by Lynne Barron
“What does a lady wear on an adventure?” Olivia called out as he strode toward the door.
“That is your most adventurous attire?” Jack teased as his wife descended the stairs an hour later dressed in an outrageous gown of pale-lavender muslin. The bodice hugged her breasts beneath a scooped neckline before disappearing beneath a wide white ribbon cinched tight about her waist. Voluminous sleeves began at the drop of her shoulders, billowing out to just above her elbows where the fabric was tucked and pleated to skim her arms to the wrists. Her skirts belled out from her waist, looking like nothing so much as the tiered layers of a cake festooned with dozens of bows, ribbons and lace. The hemline was shorter than was customary, showing off the turn of her ankles in tightly laced white half-boots.
“How many petticoats are you wearing under that thing?”
“Three,” she replied primly. “I saw a woman wearing just such a dress leaving my mother’s house a few weeks ago.”
“And decided you had to have one just like it?”
“Actually I thought it quite outrageous,” she admitted with a giggle. “There is so much of it, such a full skirt, so many ribbons and bows. But when I visited my modiste before our wedding she showed me the latest fashion plates from Paris and apparently full skirts and fussy trim are all the rage just now.”
“I’ll have the devil’s own time getting under your skirts,” he groused, watching as his wife breezed past him, what looked like a bouquet of silk flowers and ribbons dangling from her gloved hands.
“Never mind getting under my skirts,” she replied, stopping before the oval mirror above a side table. “You’ll have a devil of a time reaching my bosom. I’m wearing a new corset and it quite cups my breasts.”
“I’d like to cup your breasts.” Jack stepped behind and did just that, gratified by the throaty laugh that fell from her lips as she met his eyes in the mirror.
“Shame on you, Mr. Bentley,” she said. “In the front hall where anyone might see us. Now kindly step back so that I might arrange my bonnet.”
Jack dutifully stepped back only to bark out a laugh when she whipped the bouquet to her head and he realized it was a hat. A bonnet of white straw with a wide brim and a veritable mountain of flowers adorning it.
“Do you find my attire amusing?” Olivia asked with an arch of her brow.
“Not nearly as amusing as I will when it is strewn about the floor of my bedchamber on our return.” Jack met her gaze in the mirror and gave his best leer.
“Is this hat too…too…” she asked, studying the bonnet with a critical eye.
“Too what? Too much? Too ridiculous?” he supplied, stepping behind her once more.
Olivia leaned over the table, pressing her three petticoats and her round ass against his crotch. “It is ridiculous, isn’t? Perhaps I should run up and fetch another.”
“Perhaps I should assist you,” Jack offered, his hands settling on her waist. “I’ve yet to see your dressing room. Is there a settee or a chair handy?”
Olivia removed the towering confection of flowers, tossed it to the table before her, and met his eyes in the mirror. “Only a small spindly chair. I’m afraid it would break under our combined weight. And honestly if the servants keep finding broken chairs all over the house, gossip will ensue. There is a wall, four in fact. And a floor covered by the softest Turkish carpet, but I’ve been warned of the possibility of carpet burn in unmentionable places.”
Jack’s gaze drifted over her face, taking in the silver sparkling in her eyes, the pretty pout gracing her ripe lips, and the pink blush sweeping over her cheeks.
She was such a contradiction, his wife. Sweet and shy one moment, stubborn and sassy the next. Prim and proper, giving way to passionate and wanton in the blink of an eye. And always intelligent, loyal, curious, courageous and kind.
And she was his. She’d always been his just as he’d always been hers. When they were children playing together, when he’d grown into a man and unconsciously waited for her to leave girlhood behind. Through all the years when they’d been married to others, when he’d watched her from afar as she’d blossomed into a poised lady.
It was a miracle he’d found her at Idyllwild, away from the strictures of society, where she’d first allowed him to know the woman she’d become, the woman she hoped to be as the years passed and she continued to grow and transform.
“Jack?” Olivia tilted her head, her pouting lips lifting into a tender smile.
“I love you.”
The words slipped out as naturally as taking his next breath.
Olivia blinked, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, hovering like crystals on her lashes.
“I should have told you that day in the stables.” Jack wrapped his arms around her, pulled her tight against his chest, against his furiously beating heart, and spoke to her reflection. “When you asked me why I wanted to marry you I should have simply told you that I love you instead of spewing all that nonsense about the life I’d lost, the life you could return to me.”
“Oh, Jack,” she whispered on a huff of wobbly laughter.
“You were that life, you were what I lost all those years ago,” he continued, the truth he’d been too foolish to recognize overtaking him, his words tripping over themselves as each new realization dawned. “The proper lady I dreamed of marrying was you. Or the woman I thought you were. But you have turned out to be so much more, Olivia. More than I ever could have imagined.”
“I…you must know…” blinking furiously, Olivia struggled to form words but Jack wasn’t finished.
“Shh, let me say it all, love,” he crooned, gently turning her in his arms. He lifted her chin with a hand that shook. “Getting you with child, that was pure drivel. I honestly don’t care about having a son, having children. I might have married again after Elizabeth died, produced a nursery full of children. I had ample opportunity, neighbors throwing their daughters my way, a widow in the village who made no secret of her interest. I never even thought about marrying.”
“But—”
“Beyond my regret at condemning Justine to the same solitary childhood I’d endured, I did not think about having children of my own. Then I learned you’d been widowed and I fastened upon it as a way to win you, as a way to coerce you, to force you to marry me if necessary. And it just took on a life of its own, that yearning for a child. I built it up until it became all important. But the truth is it was never about a child, an heir. It was ever about you.”
“Truly?” Olivia whispered and Jack heard hope battling with doubt in the simple word.
“I have always loved you, Livy,” he vowed. “I cannot remember a time when my heart was not filled with you, with the possibility of us.”
“Mine, too.” Jack watched her lips form the words, devoid of sound beyond the softest breathy sigh.
Olivia wound her arms around his neck and pulled his head down, fusing their lips together, telling him all he needed to know.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“You want me to do what?”
Jack tossed back his head and laughed at his wife’s dubious expression. “Hop up and take the reins.”
“I don’t know how to drive a team…and where are the steps?” she asked, her gaze darting over the side of the carriage perched high atop tall wheels.
“It’s only the two,” he reminded her with a nod to the placid horses waiting patiently, the groom holding fast to their harness. “You’ve only to put your foot here on the stirrup and lift yourself up.”
Gingerly placing her booted foot on the leather strap dangling from the frame painted gray and blue in honor of her family livery, Olivia shot him a look from beneath the brim of her simple straw bonnet.
“That’s it,” Jack encouraged, placing one hand on her back in support, both physical and emotional. He hadn’t missed the way her eyes had widened when she’d spied the conveyance pulled up in the street. Equal parts excitement and trepidation had shown in their depths. “Up you go
.”
Olivia lifted her skirts out of the way and hoisted herself onto the platform before plopping onto the narrow seat with a small sigh. “That wasn’t nearly as difficult as it looks from the ground.”
Jack bounded up and bowed to her, a silly grin spreading over his face, joy and anticipation spreading through him.
“What are you doing in the corner?” he asked. “You can’t very well control the horses from there. Scoot to the middle.”
“But where will you sit?” she asked, doing his bidding before carefully rearranging her skirts to drape just so.
“I’ll squeeze right here beside you,” he replied, setting actions to words.
“Good gracious, we’re practically on top of one another.”
“Now that’s the best idea I’ve heard all day. Climb on my lap.”
“Behave Mr. Bentley,” she whispered, peeking up at him from beneath her bonnet brim.
“As you wish, Lady Bentley.” Jack took the reins from the groom with a nod before placing them in his wife’s gloved hands. “Have you ever driven a pair?”
“No,” she answered, shaking her head for emphasis. “I did drive the farm wagon at Idyllwild. Of course there was only the one horse and he was quite old and plodding.”
“Romeo, the shaggy beast?”
“How did you know?”
“Lucky guess,” he replied, remembering old Tom Jenkins cautioning him to keep an eye on her ladyship. Jack was determined to give her a day, hell a lifetime, filled with adventure. “It’s much the same. This pair is likely as old and plodding as that draft horse. They’ve been a team for years. One will follow the other. You’ve only to give them a bit of direction.”
“Perhaps you could take them, just until we’ve cleared the square.” Olivia pushed the reins into his hands.
“Not a bit of that,” he admonished, wrapping the leather straps lightly over her hands. “You’ll do fine.”
And she did. For the most part. There was only one small mishap, a slight altercation with a beer wagon whose driver refused to yield to the curricle at the intersection of Brown Street and Totten Court.
“What would have happened had I told that nasty man to go fuck himself?” Olivia asked, darting a glance behind them at the offending driver.
Jack chuckled and tossed his arm over her shoulders, pulling her close as they left the worst of the congestion behind them. “I would have undoubtedly found myself facing the man over fisticuffs.”
“Well then for that reason alone I am glad I refrained,” she answered primly. “He was a rather large man.”
“You don’t think I could best him?”
“Of course you could. But he might mark your pretty face and then I would be forced to truly give him a piece of my mind. Why, I might even disparage his mother, or the size of his manhood.”
“The size of his manhood?” he repeated in mock horror. “Surely you would never use such language on the street? In hearing of other people?”
“I would if I was truly angry,” she replied without hesitation. “If he harmed someone I loved.”
Jack suspected she didn’t even realize she’d admitted to loving him. With a smile he leaned over her shoulder to buss her cheek beneath the brim of her bonnet. “Take this next right turn, love.”
“Where are we going?” Olivia asked as she followed his direction, effortlessly turning the matched pair onto a narrow side street lined with oaks trees that dated back more than a hundred years. “This neighborhood doesn’t look at all familiar.”
“Do you venture beyond Mayfair so often that you know one street from the next?” Jack teased.
“I’ll have you know I volunteered at the Foundling Hospital twice last week.”
“You did? How is it I didn’t know that?”
“Well, we weren’t conversing with one another beyond the most mundane of topics,” she answered after a slight hesitation. “Do you mind?”
“Do I mind that we lost nearly a month together due to my stupidity and your habit of taking ridiculous ideas into your head?”
“No, silly,” she replied with a giggle. “That’s all a bridge under water.”
Jack smiled, only just barely refraining from correcting her.
“Do you mind that I’ve committed myself to two afternoons each week at the Foundling Hospital?”
“Not at all. You said you would,” he reminded her.
“You remember that conversation?” she asked in obvious surprise and perhaps a bit of pleasure.
“I remember every conversation we’ve ever shared.”
Olivia opened her mouth to speak, no doubt to pepper him with questions, apparently thought better, and stared straight ahead, her lower lip pulled between her teeth.
“Don’t bruise that pretty mouth of yours, love,” Jack admonished. “I’ll have need of it later.”
“Do you remember the conversation we shared over breakfast that day?”
“What day? We haven’t eaten breakfast together since our marriage. But yesterday over dinner we discussed Lady Marley’s upcoming ball and the letter you’d received from Mrs. Smith welcoming Justine for the autumn term. Last Wednesday we discussed whether or not you would call upon your mother now that she is well enough to receive visitors to Hastings House. And the Monday prior…let’s see…I believe we discussed names for Easton and Beatrice’s baby girl.”
“The day mother found you in the stables with Elizabeth,” she whispered the words as if loath to remind him.
Jack’s smile dimmed. “We needn’t discuss that day, that time, Olivia. It’s water under the bridge.”
Olivia flashed a grin, there and gone, acknowledging his teasing. He should have known his stubborn wife would not relent. She clearly had something weighing on her mind.
“Do you remember?” she prodded.
He thought back to that morning. “Easton and I had joined your family at Hastings House just as you were sitting down to breakfast.”
“Henry was away at school,” she corrected. “And father was gone. He’d passed away the year prior. It was only Mother and me.”
“And she was inordinately pleased to see me standing at her sideboard filling my plate. Now we know why.”
“You sat across from me, watching me until I suspected I’d dribbled jam down the front of my gown,” she added with a soft sigh.
“You’d only just developed those luscious breasts of yours and I couldn’t pry my eyes from them.”
“Do not attempt to sidetrack me with your naughty words,” she chided. “What else do you remember?”
“You were going on and on about the new kittens in the stables. You wanted to take me to see them after we’d eaten but your mother said the stables were no place for a lady. When we’d finished eating your mother asked Easton to help her with something in the study,” Jack murmured, the memories tumbling over one another. “No, that’s not right. Your mother asked you to go out to the garden.”
“To cut some roses that were nearly past their bloom,” Olivia supplied. “Pink roses that did not live beyond a day cut from the bush. To this day I cannot abide fat pink roses.”
“Yes, she sent you off for your bonnet before you’d finished your chocolate,” Jack said, remembering the surly look she’d shot her mother across the table and the smile she’d tossed at him as she’d exited the breakfast room.
“Yes, what else?”
“It wasn’t until you were skipping up the stairs that Lady Hastings asked Easton to join her in the study to take a look at some discrepancy in the estate accounts.” Jack’s heart was beating fast and furious. Uncertain he wanted to know what twisted path Olivia was leading him down with her reminiscence, he attempted to turn the topic. “You aren’t going to argue that as a proper young lady you would never have skipped through Hastings House?”
“Did Mother suggest you wait for Simon in the stables?” Olivia asked, clearly intent upon finishing the story, filling in the blanks, those of his memory and those of th
e facts that had always eluded him.
“In her customarily forceful fashion,” he admitted. “Olivia, we needn’t go down this path. We both know your mother set the trap, intentionally removing me from your sphere. Slow up a bit, love. You want to take this next left onto the square.”
Olivia brought the horses nearly to a halt before deftly maneuvering them onto Raleigh Street. A small shady park spread out before them. To the east of the park ran a row of two- and three-story town houses, newly built at ground level and only a handful of steps from the street. To the west a vast tract of overgrown land sprawled out behind a tall wrought iron fence.
“This is a pretty little square,” Olivia murmured. “Might we stop for a moment?”
“Of course,” he replied, pleased by the suggestion as they’d reached their destination. “Pull the horses up a bit, away from the corner. That’s right. Stop them in front of that drive.”
As she followed his instructions, Jack waited in anticipation for her to look beyond the jungle that had sprouted within the boundary of the fence. Instead she wrapped the reins around the brake handle and turned on the seat to face him.
“Did you never wonder why Mother chose Elizabeth?” she asked and it took him a moment to focus on her words, to realize she’d gone back to that day.
“Until very recently I didn’t know your mother had laid a trap for me. I thought you’d seen us and gone crying to her,” he reminded her, hoping she wasn’t about admit to something else, knowing he would forgive her regardless.
“That was her intention, I’m certain of it. Why else send me to the garden so near the stables? But how could she know you would take Elizabeth into your arms?”
“She couldn’t,” he agreed a bit sheepishly. “That part was pure happenstance. Happenstance and raging lust heightened by the sight of your nubile breasts across the breakfast table.”
“But now that you know it was a trap,” she prompted, ignoring his bawdy talk but for a slight tinge of pink on her cheeks.
“Quite honestly I’ve had other things on my mind since you enlightened me to that fact. Firstly making sure you arrived at the church and secondly attempting to repair the mess I’d made of our marriage.”