by Lynne Barron
“You must be Lord Palmerton.” The old man peered down at the boy with fistfuls of blond curls in his hands. “The boy with the special foot.”
“How did you know my brother has a special foot?” Fanny asked suspiciously.
“I good friend of mine wrote to me of the little lord who’d been born with a unique foot and I journeyed to Town to make the acquaintance of the boy.”
“What’s unique?”
“One of a kind,” Fanny answered her brother, wrapping one arm around his shoulders in a protective gesture.
“I’m sorry, but who are you?” Olivia stepped up to the man, placing one hand on each of her children’s heads, hope soaring within her so that she felt nearly faint.
“Did I not say?”
She shook her head, quite unable to form words.
“Dr. Goldman at your service.”
“Oh where the devil could he be?” Olivia murmured as she brought the curricle whipping around the corner onto St. James’s Street, narrowly missing two gentlemen just stepping off the curb.
“Female drivers,” one of them shouted, his fist waving in the air.
“My apologies,” she called back as she scanned the street before her.
Pendergrass had not been remotely forthcoming when she’d arrived in Bedford Square with the children to find her husband gone from home.
“Lord Hastings came for Mr. Bentley shortly after you left,” the butler had said, ignoring her agitation as she prodded the children up the stairs.
“Henry? Where on earth would Henry and Jack go to in the middle of the day?” she’d asked, darting a quick glance behind her as Pendergrass followed her down the hallway toward the nursery.
“I’m afraid I can’t say with any degree of certainty, my lady.”
“No, no. Of course not, but if you had to venture a guess?”
“I would not dare to presume.”
“Of for bloody sake, Pendergrass, presume.”
“It has been my experience that gentlemen of a certain standing, that is gentlemen with time on their hands—”
“Out with it.”
“Maybe they’ve gone to Uncle Henry’s club,” Fanny had suggested as she pushed open the nursery door.
“Precisely,” the butler agreed.
“Henry belongs to a number of clubs. How shall I find them?”
“Don’t you know anything, Mama? All those gentlemen’s clubs are at St. James’s Street.”
St. James’s Street was terribly congested. Olivia maneuvered out of the path of an oncoming coach, halted behind a slow-moving cart, and waited for a break in the traffic. She swept her gaze over the buildings, picking out numbers and realizing she still had a ways to go to reach those blocks that housed the gentlemen’s clubs.
Pulling out from behind the cart, she gripped the reins tight. Traffic had thinned out ahead and she fully intended to take advantage of the open road, making up for lost time.
So much lost time. Years and years spent wishing things might have been different. Weeks spent reveling in Jack’s arms while she pretended the future did not matter, that she could somehow be content with a short-lived affair.
And this past month. Good Lord, she’d been a fool to think that she must hide her true self from him, that she must somehow make up for all that he had lost in marrying her.
Jack loved her.
He’d shown her in myriad ways. With his tender touch, with his unbridled passion, with his warm body spooned around hers in the night. He’d riled her temper, listened to her wailing complaints, laughed at her misspoken phrases, forgiven her part in her mother’s trap, taken Fanny and Charlie into his heart, and accepted her barren state.
He’d encouraged her to embrace that daring side of herself that she’d hidden away in order to become the proper wife she’d thought he wanted, buying her a curricle and patiently teaching her to drive it. He’d arranged for a night of gambling, foregoing the amusement for fear she would turn up her nose at the impropriety had he been beside her.
He’d purchased a home for them, a perfectly wonderful old house where the children could run screaming about the halls and roam free over acres of land.
And today. Oh, today he’d made her fondest dream, her wildest wish come true.
She didn’t want to waste another minute, wanted to shout her love from the rooftops, and finally, finally become the wife he deserved, the woman she’d buried inside her until he’d come along and set her free.
A flash of color up ahead accompanied by the merry tinkling of bells pulled Olivia from her thoughts, forcing her attention back to the street just in time to laugh in astonishment.
A bright yellow curricle perched high atop the tallest wheels she’d ever seen turned the corner, white and blue ribbons streaming out behind, fluttering in the breeze. The top was down and perched on the seat was a tall woman with bright red hair spilling from beneath a pink and blue tricorne hat. She wore a matching dress, yards and yards of pink and blue silk and lace that swirled around her and drifted over the side of the smart conveyance.
The lady held the reins firmly in her gloved hands. Beside her a young man dressed to the nines in a periwinkle-blue velvet coat and gray breeches held on to his seat for dear life. As they came abreast of Olivia where she’d halted in the middle of the street, his tall beaver hat flew through the air, revealing a tangle of dark curls haphazardly tied back in a queue.
“My hat!” the young man cried, his head whipping around to watch as it flew through the air and landed to roll down the street.
“Hush, Tag,” the woman replied in the same husky voice Olivia remembered from the day she’d seen her in front of Mother’s house.
“Good Lord,” Olivia breathed as the curricle and its outrageously attired occupants flew past.
“Smart gig, Mrs. Bentley,” the woman called back over her shoulder.
“Watch the road, Georgie!” cried the frightened young man, little more than a boy really.
Olivia turned to watch the curricle dart around a wagon that had stopped in the street. Yellow wheels lifted from the cobblestones before landing with a jingle of bells.
“Get a move on up there!”
Spinning around to face the road ahead, Olivia realized she’d reached White’s and there in the bowed window sat Henry and Jack, peering out at the street.
Without a thought to the traffic behind her, Olivia yanked on the reins, bringing the matched pair to a halt. Stopping only long enough to set the breaks and loop the leather straps around the handle, Olivia lifted her skirts up to her knees and scrambled down over the side, her booted feet foregoing the stirrup and scrabbling on the spokes of the wheel.
She circled the horses, her gown gripped in her gloved hands. Shouts and curses rose all around her as the other drivers realized she intended to park her curricle right in the middle of the street. Olivia ignored them all, intent only upon reaching Jack.
She edged around three gawking gentlemen, darted between two more, before reaching the relative safety of the narrow walkway. Glancing at the bowed window she found Henry standing with his nose pressed to the glass, his mouth open in a perfect O of surprise.
The door swung open and Jack sprinted down the steps.
“Jack!” Olivia took flight, launching herself into the air, trusting her husband to catch her.
“Olivia.” He stumbled back, his arms wrapping around her.
Winding her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, she held on to him for all she was worth.
“What’s happened?” he asked, his voice a deep grumble.
“You,” she breathed into his neck. “You happened to me.”
Jack laughed, tightened his arms around her and spun in a slow circle.
Olivia leaned back in his arms and met his smiling eyes, eyes as blue as the sky and filled with tenderness and mischief and love. “Thank you, Jack. Thank you, thank you. A thousand times, thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied with
a grin. “What have I done?”
“What have you done?” She peppered kisses across his chiseled cheeks, along the hard angle of his jaw, and over the cleft of his chin. “You sent that wonderful man to me. I didn’t know who he was. He just appeared in the garden as if by magic. The answer to my greatest wish.”
“What man? Olivia, you aren’t making sense.”
“How did you convince him to make the journey?” She kissed along his forehead, her fingers sifting through his silky hair. “He said you’d written. What did you say in your letter?”
“What letter? What man?”
“Fanny was terribly rude to him, but he paid her no mind.” She kissed a path down his not quite patrician nose, over the slight bump, and dipped down to buss one corner of his mouth then the other. “All of his attention was for Charlie. Oh, Jack, how will I ever thank you?”
“Olivia, I don’t know what you are talking about. What man?”
“I love you. I love you. I love.” She captured his lips, sealing their mouths together, sweeping her tongue in find his, to stroke and caress.
“What is the world coming to?”
The strident voice barely penetrated her mind, lingered just on the fringes of her dizzy thoughts as Jack returned her kiss, one hand sliding down to cup her bottom.
“Who is that wicked woman?”
Olivia broke the kiss, lifted her head to smile at Lady Casterbury. “It is I, my lady, the wicked Mrs. Bentley.”
“Good gracious, when your lady mother hears of your behavior,” Lady Casterbury huffed out.
“You’d best run along,” Olivia replied, “you wouldn’t want some other lady to steal your thunder.”
Jack tossed back his head and let lose a roar of laugher, his big body shaking with it. Olivia smiled, dismissing the lady without another word.
“I got it right, didn’t I?” she asked.
“That you did,” he agreed, his laughter falling away. “Say it again.”
“Steal your thunder.”
“Olivia,” he growled, leaning in to press a quick, hard kiss to her lips. “Again.”
“I love you.”
“Again.”
“I love you. I love you. I love you,” she repeated obediently.
“And who is this man who appeared in your garden as if by magic?” Jack’s warm breath drifted over her lips. “Should I be jealous?”
“Dr. Goldman, of course. He came just as soon as he received your letter.”
“Olivia, I had planned to write to him, but I could not find anyone who knew what had become of him.”
“But if you didn’t send for him…” Olivia leaned away to look at him.
“Henry, perhaps?”
“Dr. Goldman said he wasn’t impressed with titles.”
“Speaking of titles,” Jack began.
“Would you mind terribly if I titled myself Mrs. Bentley?”
“Ah, Livy, the things you say.”
About Lynne Barron
Lynne Barron always wanted to be a writer, if only she could decide what to write. Everyone told her write about what you know. It wasn't until she married her extremely romantic and surprisingly sensual husband that she was able to follow that advice. Lynne lives in Florida with her husband, son, and a menagerie of rescued pets..
Lynne welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email addresses on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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Also by Lynne Barron
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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Widow’s Wicked Wish Copyright © 2014 Lynne Barron
Edited by Whitney Mihalik
Cover design by Dar Alber
Cover photography by Vera Kuttelvaserova/fotolia.com, periodimages.com
Electronic book publication March 2014
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