by Sara Lindsey
Damn her.
Damn the treacherous hearts of women.
He headed for his chamber to pack. The sooner he got away from here—from her—the better.
He needed to leave before she could look at him again with those big, beseeching blue eyes. Before she made him feel things he didn’t want to feel. Before he was tempted to turn and look back.
Chapter 14
“What is love? ’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.”
Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene 3
Olivia ran straight to her aunt’s chamber. Her heart was breaking, and she wanted her mother, but her mother was in Essex at Weston Manor. Aunt Kate was the next best thing.
Her emotional state had further deteriorated during the minutes it took her to get to the other side of the castle, so by the time her aunt opened her door, Livvy threw herself into her arms, sobbing.
“Good heavens, darling, what’s the matter? Are you ill?” Her aunt ushered her into the room.
Olivia shook her head.
“Come sit near the fire. Let me fetch you a dressing gown before you take a chill.”
Her aunt wrapped her in a cozy quilted robe, and then sat beside Livvy, rubbing her back until her sobs quieted to sniffles and the occasional shuddering breath.
“I suppose you must be wondering why I woke you,” Olivia said. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t know whom else to—”
“Hush. Clearly something has upset you. I would be hurt if you felt you could not come to me, no matter what the hour. As to what has caused this upset, I trust you will tell me when you’re ready.”
“I am afraid something has come up. I need to leave here as soon as can be arranged.”
“I see.” Her aunt looked at her, assessing. “And might this ‘something’ have to do with my stepson?”
“It might,” Olivia allowed.
Aunt Kate took her hand. “I can tell you care for him, and I believe he cares for you.”
She ignored Livvy’s snort of disbelief.
“Do not let him scare you off. Beneath that gruff exterior is a man who needs love and is quite capable of giving it in return.”
“I’m not being scared off so much as I’m being run off the premises. We had a . . . a bit of a disagreement this evening. He—” She took a deep breath. “He doesn’t want to see me again. Ever. He’s planning on leaving as soon as possible, and he will not return until I am gone from this place.”
“That seems most extreme. This argument must have been quite serious.”
Olivia twirled a lock of hair around her finger.
“I wouldn’t call it an argument precisely.” Unable to meet her aunt’s gaze, she rose and walked over to the bed. She climbed up and sprawled on her back, hugging a pillow to her chest. She stared at the intricately embroidered bed curtains as she searched for the right words.
“I am still finding it hard to believe. The change was so sudden. Everything was going so well, I thought—” Her throat swelled. “Well, regardless of what I thought, I feel certain he was making progress.”
“You are speaking of Jason, I take it, but progress toward what?”
“In moving past his grief,” Olivia explained. “That was one of the reasons why I wanted to come here, you know.”
“I confess I did not. You told me that you wanted an adventure.”
“I did, but I wanted to help Jason, too. I suppose he was to be part of my adventure in a way. For all the novels I’ve read, I never really believed in divine plans and the like, but I know I was meant to come here.” She rolled over onto her side so she could see her aunt. “Fate sent me. Or perhaps it was Laura.”
“Laura?” Aunt Kate sounded startled. “Do you mean Jason’s wife? What could she possibly have to do with your coming here?” She gave Livvy a worried frown. “I know I said the Marchioness’s Chambers had a ghost the first day we came, but I didn’t mean it literally. I only mean that the memory of her is still very strong here.”
Olivia sighed. “Yes, that’s just the problem.”
“My dear child, I am afraid you have quite lost me. I think perhaps you had best start at the beginning.”
“It might take some time,” Livvy warned her.
“Then you had best begin now, had you not? I can hardly help you without understanding the situation.”
“I suppose it all truly began while I was reorganizing the library at Haile Castle. I pulled one of the volumes off the shelf and out fell a bit of foolscap, folded and sealed with a dab of wax.”
“Why do I doubt you had the fortitude to put it back unread?”
“It might have been important. In any case, the wax needed to be removed. It was making a terrible mess of the endpapers.”
“Your concern for the endpapers prompted you to read a private correspondence?”
“Well, I might also have been the tiniest bit curious as to the contents.”
“I confess I would have been as well. Come now, do not keep me in suspense. You cannot dangle a juicy morsel like that without expecting me to bite.” She moved to sit with Livvy on the bed, and for a moment Olivia felt as though she were home, sitting up late to gossip with her sister.
“It was a riddle to a hidden treasure!” Even in the retelling, Livvy could not help but get excited.
“How intriguing! Were you able to solve it?”
“I know I shouldn’t have even tried, since the treasure wasn’t meant to be found by me, but I couldn’t help myself.”
“Well, did you find a treasure?”
Livvy nodded. “It was a little brooch with a shadow portrait. The back had a bit of engraving on it, so tiny I needed a magnifying glass to read it.” She quoted the verse that had become etched upon her heart: “ ‘So we shall be one, and one another’s all.’ ”
“Shakespeare?”
Livvy rolled her eyes at her aunt’s guess. “I should hardly consider that a treasure. No, the poet is Donne. The final clue was hidden in a volume of his verse.”
“Donne,” Aunt Kate murmured. “He was William’s favorite poet. Jason’s, too, I think. There were many evenings when he and Jason took turns reading aloud from one of his books while Laura and I worked at our embroidery. . . .” Her eyes widened and she looked at Olivia in dawning horror.
“When you said that you knew that the treasure wasn’t for you, were you being hypothetical or did you know whom the treasure was actually meant for?”
Livvy licked her dry lips. “There was a name on the paper that fell out of the book,” she whispered.
“Laura.” It wasn’t a question.
Olivia jerked her head in assent.
“I trust that is the whole story?”
Olivia shook her head. “Not quite. I was fascinated by Jason. Any man who took such time and care planning a surprise for his wife must have loved her very deeply. From what little you had said of him, I suspected he grieved as deeply as he had loved. It sounded as if his grief was destroying him. I wanted to help him in some way, though I hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about it. I meant everything I said about wanting an adventure as well. When I asked to come to Wales with you and Charlotte, I thought to accomplish both. I just hated the thought of him languishing here.”
She wiped at her eyes. “And then, just before we were to leave, when I was putting the last of the books away in the library, I came upon a diary. Actually, it was Izzie who found it, but as soon as I realized whose it was I wouldn’t let her read it.”
“And whose was it?”
“Laura’s,” Livvy whispered. “What clearer sign could there be? I felt more certain than ever that someone or something wanted me to come here.”
“I take it you read the diary?”
Olivia stared at her, as if to say, Do you really n
eed to ask?
“And Jason knows all of this?”
“Oh, no! I suppose I should be quite dead if that were the case. He only knows that I found the brooch . . . and the clues. The brooch was hidden behind the frame of an old painting, so he would never believe I just happened upon it.”
Her aunt pressed her index fingers to her temples. “But how would he know you found the brooch in the first place? You wouldn’t be so stupid as to tell him!”
“Of course not!” Olivia said scornfully. “But I don’t think you really wish to know how he found out.”
Aunt Kate looked at her blankly.
“I kept the brooch pinned to one of my garters. It seemed quite safe there, as it was imperceptible underneath my dress and petticoats. You never noticed it, did you?”
“Obviously not, but if the brooch was, as you say, imperceptible, then how did Jason see it?”
Olivia bit her lip. “He didn’t. See it, that is. Not at first. Unfortunately one of Jason’s fingers met with the point of the pin, and . . .” She shrugged.
Her aunt closed her eyes. Perhaps she was praying. A miracle was most definitely in order.
“Of course,” Livvy added, unable to stop herself, “if Jason had not been trying to untie my garter, he would never have found it, so this is really all his fault.”
Aunt Kate let out a strangled groan.
“Fine. Mostly his fault,” Olivia conceded.
“I am less concerned with whose fault it is than how much damage has been done. How much do you know of the relations between men and women?”
“Izzie was wretchedly closemouthed, though she did warn me about being alone in a closed carriage with a man. And I have, of course, read a great deal.”
“I see,” her aunt said, with the voice of someone who did not see at all.
“In fact,” Olivia continued with a satisfied smile, “though you must never, ever tell my parents, I was the one who planned Izzie’s compromise.”
She really was pleased at how well that had worked out. Granted, there had been a few moments when she hadn’t been at all sure she’d been wise in urging her sister to follow her heart in such a bold fashion, but it had all come right in the end. And if questioned, Livvy would swear up and down that she had known it would all along.
Aunt Kate was staring at her with a mixture of awe and horror.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that. I knew from the very start that everything would turn out for the best.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I did,” Olivia protested.
“Regardless,” her aunt said, “your sister’s compromise is not the issue at hand at present. Yours is.”
Livvy looked at her in surprise. “Mine? But I’ve not been compromised.”
“Are you entirely certain?”
“Entirely, no. Mostly, yes. Not that it matters. I wouldn’t marry him if he asked.”
At least not without some abject groveling. What was she thinking? She could never marry a man with such a low opinion of her sex. And then there was the lamentable fact that he was insane. . . .
But you love him, some inner voice whispered. Underneath the anger and hurt, there is love.
No, whatever she had felt for him, it had not been love. She had fooled herself into believing it was love because she had been swept up in the adventure of it all. The fact that she had wanted to comfort him even while he raged at her simply meant she was an extremely compassionate human being.
“Dearest, it is understandable that Jason was upset about finding the brooch. It must have been a shock to him and—”
“I understand that,” Olivia snapped. “And I apologized. Would you believe, I even apologized to him the very first night we were here? I had an idea that Laura’s chamber was some sort of shrine to her memory, and I felt I was trespassing.” She gave a bitter laugh. “How stupid I was!”
“I don’t understand.”
“He’s not grieving,” Livvy shouted, then she lowered her voice. “All this time he hasn’t been grieving for Laura. He doesn’t need help mending his heart. Do you know why? Because he hasn’t got one. Do you know what he thinks Laura was doing the day she died? He thinks she was having an affair, that she was running away with her lover.”
“My God.” Her aunt looked shaken. “No, I cannot believe she—”
“Of course she wasn’t. She was helping Charles by paying off his gambling debts to Lord Verney. That is why she was meeting him that morning. She was afraid to tell Jason what she was doing because he’d forbidden her to help Charles out of another scrape. It’s all there in her diary.”
“And have you spoken to Charles about any of this? You two became close friends rather quickly.”
“As you know, I have a dreadful propensity for blurting out whatever is on my mind. It was only a matter of time before I made some suspicious comments, and then I had to explain about the diary.”
“Was he angry?” Aunt Kate inquired.
“Relieved. He’s spent all this time believing himself responsible for his sister’s death. Being able to talk about it, about her, has gone a great way toward easing his mind.”
She saw her aunt had started to cry. She sat up and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Aunt Kate—”
“Oh, that poor boy!”
“Charles will be all right, truly he will,” Olivia assured her.
“I know, my dear.” She wiped at her eyes. “I was speaking of Jason.”
“Jason?” Livvy was outraged. “I don’t see why you should feel sorry for him!”
Aunt Kate took Olivia’s hand. “I know you don’t, love, but there are still many things you don’t know about him. No, before you ask, I am not going to tell you. You will have to wait for Jason to do that. But know that while his accusations regarding Laura are upsetting, they have very little to do with her and a great deal to do with a very old hurt.”
“His mother, you mean?”
“You know about her?” her aunt asked with no little surprise.
“He told me she’d been killed in a carriage accident while running off with her lover.”
“It’s true. Naturally, both families wanted to avoid a scandal, and they might have done had not one of the servants found a note stating, in no uncertain terms, that the marchioness and her lover were running off together.” She shook her head in disgust. “Whomever it was that found the note must have made a tidy sum off it.”
“Oh!” Livvy gasped. “You don’t mean—”
“The contents of the note were reprinted in the Daily Post. The ton loves a scandal, and this was the most shocking affair since the Duke of Lansdowne’s daughter ran off with his stable master. Well, you know how gossip spreads, and it wasn’t too long before the boys at Harrow got wind of it. From what William told me, Jason got into terrible rows trying to defend his mother’s honor. He refused to believe she was running off when she was killed, but then what child wants to believe his mother consciously deserted him?”
Livvy’s heart ached for that little boy. She could envision him clearly, for he must have looked very like Edward. She remembered Edward’s stoicism during the asthma and imagined Jason putting on the same brave face while daring the larger boys to repeat the slander. What she wouldn’t give to go back in time and comfort that lost, angry little boy.
“William had no choice but to tell Jason the truth about his mother. After that, Jason never spoke of her, and he ignored all of William’s attempts to discuss what had happened. William was never convinced Jason had moved past his mother’s abandonment. Though Jason was already a grown man when his father and I wed, I vowed to look after him. It seems I’ve muddled that.”
Her expression became thoughtful.
“But perhaps it is not too late to make things right,” she mused.
She met Olivia’s eyes.
“Do you love him?”
Livvy didn’t realize she was crying until she tasted the salt of her tears. She nodded miserably, unable to speak.
>
“Oh, my dear!” Aunt Kate pulled her into her arms. “Don’t cry. It will all work out, you’ll see. Now lie down and close your eyes. You must get some rest. We’ve a busy day tomorrow, what with packing and planning how to bring my stepson to his senses.”
The plotting began at the breakfast table.
“I think the first thing we must decide is where we are going,” Aunt Kate told Olivia. “Remaining here would be a wonderful act of defiance, but I don’t think it would do much good. He can’t miss you if you never leave. Do you want to go home to Weston Manor?”
Livvy sighed. “It’s silly, but I feel as though going home would mean the adventure is over. Besides, Mama is sure to realize something isn’t right and she’ll persist in questioning me. I’m afraid I’ll tell her everything, and—”
Her aunt held up a hand. “Say no more. We’ll go to the town house. I’m afraid London will be quiet this time of year—”
“That is quite all right. I have no desire to see anyone.”
She rose and began to prowl around the parlor, pacing back and forth like one of the caged lions at the Tower of London.
Her aunt looked up from her plate and shook her head, a slight smile upon her face.
Olivia frowned. “What?”
“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking it wasn’t so long ago that I was sitting and watching your sister try to wear holes in the carpet. You girls certainly know how to keep life interesting for your old auntie.”
Olivia went over to her and rested her cheek against the top of her aunt’s head. “You’re hardly old, Aunt Kate. Besides, just think of this as practice for when Charlotte is older.”
Lady Sheldon reached up and patted Olivia’s cheek. “Heaven forbid.”
Charles entered the room and Livvy launched herself at him.
He laughed and wrapped his arms around her, patting her back. “Livvy, my love, if this is the kind of enthusiastic greeting I get for sleeping in, I vow never to rise before noon again.” He set her apart from him. “Enough of that now. Jason can’t be long behind me, and I have no wish to arouse his ire.”