The hour before dawn was always the quietest. Olivia slipped back into her small room and lay down, pretending to herself that she would be able to sleep.
Instead, she listened to the sound of her heart. That it should beat so steadily seemed impossible to her, as though nothing had changed tonight, as though she had not changed. As though whatever had happened might have faded, leaving no physical effect.
She knew there was nothing so rare or complimentary in what had just transpired in the library. A master seducing his servant—it was a tale so old that it had become a cliché. And so, too, was its corollary: the servant welcoming his attentions. Feeling his touch like a miracle. Hungering and praying for more.
She stared hard at the pictures on the wall, seeing them in her mind’s eye though the darkness kept them shrouded. In the village tableau, a couple strolled the lane: a wife who wore her collar buttoned to her throat, and a husband, plump and florid, who would inspire no heated dreams in any woman. There was a message in the picture: what a far distance lay between decency and desire.
Decency held no moral weight for her. Her mother, after all, had taken up with a man knowing he would never marry her. That did not make Mama a bad person. She had lived gently and with grace, and Olivia had no doubt she rested now in God’s arms.
But while she did not count decency a virtue, it was the safer route by far. All her plans centered on it. She was not some foolish girl who dreamed of love. What she wanted was something real, something durable: a home in a little village where people would know her name and nod to her in the street. These were the things her mother had never had. The local gentry had not acknowledged Mama. The merchants and postmaster had taken her money politely, but they had never smiled at her.
Olivia aimed for such a place, where she would be known, and welcomed, and smiled upon. But her longings . . .
She slipped her hand beneath the loose sleeve of her nightgown and ran her fingers up her arm, testing herself. The gooseflesh rose again, for in her mind it was Marwick’s hand that stroked her.
He had shattered her tonight. And he’d been right to warn that she would like it. Like it? What a pallid word for what he’d made her feel! And how easy it was, in the darkness, to touch herself and pretend it was his touch, and feel the shivers build anew . . .
Was she tuned to him now, like a violin refashioned for one player? She could believe it. The Duke of Marwick: like a planet, he exerted his own field of gravity. He had shaped politics, molded the nation. Why should he not reshape her, too?
She made a fist. Replaced her hand at her side and stared up, dry-eyed. The ceiling had a single crack in it, which she could not quite see in the darkness, but she could sense. Likewise, she could sense the crack deep within her.
The longer she stayed here, the wider and deeper that crack became. He was kind and then cruel, blind and then unnervingly insightful, offensive and then, without a moment’s warning, so gentle that her heart could break. He had been a great man once, and he would be so again—she did not doubt that, even if he did. His intellect was too sharp, his restlessness too strong, to submit to this self-made prison forever.
He had been wronged. She knew the full extent of it—which itself was a cause for shame. He had known too much deceit already, and he did not deserve any more of it. He would never forgive her for deceiving him. But trickery was all she had to give. He thought himself the danger to her? She meant to betray a man who had already been horribly deceived. And she would not be able to forgive herself for it, any more than he would.
But if she walked away empty-handed, what then? Eventually he would step back into the world, which would be waiting for him, glad to rearrange itself to orbit around him once more. And she? She was no planet. She was a speck of dust. The world would not even notice her. She would be blown onward, never able to settle in her village. For all it would take was a single visit from Bertram for the townspeople to cease nodding to her, cease smiling.
The next morning when Olivia woke, she was certain she was falling ill. Her head felt stuffed with wool, and her eyes ached. She breakfasted in her rooms, and would gladly have stayed there the rest of the day, avoiding the duke like a coward—but with only her thoughts for company, the prospect quickly grew intolerable.
She decided to check on the maids’ rounds of the public rooms. In the formal drawing room, she found Muriel beating the curtains while Polly held a vase up, by one hand, to dust.
“Careful!” she cried—and then came forward to rescue the vase from Polly’s awkward grip. “I’ll do this. Give me the cloth—you see to the rest of it.”
She pretended not to see the mystified look the girls exchanged. It felt good to be occupied, busy with something other than her thoughts. The vase was fashioned of turquoise enamel, delicate birds fluttering within compartments delineated by silver wire. No doubt it was priceless. Probably nobody had admired it in months.
She ran her cloth around the vase’s mouth. She had never coveted treasures, but it came to her that there might be a peculiar reassurance in owning priceless things. If you left treasures behind, people would always notice you had gone. They would wonder where you were, simply because they wouldn’t understand how you had brought yourself to abandon so much.
Somebody screamed. She turned to discover a bird fluttering over the sofa; it must have slipped through the window Muriel had opened to wash.
Polly stepped forward, thrusting her broom like a jousting lance. The bird winged upward. It collided with the ceiling and reeled drunkenly along the wall.
Muriel screamed again. “Oh, get it, get it!”
“I’m trying,” Polly snapped.
“Stop it.” Olivia snatched up a sheet that protected the furniture when in disuse. “Let it settle.”
“It shouldn’t have come in,” Muriel wailed.
The bird veered abruptly toward a window—the wrong one. It smashed into the glass and dropped to the carpet.
“It’s dead,” said Polly. “It killed itself!”
“Hush.” Olivia dropped the sheet over it, then gently felt for the small body. Its warmth startled her. She scooped it up, then brought the edges of the sheets together to make a kind of sack, in which she carried it to the door. “I’ll take it to the garden.”
“Its neck is broken,” Polly called as she left.
She walked quickly, not understanding her sudden anger. But surely even a bird deserved a better end than to die in this house.
In the garden, she laid her burden on the grass and carefully unwrapped the sheet. The bird lay there, stunned, twitching. Maybe Polly was right, and these were the death throes.
She sensed that if the bird did die, she would feel angrier yet; that her temper might become explosive, and she would look for a way to take it out on someone who didn’t deserve it. Like Polly, who thought it perfectly suitable to bash at a panicked creature with her broom.
And why shouldn’t Polly think so? It was only a bird. It was not a man.
She straightened, appalled by herself. Was she so stupid, so deranged, that she now likened the Duke of Marwick to a hapless bird? He did not need her protection. If he was trapped, then the cage was of his own making.
“Go,” she whispered to the bird. “You’re free.”
Who else could say that in this house?
A latch clicked. Marwick stood in the doorway, his face expressionless. “I would like to speak with you.”
She had been anticipating, dreading, this moment all morning. Now it was on her, she found her anger had a purpose after all. It rose between them like a stone wall, rendering her indifferent to his order, to the calm authority with which he said, “Come inside.”
“In a minute.” She focused on the bird.
“Now, Mrs. Johnson.”
Alas that he could not enforce his will by coming to get her. That would require leaving the house, which he could not do—not even to step into his own garden. How unfortunate for him that she was occupied.
She knelt by the bird. It was not pretty—a wren, plain and brown, small enough to cup in her palm. But its eyes were open now, shining black beads that darted about wildly. “Hello,” she whispered. “Get up.”
“Olivia,” he said quietly.
The sound of her name on his lips ran through her like a hot jolt. But she refused to look up. Let him wait all day. He considered himself a very bad man, after all, and didn’t bad men tend to skulk? Let him skulk in the doorway to his heart’s content.
She stroked the bird’s tummy, very gently, with her forefinger. The bird fell still. A mistake? Had she killed it?
“Leave it be,” Marwick said. “It’s frightened.”
It being an unusually mild day for December, perhaps she would find other things that required her attentions outdoors. Perhaps such distractions would keep her busy for the rest of the day.
The bird’s wings twitched, then flapped once, twice. It could not turn itself over to regain its footing. Holding her breath, Olivia slid her hands beneath it. Sharp little claws briefly scrabbled across her palms. Then the bird froze again.
“It’s playing dead.”
“Are you an ornithologist?” Her voice was tart. “If so, come lend a hand. Otherwise, be silent.”
His soft laugh startled her. But she did not let herself look. “Fly,” she said softly, and lifted the bird toward the clouded sky. But the bird cowered into itself.
“Or perhaps it’s mortally wounded,” said the duke.
“Fly,” she said more sharply, and lifted her cupped palms again, with more energy.
The bird did not move.
“It’s dead.” He spoke with an edge now. “Put it down.”
“Fly!” She threw up her hands and the bird exploded into flight, plummeting once before catching the way of it and winging rapidly over the high stone wall.
Gone. She looked for it and could find no sign. “It wasn’t dead.”
Silence from the doorway. She turned and found him watching her, something strange in his face, which made her chest ache. How beautiful he was. How terribly misguided. What did he see when he looked in the mirror? She saw him as a fallen angel. Did he not realize angels had the choice to rise?
“Yes,” he said. “Not dead. You were right.”
He stepped out the door.
She goggled. Was he really going to—
Yes. He walked toward her, and she gasped and clapped her hands together—and then wished that she hadn’t, for it caused him to smile blackly, and lift his palms in a gesture that said Behold.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” He approached, tall and lean, broad-shouldered, outside. “One would never guess I’d just left leading strings.”
“Don’t joke,” she whispered. In the natural light, moving with animal grace, he looked the very last thing from a child.
“Oh, believe me, I’m not.” He came to a stop, glanced around, and drew a long, audible breath. His long lashes dropped. He studied the ground beneath his feet, his full lips twisting as he scuffed the dirt with his boot. “Quite dead,” he murmured.
She positioned herself between him and the doorway, determined to prevent any attempt at retreat. “The bird? Oh, the garden, do you mean?” For he was staring around at the brown grass. And he was outside. She barely knew how to speak for the waves of shock coming over her. He looked so much younger, suddenly, as though the house had been a weight on him, and now, at last, he could stand at his full height, liberated, strong and lean. “It’s not entirely dead,” she said. “There are several perennials planted hereabouts—”
He smiled faintly at her. “Don’t give me any nonsense about the coming spring.”
A strange sound slipped from her, something between a laugh and a sob. He sounded so well. He was not going to bowl past her for the house. “I won’t.”
He closed his eyes and tipped his head back, as though to show his face to the sky. His hair gleamed pale in the light, flaxen, shining. She drank in the sight of him, noting every line on his face revealed by the light: the crow’s-feet around his eyes, the laugh lines at his mouth, the two faint lines above the bridge of his nose. Had she made him frown and smile often enough to have deepened those lines? Would she leave a mark on him there?
The thought made her shift uneasily. She should go. Her main aim today had been to avoid him. But though she glanced toward the door, she did not move. These steps he’d just taken were too important, too extraordinary. He needed a witness for them.
He lowered his face and smiled at her. The full shape of his lips riveted her. The strong column of his throat. He was dressed for public in a pin-striped suit; he looked now like any well-bred gentleman, only more expensive, for the gleam of his merino jacket, its elegant drape, and the effortless assurance with which he wore it, would mark him out in a crowd. He looked now like a man she could never hope to know.
But last night, he had put his mouth to her most intimate place . . .
“You were right,” he said.
She was flushing; she put her hands to her cheeks to cool them. If he was going to pretend it had never happened, she would gratefully follow suit. “About the bird, you mean.”
A breeze swept over them, and he turned his face into it, his eyes closing again. “Among other things.”
Confusion fell over her like a hot net. She wanted to ask him what he meant. She wanted her anger back, too; it was so much better than this unsteady feeling. She wiped her hands down her skirts. “I should wash. The bird was . . .”
He turned back to her, his eyes searching, the color of sapphires, only deeper, bottomless, infinitely complex. “I wonder,” he said. “What is it you think to escape right now? Another assault? Or my apology? I am sorry for last night, you know. I never should have touched you.”
She felt herself grow hotter. He had put what happened into words now. She wished he hadn’t. Stupidly, irrationally, his regret upset her. She would not have called it an assault. It seemed to strip her of her consent, belatedly, and she had consented. She had not been forced into anything.
“It’s fine,” she said stiffly. “It was nothing.”
“I envy your certainty.” And then, before she could think on that, he added, “A woman is coming today to interview for your post.”
Of course this was what had brought him to her. No doubt he considered himself to be doing a kindness; this was part of his apology as well. She took a steadying breath. “Do you need me to speak with her?”
“No, Jones and I will handle it.” His smile seemed designed to remove any sting from his reply. “I’ve prepared a reference for you, and a list of suitable families you might wish to work for. My remarks last night—do forget them, please.” He took her hand. His broad, hot fingers bracketed her wrist as lightly as a breath. “I confess,” he said softly. “I would like to touch you again.”
He meant a far more intimate touch than this. As she understood him, butterflies seemed to flutter—not in her stomach, but all along her skin, invisible wings whispering over her, leaving prickles of wonder. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
She wanted him to touch her.
She wanted him to say, I am not letting you go.
“But I won’t,” he went on. His grip slipped away. “You deserve better, Mrs. Johnson. For that reason, it is best you leave.”
How had this happened? She had never lost her head over any man. But now, as he rescued her from the precipice, she felt how close she had come to stepping over it. Or perhaps she already had.
And she wasn’t certain she wanted to turn back.
She retreated a pace, clutching her arm, massaging it to rub away the last glimmer of desire.
He watched her, his face impassive. “I am sorry, Olivia.”
She gathered herself. Straightened her spine and took a hard, deep breath. She was not his victim, nor his scorned lover. She had not been cast off; she had come here for a reason, and she might still succeed.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said. Not for last night, but for what she must do today. This afternoon was her chance at last. Her only chance. His rooms would be vacant during the interview. She would search them.
Alastair thought he had acquitted himself well, honorably. He had apologized, and though she did not realize it, he had rendered tribute. She could not know the effort it had taken for him to step out into the morning light, to walk to her when she would not come to him.
Outdoors, all at once, so simply.
For a moment, stepping over the threshold, he had felt his soul part with his body and float somewhere above, while his flesh, piloted by some invisible hand, nothing to do with him, continued onward. It had been her astonishment, her gasp, that had jolted him back into himself. Leading strings, he had joked.
A joke! His facility had amazed him. For a strange and disorienting moment, he had remembered that old part of himself that had never been at a loss, never discomposed. Outside, so easily, with no weight on his chest, no panic. Walking toward her.
Of course, walking toward her. It did not even surprise him. He felt as though he had been walking toward her for months. Of course she had been in the garden.
As he’d looked at her in the fresh air, he had felt himself waking from a dream. As they had spoken, the difficulty of the first step had seemed to recede into old history, becoming half remembered, dim at the edges, like a memory twenty years old. What had kept him inside for so long? The outdoor air felt like an electric shock, sharp and wild like liquor in his nose, his throat, his chest.
This girl was beautiful. The garden was beautiful. He had kissed her once, and he could kiss her again. But he owed her better; he saw that, suddenly, for it was she who had drawn him out, her and only her whom he would have walked toward.
She left the garden first, hesitantly, looking back at him from the door to check if he would be all right. Her generosity, her kindness of spirit, came home to him all at once; she did not owe him that look, or anything else. God save her from herself.
“I’ll be all right,” he said, and she blushed and pretended not to know what he meant, and then walked on very quickly, soon swallowed by the dimness of the interior.
A minute later, he followed—intending to go upstairs, to finish the letter to his brother, to write, perhaps, to propose a meeting. But the house was so dark. He wondered suddenly if the darkness might not grip him again. Where was she?
He was letting her go, for her sake. He must do this by himself.
And so, instead, he found himself in the entry hall, at the front door. The porter leapt up, goggling, but Alastair opened the door himself.
He walked down the front steps onto the pavement. How easily this world he’d abandoned now received him again. He laughed. The ground beneath him felt solid, and his feet, his calves and knees and thighs, so flexible, so ready for the challenge. He stood a minute at the bottom of his stairs, surveying the empty park, the shuttered houses across the street. His neighbors, of course, had gone away for the cold season. Scotland, Italy, Cannes. He could do that, too, if he liked.
It was too much. He would think only of this square block for now, everything within his view.
He walked across the street into the park. Here, beneath the shadow of the bare-branched elms, he sat and watched the wind play in the grass, which somehow was still green, though the leaves had all gone. The bird had not been dead. Nor was the garden, really. Other birds still inhabited the branches. Bugs crawled through the grass. A rabbit had slipped through the bushes near the wall as Mrs. Johnson had asked him if she was needed at the interview.
She deserved his respect. He would find her an excellent place, and remove her from his reach as soon as possible—today would not be too soon for her. For her. Not for him.
A flock of birds passed overhead, bound for warmer climes.
A superstitious man would have believed that she had brought the bird back to life. Ages past, she might have been called a witch.
He took a deep breath and forced his thoughts away from her. He focused on his own house rising before him, its somber, elegant face. It had looked just so since his boyhood. It had looked just so through all the havoc that had transpired within it during this last year. Here was the face shown to the world in his stead. Passersby, glancing at this house, would not have guessed the state of the man within it. He realized this with some surprise.
It had a good face, this house. Dark brick, shining windows, gargoyles in the eaves.
He felt her presence in it like a lodestone, a talisman against the dark. But she was not his to keep. She deserved a good life, a good man, an honorable arrangement, for such things still mattered to her. And if she stayed, ah, God, but he would ruin her; he would willingly, instantly, ferociously, joyously—
He rose. He thought about walking farther, but decided against it; it felt safer to keep the house in his sights. He looked up at it again, seeing it as himself, feeling its solidity as an extension of his own.
A hackney drew up. It disgorged a single passenger, a woman hunched by age, in mourning weeds. Not Mrs. Wright, alas. She had refused to resume her old position; had chosen instead to accept Marwick’s offer of a pension, and live out her retirement in Shropshire. But she had recommended an old friend, who had lost her home when her nephew had died. Mrs. Denton, this woman was called.
Mrs. Denton did not notice him as she climbed his steps. She was shaped like a barrel, exactly as a housekeeper should be. He would offer her the post as a favor to Mrs. Wright, by way of atonement for that shoe he’d hurled at her.
But most of all, he would offer her the post because he didn’t want to. It was for Olivia Johnson’s sake that he would offer her the position.
Olivia began the search feeling calm, numb even. She did not wish to break the chest unless she had to, and the quantity of papers had multiplied in her absence, appearing on the nightstand, taking up a new shelf on the bookcase. But as she searched, heedless of what she knocked over, or pages she ripped in her haste, her actions began to summon a different mood. She tore through the papers as though she were in the grip of some silent, unfolding hysteria.
This was a nightmare. Betraying him, stealing from him. She must get through it as quickly as possible. There was no saying how long the interview would last. He might appear at any moment. Or Vickers, or Jones.
The collection on the nightstand proved useless. She moved to the bookcase, where new papers sat haphazardly stacked, or sandwiched between volumes by Melville and Aurelius, Plato and Cervantes. As she drew out the new bunch, she recoiled, recognizing the handwriting. It belonged to the late duchess.
She flipped through the letters quickly to confirm they were all of a kind. She tried to blind herself to the words, but she could not help but see that none of them were addressed to the duke.
How must it have felt for him to read this filth? In her letters to Bertram, the duchess had boasted of how easily she coaxed Marwick to reveal his political secrets; how her single miscarriage had so frightened him that he never protested when she demanded to sleep alone; how he nursed not a single suspicion that she looked elsewhere for pleasure. She reviled him as a gullible, impotent fool.
Yet Olivia had never seen those faults in him. Other faults, certainly: too much pride, too little faith in himself, and perhaps, once upon a time, too much faith in his wife. But cruelty? No. An easy dupe? By no means; his eyes saw far too much. And as for impotence . . . Olivia had felt evidence to the contrary.
His wife had not seen him clearly. Her reasons for it, Olivia could not begin to guess. But the duchess’s most common jibe—that Marwick wholly misread her—was materially contradicted by these letters, the ink of which was blurred and smeared, the creases thinned. Each page had been handled repeatedly, folded and unfolded again and again.
She stared at the lot. I should burn them. Reading them would not aid his recovery.
But it was not her right to decide that for him.
She put them back, carefully replacing the book that had lain atop them—then paused, frowning, and gave the book a little shake.
It was hollow.
Holding her breath, she opened the cover—and discovered, nestled in the carved-out innards, his pistol.
A chill ghosted down her spine. I am not that kind of thief. I have a specific purpose here.
But the purpose was self-defense. And a pistol would aid that cause immeasurably.
Undecided, she carried the pistol over to the foot of the bed, laying it on the carpet before turning to the matter of the locked chest.
As she had feared, the lock was not simple, and refused to yield to her hairpin. But Lilah, the thief turned typist, had contended with such locks. She had said once (as Amanda had gasped with shock, throwing Olivia pointed, censuring looks, looks that condemned her for encouraging such talk) that when a lock was complex, it was easier to leave it locked; to attack whatever it was attached to, instead.
Olivia had prepared for this. She had stolen a small hatchet from the garden shed. She was crafty like a thief; perhaps she was born to it, this state of evil her natural mode. How awful. She would not think of it.
There was a fractional gap between the brass plating of the lock and the wood of the chest. She fit the edge of the axe into this gap and pried. The plate loosened just enough to permit her to crack the trunk open. But the opening was not wide enough for her hand.
On a deep breath, she slammed the blade down into the gap. The clang was so loud that her heart stopped; she hunched there, daring not to breathe, waiting to be discovered.
But nobody came. She heard nothing save the deep silence of idle afternoon: the maids had completed their morning rounds, and the staff was now gathered for a late luncheon that Olivia herself had scheduled, on the pretext that they should all be together, should the housekeeper be offered the position and wish to meet them.
Her own absence would raise brows, no doubt. But everyone would think they understood it. Sour over being replaced, surely she would not desire to meet the new housekeeper.
She laid down the axe. Now she could see the mechanism of the lock, the cylindrical shaft that pierced the body of the chest. She grasped the edges of the plate, braced her foot against the chest for ballast, and pulled. It required her to rock the lock from side to side, but she made a millimeter of progress, and then another. Her arm and shoulder began to burn; she allowed herself ten seconds’ rest, to recover her breath and let her muscles ease, before resuming. Another millimeter—now a quarter inch, all at once—
The lock came out in her hand.
She looked at what she had done, and she was shocked. Fear, true fear, was a cold ringing note, like the first note that opened a symphony, a single pure tone that built and built, until it shuddered out through the air, and the orchestra joined in, and became a maelstrom.
There would be no disguising what she had done to this trunk. At his first step into the bedroom, he would see it and know.
She threw up the lid. A sob burst from her. The chest held nothing. Nothing of interest. A wreath of dry roses. A wedding dress of antique gold lace, scented heavily with lavender. She pawed it aside and found hidden in one of its flounces a photograph: Marwick standing beside a small, fox-faced brunette, a woman with a face like a heart, with eyes that were long and exquisitely formed, a smile like a cat’s.
Olivia stared at the woman. Margaret de Grey, late Duchess of Marwick. She was as perfectly formed as a porcelain miniature. Dark and sultry, her cupid’s-bow mouth naturally glamorous. She wore a collar of diamonds that a czarina might have envied. And she had had him, and she had discounted and abused him. Why? How could she have done it?
There was no time for this.
Olivia put down the photograph and groped under the dress—then gasped as her hands closed on smooth leather.
Gently, so as not to rip the dress (But why not? Why mustn’t she rip it? It should be ripped. It should be burned; why did he save these things?), she pulled out the portfolio.
He keeps a dossier . . .
Margaret de Grey had no doubt lied about many things—but she hadn’t lied about this. The papers inside were organized into neat, alphabetized sections, the names familiar to those who followed politics: Abernathy. Acton. Albemarle. Axelrod. Barclay. Balham.
Bertram.
She slid out the papers, replaced the portfolio beneath the dress, and turned once more to the picture.
Marwick looked so young in the photograph. There was a hint of a smile on his lips—not sarcastic, not ironic. He looked full of life, hope, energy.
He had deserved so much better than the woman beside him.
He deserved so much better than to be thieved from by his housekeeper.
She sat paralyzed, gripped by numb horror. Her valise was already packed. Once below, nobody would stop her from slipping out the back passage to the street. Why was she about to weep? Why could she not look away from his face?
It is too late. You have done it. The lock is ruined. He will know. It is done.
“Good-bye, Alastair,” she whispered. “Be better. Be well.”
“What,” came his cool reply from behind her, “are you doing?”