WidowsWickedWish

by Lynne Barron

  “What on earth is going on around here?” Alice demanded as soon as Olivia entered the room. “Henry said Aunt Hastings had a fit after some sort of argument between you.”

  Olivia peered up at Henry beside her.

  “It’s for you to share what you will,” he told her before turning from the room and pulling the door closed behind him.

  “What happened?” Beatrice asked from her perch on the velvet settee.

  “You haven’t heard then?” Olivia took the seat across from the two ladies, her hands nervously smoothing over her skirts.

  “Heard what?” Alice leaned forward expectantly.

  Olivia drew in a stuttering breath. “Jack and I were found in a compromising position last night.”

  “At my ball?”

  “In my carriage.”

  “By whom?” Beatrice asked, her eyes wide.

  “By Johnston,” Olivia answered, heat racing across her cheeks at the memory. “And a footman, Freemont, I think.”

  “You think?” Alice replied with an arch of her brow.

  “It all happened so fast,” Olivia hurriedly explained. “As soon as the door opened Jack leaned over me and I couldn’t really see who was outside the carriage.”

  “Leaned over you to hide your disarray?” Alice asked.

  “I wasn’t in disarray. He was, but I was fully covered.”

  “Oh my God! You took him in your mouth in the carriage? And your butler…”

  “He opened the door.”

  “And you were still…”

  “No, I’d…that is…Jack had already…but I was still on my knees and his…” Olivia waved one hand in the air, lost for words.

  “His manhood was still on display.” Alice finished for her.

  Beatrice leaned back against the settee, her hands coming up to cradle her belly, her eyes drifting shut.

  “And mother somehow found out—”

  “It’s the twins,” Alice interrupted. “Those two twin parlor maids. You should never have split them apart, sending one to your mother’s house and keeping the other in yours. Separated twins are the devil.”

  “You think one told the other?”

  “Of course.”

  “It’ll be all over Town soon,” Olivia whispered.

  “No, it will not.” Alice rose to her feet. “I will put a stop to this, mark my words. I will put the fear of God into your servants and your lady mother’s. We will keep this fiasco contained.”

  “Do you truly think that is possible?” Beatrice asked without opening her eyes.

  “And you,” Alice pinned Olivia with her glittering gaze. “You must learn to keep your amorous adventures private. Bad enough you took him up to the tower and returned with the evidence plastered upon your derriere. But to pleasure him with your mouth without the safely of a locked door between you and the world. What were you thinking?”

  “She wasn’t thinking.” Beatrice’s eyes slowly opened and Olivia saw moisture gathering in their corners. “I’m sorry I encouraged you to be daring. You are not cut out for it.”

  “That isn’t true.” Olivia rose to her feet, her hands fisting in her skirts. “It was an accident. It could have happened to anyone.”

  “But it happened to you,” Alice replied, her face softening. “And I too am sorry to have encouraged you, to have taught you that trick.”

  “What trick?” Beatrice asked.

  “Stop it, both of you,” Olivia ordered. “I am not some silly girl led astray by my wanton sister and cousin. I am a grown woman and if I chose to be daring, if I chose to take a lover and please him in my carriage, I did so of my own free will, not because you encouraged me or taught me tricks.”

  Beatrice and Alice only looked at her as if she’d suddenly sprouted a third eye on her forehead.

  “I wished to be daring,” she continued as she paced away from them. “No, I wished to be wicked. The wicked widow. And I do not regret my affair with Jack, not for one moment, even if I do regret having been caught in so humiliating a situation. Alice, I hope you are correct and we can somehow forestall disaster, but if not I will live with the consequences of my actions.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  At Henry’s words Olivia whipped around to face him where he stood in the open doorway.

  “Because the consequences have come calling.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Jack looked haggard and a bit wild when he followed Henry into the parlor.

  His hair was tousled, one dark lock falling over his forehead. His cravat was wilted, his black jacket open over a white shirt and no waistcoat. His buff trousers and tall boots were mud spattered.

  On his not-quite handsome face he wore a worried scowl that pulled his full lips down at the corners and his raven brows low over hooded eyes.

  His gaze unerringly found Olivia across the room where she stood between two tall windows, her hands clasped before her roiling stomach. He took her in from the top of her head to her slippers, his gaze lingering on her cheek where four shallow scratches gave testament to her mother’s fury. A muscle ticced in his jaw.

  “Mr. Bentley,” Alice greeted as she crossed to him. “I wish you luck.”

  If Jack thought her words odd, he did not show it, merely bowed over the hand she offered before turning to Beatrice who had risen from her perch on the settee.

  “Jack, I’m terribly sorry it has come to this,” Beatrice said, her gaze darting between the silent man and her sister who had yet to greet him.

  He remained quiet in the face of her sympathy and Olivia wondered what he imagined his sorry fate to be. Likely he thought he must save her, make another offer of marriage when the word had not so much as passed his lips in the weeks she’d been in Town.

  When Henry made no move to follow the ladies from the parlor, Jack turned to glare at him.

  “I’ll stay,” Henry said in answer to the unspoken order.

  “I believe I can handle it from here,” Jack replied, his voice as dark as thunder.

  “Even so.” Henry ambled farther into the room to take up a place before the empty hearth. He leaned elegantly against the mantel, one arm stretched across the dark wood, his fingers gently tapping.

  Jack spun around to face Olivia once more, his eyes pinning her in place. “Good morning, Lady Palmerton.”

  “Mr. Bentley,” she whispered as dread settled like a rock in her belly.

  He looked so angry. She didn’t know what she’d expected when she saw him again but it certainly hadn’t been the deep, seething rage she saw on his face, in his rigid stance, in the eyes that bored into hers.

  “Hastings and I have settled things,” he said in a voice only marginally less fierce.

  “Settled what things?”

  “I’ve a special license in my pocket, signed by the archbishop himself.”

  “No,” she breathed.

  “Oh, yes. Make no mistake, my lady. You will be my wife.”

  Olivia looked away from the fury radiating off him to meet her brother’s gaze. “Henry?”

  “There is no other choice,” he said, his voice soft yet implacable. “I have spoken with the servants, threatened them with dismissal should they gossip, but who knows how far the rumors may have already spread? We can only hope to contain them so much.”

  “Please,” Olivia whispered.

  “You must think of Frances and Charles,” he replied, his face hardening. “If you cannot think of yourself, of the damage to your reputation, then think of your children and Miss Justine. If scandal erupts it will surely follow them for years if not forever.”

  Olivia sucked in a fractured breath, unable to deny the truth in his words. And still, how could she condemn herself and the man who stood silently seething in the middle of the room to a marriage that would provide neither of them what they most desired.

  “Please don’t do this,” she whispered. “It will kill me.”

  “Kill you?” Jack roared and Olivia turned to face him,
shock vibrating through her limbs. “It will kill Lady Palmerton to give up her title? To marry so far beneath her? To bear a miner’s sons and daughters?”

  “I will not—” she began, her hands fluttering at her sides.

  “You will,” he answered in a low rumble.

  Fury roared over Olivia, battered against her temples, slammed into her chest, her heartbeat faltering. “How dare you? Who do you think you are to come into this house bellowing like a madman and shouting orders at me? You act as if this is all my fault, as if I somehow trapped you in this quagmire. I don’t remember you protesting when I fell to my knees before you, when I took your—”

  “Olivia!” Henry shouted.

  “If you don’t want to hear what I have to say, be gone.” She darted one quick angry glance at her brother before returning her burning eyes to Jack. “What are you so angry about? Only a few months ago you asked me to marry you. No, no that isn’t right, is it? You told me I was to marry you. To bed me is to wed me, remember?”

  Jack blinked in obvious surprise. “I am not angry at being forced to marry you.”

  “Forced?” she repeatedly with as much scathing disdain as she could muster.

  “Poor choice of words, that,” Henry muttered.

  “Oh, that’s it,” Olivia seethed through trembling lips.

  “Livy.” Jack stepped toward her, one hand out before him, a look of anguish pinching his features.

  She spun and fled through the open window at her back, undone by the soft plea and the torment in his eyes. She crossed the stone balcony and stumbled down the steps to the tight garden beyond.

  “What to do?” she whispered around a moan, her hands pressed to her belly. “Oh God, what to do?”

  She could not marry Jack. She could not damn them both to a cold marriage. And it would be cold once he realized she would never bear him the son he so desperately wanted. It would be Palmerton all over again, only worse. Infinitely worse. She hadn’t loved her husband, hadn’t missed him when he’d abandoned her to find his pleasure elsewhere.

  She loved Jack Bentley, had loved him since she was a girl of six and he’d first arrived at Hastings Hall with Simon. She’d been a fool to think that love had disappeared when he’d married Elizabeth, when she’d pledged herself to Palmerton. It had always been there, through all the years when he’d been little more than a ghost in her life, lingering on the fringes of society, silently watching her but never approaching.

  When he inevitably turned from her she would be crushed, broken where before she’d only been battered. She’d been a fool to invite him to her bed, a fool to continue the affair in Town, a fool to believe she might dare to reach for passion and come away unscathed.

  And now she held his fate and that of his daughter and her children in her hands. If they did not marry and the story of her wanton behavior made the rounds Jack would be as ruined as she. Everyone would assume he had not offered her the protection of his name. The gossips would label him a cad, a man without honor. Those doors open to him would be summarily slammed shut and he would be left to somehow shield Justine from the worst of it.

  Olivia stopped in the middle of the garden, her mind whirling as she attempted to sort out the havoc she’d wreaked upon them all in one short night.

  She’d only wished for a bit of wickedness.

  How had it come to this?

  She stared off into the distance not really seeing anything around her.

  It was the jangle of carriage wheels in the mews beyond the garden that finally woke her from her daze. She watched as a groom led a small curricle through the narrow alley, likely coming from one of their neighbor’s stables en route to the front step to pick up a passenger. As the carriage passed behind Henry’s stables, her gaze landed on the low whitewashed structure, the doors open to the summer breeze.

  Without thought she walked to the open doors and peered inside. All was dim within and quiet but for the occasional snorting of the horses in the stalls. She stood there, half inside the dark interior, half outside in the sunlight, hesitant to enter, unable to turn away.

  “This is where it all began.”

  At the whispered words Olivia turned to find Jack standing not ten feet away staring beyond her into the stables.

  “Or ended, as the case may be,” he continued as he stepped nearer. “Do you remember that day?”

  “I didn’t think you’d seen me,” she answered him as heat rushed over her.

  “I didn’t. It had gotten so that I didn’t need to see you to know that you were near,” he said with a shake of his head. “I could feel your eyes on me.”

  She cringed in embarrassment. How she must have plagued him, constantly following him about, begging him for his attention. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve waited a long time to hear you say those words.”

  Olivia couldn’t think what to say in reply to his softly spoken words.

  “Why?” Jack stepped around her and into the stables, turning in a slow circle before facing her. He stood in a narrow beam of sunlight that streamed through the open doors and glinted off his hair, turning the lock across his forehead a deep blue.

  “Oh Jack,” she murmured, unsure what he wanted her to say, how she might explain. “I fancied myself in love with you.”

  “Yes,” he agreed after a pause, his gaze intent upon her.

  “I knew nothing would ever come of it,” she continued. “I truly am sorry if my adoration embarrassed you.”

  Jack slashed the air with one hand, impatience evident in the gesture. “Why did you do it, Olivia?”

  “Do what?” she asked. “Follow you about? I told you—”

  “I understand that you were jealous, angry,” he interrupted on a huff of breath. “But to force me to marry Elizabeth?”

  “Force you? You loved Elizabeth. I saw you take her into your arms right there.” She walked into the stables and pointed to the corner where bales of hay were stacked to the ceiling.

  “And for that one transgression I was saddled with a wife I never wanted and a child who was not my own,” he growled.

  Olivia stepped back at the quiet fury in his words, her gaze flying to his face to find him staring at her with a frown pulling at his lips and his brows lowered.

  “Justine is not your daughter?” she whispered in shock. “But who is her father?”

  “My wife would never tell me but she was three months along when I married her.” Jack paced away before turning to glare at her. “And contrary to what Lady Hastings thinks she saw that day, I’d gotten no more than a few kisses and a quick grope of her breasts.”

  “My mother found you and Elizabeth here,” Olivia whispered as the pieces of the puzzle slipped into place in her mind. “She sent up a cry and you did the honorable thing.”

  “Honorable?” he barked out a grating laugh. “After you went running to your mother, she and her friends stormed in here screaming about injuring a poor innocent girl. It was no accident they found us together. What choice did I have? Refuse and see us both ruined or marry the scheming bitch and hold my head up with some measure of pride, some measure of my honor intact.”

  I saved you from him once. I saw the way you followed him around when he was just a boy, watched as you fawned over him, lusted after him as he grew into the rough dirty man he is.

  Her mother’s words came back to her and she knew, she knew deep in her bones that Jack was right. It had been no accident that her mother had come upon Jack and Elizabeth in the stables that long-ago day. Her mother had engineered the entire episode, from start to finish. She’d saddled Jack with a woman whom he did not love and another man’s child. And she’d done it to remove him from her daughter’s sphere, to forestall disaster.

  “Why did you do it, Olivia?” his ragged words tore through her.

  “Oh my God,” Olivia murmured as the full impact of his words registered. He thought she’d run to her mother, that she’d sent her to find them together, that she had single-hande
dly ruined his life. “You blame me.”

  Jack ran a hand through his hair, his eyes briefly closing before opening once more. “Not entirely. I should have turned around the moment I saw Elizabeth lurking in the shadows. But Christ, she was known to spread her charms about and I was as horny as a goat.”

  “All these years I though you and Elizabeth were in love…” Her voice trailed away as the enormity of her mother’s crime hit her.

  “We barely knew one another,” he replied heatedly. “I would have tried to make the best of our situation but she would have none of it. None of me. That day in the stables was the only time in five long hellish years that I ever kissed her, ever touched her. She spread her legs for any man with a prick except her husband.”

  “I see,” she responded as this new knowledge jolted through her, shed their time together in an entirely new light. “When you came to Idyllwild, did you know I was there?”

  Jack glared at her and for a moment she thought he would not answer her.

  “No,” he finally grated out, “but make no mistake, I intended to find you in London.”

  “To make me pay for my sins?” she asked as pain pierced her, nearly doubling her over. She wrapped her arms around her waist and stepped back until she was pressed against the rough, wooden wall.

  “To make you my wife,” he answered swiftly.

  “Why would you want to marry me if you believed I had engineered your descent into five hellish years of marriage?”

  “Because you owe me!” he shouted as he advanced on her. “You took my dreams from me, dashed them to the ground in a fit of jealousy. Do you think I wanted this life? To be married to a conniving slut? To be a widower with a motherless daughter not of my blood and no children of my own? I had plans for my life. I wanted a proper lady for my wife, from a good family, one whose connections coupled with my wealth might raise us high. A house full of children who would grow into ladies and gentlemen celebrated in Society rather than merely tolerated. A son to carry on the Bentley name, to inherit the fortune we’ve labored to wrestle from the earth.”

  Jack towered over her, his harsh breath billowing over her upturned face, his eyes mere slits beneath slashing brows.