“Oh dear,” a woman cried. “Oh dear! Sarah? Sarah!”
Olivia swung her legs off the bed: That was her mother’s voice. What on earth was going on?
She no sooner burst fuzzy-headed into the hall than the answer became clear. Much too clear.
The door to her mother’s private chambers stood partially ajar. Augusta stood in the hall in front of it, struggling to don a wrapper over her delicate, nearly transparent chemise. That was a little odd, but not particularly troubling, given that their male guests had all gone fishing.
Except that they had not all gone fishing. For behind Augusta in her bedchamber, hopping around on one foot as he tried to pull a boot onto the other, was Justin St. Clare. Not Archibald Collins, but the Honorable Justin St. Clare.
For a moment Olivia could only stand there, gaping at the two of them. Her mother and Mr. St. Clare?
Under Olivia’s stunned stare Augusta actually blushed. “It’s not what you …” Her hand fluttered at her throat. “I … I can explain,” she stammered.
She tried nervously to rearrange her loosened hair but it was pointless. Then her paramour came up behind her and she gave up any pretense of explanation. She dropped her face into her hands and began to cry. Mr. St. Clare at once wrapped his arms around her and she turned gratefully in his embrace, to direct her tears to his shirtfront.
It was such an intimate display that Olivia could only gape like a dumbstruck fool. Her mother, clad in her clinging wrapper was weeping upon the chest of a man dressed in just his shirtsleeves—and in the middle of the afternoon! Had the world gone completely mad?
“Mother,” Olivia began with some difficulty. “What, precisely, did Sarah see?”
That made Augusta cry all the harder, forcing Mr. St. Clare to answer. “I accept complete responsibility,” he earnestly vowed. “And of course I mean to do the proper thing by Augusta.”
The proper thing. In a moment of complete absurdity Olivia wondered if Mr. St. Clare hadn’t already done the proper thing and pleased Augusta as properly as Neville Hawke had pleased her.
“Oh no!” She shook her head at such a wicked thought.
“But I must!” Mr. St. Clare replied, misunderstanding her reaction. “I must wed her. It’s only right!”
“What is all this hubbub?” James’s voice rose questioning from the first floor.
“Good heavens!” Augusta shrieked. She dashed into her room, Mr. St. Clare stood there, plainly at a loss when Augusta slammed the door shut.
Olivia heard her brother’s heavy footsteps mounting the stair. “Olivia? Mother? What’s wrong with Sarah? She was crying and ran off—” James halted mid-sentence and mid-step when he spied the strange tableau in the upper hall. From Mr. St. Clare’s obvious dishabille, James’s gaze narrowed and swung to Olivia. His thick brows lowered in quick fury.
“What in God’s name? Olivia! Are you mad? Justin—” His hands knotted into fists. “By damn, I’ll kill you!”
“No. No!” Olivia leapt between them. “It’s not what you think.”
“Not what I think!” He tried to shove her aside but she clung to his jacket front. “First Hawke!” he exclaimed. “Now St. Clare!”
“It was Mother,” she shouted. “Not me. Mother!”
“What?”
When he hesitated Olivia took quick advantage. “Sarah must have barged into Mother’s bedroom without knocking and found … and found them. Together.”
“Together? With Mother?” For a moment James was at a loss for words. Then his fury returned tenfold and he glared past her at the unfortunate Mr. St. Clare.
The man nervously cleared his throat. “I’m afraid so. But I mean to do right by her,” he hurriedly went on. “You needn’t fear on that score.”
Caught still between fury and shock, James stood there, mired in utter confusion. Olivia understood precisely how he felt. Then Augusta ventured from her room hastily dressed, just as Lord Holdsworth and Viscount Dicharry came up the stairs. Alerted to the hubbub and not to be shortchanged, the Skylocks and the Wilkinson women followed behind.
Olivia wanted to chase them away, for she could just imagine what they were thinking. No sense missing any detail of what sounded like a shocking scandal unfolding in their midst. As witnesses, they would be in demand at all the parties back in town. This was the most delicious scandal in ages, something to bandy about for months to come: the beautiful widow Dunmore discovered in flagrante delicto with the very wealthy Mr. St. Clare, a man several years her junior and a friend of her son’s. And caught in the act by her three children!
Fortunately Mrs. McCaffery appeared just then to hustle Augusta back into her room. James stalked off to the study, followed by Mr. St. Clare, after he had retrieved the rest of his clothing. That left Olivia to deal with the rest of their guests, and her patience was worn so thin as to barely support civility.
“Well!” Henrietta Wilkinson huffed as Olivia herded everyone downstairs. “I can see this is not at all the environment for delicate young ladies.” She placed an arm around her daughter as if to shelter her from whatever other evils lurked in the rafters and corners of the house.
Olivia gritted her teeth. “I understand completely. I will have the coach prepared at once. You can depart before suppertime.”
“Before suppertime?” The woman stared at her as if she were more shocked by the possibility of missing a free meal than by anything else.
“I’ll have the cook pack you a basket,” Olivia, retorted, refusing to back down. She wanted everyone except family out of her house, and the sooner the better. She swung her slitted gaze on the two lords. “Will you ride in the carriage with the Wilkinsons and Skylocks, or will you take your horses?”
Lord Dicharry cleared his throat. “I say, are you putting us out?”
“Who would want to stay?” Lord Holdsworth snapped. “With such goings-on, and in broad daylight, no decent person can wish to linger in this household. Indeed, Miss Byrde, it behooves you and your sister to depart with us. Your brother is the only one fit to deal with this unfortunate matter.”
Olivia glared at him. “I am not a person to abandon my family when it is in need. The fact that you are says plainly that my mother has selected a better man in Mr. St. Clare. Good day, Lord Holdsworth. I’ll send servants to help all of you pack. The coach will leave in two hours. Sharp.”
Those two hours passed in a bitter blur. For as fiercely as Olivia defended her mother to their haughty guests, she nonetheless was shocked by what had occurred.
How could her mother have behaved so?
But she knew how. Passion was a beast of extraordinary might, with amazing powers of persuasion. Hadn’t she learned that lesson herself? She grimaced at the thought.
Perhaps a better question was, how could her mother and Mr. St. Clare have been so careless?
But again, she knew the answer, for hadn’t she been even more careless? At least Augusta and Mr. St. Clare had not fallen upon one another outside where anyone might have seen them.
Olivia pinched her lips together, willing away the throbbing ache that had begun behind her eyes. Thank God no one had seen her and Lord Hawke together that day. For that would have been the ultimate humiliation. Poor Mother.
Then she thought of her distraught sister, and she stiffened. Poor Sarah, to come upon her mother and Mr. St. Clare that way. Where had the child run off to?
Once the carriage rumbled away, with the two obnoxious young lords riding alongside, Olivia let out a long, frustrated sigh. Good riddance to them all. She hoped the gathering storm clouds caught them and thoroughly soaked them, and that they all caught their death of cold.
“Really, Olivia. Get a hold of yourself,” she muttered as she turned back to the house. Rather than throw curses on their fair-weather friends, she needed to find Sarah. Then together they must go and speak with their mother.
Inside James stood in the study, his hands clasped behind his back as he stared out at the departing carriage.
He looked tired when he turned to face her. Tired, but relieved. “It’s all arranged. St. Clare is to purchase a special license. I’ve sent him to take a room in the posting house in Kelso—for the time being.” He let out a sigh. “Have you considered, Livvie? We shall have a new father within the week.”
“A new father.” Olivia shook her head, then sank into a chair. “No. I hadn’t thought of it that way. But I suppose you are right.”
“Damn me, but when I invited St. Clare to join us I was thinking more of a connection between him and you. Not him and Mother.”
Olivia stared at him in mild reproof. “That should teach you not to meddle. Though I suppose I ought to feel slighted that he preferred her to me,” she added. “Fortunately, he’s not my type.”
“No. But we both know who is.” He fixed her with a stern gaze. “I’ve been thinking, Olivia, that Mother and St. Clare are behaving as they ought. I mean, once caught they have owned up to their responsibilities. Unlike you.”
Olivia stiffened. “I know what you’re going to say, but you waste your breath. I will not be coerced into marriage by you or anyone else. All you would succeed in doing is tarnishing my reputation, and by association, Sarah’s. Mother’s behavior is bad enough, but think, James. Who would wish to offer for the poor girl if both her mother and her sister have flirted with scandal?”
He frowned but, thankfully, did not argue.
“Speaking of Sarah, I suppose we’d better go have a look for her,” he said. “She seemed awfully upset.” He shoved his fists into his pockets. “Just how am I to explain all of this to her? She’s only a little girl, and they—” He broke off, scowling.
Olivia heaved a sigh, then pushed to her feet. “I’ll find her and I’ll explain it all.”
“Everything?” The expression of relief on his handsome face was almost comical. Then just as quickly it darkened. “Everything? How can you explain everything? You don’t know everything. At least you’d better not.”
Olivia pushed to her feet. “I know enough about what goes on between men and women to explain it to Sarah. I’m going out to find her,” she added. “She’s probably hiding somewhere up a tree or in the stable loft. I’ll find her and we’ll talk, and then I’ll bring her home.”
A roll of muffled thunder pierced the quiet of the room. “It’s going to storm,” James said. “That will bring her home. That and hunger.”
“I know. But she’ll feel better if she knows someone is concerned about her. Don’t worry, she can’t have gone far.”
Chapter 24
The storm pressed the air down over the land, hot and heavy with threat. Olivia paused and lifted a damp lock of hair from her neck. She’d been searching for Sarah more than an hour with no success. The stable, the overgrown orchard, the riverbanks. Now, on Goldie, she meant to search farther afield.
No, she amended as she guided the compliant mare into a ground-eating canter. She meant to go to the only other place she could think of that Sarah might run to.
She was heading to Woodford Court.
From the west lightning flashed dully behind the heavy clouds, and after a few seconds, thunder rolled over the land. It would be dark before long, yet Olivia was undeterred. Sarah liked Neville Hawke; they’d seen him in town just a few hours ago; and his was the only other household Sarah knew in the area. All quite logical. Yet this nervousness, this clutching in Olivia’s stomach and the pounding of her heart as she approached Lord Hawke’s estate was anything but logical. It was only her fear for Sarah’s whereabouts that gave her the courage to go on, for she knew she could not avoid seeing him. If those brief moments in the village with him had shaken her to her bones, how was she to survive the coming interview?
Between the bridge and Woodford Court the wind began to rise. From warm and damp, she was swiftly cooled. By the time the handsome fortified house came into view, rain had begun to fall.
“Have you seen my sister?” she called to the stableman before he’d even taken hold of Goldie’s bridle. It was Bart, she realized. Lord Hawke’s trainer.
“Your sister, Miss Sarah? With the old dog?” The man nodded and smiled. “She’s up t’the house, miss.
With milord.” With milord. Olivia stared across the yard and through the rain to the house while the stableman led Goldie into the stable. She was already disheveled and damp, and though she tried to adjust her collar and cuffs, she knew it for a hopeless case. She must look a fright. By the time she reached the front door she would be completely soaked as well.
As if he sensed her dilemma, Bart pointed to another door nearer the stable. “That there is the kitchen door. Cook could get you dry, then bring you up to Lord Hawke. If you don’t mind enterin’ through the kitchen,” he added.
On her dash across the yard with a feed bag over her head, it occurred to Olivia that her friends among the ton would be horrified at such a scenario as she was playing out. Certainly her own mother had never made so inelegant an entrance into a peer’s home. But since she was not trying to impress this particular peer, Olivia did not care. It might even put Neville Hawke off to see her so.
“My gracious!” the cook exclaimed when Olivia burst out of the sharply angled rain and through the open half-door.
“I’m sorry, but the storm—” Olivia removed the feed bag, noticing too late the oat seeds that clung to her damp hair.
“Don’t worry yourself over that, miss. I’m easily startled, that’s all.” She studied Olivia a moment, then handed her a clean cloth from a stack on the open shelf of a side dresser. “I’m Maisie Tillotson, at your service. I cook for Lord Neville. And you must be Miss Olivia Byrde, from Byrde Manor. You’ve come to fetch Miss Sarah home. Am I right?”
“Yes. Is she all right? Has she been any trouble?”
“No trouble at all, though the dogs raised quite a ruckus when they spied that bony pet of hers. As to how she is, himself has calmed her down.” The woman’s round face creased in a smile. “But then, he’s always had a way with creatures that are wild or unsettled.”
Olivia shook out her skirts, then patted her ruined coiffure. “Horses and little girls?”
“Big girls too. I was just preparin’ a tray for them,” the woman continued, ducking her head to avoid the shocked stare her words garnered from Olivia. “Will you be wantin’ tea?”
And so it was that Olivia trailed after Mrs. Tillotson. Through the private back passages of Woodford Court they went, beneath ancient arches and past centuries-old leaded-glass windows. The public hall was a grand, soaring space, and the back gallery provided a peek at the history of the family that had so long resided there. Blond women, plumpcheeked little children. But every one of the men was raven-haired and blue-eyed.
Olivia couldn’t help staring, it was such a fascinating glimpse into Neville’s life.
When they arrived at his sitting room, however, Olivia’s curiosity reverted to anxiety. Not only must she deal with Sarah’s trauma, she must do so in Neville Hawke’s presence.
Resolving not to reveal the true state of her nerves, Olivia knocked, then opened the door so that Mrs. Tillotson could enter with the tray.
She wasn’t certain what she expected, but the scene that met her eyes was remarkable. Bones lay on the floor in front of an enormous Chesterfield sofa. When he spied them he thumped his bony tail. Neville and Sarah sat side by side upon the sofa with a large book spread open across their laps. Their two dark heads were bent together over it.
“Shall I just set the tray on your desk?” Mrs. Tillotson asked when the two did not look up from their studies.
“Yes. Thank you, Maisie—See? Here it is, Sarah. Your great-great-great-grandfather on your father’s maternal line.”
Mrs. Tillotson smiled at Olivia, but she did not announce her to the intent pair. When the woman silently left, Olivia turned back to observe the sister she’d expected to find distraught, and the man she’d expected
to find rattled by the presence of the temperamental little girl.
“My great-great-great-grandfather,” Sarah repeated. “Why, he was born almost two hundred years ago. That’s even before the Civil War.”
“Very good,” Neville said. “It seems you’ve been paying attention to your lessons.”
Sarah looked up, beaming at his compliment, and it was then she spied her sister. “Livvie!” she cried. But her glad expression swiftly turned stormy, and she leaned back into the sofa. “If you’ve come to take me home, I’m not going.”
As if he were not at all surprised to see her, Neville regarded Olivia with dark, observant eyes. Then he gestured toward the tea tray. “Would you mind pouring?”
Olivia nodded and without a word began that simple, domestic task. Only it did not feel at all simple, not when she was doing it in Neville Hawke’s home.
She handed round the teacups, then set the plate of biscuits on a table near the sofa and seated herself carefully on the edge of a Hepplewhite armchair. Neville folded the big book away and for a moment they all sipped their tea in silence. Despite her fractured nerves at having Neville’s eyes upon her, Olivia knew she must address her purpose in coming.
“You should never have run off like that, Sarah,” she began. She glanced at Neville. Did he know precisely what had prompted her sister’s flight? Probably. She took a deep breath. “I know you’ve had a shock. Nevertheless, frightening all of us out of our wits is hardly the proper way to deal with it.”
“I hate them!” the child swore. Her face screwed up in a ferocious scowl. “I hate them and I’m not going to live with Mother anymore. I want to stay here,” she finished, again pressing close to Neville’s side.
“You can’t possibly stay here. Lord Hawke has been very kind,” Olivia conceded. “But you can’t—”
“Not in his house. I mean in Scotland. With you. At Byrde Manor.”
“So you’re still planning to stay in Scotland?”
Olivia ignored Neville’s question, for it somehow implied a connection with him, an intimacy she was not prepared to address. And anyway, how was she to respond? Yes, I’m staying here—against every measure of good judgment I am staying near to a man from whom I ought to stay a hundred leagues away.
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