She’d friended the actresses, musicians, poets, and politicians. She’d hosted salons where the main purpose was to educate people on the arts. She’d made friends with people she’d never thought to make friends with, and she’d learned so much.
She’d finally felt like she’d landed where she was meant to be.
She’d been truly happy, for only the second time in her life. The first being her short time with Oliver.
And now, suddenly, there was a shadow over everything. Her happiness had dimmed, and she was inexplicably restless.
She glanced over her shoulder, a prickling running down her neck, to find Oliver on the other side of the room, standing alone, watching her. She suppressed a shiver and continued her circuit, aware that he was watching her.
William appeared beside her and put a hand on the small of her back. “A smashing success as usual,” he said as he smiled down on her.
She looked around the room at the artists that might never have mingled, if not for her, and felt a hollow sense of accomplishment.
“Yes,” she said. “It is.”
“But you don’t have a drink in your hand.” He motioned for a servant and plucked a glass of champagne off the tray to hand to her. Absently, she took it from him but did not sip.
Oliver was watching them carefully, and it made her angry. What right did he have to come back into her life all these years later? What right did he have to upset the balance of everything? To make her feel out of sorts?
She paused. Is that what was happening? Was it Oliver who was making her feel suddenly restless?
His reemergence from her past had definitely made her anxious. She’d been happy to avoid him for all those years after she’d realized that the baby she’d given birth to was not her husband’s but her one-time lover’s. It was safer that way.
But now he was back and not only that, she had asked him to help her with Philip. Of all the stupid things she could have done. But she’d been desperate and out of options and Oliver had been so kind—with those blue eyes that were so much like his son’s—that she had pushed through all her misgivings and asked for his help.
And he’d not really been any help at all.
She turned her back on Oliver and let William lead her toward the music room where they were to hear the famous Abigail Betts sing. For a moment, they were alone in the room, and William turned to her.
“You seem out of sorts tonight.” He looked concerned, and it made her heart twist a bit. William was one of the most brilliant men she knew—the queen’s surgeon and one of the leading surgeons in London. She’d been in awe of his reputation and had foolishly invited him to one of her salons, thinking he would mix well with the others. She wasn’t sure how it had happened, but eventually, they had become a couple. They’d never officially announced a courting, but it felt like it just the same. She’d not protested and sometimes she wondered why. She liked her new independence. She did not really want another man in her life, but William was here, and she’d not had the heart to send him away.
He took her to the theater and the opera and he attended her salons. She’d learned that he was actually very gifted with the violin and he’d play with some of the musicians that attended.
“I’m just worried about Philip,” she said.
William’s eyes darkened. William didn’t like Philip. He felt Philip needed more direction and more punishment. Philip thought William was a self-centered windbag. They avoided each other.
A servant approached and said something to William. His expression went grave, and he turned to Ellen. “I’m afraid I have to leave.”
“Nothing serious, I hope,” she said, wondering at the bit of relief she felt that he would not be hovering the rest of the night.
“A patient who needs my help.”
“Go then. And good luck.” She lifted her cheek for his quick kiss, and he was gone.
She’d become accustomed to these hasty exits. When one was such an accomplished surgeon, one was in demand.
Her relief was short-lived, because William was replaced by Oliver who was suddenly at her side. He was looking down on her and she was looking up at him and neither one of them said a word for what seemed like the longest time.
“Ellen,” he finally said. It was the first time she’d heard him say her name since that night seventeen years ago.
“Lord Armbruster.” She had to keep her distance. She just had to. Otherwise everything she was holding together by a thin thread would unravel, and that simply could not happen.
His lips tilted in a not-quite smile, and she knew that he knew what she was doing.
“I’ve decided to help,” he said.
People were making their way into the music room and Ellen glanced around nervously, but no one seemed to be paying them any mind. And why would they? They don’t know our history. They have no idea.
“Help?” She couldn’t seem to think properly, and why did Oliver look so angry? He was clutching a glass of champagne as if his life depended on it, and there were two creases between his furrowed brows.
“With young Fieldhurst. The headmaster said he would accept the boy back early if I vouched for him. Well, I’m not vouching for him until I know his behavior has truly improved.”
Ellen felt as if a cold draft had entered the room, and she was suddenly chilled. She had no idea what Oliver meant by helping, but she felt a foreboding so deep that she wanted to run away.
“Tell Fieldhurst to be ready at eight sharp and to dress in old clothes that he doesn’t mind ruining.”
Ellen heard a roaring in her ears, not comprehending any of this.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “What are you doing with him? Where are you going?”
Oliver put his half-empty glass on a passing tray and looked at her with angry blue eyes. “Do you want his attitude and behavior to change?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then have him ready to go.”
Oliver spun on his heel and walked out of the room. Ellen didn’t see him for the rest of her night, but an anxious rock settled in her stomach.
Chapter Ten
“I fear I monopolized the conversation the other day at Gunters,” Ellen said.
They were strolling through Hyde Park but off the main thoroughfare. Their relationship, for lack of a better word, was complicated. Neither had told anyone of their meetings.
Oliver’s mother was busy with her pregnancy. Yes, she was finally with child again. She and his father were ecstatic, and his mother was being very careful, in the hopes that this one would stick.
The good part about that was that she did not question Oliver’s comings and goings. His mornings were spent with his father, learning how to one day become an earl, but the afternoons were all Oliver’s, and he spent as many of them as possible with Ellen.
As for Ellen, she gave her mother various excuses as to why she had to be out. Her maid was with her at all times, but at a discreet distance, and Ellen insisted the girl could be trusted.
So for the time being they were in their own little bubble, not under any watchful eyes, able to learn all about each other within Society’s restrictions.
“I don’t mind,” he said in answer to her proclamation that she had monopolized their conversation over ices. “I like learning about you.”
They were currently on a path all to themselves, and Oliver made a bold move to touch her hand, link their fingers before letting them slide away. Her steps hitched, and he was glad to see that she was just as affected by his presence as he was hers.
She wound her arm through his and to anyone looking from afar they were a couple taking a slow stroll on a warm spring day. They were in trouble only if someone they knew happened upon them. Then tongues would wag and even though she was in confinement, Oliver’s mother would be the first to hear of it.
“Tell me about you,” Ellen said.
“You know about me.”
She squeezed his arm. “I know you a
re a viscount, your father is an earl, and that you just left Eton. And you like orange ices.”
He thought about her question, really thought about it. Was he passionate about anything as much as Ellen was passionate about learning about other people?
And then he thought of something. “It’s silly,” he said. “And rather boring.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
He took a deep breath and for the first time voiced his inner thoughts. Thoughts that were not fully formed, that had been nothing but ethereal flits of his imagination.
“My father is teaching me about being an earl.”
“That does not come naturally to you?” She laughed and he grinned.
“There is so much I wasn’t aware of. Land and finances and there are people relying on you. It’s all rather daunting.”
“And you don’t want that responsibility?”
“On the contrary. But what I want… I feel that my father’s way is the old way of doing things. I think that this belief that earls run estates and make sure their tenants are doing what they are supposed to do is outdated. I see change in the future, and it is not good change for the old nobility.”
“This sounds ominous,” she said, but she was taking him seriously. She was listening, and that made him want to talk more.
“It doesn’t have to be. Have you heard of the steam engine?”
“I have. Large machines that can take us to the country in a fraction of the time it takes now.”
“Exactly. I think the steam engine is going to change everything. I think it will bring the country folk to the city. I think for the first time ever, families that have known nothing but toiling on land that is not theirs will realize they can come to the city and earn a better wage, become their own people instead of servants to someone else’s land.”
“I’d never thought of it that way before.”
“I think many noble families are going to be negatively affected if they refuse to see the change coming.”
“And what do you propose to do so you are not negatively affected?”
He drew a deep breath. “Trade.”
Her brows rose. “Trade as in you would become a shopkeeper?”
“As in I would bring the goods to the shops. I would purchase ships and have the raw materials, or even the finished products, shipped to England, and I would sell them to the shops.”
“That’s not something that earls do,” she said.
“I know, but I think it’s something they will need to embrace if they want to survive. It’s happening already. Men of business are surpassing many nobles in wealth. They do not have the titles, but they have grander homes, more money to spend.”
“And that is important to you? Grand houses? More money?”
He shook his head, fearing she thought him shallow. “The excitement of new ventures is important to me. Discovering new ways to do things is what’s important.”
“Well I think it’s marvelous and ingenious and I have no doubt you will be a raging success.”
Oliver acted on an impulse that he had never felt before. He pulled Ellen beneath a tree with low-hanging branches, cupped her cheeks, and kissed her.
She squealed when he pulled her under the tree, gasped when he kissed her, and instantly melted against him as her lips softened beneath his.
He’d kissed women before. There’d been a certain maid at Eton willing to do anything for the right amount of coin. But this was different. This was beyond any fumbled kiss he’d experienced in a linen closet.
Ellen was pliant against him, warm and soft, and she smelled of an intoxicating mix of roses. He filled all his sense with her as his tongue explored the seam of her lips.
And then she opened her lips and he was tasting all of her. Sweeter than any ice, she was.
He groaned, suddenly so aroused that it hurt. But he kept his distance, did not allow her to know exactly what she did to him. He didn’t want to frighten her. The last thing he wanted was to scare her away.
He just wanted to taste her and explore her.
He was the one who broke the kiss first, pulling away because he was so breathless he thought he might expire.
Her dark eyes were clouded, her lips red and moist, her cheeks flushed. Her lashes fluttered until their gazes met, and then she smiled.
“I…” He thought he should apologize for being so bold, but he didn’t want to apologize. Because he wasn’t sorry. He was glad he kissed her, that he now knew her individual taste.
…
Oliver arrived promptly at eight in the morning and knocked on the door himself. He was in a foul mood that wasn’t helped when the butler answered the door and young Fieldhurst was sauntering down the stairs, a scowl on his face, one eye blackened and nearly swollen closed, and still in the clothes he’d been gadding about town in the night before. Expensive clothes. Not the old clothes he’d requested.
His mother hovered behind him, shooting concerned looks at Oliver and her son, wringing her hands. She looked exhausted and worried, and that increased Oliver’s ire.
He wasn’t sure if he was angrier at the boy or at Ellen. All night he’d thought about Ellen and the surgeon, and by the time morning came he had worked himself into a temper.
“I said to wear old clothes,” Oliver said in lieu of a greeting.
Ellen shot a nervous look at her son who appeared bored and uninterested.
“I just arrived home,” young Fieldhurst said, as if it were nothing to keep someone waiting.
Oliver arched a brow. “Very well, then. Come along.”
“I thought I might come, too?” Ellen’s statement ended in a question, and Oliver shook his head.
The last thing he needed was Ellen hovering about. He had a feeling that most of young Fieldhurst’s problems stemmed from an overprotective mother and no father figure.
“Come along,” Oliver said again, turning toward his carriage without waiting for either of them to answer.
He settled into the driver’s seat, and Fieldhurst fell into the seat next to him with a loud sigh, and Oliver urged the horses forward.
They did not speak and that was fine with Oliver. He was thinking of his comfortable bed and how he should be in it and how he’d never seen the morning quite like this. Most mornings he also was just coming home, not going out.
He resented Fieldhurst for this, but in truth it hadn’t been the boy’s decision to get started this early, and by the looks of him it appeared he wanted to be in his bed, too. In fact, his eyes were closed, his chin on his chest, and he was breathing deeply.
Oliver kicked the boy’s boot. If he had to stay awake, then by God, so did the boy.
Philip jerked awake with a loud, “Huh.” And looked around with bleary eyes.
“Why’d you do that?” he asked in a whiny voice that put Oliver’s back teeth together.
“Because this is not a drive through the country. You’re to stay awake.”
“And who the hell are you to tell me what to do?” He settled back down in his sleeping position.
“I am your last hope of getting back into Eton, you ungrateful runt. So stay awake.”
Philip snorted but sat up and yawned and looked around blinking. “Where are we going?”
“The Fieldhurst estate.”
“The Fieldhurst estate?” His voice rose in shock. “Why are we going there?”
“Your mother tells me that you feel that you are adequately schooled enough to run the earldom. I want to see if this is true.”
Oliver received great satisfaction in seeing the young lad squirm in his seat.
“Is this some sort of test?” His tone was sullen.
“Not at all.”
“And why are you the one to determine if I’m fit to run the earldom?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, my own earldom has been very successful, so I am qualified. Your mother has asked me to help, and the headmaster won’t take you back unless I can vouch for you.”
Philip was silent for so long that Oliver thought he might have fallen back asleep until he murmured. “I don’t need to return to Eton.”
“Then today will decide that,” Oliver said.
They fell silent, and Oliver let the boy ruminate on their intended day while Oliver thought more about Ellen and the surgeon. He didn’t like that relationship but thought it had more to do with the past feelings he had for Ellen. He’d thought he was over her, but maybe he wasn’t, and it was unfair to be angry at Ellen for moving on and finding someone. After all, she had to be lonely without a man in her life, and it was clear that she was having trouble with her son. So why not ask Needham for help? Why had she asked him?
He’d been going round and round with this question all night and was nowhere close to an answer, nor would he be, because he had no intention of ever asking her. That would force him to reveal that he felt more for her than he should, and that would be awkward, because obviously she did not have feelings for him.
Oliver glanced over to find the boy nodding off, keeling slightly to the left. Oliver nudged him with his foot, and Philip came awake with a grunt.
“Damn, man,” he said, with a hint of a whine in his voice. “It’s not like we’re doing anything until we get there.”
“What time did you get home last night?”
He snorted. “The footman Mother sent after me found me around seven this morning.”
He seemed proud of this.
“What does a young boy do until that early in the morning?”
He suddenly seemed reluctant to talk and shrugged thin shoulders. “This and that.”
“What is this and what is that?”
He turned to Oliver, revealing his shiner. “You should know. You have a reputation as a man-about-town.”
Oliver wanted nothing more than to give the runt a shiner on the other eye, but he kept his hands on the ribbons and guided the horses down the path without responding.
Finally Philip said, “A little gambling. Dice and such. Drinking with friends.”
“And you think this acceptable behavior for a boy your age?”
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