Tempted by the Viscount

by Sofie Darling

  She didn’t give much credence to the right to rule, but many of those gracing the staircase did. Take the Duke’s heir, for example, Lord Michael Bretagne, the Marquess of Exeter. As Percy’s elder brother and the Duke’s only other surviving child, she’d had plenty of time to observe him, and he most definitely believed in divine right. To Exeter’s left stood his heir, Lord Avendon. Lucy called him by the diminutive Huey, but she suspected only Lucy could secure that particular right with a young man like Hugh, so self-serious. What had she interrupted between him and Mina? Had she really called him a simpleton?

  Her eye swept across the staircase. Both families claimed descent from the reign of William the Conqueror and all made jolly on this joyous occasion, but their place in the world was a serious business, and none of them would stop at anything to keep it secure. In a way, she could relate to the feeling. It was that particular feeling, the need for security, that had bound her life together this last decade and kept it from falling apart. It was the same need that had predetermined the outcome of this night.

  She couldn’t give up the security of the life she’d built around herself for the uncertainty of a life with Jake. The trade-off was too fraught with instability. A moment’s grief now was nothing to a lifetime’s worth of mourning should their experiment fail.

  The stately rumble of the Duke’s voice cut through the still night. “I would like to thank everyone for gathering here tonight to celebrate this most special of occasions.” The Duke’s hand extended toward the Dowager, who brusquely swiped at tears that dared stray from her eyes. “Please raise your glasses in a toast to the Dowager Duchess of Dalrymple, soon to be Her Grace Lucretia Bretagne, Duchess of Arundel.”

  A little “squee!” of excitement sounded from the staircase, eliciting delighted snickers all around. Olivia’s gaze found a flushed Lucy, and a grateful smile for the moment of levity crinkled the corners of her eyes, even as every single one of tonight’s unshed tears rushed forward.

  “Hear, hear!” chorused the crowd while the quartet struck up a lively country reel.

  The Duke, majestic and assured, led his future duchess down the staircase and into the center of the ballroom. They instantly fell in step with the music that would have been popular in their youth. The assembled nobility lost all awareness of its aristocratic airs and joined together in clapping a beat to the rhythm of the strings, harkening back to roots that no city aristocrat ever left completely behind. The land was in the blood of every English nobleman. They were nothing without it.

  As her eyes picked over the two families soon to be one, Olivia finally allowed herself to settle on the one head she’d been most carefully avoiding. Apart from Lucy, he shone the brightest of all, his serious gaze sweeping across the crowd as if he was looking for someone . . .

  A shard of pain stabbed through Olivia. He was looking for her.

  He might love her.

  Her breath caught in her chest.

  He’d lied to her. He’d followed her. He’d betrayed her trust.

  She’d vowed years ago never again to put herself in the position where a man could betray her. And, yet, she had.

  He’d asked her to marry him.

  What if there’s a babe?

  A babe was the least of her worries. She would never marry without love.

  What if I loved you?

  She would never marry for love.

  Olivia, you’re the prize.

  She shook her head and forced her breath to release. She must go it alone. As she’d done for so many years. Surely another decade wasn’t a problem.

  Happiness may be held at arm’s length, but so, too, would heartbreak. She would be safe from the inevitable betrayal of marriage inside the marble prison tower that she’d so carefully and thoroughly constructed for herself.

  Chapter 29

  One month later

  Espied in Mayfair

  A discreet retreat for two?

  Chits weep: lucky who?

  “Pish, these London Diary haikus are becoming truly atrocious,” Lucy exclaimed. In disgust, she dropped the paper onto the breakfast table, where it landed with a light, papery slap. “Whoever could they keep referring to? I thought it was Mina’s father, but what was the ‘A house for his Queen’ one all about?”

  A house for Lady Olivia Montfort on Queen Street, Olivia didn’t tell her too astute daughter.

  Her stomach filled with acid, and she pushed her croissant away. This was how it felt to be mocked. Of course, the writers at the London Diary had no idea that they were mocking her. They thought they were taunting her.

  Well, it wouldn’t be long before they realized how very wrong they were. Today marked the anniversary of her and Lucy’s first week in their new Mayfair townhouse. The matter had been settled at the discreet office of Mister Tobias Dilbey, Esquire, Jake’s solicitor. Money had efficiently changed banks and signatures solemnly scratched across deeds.

  On impulse, Olivia had reached across the table to shake hands with Mister Dilbey. He’d stammered a bit before he’d haltingly reached out and tapped her palm with the tips of his fingers.

  Life had a relentless way of moving forward. With or without one’s permission.

  A movement at the corner of her eye drew her out of philosophical musings doomed to reach no good end. Lucy had cracked open The Bride of Lammermoor. “How was your day, Lulu?”

  Lucy stopped mid-chew, and her eyebrows drew together in consternation. If Olivia was reading her daughter’s expression correctly, she was looking at her as if she’d grown horns. “The day has barely begun, Mum,” she said around the food in her mouth. “I’d say that the tangles brushed out of my hair without too much fuss, and it was a pleasant surprise to find that this dress still fits. It seems that my body has decided to grow outwardly of late.” Her head tilted quizzically to the side. “Shall I ring for another pot of coffee? You might need another cup. Or three.”

  Olivia grew warm beneath the acuity of her daughter’s gaze.

  “Seriously, Mum, you might need a holiday.”

  “A holiday?” Olivia asked in all sincerity. She’d convinced herself that she’d hidden her glum state of mind quite well. After all, she was busier than ever.

  “How are your art lessons progressing?” Lucy asked in an obvious attempt to change the subject.

  “Splendidly,” Olivia replied brightly, too brightly, earning a penetrating double-take from her daughter.

  It was a lie. She hadn’t seen Jiro . . . Kai since he’d all but told her to stay out of his affairs. It was too soon. Besides, she was busy with her new life. Kai might be part of an old life better shed and left behind.

  “And, of course, I’ve been so busy with the move.”

  “Hmm,” Lucy began, her voice a hum ripe with disbelief. “Mum, it’s like you’re everywhere and nowhere at once.” She tapped the small, rectangular missive to the left of her plate, and her eyebrows drew together. “I suppose you know about the letters Lord Percival has been sending me.”

  “I’d noticed.”

  “Tell me something.”

  “Anything.”

  “Why did you marry him?”

  The question took Olivia by surprise, but she wouldn’t give Lucy any answer other than the truth. She deserved that much. “Simply, I took one look at him and knew I must, that I would perish of unrequited love if I didn’t. There was no other man in the world like him. I was very young.”

  “He broke your heart,” Lucy stated, the words flat.

  “He did.”

  “Don’t you regret him?”

  “Never.”

  “Why not?”

  “He gave me you.”

  A small frown pinched Lucy’s mouth and released. “That’s something you must say, isn’t it?”

>   “Can I speak freely?”

  “It’s the only way to speak,” Lucy said with her characteristic certainty.

  Olivia smiled for the first time in days. “Now, that is something the Lord Percival I knew would have said. In some ways, you’re very like him.”

  Lucy shook her head, protest in her eyes. “I don’t want to be like him.”

  “He had some bad qualities, your father, but he had some good ones, too,” Olivia continued. “He was open. He spoke his mind. He loved to laugh.” She reached across the table and squeezed Lucy’s hand. “You’re allowed to embrace the good. You won’t be betraying me, Lulu. It’s your choice to open that letter or not, to forgive or not, but sometimes it hurts the person withholding forgiveness worse. It can turn into the sort of hate that eats away at a person.”

  “Have you forgiven him?”

  “Yes,” Olivia said, surprised that she meant it with every fiber of her being.

  Lucy turned the missive over in her hands a few times before slipping it inside her book. A bittersweet joy sprang up inside Olivia, even as a thread of misgiving ribboned through it. Percy had better prove worthy of her.

  A movement outside the front bow window caught Lucy’s attention. “Drummond has arrived.”

  “I’ll be here when you come home.”

  A month ago, Olivia had stopped picking up Lucy from school. She simply hadn’t been able to brave it, not since Jake was there in mornings and afternoons. Further, it had been hard to miss the steady increase in the number of mothers, all impeccably groomed and polished, personally seeing their daughters off to school and crowding the corridors. Motherly concern for the safe passage of their daughters was at an all-time high at The Progressive School for Young Ladies and the Education of Their Minds.

  Surely, it had naught to do with the recently admitted Radclyffe family.

  Ha. One mother had run smack into a doorjamb whilst craning her neck for a glimpse of him. The mothers simply couldn’t keep their eyes off him.

  “Oh, Mum,” Lucy called out from the doorway, snapping Olivia back into the present, “may I invite Miss Radclyffe for a visit this evening?”

  Olivia’s heart stomped out a hard thud in her chest, even as she willed the rest of her body to remain very, very still. “Do you have a project together?”

  “Oh, nothing to do with school.” Lucy pulled a disgusted face. “I’ve told her about our rooftop garden, and she would like to observe the sky from up there tonight.”

  Sweat slicked Olivia’s palm. Another response she couldn’t control. She could, however, continue to hold herself very, very still. “Of course.”

  “Excellent.” Lucy threw her a quick smile and dashed off toward her day, calling out over her shoulder, “And please ask Cook to bake up a batch of her scrumptious shortbread.”

  The front door slammed shut, and Olivia sagged into her chair. That name, Radclyffe, was like a long, razor-sharp sword that stabbed through to the hilt every time she heard it. Over time, mayhap its blade would dull and shorten to a more manageable state. A short dagger could be handled. And then, perhaps, someday she would feel nothing at all when she heard the name Radclyffe.

  Her stomach twisted. That day hadn’t come. If their lives continued to be intertwined through their daughters’ friendship, it would inevitably happen, correct?

  Of course, it would. It must.

  She clenched her fists at her sides and allowed the nails to dig in deep. One sort of pain could replace another and draw her more fully into the present. Lucy hadn’t been wrong. Lately, she was everywhere and nowhere at once.

  Since the day after the Duke’s ball, she’d filled every moment of every day with one task just completed, another task to complete. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d been more occupied, both physically and mentally. After all, she had a new house and a new life. A life she’d striven tooth and nail to achieve. A life that offered freedom, independence, security, predictability. Everything she’d wanted, she’d gained. She’d secured the predictable life cycle of an English rose.

  And if in the quiet of the night, when the house fell silent and only the whisper of her breath broke through the stillness, her mind protested that this life felt empty and lonely, that she’d never felt so empty and lonely, she rolled onto her side and began compiling mental lists for the next day’s tasks.

  “My lady,” she heard as if from a very far distance. She glanced up to find her butler, Wilkins, standing in the doorway not ten feet away. “His Grace, the Duke of Arundel, has arrived.”

  Olivia’s spirits experienced an immediate lift, and she pushed away from the table. With a somewhat renewed spring in her step, she rushed to the foyer and found the Duke taking in the room.

  “This house suits you, my dear.” His eye followed the coiled staircase up to the skylight, bright and cheery, even on a gray and dank day like today. “I can see why you chose it.”

  She landed a quick welcome kiss on his cheek. “I’m glad you like it.”

  He took her hands in his and stepped back, assessing her. “You’re looking”—Did she catch a slight hesitation?—“well.”

  She looked peaky, at best, and they both knew it. The Duke noticed everything.

  “Has Lulu left for school?”

  “You’ve just missed her, I’m afraid.”

  “Good,” he pronounced, eliciting a start of surprise from Olivia. “Now, show me this magnificent rooftop garden everyone is talking about.”

  “It would be my pleasure,” she replied smoothly, even as dread blossomed in her gut. He’d all but pronounced that he wished to speak with her privately, and she couldn’t help feeling she wouldn’t like what he had to say.

  With the Duke at her heels, she placed a balancing hand on the bannister and a few short minutes later, they reached the rooftop. Despite the London morning oppressive with soggy clouds, she experienced the same rush of love for this oasis that she’d felt from the very start. Unlike her dark and wintry state of mind, this rooftop, with its colorful riots of peppermint tulips and marigold forsythia, illustrated life’s ability to move forward into spring, bright and effulgent.

  She couldn’t bear the glory of it and looked toward a sky indistinct and fuzzy with cottony mist. Indistinct. Fuzzy. Words that nestled inside her with disconcerting familiarity. Nothing lately was sharp or acute. Like the clouds hanging above her head, so close she could reach up and touch them, she’d gone indistinct at the edges, like a walking blur. Would she ever be sharp again?

  “When my solicitors first informed me of your intention to purchase a townhouse in Mayfair—”

  “Your solicitors?” she asked, his words jarring her out of her cloud.

  “Of course, my dear. Did you think they would keep your correspondence from me? They understand who butters their bread.” He held out his arm to her, and they began strolling along the crushed granite path. “My first thought was that it would be a fitting endcap to these last several months of courage.”

  “I’m not certain courageous is the word I would use to describe myself.”

  “I agree, my dear. You’ve turned out to be quite the little coward, haven’t you?”

  Her body drew up in a rigid line, and she opened her mouth to speak, but only a rough, unformed croak emerged. When she began to pull her hand from the Duke’s arm, he subtly tightened his hold. It appeared he’d only gotten started. “I thought you’d finally allowed yourself the opportunity to move forward with your life, to fully unburden yourself of the ghosts of your past.”

  “I have,” she said, her voice still a raw scrub against her throat, but, at least, she could now form words, even if only monosyllabic ones.

  “Percy was a boy,” the Duke began, “a boy I loved with all my heart, but a spoilt one, I can admit. He was the spitting image
of his mother, and I couldn’t help doting on him. A willful child can be charming, no? A willful man, on the other hand, can be decidedly less so.”

  “I know exactly the sort of man Percy was . . . is,” she retorted, a snap in the words. She had no desire to speak of Percy.

  “Yes, I’m afraid you do.” He hesitated. “I didn’t want the two of you to marry. Did he tell you?”

  “I had no idea.” Betrayal and hurt rushed through Olivia, feelings that had become too familiar of late. Tears welled up behind her eyes, and she dare not blink lest they break and stream down her cheeks.

  The Duke squeezed her hand. “Oh, my dear, it isn’t like that. The rush of your young love was so sudden and complete that I advised Percy to extend the engagement, to give you time to know one another. I rather think my advice had the opposite effect as you were married by the end of the Season.” He shook his head, bemused. “Percy wanted what he wanted, and he found a way to have it. He wanted you, and he had you.”

  “Until he didn’t.” She hated the bitter note that sounded.

  “I won’t defend him, but I shall say this. Percy was like every other young man of wealth, popularity, and rank in London. But you, my dear, weren’t like every other young lady. I saw from the beginning that you would want more from your marriage than he would. Percy wanted a marriage that would allow him to skim across its surface. You wanted something deeper. But once you married, I was powerless to do anything about it. Then Percy ran off to the Continent and got himself blown to bits.” He pinned her into place with his piercing gaze. He wanted her to know that she was seen. “Do you know what I saw through the dark haze of my grief for him?”