She hurried to the end of the row of townhouses, weaving through the few pedestrians braving the London damp, eyes on the lookout for a hackney where her quiet street intersected with Curzon. Her hand shot toward the sky and began waving, fingers waggling, uncaring that she might be attracting unwelcome atten
tion.
What did she care what strangers thought? Or acquaintances for that matter? She only cared for the opinion of one man.
Just when she thought all the hackneys in London were conspiring against her, one rolled into view. She blew a short, sharp whistle, and her hand increased its frantic bid to entice him her way. The driver crossed a lane and pulled his lone horse to a stop in front of her.
“Where canna I take ye?” he called down from his lofty perch as he flipped up the collar of his overcoat against the unseasonable wind.
“Cleveland Row, if you please.”
“And if ye don’t mind me askin’, how will me fare be paid today?”
She glanced down to find her hands empty of reticule or any form of currency for payment. “Oh,” was her reply before she dodged right and set her feet in motion at a hurried, and decidedly unrespectable, clip.
If she’d been paying attention, she might have overheard the driver mutter a discontented diatribe against, “That lot o’ ’oity-toities ’oo ’speck to get sumpin’ for nuttin’ off tha backs o’ tha workin’ folk.”
Olivia, however, had no intention of dithering about when she could be making her way toward Jake. A second without him was a second wasted. Her slippers had curdled into a sloshy mess, and the lightweight muslin of her dress may have turned transparent due to rain now falling in drops heavier than a drizzly mist. No matter. If she kept her focus, she could be on his stoop in twenty minutes.
She cut a quick right through Shepherd’s Market, her clip developing into a steady jog. By the time she reached Green Park, she was sorely tempted to shed slippers that had begun to blister her heels. She banished the idea. She couldn’t arrive on his doorstep unshod. That would be too much.
She was rounding an overgrown corner when, just ahead on the path, she spotted Miss Fox strolling toward her, arm-in-arm with a man . . . A tall, powerfully built man.
Without thinking, Olivia ducked behind the nearest bush, her heart racing and threatening to break. She closed her eyes and waited and tried not to think of who that tall, powerfully built man could be, or the deep pit of despair that had opened inside her at the sight of him.
A throat cleared politely, and her eyes flew open. Before her stood Miss Fox with . . . Not Jake.
Her lungs released. She could breathe again. Her heart could remain intact.
“Lady Olivia?” Miss Fox asked, genuine concern in her eyes. “Are you quite the thing?”
“Oh, yes, quite,” Olivia said, her words a breathless rush. “I’m inspecting this”—She gestured toward the shrub that should have done its job and protected her from view—“gooseberry.”
“Actually, this gooseberry and I know each other rather well. But who am I to tell you?”
Miss Fox pointed toward Olivia’s skirts, drawing her gaze. The devil take it. The dratted gooseberry had ensnared her in its diabolical grip.
As she quietly attempted to wrest the delicate muslin from the tenacious shrub, Miss Fox’s companion said, “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your fine”—He pronounced the word foin and placed himself decidedly out of her and Miss Fox’s social class, a fact Olivia would have found curious any other time—“friend.”
Miss Fox hesitated before relenting, “Lady Olivia, may I introduce—”
“There!” Olivia exclaimed after one last twist of gossamer muslin. The tear was no wider than four, maybe six, inches. No matter. She was free. “Miss Fox, I’m turned around. Could you point me in the direction of—” She stopped cold, good sense preventing her from finishing that sentence.
Miss Fox finished it for her. “Queen Street?”
Good sense would prevent her from reaching Jake if she didn’t finish her sentence for herself. “Cleveland Row.”
Miss Fox’s brow lifted, even as she silently pointed the way.
With nary a care for proper etiquette, Olivia’s feet kicked into a rapid walk that increased into her former steady jog, her chest heaving, droplets of sweat trickling down the sides of her face, the obstinate gooseberry and the curious eyes of Miss Fox forgotten. She had more important matters on her mind. Like not stepping through the fresh rip in her dress.
After what felt like forty days and forty nights, Jake’s Cleveland Row mansion came into view, and within moments her feet were taking the front steps two at a time. Propriety be damned. She had a future to begin.
At the top, she paused, just a breath to collect herself and attempt to tame her stampeding heart. She combed back strands of wet hair off her clammy and surely flushed face and smoothed them down as much as she could. Fat droplets of rain had accumulated over her entire person like so many glittering diamonds.
What a ridiculously glamorous metaphor for the mess she must appear.
No matter. She drew herself up to her fullest height and reached out before her nerve failed her. Once, twice, she rapped the knocker, and waited.
She tapped out the seconds that followed, forefinger striking thigh, and reached thirty before the door cracked open. Jake’s man, Payne, stuck his head out the opening. “May I be of assistance—” He stopped mid-sentence, recognition lighting within his eyes. “It’s you.”
To his credit, the man didn’t shut the door in her face.
“Please announce my arrival to Lord St. Alban,” she intoned in her haughtiest voice, conjuring up generations of aristocratic forebears who in no way had ever resembled her current state of dishabille.
“Is his lordship expecting you?”
“No,” she had no choice but to reply.
The valet probably had to accommodate all manner of deranged women banging down his employer’s front door. Even ones wearing nothing but a destroyed pair of slippers and a ruined muslin dress the color and consistency of a well-used dishrag.
“His lordship is not in. Good day,” the butler offered respectfully, but inflexibly.
To Olivia’s horror, the door began to shut. She’d come too far to allow that to happen. Her foot kicked out, and she tried not to wince when it became wedged between the solid door and the unforgiving jamb.
She pinned the valet beneath her stubborn gaze, reminding him ever-so-subtly that she outranked him, even with a wet string of hair stuck in her right eye. “Is he not in? Or is he out?”
There was a difference, and they both knew it. If Jake was out, then he wasn’t here. If he was not in, then he could be here and had instructed his butler not to admit her.
The first option was a minor set-back, the second a soul-destroying defeat.
“My lady, if you will please . . .” the servant trailed off. He stared pointedly at her obstructive foot. She removed it, and the door shut with a firm snap.
Jake was not in?
Gutted, she stood staring at the closed door for an indeterminate amount of time, all the energy and life that had brought her here, draining out of her. At last, she pointed her feet homeward. And stepped through the rip in her dress. Of course.
She bent and finished what her foot had started, tearing off the bottom eight inches of muslin. She must look fit for Bedlam.
Without Jake, perhaps she was.
Chapter 31
Jake rocked forward onto the balls of his feet before settling back on his heels, his feet as restless and tetchy as the rest of him. Sweat-slicked palms clutched the package he’d brought for Olivia. He refused to think of the package as a present.
Payne had nearly gone apoplectic when he left the manse carrying the package with the intention of delivering it himself. Viscounts didn’t deliver packages. They had them sent by post or delivered by footmen.
His intention had been to hand the package over to Olivia’s butler, pivot, and leave. It had been a good plan. Except he hadn’t followed the plan. Instead, he’d stepped inside the foyer and said, “Will you inform
Lady Olivia that Lord St. Alban is here to see her?”
Those had been his exact unplanned words. Now he stood tarrying in her foyer while the household staff searched the house for her. It appeared they’d misplaced their mistress.
He was, in fact, under no obligation to stand here and wait for her. He should place the package on the receiving table and leave, saving them both the embarrassment of his presence. It was what she wanted. She’d made that much clear.
He didn’t need to see her unknot the twine and pull the parchment paper apart. He didn’t need to see her face light up from what lay inside.
Rationally accepting what he didn’t need to see, he set the package down. “Right.”
Behind him, he heard a muted click and the soft creak of a hinge. His head whipped around, and his body followed a beat behind. The front door stood wide, the silhouette of Olivia framed within its opening. She resembled an angel, light and lithe, illusory.
Except, when details began coming into focus, his first impression was replaced with a different reality of her. Hair set at an odd angle . . . Dress fabric strangely heavy and frumpled . . . She was . . . Disheveled.
He took a step forward, alarm guiding him. Olivia wasn’t merely disheveled. She was nothing less than a complete mess. Hair stringing down her face, half up-half down. Feet bare on cold marble tiles, rainwater pooling beneath her. Dress ripped to shreds and translucent with wet and clinging to her body in ways that cleared all decent thought from the mind of any sousing male who happened upon her, who happened to be him at present.
She closed the door and rested her forehead against oak. Her body language spoke of defeat. Another wave of concern crested inside him.
Tempted by the Viscount Page 30
