Indeed, such stories did not generally end with the hapless orphan managing to make do in any regard. The only accounts he could recall were moralistic parables, in which the sheltered miss encountered some predatory young buck who turned her into a kept woman. Times were changing, of course, but the world still offered few opportunities to a gently bred girl forced to work.
He let some of his skepticism show. “What of your extended family? They had no care for you?”
“My family was never so large.”
“But surely there was someone.” He himself had not enjoyed the warm embrace of a large family—but even he’d had his brother, Michael.
She met his eyes and let the silence sit between them for a long moment. “No,” she said at last. “There was not.”
He felt somehow stung by that reply. What an absurd reaction! Yet for a moment, it felt as though he were the callow youth, and she, his superior in experience.
It unnerved him. He took a brisker tone. “How old were you, then, when you first struck out on your own?”
She answered readily enough. “Eighteen, Your Grace. Nearly.”
Nearly? “Seventeen then, you mean.”
She looked briefly bewildered at his tone. His anger was showing. He did not understand, any more than she, why he should be angry. But he was. “Yes,” she said slowly, “I suppose so.”
Seventeen. “And yet you had no connections—no family connections—to service? How then did you find your first position?”
“There is such a thing as a servant’s registry, Your Grace.” There was a dry joke hidden in her voice, no doubt at his expense. “One pays a small fee to discover the households where applications are wanted.”
“Yes, of course.” Naturally he knew of such things. “But how did you make the decision that service was the thing for you?”
She shrugged. “Anybody, they say, can wield a rag.”
She was being deliberately obtuse. Many young women would have sought alternatives to scrubbing floors. “You have an education. You might have been a companion or a governess.”
Now her amusement faded, leaving only cynicism in her face. “At eighteen, Your Grace? By those who sought companions, I was more judged in need of accompaniment. And as for being a governess . . . I doubt many wives would have liked that.”
No, he supposed not. The last sort of governess a housewife looked for was the dewy young lady. But he was startled by her forthrightness, and she saw it. “Forgive me,” she said, and then frowned down at her own hands, looking genuinely embarrassed. “I have shocked you.”
He checked his snort. “That’s rather a strong word for it.” And then he inwardly sighed. It seemed her quibbles with diction were catching. “Surprised, however—yes. One doesn’t often find would-be maids of your background. The Italian and piano, and whatnot.”
Her small, pleased smile was somehow charming. And then, quite suddenly, it . . . wasn’t. Though it had not altered a fraction, he could not look on it.
He stared over her shoulder. He had forgotten that there were all manner of tragedies in the world. Hers was not the greatest—but neither was his. Was there any cliché more tired than the cuckold?
The realization might have carried a bittersweet relief—for a commonplace tragedy was also a tragedy that might pass. And yet instead he felt stung, for he saw suddenly the difference between him and this girl: confronted with unimaginable loss, she had rebounded with ambition, whereas he, a man ten years her senior, had . . . how had she put it? Retired from the field.
She had put it more gently than he deserved. What in God’s name must she think of him?
He felt himself turning red. Odd sensation. Why the hell did it matter what a servant thought? He turned his attention to shuffling the notes she had made. Gladstone had written: he wanted Alastair’s help in ousting Salisbury, retaking the government. God’s blood—he’d written thrice. The man would not give up.
Damn right he wouldn’t. Alastair had won two elections for him. Provided Margaret’s letters were never made public, he would certainly be remembered for that.
But what of it? He no longer gave two bloody figs for his legacy. Naturally, some lingering vestige of his old self refused to believe this. But he had no use for it: his old life was dead. Done, damn it.
He laid down the papers. His housekeeper was sitting rigidly, braced for further interrogation. But he had the general outline of her secret now. She had been raised to hope for better, and she could not forget it. That explained a great deal about her.
He made himself say it: “You do yourself credit.” The words burned his throat, for he knew he could not speak them to himself. “You have cause to be proud.”
For some reason, she went white again. “Thank you.”
“And now I will give you a piece of advice.” He made himself smile. “Write to Lady Ripton. Tell her you require a place to stay while you seek a new position.”
A line appeared between her brows. “Are you sacking me again?”
“No. I’m doing you a favor, in fact.” He rose, and she hastily followed suit.
As he walked around the desk, he kept his eyes on her face, for there always seemed to be something new to see in it. And it gratified him to a baffling degree when he spotted the precise moment she realized he was walking toward her. Another man would have missed the fractional widening of her eyes. But not he. He saw what others would miss. He saw her.
Nobody, however, would have missed the quick hop she took away from him. “Must I always exit in this manner?” she said on an awkward, breathless laugh. “Chased out by—”
He looped his arm around her waist, and she gasped. With his free hand, he caught her chin and tipped it up.
How had he ever imagined that a petite frame was the key to feminine appeal? Miniatures might be compassed in a single glance. But such an abundance of perfection, long limbs and generous hips, nearly six feet of woman, made for an endless expanse of skin. Such a woman would demand hours to properly peruse. To taste. To penetrate.
“You should find a new position,” he said, “in the house of some honorable gentleman. I am not one.”
He brought his mouth down onto hers.
CHAPTER NINE
From the moment Marwick had appeared in the doorway, Olivia had felt as though the world were spinning. Shock had all but knocked her off the ladder. Before she’d even had a chance to skip forward to triumph—at last, he was out!—her worst fear had been realized: he’d seen through her.
But had he? Sitting at his desk, she’d scrambled to feel him out. His questions were probing, incisive. She felt like a tennis player parrying desperately against an unexpectedly skilled opponent. Was his suspicion based on some credible cause? Had she betrayed herself somehow? Or was Amanda’s overblown reference the only cause for it?
Most unnerving of all was the growing sensation that she was not facing the same man whom she’d come to know during these past weeks. Somehow, in the journey downstairs, that wild, dark, desperate man had been replaced by a lord. He wore a well-tailored suit, his trimmed and tamed hair (Vickers must have fixed it) now framing his eyes, his face, in a manner that accented the ruthless angles of his bone structure. And his every question bore the full force and the resurrected might of a man she had glimpsed only in flashes until now: landowner, politician, the scion of an unbroken line of aristocrats well accustomed to demanding obedience. It took every ounce of her wit to evade, resist, and rebuff him.
And then, with one line, he destroyed all her efforts: You have cause to be proud, he’d said, with no veil of cynicism or sarcasm to flavor it.
Perhaps he was right. He was downstairs because of her. She had helped effect this. That was cause for pride.
Yet shame, like a rush of acid in her throat, had choked her reply to him: for whatever triumph she might have otherwise gleaned from a duke’s resurrection, it was counterbalanced by what that resurrection made possible: a deceit and a theft that would destr
oy the startling, open respect she saw so plainly in his face.
This unhappiness weltered through her, dulling her wits; and so when he came around the table toward her, she did not glimpse his intentions until the very last moment—when he grabbed her waist and pulled her into a kiss.
His lips were hot. As masterful as his new manner. He opened her mouth with his and she tasted his tongue, and the shock was elemental; it started in her bones. Her startled breath filled her lungs with the scent of him, soap seasoned with bay leaves, the fresh lemon rinse with which he’d washed his hair. His skin. Salt and musk.
His grip at the small of her back, the flat of his palm, powerful, steadying, as her knees sagged.
Gasping, she turned her face aside—and then gasped again as his lips found her ear, tonguing the rim, suckling her lobe. “Wait,” she said raggedly. “I don’t—this won’t work.” Not again. She had resolved it. His lips found a spot beneath her ear and it made her whole body shudder. She stiffened and struggled out of his grasp. “You don’t need to do this! I was leaving!”
He stood facing her, his full lips parted, his breath audible, his long, elegant hands flexing at his sides. Another hot wave rippled through her at that sight, at the knowledge—God help her—that those hands were flexing around the feel of her. “What do you mean?” he said slowly.
What was the point of this ruse? “You don’t need to run me off.” Her hands shook; she knotted them into her skirts. “You were the one who came in. I am going.” She turned on her heel.
His hand on her elbow hauled her back. “Run you off?” His smile looked disbelieving . . . and then delighted. “Is that what you think I’m trying to do?” He reached up and nudged her spectacles into place. “Look more closely,” he murmured. “Or perhaps you’re truly blind.”
He was pulling her into him. Millimeter by millimeter, he was drawing her close. And she let him do it, because there was something in his expression . . . Who had ever looked at her that way before? As though her face were a spell, a piece of hypnotism, to which he played the willing, fascinated victim. His eyes were oceans, and she was lost in them . . .
Their lips met again. She did not move. Did not breathe. Gently his mouth molded over hers. She did not understand. If he wasn’t trying to run her off, then . . .
He was kissing her simply because he wanted to.
Everything suddenly became clear and bright. Her eyes drifted closed. Her hand found the back of his head, the shorn hair, still so soft; the feel of his skull, solid and curving. His mouth opened, and so did hers. Their tongues met. He was perfectly tall; they aligned as though designed for each other. His hand stroked her waist, and it felt as though he had unlocked something; her hips loosened, became sinuous, as she pressed against him.
Like that moment when the off-key string finally came into tune and joined with the chord, and the air vibrated with purity: her lips belonged with his; her body came into tune with him. Only she hadn’t guessed until this moment, as the kiss lengthened and opened a world of new sensations, that rightness could sing through her, a pure and perfect completion, and reverberate through her blood, and make it leap.
This was desire. Before it had manifested only in symptoms. But here was the full illness, and in his lips lay the cure. His mouth, his tongue, were wholesome to her, hot, exactly what her body craved . . . what it needed . . .
“Oh!”
The shrill exclamation brought Olivia to her senses. She leapt back, whirled, and found Polly hastily closing the door.
“Oh!” She felt the word slip through her fingers, and only then did she realize she was covering her mouth. “Oh!” She looked back at him, appalled.
He gave her a roguish half smile. “Oh.”
Sanity pierced her like a needle. It drew her loose limbs back into tight, rigid alignment. She narrowed her eyes at him.
He leaned back against the desk, raffish and unashamed. “Find a new employer.” He shrugged. “Or, if I am so lucky, don’t.”
On a strangled hiss, she fled.
Once in the hallway, the door slammed shut behind her, she sank against the wall. Her legs felt weak. She stared blindly at the suit of armor standing guard opposite. My God! That had actually happened! He had kissed her. And she’d reacted like a wanton.
A strange smile seized her, stupid and amazed. She had behaved like a wanton. Who would have guessed it?
She made herself scowl. This was nothing to be proud of.
But Mama had always told her that passion could make one a fool, and she had never believed it . . . until now. For there came a sound from within the study, the creak as his footsteps approached the door, and all she wanted to do was remain right here, waiting for his exit, to see what he might do next . . . and what she might do, what she might learn of herself, that she had never before suspected.
Instead, she snatched up her skirts and hurried down the hall—and then skidded to a stop by the staircase. Polly stood leaning against the banister, arms crossed, brows raised.
Mortification flooded her. Good God! After all the stern lectures she had delivered on proper behavior, to be caught frolicking with Marwick—
“It’s your half day, ain’t it?” Polly smirked. “P’raps I might go out with you.”
Mutely she shook her head. She did not take half days. Why risk leaving the house to be spotted?
Polly made a little chiding click of her tongue. “I heard Jones saying just this morning that he wanted you to fetch the fancy stuff from the market.”
You shouldn’t eavesdrop. She folded her lips together. After what Polly had seen, how could she make such pronouncements? Oh, heavens—Polly would tell everyone.
It doesn’t matter, she told herself. She would be out of this house within the week. He had left his rooms now, hadn’t he? Less than a week, then.
She wanted to sink through the floor.
“Well?” Polly’s devilish grin showed how much she was enjoying this—and how little she cared to disguise it.
Olivia cleared her throat. “Yes.” Her voice croaked. “That’s very true.” To ensure the kitchens suffered no additional thefts, Jones had proposed that she purchase all the expensive and rare supplies, and deliver them directly to Cook, whose knee prevented her from going to market herself. “But I didn’t think—”
Polly looked pointedly over her shoulder. “Oh, here comes His Grace. Interrupting again, am I? Is that why you can’t go?”
Olivia sucked in a breath. “All right, then.” Perhaps she could buy Polly’s silence with an ounce or two of saffron.
* * *
On a sunny afternoon, Piccadilly was a tangle of omnibuses, shouting cabmen, lady shoppers promenading beneath parasols, errand boys bearing packages, and impatient gentlemen who seemed to believe everyone should yield the road to their high-strung thoroughbreds. The entirety of the city seemed out to carouse, and the aisles of Swan & Edgar’s were crushed.
It took Olivia ten minutes, and a very sharp tone of voice, to flag the attention of a young female salesclerk. The girl seemed peculiarly ungratified to be making such a significant sale, a small fortune’s worth of spices: cardamom, Ceylon cinnamon, mace, saffron, and white pepper. As the goods were packaged, Olivia waited for Polly to say something—some sly remark to hint at what she required to keep quiet.
But Polly showed no interest in the proceedings. Her elbows on the counter, she faced out toward the crowds, looking with transparent curiosity at the grand dames and the harried bourgeois mothers, whose brawling broods quarreled and chased each other through a sea of skirts.
As they exited back into daylight, Olivia started for the cabstand, but Polly caught her elbow. “Why not a stroll?” she said. “We’ve the time for it, aye? And St. James ain’t a far walk.”
Olivia knew better than to trust her. They had crossed swords far too often for that. But out of doors, Polly looked different somehow—far younger, less sour. The natural light lent her olive skin a flushed, vigorous radiance th
at one more often saw on young children. And the light in her amber eyes did not seem greedy or calculating, only wistful.
Perhaps she saw Olivia’s indecision, for she said softly, “I don’t want to go back to the house just yet.”
And Olivia remembered suddenly how Vickers had pinned her up against the wall. “Is the valet still bothering you? I spoke to him, but—”
“It’s not that,” Polly said. “Only it’s so pretty out, and soon it won’t be. I don’t like the winter.”
Lingering outdoors was a risk, but surely a minor one. With so many crowds on the pavement, and a netted hat on her head to disguise her hair, Olivia felt that a passerby in a coach would never take note of her.
With a shrug and a nod, she turned down Regent Street for the park.
In the meadow, the milkmaids were selling milk straight from the cow at a penny a pint. Olivia purchased two mugs seasoned with nutmeg and cinnamon. Polly rented a gingham cloth to whip across the grass. After a moment’s indecision, Olivia set down the packages and joined her on the ground.
She had not lolled on her bum since she’d first donned a corset. Mama, who had hailed from rural Kent, had been intent on raising Olivia to a finer standard—or what she had imagined to be finer. London ladies don’t behave so: it had been her favorite reproof. But Mama had never actually been to London. How it would have disappointed her now. For all around them, other girls were lolling on similar blankets, enjoying their afternoon away from work—and the grass, to Olivia’s surprised pleasure, was quite comfortable.
The silence, however, was not. As she sipped the milk, she felt herself on edge again, waiting for the penny to drop.
The wardrobe of passersby—some grand, some humble—at last furnished material for a halting discussion. “There’s a smart gown,” Polly said, pointing at a woman in bronze silk. “Bit flash for the afternoon, don’t you say?”
Fool Me Twice Page 13
