by Julia Donner
Harry rested his temple against the wall and helplessly listened to muffled weeping. Olivia had a child? There’d been no sounds of a child in the house. As often as women died in childbirth, mothers often survived while the babes didn’t. And Goodfall had used a dead child to prove his point. Inhaling a slow breath, he tamped down outrage, while wishing he was steadier on his pins. As soon as he felt well enough, he’d hunt down the lout and beat him senseless.
Later, when Olivia came to check on him, Harry could see no indication that she’d suffered a trying interview. She said nothing the following day, and Harry, as much as he wanted to ask, didn’t comment on the incident.
He’d been at the cottage a week when he noticed the quiet. There’d always been distant sounds of traffic coming down the lane from the toll road. Church bells in the village rang matins and evensong. Fanny and her parents made puttering noises around the house and outside. The unusual lack of activity soon fostered a seed of concern. He hadn’t realized how the oddness of the silence had been working on him until he flinched from an unexpected tap on the bedroom door.
“Sir Harry?”
His entire body went on alert from the sound of her voice. “Please come in, Mrs. St. Clair.”
She peeked her head around the door first, her eyes widening when she saw him dressed in clothes splotched with bloodstains that hadn’t completely washed out.
She pushed open the door. “You’re well enough to be dressed?”
“Much better, thank you. And the threads have stopped itching, a vast improvement over the pulling as they healed.” In his stocking feet, he stood as she entered, but she halted abruptly before reaching the bedside. He took a step toward her. “Is something wrong?”
“No. I hadn’t realized that you were so tall. You’ve always been reclining or sitting. Would you take a seat in the sunlight? I’d like to see if the stitches are loose enough to remove.”
After he sat in the sunny window seat, she approached, saying, “I expect that you’re wondering about Fanny not showing up with your breakfast.”
He gripped the edge of the padded bench when she stopped in front of him, almost touching his knees as she studied his face, her handiwork. Without gritting his teeth, he told his body to relax and behave, which he doubted would work.
The age-spotted mirror on the wall revealed the care she’d taken with the stitches. He had hopes that he might come out of this boasting a face full of piratical scars, but from having wounds sewn up before, he knew her tiny stitches would only leave thin, silvery scars.
He cleared his throat to find his voice. “Is there something wrong with my hearing or is the neighborhood unusually quiet?”
“There’s nothing wrong with your hearing. There’s a cholera scare in the village. Everyone’s come down ill. Fanny said that she is well but must stay home to care for her parents. Both are confined in bed too fevered to get up.”
He anticipated her touch and suppressed a flinch when her fingertips investigated the injury that slashed down one side of his face. To get his mind off her touching him elsewhere, he asked, “They quarantined the village?”
“Yes. Did I hurt you just then?”
“Not at all.” She stood so close, against his leg, her presence and scent bathing him. He swallowed and asked, “Do you think it’s cholera?”
“It could be. This house has its own well. The Hoskins share it with me, but they frequently walk to the village and attend services without fail. The village has a common well and the thinking has been that it’s the source of the illness. Road traffic has been rerouted until it’s discovered if it’s contaminated.”
She stepped back and slipped her hands into apron pockets. “Sir Harry, there is something else. I must apologize for any awkwardness or discomfort you might have suffered from the visitor I had the other day.”
“The only discomfort I suffered came from the inability to dash down the steps and toss the cad out the door. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of service.”
“Please, I wouldn’t have wanted you to do that. And you haven’t met Mr. Goodfall. He’s known for his boxing skills. Beyond that, he is not without influence.”
“Ma’am, forgive me for saying so, but neither am I.”
Lovely dark eyes studied him until she finally said, “Ah, yes. The Regent.”
“I have the honor of calling him friend, yes, but I need not go that high.”
She avoided eye contact. He didn’t want to let the topic go. It seemed vital that she understand he’d happily pound the clod Goodfall into a jelly. He started to say so, but a surprised expression bloomed on her face as she discovered something outside. “Oh, the strawberries didn’t get picked! Excuse me.”
He tried to catch her hand but she pulled free. “Mrs. St. Clair, it’s going to rain.”
Hurrying to the door, she said over her shoulder, “All the more reason to gather them quickly. The flavor will be ruined if water-logged.”
He stared at the closed door. Primitive hunger prowled through his system, screamed for him to give chase. A grim smile twisted his mouth. Did she have any idea what she was doing to him? Of course she did and revealed her interest by doing everything possible not to validate the urgency they shared.
Heat poured off the window glass behind him. No breeze came through the open casement. Outside, the air hung sullen and dense, awaiting the storm. Below, the back garden boasted a plot of berries, bright red dots on green plants nestled in straw. Olivia knelt in the sweltering weather, gloved and shielded by a wide-brimmed hat, rapidly picking and tumbling the berries into a shallow basket.
Disgusted with himself for lusting after and making his hostess nervous, he decided that the least he could do was help her. A dark voice whispered that to help her would prove he was well enough to leave her idyllic cottage. The gentleman in him made him stand. He did so quickly to prove that he was fit. No dizziness, only the writhing tension and yearning for the unapproachable Mrs. St. Clair.
He tugged on boots, dreading the struggle to take them off. Using the bootjack wasn’t an option. Any rough treatment to the soft leather would be ferreted-out by his valet, resulting in a fit of hysterics. One of the things he hated and loved about Phipps was the man’s insistence on perfection. Thank heavens he’d sent him north with the luggage. The idea of Phipps lounging around a small village with nothing to fuss about would have driven both of them mad. It would have also landed him in the posting house days ago without ever seeing or experiencing the mystery that was Olivia St. Clair.
Droplets pattered against the windowpanes, sending Harry in a hurry down the steps. There had to be a door. He’d seen people coming and going from under the window. He stopped at the bottom of the staircase. How had they gotten up such a narrow passage?
Gripping the deeply carved newel post, he studied a partially opened door on the left. That had to be the receiving room where Quentin Goodfall harassed Olivia.
Had that only been two days ago? He felt so much better, revived. If not for the irritation of the stitches and the occasional dizzy spell, he would be very near his old self.
A glass-paned, garden exit stood partially open. As he crossed the room, the storm broke overhead. Rain splattered on the flat paving stones beyond the door. He squinted, cursing his weak eyes and a sudden deluge that made it impossible to make out Olivia’s form in the berry patch. There was no sign of her. He started to leave but was stopped by a gurgling laugh, deep-throated and sputtering. Pushing the door wider, he peered around its edge.
Shoes, gloves, hat, and a berry-filled basket sat on the flagstones under the protection of the eaves. A cap and sodden pile of white material had been dropped next to it. Movement at the corner of the house lifted his gaze. Olivia stood under a gushing waterspout.
Mesmerized, he stepped outside, unaware of the rain beating down on his head. He couldn’t look away. Olivia stood under a cascade of water from a spout on the roof. She had her arms raised, her hands open to block the pulsating s
tream. Her palms broke the force of the outpour as she turned and sinuously twisted.
It must have been the heat that coerced her into wearing no underclothing, no stays or stockings, which rendered her soaked summer frock translucent. With her apron gone, her saturated clothes were nothing but a film against her figure. Her skin made him think of apricots and peaches. Olivia under the waterfall was the most erotic thing he’d ever seen.
His legs almost gave out when she lowered her hands to her waist, bringing them up to slide her palms over her breasts, hesitating to squeeze, then up her neck to her hair. She stepped out of the gushing water to the shelter under the eaves and smoothed the strands from her face. Leaning sideways, she hauled the long, wet tail of her hair off her back and wrung it out. When she straightened up, she saw him watching. Her smile faded and mouth fell open.
He had no idea how long they stared, until he broke it for a greedy inventory of her near nudity. The soaked material outlined every curve and valley. Droplets rolled down over her parted lips, dripped from spiky eyelashes. He pictured himself licking the wetness from her mouth, gliding inside her heat, cuddling her lushness, loving every inch.
The sudden lift of her hands to cover herself brought him back to the present. He went inside before anything could be said. The room whirled. He had to sit down and sank into the nearest chair.
The irony of his light-headed condition didn’t bring any comfort. Years of females fainting over him were suddenly explained to his complete understanding. He damned near passed out from the sight of Olivia’s considerable physical charms. He had to smile as adjectives wound through his mind—ripe, irresistible. Delicious. Succulent.
Over the years, he’d acted blasé, but never uncaring, about the limp bodies of the adoring females he unintentionally sent to the land of Morpheus. His sense of the ridiculous taunted that he’d been dealt a well-deserved lesson today. Now all he had to do was remember Olivia under the waterspout to share their embarrassment. His body roared with lust not entirely due to abstinence. He had to take his wild emotions in hand. The images this mental admonishment induced made him laugh, which sounded odd in the empty room.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his throbbing temple. With his head bowed, he opened his eyes and noticed splotches of pale-brown on his shirtfront—bloodstains that hadn’t washed out. Lud, Phipps would have an apoplexy. What had happened to his spare shirt, the Belcher neckerchief and his hat? The travesty of his apparel was no way to make an impression on Olivia, the austere widow who concealed a passionate nature. Was what he’d seen a product of wishful dreaming? Had the knock to his head worsened his eyesight?
He studied his surroundings. The room looked fuzzy around the edges, but the sight of Olivia twisting under the water’s flow remained wonderfully explicit. He hoped she wouldn’t come in and see him in this state, groggy from an almost faint.
It wasn’t going to be easy, wiping such an unconsciously lascivious image from his memory. He immediately decided to keep it, go to sleep reviewing it every night, resurrect it any time he had to endure a bit of boredom.
Would his strong response be the same if she had a different sort of figure? He suspected it would be. Ample womanly form or not, he instinctively knew it was Olivia who gave him this sort of profound reaction.
He started to give his face a wake-up rub and remembered the stitches. The dark whisper returned, telling him she’d have to get close to remove the threads, practically on top of him. She’d be close enough to taste flesh that reminded him of apricots and peaches.
Chapter 8
Olivia blinked water from her eyelashes and gaped at the place where Harry had stood. Had he seen her touching herself, writhing under the waterfall like a stroked cat from the pleasure? That would mean he witnessed the shameful part of her that she couldn’t suppress.
What an exhausting, horrific week. She had thought the worst would be the misery of Quentin badgering her, his bringing up the wrenching episode of a stillborn child, his ridicule of her weakness. Then came the humiliation of being caught in the act of savoring the unseemly side of her nature.
Regretting that she’d removed the sturdy pinafore, she looked down at the water dripping from her shift’s hem. Rainwater saturated the thin cotton. Now translucent, the material stuck to her skin, more shocking than simple nudity. She’d never been modest but was exquisitely sensitive about what her father and grandfather called her lack of proper female sensibility. They considered her wanton but hadn’t said so out loud.
A surge of impatient outrage rippled through her. What was so wrong with wanting a child? It was a natural enough desire. The soft voice of her conscience reminded that her yearnings had been more than that. When it boiled down to the truth, she had entrapped Percy, and for his part, he’d been enticed by what he could accomplish with her dowry.
She’d been seeking a way out from under family domination, to find a life of purpose and promise, not one of merely making the usual respectable match. In her hurry to grasp her goal, she chose a man physically similar to her ideal, one with whom she could share her dream of making a difference and at the same time find freedom from her family’s control.
Angry about feeling guilty, she snatched up the sodden apron and the basket, leaving the hat, shoes and gloves. Why did she continue to hide in the country? She created this exile for herself after Percy died and for what reason? She’d wasted a decade trying not to feel ashamed. She couldn’t help that she’d been born to enjoy sensual things. Why be given the ability to appreciate what life had to offer and not indulge in it? She hurt no one but herself.
But she had hurt her husband. Her advances had shocked and disgusted him, but she wanted a family and couldn’t settle for anything but a man of principles. Percy had seemed like a saint to her, so bent on ending the horror that was slavery. His zeal for the task carried her along. She urged him to use her dowry and what little money she had to fund his mission. Together, they would fight the good fight, expose the evils of the slave trade, a righteous purpose to fulfill. Percy loved that about her, but not her demand for a child or for the whispered plea for a loving touch in the night.
In the end, he did give her the child she wanted, but refused to allow her to travel across the ocean while pregnant. Percy insisted she wait until he found a place for them to live in the Colonies. After the child was born, and only then, would he allow her to make the crossing.
The child who didn’t live, the marriage that ended with unexpected death—a righteous mission to end slavery never fulfilled.
A truth too shameful to confront wormed its way to the surface, mocking her. She married Reverend Percy St. Clair because he resembled Harry, the shining knight of her girlhood, or what she thought Harry would be like when he matured.
She looked out through the lifting rain, remembering. The first and only time she’d seen him happened at her aunt’s day party. Only twelve at the time, she’d been given permission to come downstairs, but told to stay out of the way of the adults. She had, peering at the guests through a crack in the garden door. When the elegant party returned to the house, she hurried to hide, sliding along the wall, but her sash snagged on a splinter. She tugged to free it, which resulted in making matters worse.
Terrified of a reprimand, she stood with her head bowed, arms straight and hands fisted by her sides, as the guests wandered by to the reception hall for the concert. No one noticed a chubby schoolgirl with mouse-colored hair. Nurse had tried to liven its lackluster color with a bright pink ribbon, but Olivia thought it made her thick hair more homely.
Unable to unfasten the sash from the splinter’s grasp, she ducked her head and stepped back against the wall as the guests filed by. Luckless, she cringed at the sound of her aunt’s voice. Aunt Charlotte had a way of stripping one to the bone when annoyed.
“Olivia, whatever are you doing crouching there? You look positively furtive. Go up to your room.”
“Yes, Aunt.”
“Well? Why do y
ou stand there? Go!”
Olivia stared at the points of her aunt’s moss green slippers poking from underneath the hem of the yellow, blue-sprigged dress. A pair of shiny, buckled shoes accompanied her—a man who wore cream-colored silk stockings without a crease or smudge.
She noticed a trace of sandalwood and imagined that her aunt’s escort smiled kindly when his melodious, deep voice asked, “Lady Charlotte, will you introduce us?”
“Oh, Harry, must you always be the gentleman?”
He chuckled, a low, comforting sound. “I apologize, but believe I must insist. How can I be of service to this young lady if we are not properly introduced?”
Since he’d softened his chiding request with affectionate humor, Lady Charlotte huffed a put-upon sigh and muttered, “Very well, you persistent beast. This regrettable lump is my niece. As you can see, not yet out of the schoolroom. Miss Olivia, this is Mr. Harry Collyns.”
A ripping sound occurred when she attempted a curtsey. Sinking to a deeper level of agony, Olivia swallowed repeatedly to curb the urge to weep. Then Mr. Collyns made everything right.
“Miss Olivia, if you would allow me?”
She dared to look up and sharply inhaled. Young enough to still be in his teens, her Galahad was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, all golden curls and the sweetest, kindest expression. The exotic scent of sandalwood intensified when he stepped closer and took her hand to draw her slightly away from the wall. His gloved fingertips searched behind her back for the snag.
After freeing the sash, he dipped his head in a bow. “I’m so glad to have been of service to you, Miss Olivia.”
Her aunt snapped, “Oh, do close that gaping mouth, child! You look like a landed fish. Come along, Harry. My niece has taken up enough of our time. My guests are waiting.”
Harry smiled at her, and when her aunt wasn’t looking, he glanced back over his shoulder and did the strangest thing. He winked at her, as if they shared a secret.
And it was a cherished secret she’d kept and never told to anyone, not even her dearest friend when she went to school, nor her mother who died a year later. Spurred by the morbidly dramatic inclination of youth, she vowed no gentleman would ever take Harry’s place in her heart. She’d fallen for an elegant young man she would probably never see again, and after that day, every male she met never measured up to his incomparable standard.