by Lynne Barron
“I must say you’ve done a fine job of it,” Olivia said, laying her hand lightly on his knee. “Repairing our marriage, I mean. It’s just…”
“What?” Jack prompted, watching as light and shadow from the trees overhead flickered over Olivia’s face. “What’s amiss, love?”
“Why Elizabeth? I cannot imagine my mother knew her except by sight.”
“She had something of a reputation,” Jack offered by way of explanation.
“So did any number of ladies who came out that Season,” she replied. “Gracious me, there was a veritable harem of ladies who barely escaped ruination. Alice included.”
“Perhaps Lady Hastings knew Elizabeth was in trouble and sought to kill two birds with one stone.”
“Mother helped her out of the goodness of her heart?”
“When put that way it does sound ludicrous,” Jack admitted. “Are you suggesting your mother chose Elizabeth to…what? What are you suggesting?”
“I’ve had quite a bit of time to think about that day,” Olivia said, her fingers skimming over his knee in an absentminded manner. “Mostly while sitting in one parlor or another pretending to listen to idle chatter. And something my mother said to me has been bothering me.”
“What did she say?”
“She told me that she’d saved me once,” she began.
“Saved you from my nefarious clutches.”
“But then she said she’d gone to a great deal of trouble only to have me disobey her and marry the lecher. Those were her exact words.”
Jack waited, not at all following where she obviously meant to lead.
“Don’t you see, Jack?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Mother never intended me to marry Palmerton,” she replied slowly, as if giving him time to jump to the obvious conclusion.
“You aren’t suggesting that Palmerton was Elizabeth’s mysterious lover? Justine’s father?”
Olivia shook her head slowly, her gaze pinned to him. “Mother would have locked Palmerton in the stables with Elizabeth if that were the case. Two birds, Jack.”
“Lady Hastings wanted me removed from your life and Elizabeth removed from…”
She nodded in encouragement, her hand gripping his knee, her nails digging into him through his trousers.
“She wanted Elizabeth removed from the life of the gentleman she intended you to marry,” Jack muttered, finally catching up with her.
“Justine’s father is…was the Marquis of Belmont. She is the granddaughter of the Duke of Ridgeway. Sister to the present Marquis.”
Olivia looked up at him expectantly, obviously waiting for some reaction. A cry of shock perhaps? Maybe a bellow of rage? Tears of sorrow?
Jack felt none of that. In fact, beyond a modicum of surprise and a bit of relief, he felt no different than he had before she’d forced him to journey down memory lane.
“Damn, you are clever,” Jack finally said.
“What?”
“My wife is by far the cleverest woman in all of England.”
“You are not reacting as I’d anticipated,” she said. “In fact you are not reacting at all. Did you already suspect?”
“I hadn’t a clue,” he replied, lifting her hand from his knee to kiss her lace-covered knuckles. “And we don’t know for a fact that the Marquis of Belmont fathered Justine. It’s all supposition.”
“I could ask my mother,” she suggested.
“There is no need.”
“Don’t you want to know?” Olivia tilted her head in the way he adored and he leaned down and planted a quick, hard kiss on her pouting mouth.
“Aren’t you eaten up with curiosity,” she asked, her breath brushing over his lips.
Jack cupped her cheeks, his fingers sifting through her curls and setting her bonnet askew. “When Elizabeth told me she was carrying a child I begged and bullied, coerced and threatened her in an attempt to force her to tell me the identity of the father. But on the day Justine was born, the moment the midwife placed her in my arms, she became my daughter.”
“And you’ve never allowed yourself to wonder? To speculate?” she persisted.
“It does not matter to me. I am her father and she is my daughter. It’s that simple.”
“You’re a better man than most,” Olivia replied.
“It is the same with Fanny and Charlie. The moment you married me your children became my children. I love them already, will only grow to love them more.”
“Oh, Jack,” she whispered, turning her head to nuzzle her cheek against his palm.
“I would love them quite a bit more, and Justine as well, if we weren’t all living atop one another in Mrs. Goode’s cramped little house,” he continued with a grin.
“Surely we’ll be retiring to Sedgefield soon,” she replied. “I’m quite excited to see your estate. Is the house very big?”
“Big enough. But what about next Season? I don’t relish the idea of renting yet another house, and another until we see both of our daughters married.”
Olivia huffed out an exasperated breath, just as he’d intended.
“Or settled in the career of their choice,” he hurried to add, lest she launch into a lecture on the street in what he hoped would be their new neighborhood.
“And we’ve a few months yet before Beatrice’s daughter is born,” he added. “You do want to remain in Town until the happy event?”
“How did you know?”
“Olivia, you love your family, every arrogant, mad, debauched, irreverent one of them. I don’t need you to tell me you’d prefer to wait until after your niece is born to journey north. I only need you to tell me where we’ll be residing.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” she replied with a grimace. “None of the houses I toured was right and in truth I’ve nearly given up finding a home for us.”
“What do you think of this one?” With a nod Jack indicated the house that sat nearly hidden within the overgrown garden surrounded by a high wrought iron fence.
“What house?” Olivia twisted around on the seat. “Good gracious me. Jack, there is a house in all those weeds and trees. A grand, sprawling mansion. It must be two hundred years old. And just look at all that land. Who do you suppose lives there?”
“At present only a handful of servants live there,” he answered, jumping from the curricle to circle around behind. “Mr. Bartholomew Raleigh passed on some years ago, leaving the house to his second wife.”
“And she has gone to join her husband?” Olivia barely glanced at him as he helped her to the street, her gazed fixed on the red brick house with its wide bow windows and twin turrets.
“A few months past.” Jack tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. “Mr. Percival Raleigh inherited the house when his stepmother passed.”
“But how do you know all this?”
“The agent told me.”
“Agent?” She stopped on the walkway just before the tall rusty gate that had been pushed open in anticipation of their arrival. “As in land agent? This house is on the market? And you are thinking to purchase it?”
“If it meets with your approval,” he answered, his eyes on her profile as she studied the house.
“If it…Lord above, Jack, it’s lovely. Simply divine. How many rooms are there? What shape are the kitchens in? My word, I didn’t think there were any homes on large plots of land left in London. However did you find it? Can we go inside? Do you suppose the fountain works?”
Jack laughed as he followed his wife through the open gates and along a cobblestone drive that wound around the front of the house before disappearing to the stables beyond. Olivia tossed questions at him one after the other, interspersed with squeals of pure delight, as they wandered through the grand old mansion.
Two hours later Jack assisted his wife onto the high seat of her new curricle, smiling as she took up the reins without urging. In his breast pocket rested the deed to Raleigh’s Folly.
Chapter Thirty-Three<
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“Your bid,” Alice whispered with a gentle nudge of her elbow against Olivia’s arm.
“I know, I’m thinking,” Olivia replied as she studied her cards and thought back over the cards that had previously been played.
She looked from her hand to the growing pile of coins precisely stacked by her elbow on the green baize table and from there to the young man who sat on her other side, his gaze ricocheting between her bosom swelling over the bodice of a sapphire-blue gown and her cousin’s all but spilling from a pale-gray gown.
“I say, Lady Bentley, you appear to be on a winning streak.”
Olivia looked away from Lord Forrester’s flushed face and shiny forehead beneath a mop of golden curls to the man who stood behind Alice, a long black cheroot dangling from his lips.
“Mr. Clive,” Olivia greeted the handsome auburn-haired man.
“The lady is making the most of her beginner’s luck,” Alice said with an arch of one dark brow. “And no, before you ask, you may not touch her person to see if any of her luck might rub off on you. Be gone, Mr. Clive.”
“Alice,” Olivia softly admonished as she tossed two gold coins into the pot at the center of the table.
Jasper Clive clamped his lips tight around his cheroot, a long ash falling to land on his lapel. Without a word he spun about and stormed away to the roulette wheel in the corner of the high-ceilinged main room of McDonough’s Gaming House where Henry greeted him, shifting to make room at the crowded rail.
“Jasper Clive is a miscreant of the worst sort,” Alice said. “And he is as poor as a church mouse and frightfully lacking in both intelligence and decorum. How your brother tolerates him I’ve no earthly idea.”
“Speaking of Henry, what do you suppose prompted him to gather us all together for this night of gambling?” Olivia asked, her gaze finding Beatrice and Simon watching the play of the wheel.
“You seem quite certain Hastings was the ringleader.”
“Do not say this was your idea. I’m quite certain my husband already believes you to be a disreputable influence upon me.”
“To be sure,” Alice agreed. “I’ll remind him to thank me when next I see him.”
“As long as you don’t see him any time soon,” Olivia replied. “I cannot imagine what he will think when he discovers I spent the night in a gaming house rather than at the theater.”
“Damn,” Alice muttered as the king of diamonds came to rest before her. She tossed down her cards before signaling to a hovering servant. “I would imagine Mr. Bentley is well aware of your present location. We’ve been here nearly three hours, after all. Someone would have carried the tale to him by now.”
Olivia flipped her cards over with a flourish.
“Twenty-one! Again!” Alice exclaimed with a laugh before turning to take two glasses of champagne from the servant at her shoulder. Olivia didn’t miss the way her cousin rubbed her finger over her own as she handed one tall fluted crystal glass to her.
“Jack is not at home. He and his father traveled to Westminster to meet with Lord Casterbury on some business having to do with the railway,” Olivia replied as the dealer raked her winnings toward her. By her calculations she was two hundred pounds richer than she’d been when Alice and Henry had bullied and cajoled her into entering the gaming house.
“So if your husband were to walk beneath the famed arches,” Alice nodded toward the pair of tall arches that graced the entrance to the main gaming room, “it would be pure coincidence?”
Olivia swiveled in her seat and craned her neck for a better view, breathing a sigh of relief when she saw half a dozen young bucks gathered under the arches.
“Shame on you,” she chided. “You had me worried for a moment.”
“Olivia, darling, what do you think your husband would do were he to find you here?” Alice asked as the dealer began to shuffle the cards, his fingers long and nimble. “Pull you kicking and screaming out into the street? Paddle your bottom in his carriage?”
“I would step up to save you, my lady,” Forrester said, lifting his gaze from her bosom.
Olivia waved off his words. “Nonsense, Forrester, you and every other gentleman in the vicinity would laugh uproariously at the sight of a husband dragging off his disobedient wife.”
“I’d not let any man touch your bum,” the young man mumbled, his eyes dropping once more. “A right fine bum, it is.”
Olivia tilted her glass and drained the cool, sparkling wine, daintily dabbing at her lips with her fingers, before leaning down to whisper to Alice, “I believe Lord Forrester is sheets to three winds.”
“Three sheets to the wind,” Alice corrected, lowering her voice. “Would your husband paddle your bottom?”
“Of course not.” Olivia watched another servant bearing down on their table with more champagne. “Although he did deliver a stinging slap just last night.”
“Did he? While you were in the throes of carnal pleasure?”
“Actually I was thrown over his shoulder.”
“Well, well, well. Mr. Bentley is full of surprises,” Alice purred. “I take it you are not displeased by your marriage?”
“Jack says he loves me,” Olivia replied, remembering his fierce lovemaking the night before and the earnestness in his eyes this morning “He wants me. In his bed, in his life, as his wife. Me. Not Lady Olivia, not the Countess of Palmerton. Me.”
“You sound as if you doubt his sincerity.”
“I am trying very hard to believe him, to believe in him, in us.”
“What would it take?” Alice demanded a bit peevishly. “What hoops must the man jump through to finally lay your doubts to rest? What do you need in order to be happy?”
“But I am happy,” Olivia exclaimed. “I have never been happier in my life.”
Alice studied her for a moment before lifting her glass of champagne. “To happier unions the second time around.”
Olivia clinked her glass gently against her cousin’s and smiled into gray eyes so like her own, surrounded by a pale face that was thinner, more angular than the one she saw each day in the mirror.
“I envy you,” Alice said.
“You do?”
“Don’t get me wrong, I don’t wish Piedmont dead,” Alice continued. “He’s harmless really, a silly old man who likes nothing more than spending his time building miniature replicas of European castles and strolling over his land with a dozen dogs nipping at his heels.”
“Does he still build castles on the front lawn of Evergreen?” Olivia asked with a laugh.
“We’ve seven at last count,” Alice replied before lifting her cards from the tabletop and peering at them quickly. She flipped three gold coins into the small pot. “I only meant that you were widowed while you were still young enough to capture the attention of a virile young man. Piedmont will likely live to a ripe old age and by the time I gain my freedom I’ll be too old to ensnare such a specimen.”
Olivia peeked at her cards and matched her cousin’s bid.
The volume of the voices in one corner of the room increased to near glass-shattering intensity and both ladies looked over to see Jasper Clive preening as Henry slapped him on the back.
“I suppose there will always be men like him,” Alice muttered before turning back to her cousin.
Olivia arched a brow in question.
“Men without fortune who are only too happy to trade their expertise in the bedchamber for a purse.” Alice nodded to the dealer for another card before tossing her hand on the table with a sigh.
“Surely you are not implying that Jasper Clive is a…” Olivia waved her hand about, searching for the correct word.
“Cicisbeo,” Alice supplied. “Since he first came down from university, or so the story goes. Apparently he disappeared into the wilds of Scotland where he hooked up with a nubile wench who taught him all manner of bedroom tricks. He gave new meaning to the Grand Tour, tearing a swath through the continent, leaving a trail of well-satisfied ladies in hi
s wake, before returning to London last month.”
“My goodness.”
“Rumor has it he has taken up with one of Hastings’ cast-offs. Although how that can be I’ve no idea. Cybil Farley hasn’t a privy to piss in but for whatever she got for the trinkets your brother gifted her during their time together.”
Olivia flipped her cards over, laughing at her cousin’s irreverent words.
“I’ll be damned,” Forrester grumbled, dragging his gaze from her breasts to her face.
“Twenty-one,” Alice cried. “You’ve the luck of the devil tonight.”
“What fun.” Olivia clapped her hands in glee as the dealer pushed her winnings across the table to join the ever growing pile before her.
“Beginner’s luck only comes around once.” Alice dug around in her reticule, pulling forth a small silver case from which she withdrew a slim black cheroot. “Enjoy it while you can.”
And enjoy it she did, her luck following her from vingt-et-un to whist to the roulette wheel where she doubled her winnings on her first bet. She barely looked up from the spinning wheel when Simon and Beatrice made their farewells, all of her attention on the little ball that spun over the smooth surface.
As there were no windows in the gaming rooms and her luck took on a life of its own, calling her to place one wager after another, Olivia lost all track of time.
So it came as quite a shock when she tucked her hand into the crook of Henry’s elbow and allowed him to lead her out of the gaming house.
“Lord above, it’s morning!”
“It’s barely dawn,” Alice countered, covering a yawn with one gloved hand.
“Shall we go to my humble house for a Cook’s eggs and kippers?” Henry asked, leading the ladies to his waiting carriage.
“I must get home,” Olivia replied, anxiety lodging in her belly. “Jack has surely realized I have not returned. He’ll be furious.”
“Egads, Alice did you not tell her?”
“If her husband had wanted her to know he might have told her himself.”