by Lynne Barron
Before Olivia could do more than gawk at that decadently sensual sound emanating from such an odd-looking creature, the woman spun about and strode down the street. Her long legs glided across the cobblestones, her hips swaying in a way no lady would allow on the London streets in broad daylight.
Olivia turned to find her mother’s butler silently holding the door open for her.
“Dobbins, who was that woman?” she asked as she brushed by the dour-faced man.
“No one of consequence,” he replied, his eyes trained on the ceiling.
“What was she doing here?” she persisted.
“Calling upon her ladyship,” he answered after a pause.
“And Mother received her?” she asked in surprise. She couldn’t imagine how her mother might know the tall, outlandishly dressed woman.
“Who her ladyship receives is none of my concern.”
And none of hers either, apparently.
“Where is Mother?”
“She has not come down yet.”
Without another word to the butler who had served at Hastings House for decades before he’d been shuffled off to her mother’s residence, Olivia drew in a deep breath for courage and glided past him, taking the stairs at a clip so as not to give herself time to rethink her decision.
She found her mother seated at a small desk in her sitting room, her head bent over a letter she was composing, her quill flying across the parchment.
“Mother?” she called out softly as she pushed the door closed.
Her mother spun about on the delicate chair, her quill dripping ink onto the polished wood floor. “Oh, good Lord, Olivia.”
“I’m sorry to startle you,” she replied carefully.
Her mother was dressed to receive callers in a pale-blue muslin gown bound tight at her waist and trimmed in cream lace. Her maid had yet to put up her hair. The brown and gray tresses floated free about her face and shoulders, giving her the look of a much younger woman.
“You did startle me,” her mother agreed. “But I’m ever so glad you’re here, daughter. You can take a note around to Connie for me just as soon as I’ve finished it.”
“Connie?” Olivia repeated. “I’m afraid I don’t know who you mean.”
“Of course you do,” her mother replied as she turned back to her task. “Gracious me, Connie and I have been particular friends for years.”
At a loss, Olivia stood silently watching her mother scribble line after line across the parchment.
“Connie was the belle of the ball when she came out,” her mother continued. “Oh yes, the gentlemen flocked about her like bees to…well to…” Her mother’s head whipped around and Olivia was surprised by the wide smile that graced her mother’s thin lips.
“Honey?” Olivia suggested with an answering smile.
“She was honey, that she was,” her mother agreed with a rather girlish giggle.
Olivia was struck dumb by the sound. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard her mother laugh. And she’d certainly never heard her giggle.
“Until she met that man.” Her mother’s wistful words floated across the space that separated them.
“Which man was that?” Olivia asked.
“Not the Baron,” her mother replied with a wave of her hand.
Olivia jumped back, lifting her amber skirts out of the way of the arch of tiny black drops that sailed across the room to splatter on the pink and blue Turkish carpet.
“The one before, that charming rake, that seducer of innocent ladies.”
“Connie was seduced by this man?” Olivia found herself caught up in the tale, spellbound by the woman who looked like her mother but spoke like a much younger, much happier lady.
“She could not resist him,” her mother agreed, her eyes softening. “He broke her heart, of course he did. I warned her he would. But did Connie listen? No. She was in love. Well, she paid the price for loving him. And I paid the price for keeping her secret. We both did.”
“What price?” Olivia moved farther into the room, tossing her reticule upon the bed and perching on a small settee before the open window.
“And now the rooster has come home to…” her mother turned back to her letter, her quill scraping across the parchment.
“Roost,” Olivia offered.
“Only she’s not a rooster at all,” her mother continued. “Imagine that. I never looked, you see. Why should I? Connie said…but she’s a hen, a tall red hen. Funny how she looks just like him and yet…he was beautiful and she…she just looks odd.”
“Are you referring to the woman who just left your house?” Olivia asked, though really there was no need. Surely the lady was the only odd-looking, tall red hen in Portman Square, perhaps in all of London. “Who is she, Mother?”
“The girl who was a boy.”
“The what?” Olivia asked in confusion.
But her mother said no more, only finished her letter and signed it with a flourish, before spinning around to face Olivia. “You take this note to Connie, Olivia. And mind you don’t read it.”
Her mother folded the parchment and folded it again before holding it out to her daughter.
“But mother,” Olivia began, her fingers brushing over her mother’s as she took the letter.
“Now, what are you doing here, Olivia, shouldn’t you be at your studies?”
“My studies?” Olivia asked in confusion. “Oh, you’ve heard of my violin lessons?”
“Violin?” her mother repeated. “No daughter of mine will learn the violin. Good Lord, what would people think were you to take up such a masculine instrument? No, you stick to the harp and pianoforte. You’ll land a worthy husband that way.”
“But, Mother, I’ve told you I don’t intend to marry…”
“Not marry, what foolishness!” her mother cried as she rose to her feet. “Of course you’ll marry. Why the Marquis of Belmont called upon your Uncle William just yesterday…”
“The Marquis of…but Mother…”
“He’d make you a duchess one day, and imagine getting such an offer before your first Season has closed.”
Olivia rose slowly to her feet, her heart pounding.
“Mother, I’ve already married…” she began carefully.
“Already married! Don’t be ridiculous, child!” her mother cried.
“Palmerton died last year…”
“Who died? What are you going on about?”
Olivia watched as her mother seemed to wilt before her, seemed to close in around herself, her arms wrapping around her waist and her head falling forward.
“Mother, perhaps you should sit down,” she suggested as she laid a hand upon her mother’s shoulder.
With a start, Lady Hastings’ head bobbed up and her gray eyes blinked owlishly. She stepped back and Olivia’s hand fell to her side.
“Why are you here?”
“It’s Thursday,” Olivia replied lamely.
“Why are you above stairs? What is that you have in your hand?” her mother inquired, her tone icy. “How dare you read my personal correspondence?”
“I didn’t…you asked me to deliver it to Connie,” Olivia began.
Before she could blink, her mother pried the letter from her nerveless fingers and clutched it to her chest.
“Connie! How do you know about Connie?” Lady Hastings twirled away, her bony shoulders hunched. “Go below stairs this instant.”
“Mother, please.”
“Wait for me in the parlor,” her mother hissed without turning around. “And while you are waiting try to remember that I raised you to be a lady, not a snooping busybody without a qualm about invading one’s personal boudoir.”
“Mother, you’re being unfair, you invited me…” Olivia’s voice faded. She hadn’t been invited, not truly, and yet her mother had been happy to see her. Hadn’t she?
“I did no such thing!” Lady Hastings spun about.
Olivia took a step back at the malicious look in her mother’s
eyes.
“I would never invite you into my chamber,” her mother hissed. “It is all I can do to invite you into my home. And make no mistake, I only do so to forestall gossip.”
Olivia made no reply, but she felt her temper rising, felt heat racing across her cheeks. She balled her hands into fists and hid them in her skirts.
“I blame it all on that…woman,” her mother continued. “She’s turned you into her shadow, into a mirror for her wanton ways.”
“That woman is my sister,” Olivia replied. “I’ve warned you to mind what you say about Beatrice.”
“Warned me?” her mother screeched, taking a step forward. “I’m warning you to mind your behavior, to remember who you are!”
“Who am I, Mother?” Olivia asked, her temper falling away as quickly as it had risen. “Please tell me, for I honestly don’t know anymore.”
“You are the Countess of Palmerton,” her mother answered promptly with a regal lift of her head, an almost imperceptive softening coming to her eyes. “You are the daughter of an earl, the widow of an earl, the mother of an earl.”
“That’s all?” Olivia asked quietly, taken aback though she couldn’t have said why. “That’s all I am? All I’m ever to be?”
“That is enough,” her mother replied with dignity.
“No, Mother, it isn’t,” Olivia whispered.
“It’s more than enough, more than you deserve.”
“I don’t deserve any of it,” Olivia argued. “I don’t want any of it.”
Whatever softening had come over her mother fell away. Her eyes flashed, her mouth drew into the tight lines Olivia had become accustomed to seeing. She was once again the brittle woman who found fault with every facet of her daughter’s character.
“Not want it?” her mother repeated with scorn. “You’d do well to get down on your knees and thank your maker for it, you ungrateful girl. Instead of mourning your husband publicly, holding your head high, ignoring the whispers, turning the scandal around, you ran off to Sodom and Gomorrah. You as good as announced to all and sundry that the rumors of Palmerton’s ignominious end were true.”
“They were true!” Olivia cried in frustration. “All of it was true. He died atop a whore, Mother! He left us with nothing but debt!”
“Rumors,” her mother grated out through clenched teeth. “Nothing but gossip. You might have halted it, turned it around. You had only to put on a show.”
“A show of grieving for that scoundrel?” Olivia asked in disbelief. “A show of sorrow…of mourning my one true love—”
“Don’t be melodramatic,” her mother interrupted. “No one cares whether you loved him, only whether you did your duty by him, whether you showed him the respect due a peer of the realm, and whether or not he left you solvent.”
“Don’t forget whether or not he passed the pox onto his dutiful wife!” Olivia cried, her voice rising until she was nearly screaming at her mother.
“You disgust me,” her mother rasped out, her bony chest rising and falling at an alarming rate.
“I assure you the sentiment is reciprocated!”
Olivia regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth.
“Mother, I apologize,” she began on a weary sigh.
“I care naught for your apology,” her mother replied without an ounce of regret for her own words. “You have simply shown me yet again how far you have fallen.”
“Mother, I have not fallen. You must know, you must have seen how warmly I was greeted at your ball,” Olivia replied defensively. “No one cut me. There was barely a whisper of gossip. My house was overflowing with callers yesterday. And judging by the gentlemen queued up to call upon me since my return, my reputation is intact, untarnished.”
“And do you thank me for that?” her mother demanded. “Or your brother? Hastings and I stayed in Town after you ran away to that…that…”
“I only went to Idyllwild, Mother,” Olivia replied when it became apparent her mother could not, would not speak of the estate where her husband had kept his second family secret for nearly twenty years.
“Hastings and I smoothed over the talk, disabused every one of our acquaintances of the ridiculous notion that Lord Palmerton would visit with…with such a woman. And reminded everyone who mattered that the Palmerton line is nearly as ancient as the Hastings line, that the Palmerton fortune is perfectly safe and wisely invested until the seventh Earl reaches his majority.”
“Well that last bit of the fairy tale bears a slight resemblance to the truth,” Olivia replied.
“Do you thank me for my efforts on your behalf?” her mother asked.
“Thank you, Mother,” Olivia offered dutifully, all the while wondering why she bothered.
“And now I hear you have dismissed Nurse Radcliffe,” her mother continued as if she’d never spoken the words. “Dismissed the nurse your husband chose to care for his heir and replaced her with a baker’s wife. A baker’s wife is to stand as nurse to the Earl of Palmerton?”
“I’ve asked you not to refer to Charlie by his title,” Olivia replied in exasperation.
“And I’ve told you, repeatedly, that I will refer to his lordship as his birth and rank demand.”
“He’s a child,” Olivia reminded her mother, “not a title.”
“He is the Earl of Palmerton first and foremost.”
“As I am the Countess first and foremost?” Olivia asked.
“Until you marry again,” her mother replied.
“Mother, I’ve told you...”
“The Duke of Ridgeway paid a call on me while you were away,” Lady Hastings interrupted with a slash of one frail hand. “He is amenable to a match between you and the Marquis of Belmont.”
“Good God!” Olivia exclaimed. “How many times must I tell you I will not marry Belmont?”
“His father, the man you might have married, passed away last year leaving him the heir to the Dukedom—”
“No, Mother!” Olivia threw up her hands in mounting frustration. “I will not marry that boy.”
“Your son would be a duke!”
“I cannot be the broodmare that provides the next heir!”
“Broodmare?” her mother screeched. “I did not raise you to spout such vulgar language.”
“Enough,” Olivia exclaimed before spinning away to grab her reticule up and turn for the door. “I’ve had enough, Mother, I am leaving.”
“You will not leave this house,” her mother hissed, one long, bony hand reached out.
Olivia sidestepped, evaded her mother’s grasp and marched from the room and out of her mother’s house.
Chapter Fifteen
Jack had about had enough of dancing to the Countess of Palmerton’s tune.
He’d calmly accepted her haughty butler’s assertion that the lady was not at home on Sunday afternoon when he’d called upon her.
When he’d called again on Monday he’d clearly heard the unmistakable sound of a novice violinist reverberating through the parlor door when the butler had pushed it open.
Even knowing Olivia was avoiding him, he’d smiled at the noise she’d called forth from the defenseless musical instrument.
When Olivia set her mind to a task, she certainly stuck to her guns.
The thought had given him pause as he’d descended the steps of Palmerton House. He’d shaken off a sense of impending doom and gone about his business but the sensation had stayed with him throughout the day and long into the night.
On Tuesday, when he’d wrestled an outrageous bouquet of flowers through her front door, he’d only been mildly surprised to be told once again that she was not at home.
He knew the euphemism for what it was.
Olivia was refusing to receive him. And he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why. Surely she wasn’t truly offended by his backhanded compliment at her mother’s ridiculous ball, never mind that she’d completely ignored him while she’d danced first with her brother, then with a number of elegantly a
ttired gentlemen before she’d disappearing into the bowels of Hastings House. Try as he might, he’d been unable to catch more than a glimpse of her here and there surrounded by London’s most eminent citizens.
He was coming to suspect that she’d had a change of heart during the months they’d been apart. But if she had decided to forego his company upon returning to Town, why in the bloody hell had she sent around that note asking him to call on her?
Yesterday he’d resolutely remained beyond the borders of Mayfair, going about the task of drumming up business for the Sedgefield Mining Company and meeting with his solicitor in regards to finding a larger house to lease.
After all, the husband of a Countess could not be expected to reside in Bedford Square and he had no intention of taking up residence in Palmerton’s house after the wedding. And he was going to marry the lady, come hell or high water.
So it was with some surprise that Jack saw Olivia marching down the street just across the square from the cozy town house he’d rented upon arriving in London.
He’d been on his way to Mayfair with every intention of plowing past her overly starched butler and having it out with the stubborn lady.
“Wait for me here,” he told his driver before taking off across the tree-lined park that separated him from his future wife.
But Olivia was moving along rapidly, her arms swinging at her sides, her amber skirts swirling around her. Behind her a carriage with the Palmerton crest rumbled along the crowded street.
“Olivia!” he called when it appeared she would disappear around the corner.
She spun around, one hand holding on to a smart black hat perched at a jaunty angle atop her dark curls. She looked about her, finally finding him as he pushed his way between two dawdling ladies.
She peered over her shoulder, started to turn back the way she’d been headed, and stopped, her hand falling to her side. Even from across the street, he saw her straighten her spine and edge up her chin.
“Olivia, what are you doing here?” he asked, darting around a cart in the road and hopping onto the walkway beside her.
“What are you thinking, Mr. Bentley?” she demanded in a whisper. “Hollering at me in such a fashion?”