Chapter Eight
OLIVIA PAUSED OUTSIDE in the hall, casting a glance at the stairs in one direction, which led down in grand sweeping fashion, then at the less grand staircase at the other end of the hall, leading up. Belinda came hurrying out of the room after her, and Olivia swung toward her.
“What’s above the sitting room?”
Belinda hesitated, thinking, then said, “The nursery, I think.”
“And below?”
“The small ballroom.”
“Up,” Olivia decided. On instinct, it seemed more likely to her that someone would use the unoccupied nursery to perpetrate their fraud than a large, open public room where a servant might walk by at any moment.
She took off down the hall and up the stairs, lifting her skirts to run better. Belinda stayed on her heels. They reached the nursery and looked in. There was no one in the large, central schoolroom. Olivia went inside and peered into each of the small bedrooms that opened off it, with Belinda trailing after her. She came back into the central room, frowning. At that moment the weeping sound came again, faint but distinct. Olivia darted into the hall. The sound, she thought, came from the other end of the hall.
She moved lightly and quickly. The sound was becoming louder. Then it stopped, and Olivia broke into a run. The hall was long and narrow and low-ceilinged, with doors opening off either side. It was here that the servants slept, and during the day there was no one up here. Olivia’s and Belinda’s footsteps echoed hollowly on the wood floor. There was no muffling carpet runner here.
Tucked away under the eaves of the house, there were no windows except one at the end of the hall, so it was much darker than it had been on the floors below. The sound came again, a mournful weeping, echoing through the silent gloomy hall. Olivia’s skin prickled. Belinda shot her an anxious glance, but she stayed with her as Olivia pressed onward, following the distant crying.
The top floor was a warren of rooms and hallways, and they twisted and turned through the cramped corridors. At one point they reached a closed door at the end of the hall, and they hesitated. Then the weeping came faintly from behind the door, and Olivia pulled it open. It led into yet another hall.
“We must be in the old wing of the house,” Belinda whispered, intimidated by the profound hush of the corridor in front of them. “Well, it’s not actually older, of course. The main wing is the oldest, really, but when they renovated years ago, they only did the main wing. This part of the house is closed off and never used.”
Olivia started down the dim hallway, lifting her skirts to avoid the dust on the floors. Belinda stuck to her side like glue. The sobbing came yet again, seemingly from another narrow staircase, and they followed it down and into the corridor below. The crying continued, faint but persistent, and they pursued it along hallways and up and down staircases, past closed doors and open rooms where the furniture stood shrouded in dustcovers. There was utter silence except for the occasional burst of weeping, always somewhere in front of them, and the only light came in around the sides of the heavy draperies, closed to protect the carpets and furniture from the sun.
“I don’t like it here,” Belinda said in hushed tones.
Olivia had to admit that it was a gloomy, eerie place, where one could easily imagine things jumping out at one. She was growing increasingly uneasy, yet still she pressed on, determined to track down the source of the weeping.
It led them up the stairs again and into another of the cramped hallways under the roof. They hurried along the corridor, the crying floating in front of them, and turned a sharp corner. Something drifted over their faces, clinging and unseen. They shrieked and jumped back, clawing at their hair and faces where it still clung.
“A cobweb!” Olivia gasped, disgust mingling with fright in her shaking voice.
“Let’s go back!” Belinda cried, frantically trying to remove all traces of the cobweb.
Olivia took Belinda’s hand firmly and started down the hall, listening, waiting for the crying to start again. They reached another set of stairs and stopped. There was no crying. Olivia and Belinda glanced at each other. The minutes seemed to stretch agonizingly in silence.
“It’s gone,” Olivia said at last, her voice dropping with disappointment. “Blast! We’ve lost it.”
She turned and opened the door nearest her and looked in. It was empty. She stepped across the hall and opened the next door. There was a rickety narrow bed, several of its slats broken and with no mattress. She opened several other doors in close proximity to the stairs and found all the rooms empty or close to it. There was certainly no sign of a person.
Olivia sighed. Whoever had been leading them did not appear to be hiding nearby. She—or he—had probably slipped quietly down the staircase, and there was no telling where the person was by now.
“I suppose we might as well return now,” she said.
“Yes. Let’s.” Belinda glanced first one way down the hall and then the other. “Which way is that?”
“You don’t know?” Olivia asked, a little surprised.
“No. I don’t really know this part of the house. It has been shut off forever, and Mama would never let us play here, because she was afraid we would get lost. Anyway, it was always sort of...scary, really. It’s so empty and quiet.”
It certainly was that, Olivia had to agree. She, too, looked up and down the hall. “I don’t think I could retrace our steps. We’ve gone up and down and turned down this corridor, then that, so much that I’m completely lost.”
“But we have to get back,” Belinda protested, panic rising in her voice. “It’s getting dark. There’s nothing lit in this part of the house, and when the sun goes down—”
“I know.” Olivia tried to sound reassuring. It was already getting quite dim; she didn’t suppose that it would be long before darkness fell completely, and then they would be trapped wherever they happened to be, unable to find their way out without light. She wished that she had thought to light a candle to bring with her, but, of course, in the heat of pursuit, it had never occurred to her.
“First thing,” she told Belinda, taking her hand, “is to go downstairs. These attic corridors are the worst. There are more windows downstairs, so we’ll have more light, and if we go to the ground floor, we can find a door that goes outside. That will be the simplest way to get back—just walk around to the main wing.”
Belinda brightened at that idea, and they went down the narrow stairs to the very bottom. They struck out along one hall, only to find that it ended in a wall. There was a window, however, and they tugged aside the heavy curtains to let in the light. There was not much of it, for they could see that the sun had slipped behind the trees. Soon it would disappear altogether.
“We must be on the west side of the house,” Olivia ventured.
Belinda, looking out the window, nodded. “Yes. We’re as far as we can get from the main wing. But I’m pretty sure there’s an outside door on this side of the house—and one or two in back, as well. Some old St. Leger—I think it was during the restoration—loved building things, and he kept adding on wings and halls and rooms. And that was after his father had already added on to the place.”
They retraced their steps down the hall, and at the next intersecting hallway took a right, assuming that it would lead them to the rear of the house. It led, in fact, only to another corridor. They turned left and kept walking, and at last came to a closed door at the end of the hall. When they turned the knob, however, it would not open.
“It’s locked!” Olivia and Belinda looked at each other in consternation. There was no convenient key in the keyhole beneath the knob.
“I suppose they would lock the outside doors,” Belinda said. “They wouldn’t want people to be able to come in at will.”
“No, I guess not.” Olivia frowned, thinking. “They are probably all locked.”
“We can’t be sure.”
“No, but we don’t want to waste all of the daylight we have left trying to find the outside doors. It would probably be best to find our way back into the main house.” She thought for a moment. “All right. We shall look out the windows of a room, and we can orient ourselves in relation to the rest of the house. For instance, if we are looking out on the south lawn, we will know we have to go to our left, because the main wing is east of us, right?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
They did as she said, going into the nearest room and pulling aside the drapes from one window. Belinda, peering out, declared they were, indeed, looking out on the side garden, south of the wing they were in and also west of part of the main wing.
They set off down the corridor briskly, for it was almost dark in the hallways now, even though they paused to open any drapes they found along the way. Dusk had fallen outside, and in here, they were increasingly unable to see. Their steps slowed, and even so, they ran into a small table in the hall before they realized they were on it. Olivia put her fingers lightly against the wall as they continued forward, walking ever more hesitantly.
“We won’t find it before dark,” Belinda said, her voice trembling.
“Perhaps not,” Olivia agreed, keeping her voice firm. “But when we literally cannot see, we will sit down and wait. It isn’t as if we’re in the middle of the woods. We have shelter. The worst is that we’ll be a little hungry and thirsty.”
“Yes, but it scares me. I mean, when you can’t see anything...and I keep thinking of that crying. What if it comes back? I wish we’d never tried to find it. What if it can’t be found? What if it’s something we can’t see?”
“I am sure it was a person,” Olivia said flatly. They had come to a complete stop. There was not any light to see to walk anymore. The enveloping blackness was rather frightening, she had to admit. She would have felt much more comfortable with a candle or two.
Olivia slid her hand along the wall and felt the recess, then wood, that meant a door. “Look, we’ve come to a room. We could go inside it and open the draperies, and then we wouldn’t be totally in the dark. There would be the moonlight and starlight.”
She turned the knob and opened the door. It was pitch-black inside. The draperies must have covered the windows completely, with no gaps, so that not even whatever faint light of stars and moon might be outside could filter in. They gazed into the empty blackness. Olivia could not ignore the shiver that ran down her spine. She closed the door.
“I think I’d rather be out here,” Belinda whispered.
“I would, as well.” They carefully edged past the door. “Shall we sit down?”
“I’m awfully tired.”
They slid down the wall to sit on the floor. Olivia tried not to think about the years’ accumulation of dust that might be on the floor. She was also trying not to think of such things as rats and mice that might frequent an unused building. The list of what she should not think about was growing rapidly as her mind lit first on the weeping sound they had followed, then went to the silent woman she had seen walking across the great hall the other night. What would she do if she saw that woman again here, without Stephen by her side or even a candle to light the corridor?
She cleared her throat, more to make noise in the silence than anything else. “We are not alone,” she said firmly, not quite sure whether she was reassuring Belinda or herself. “We have each other.”
“Thank heavens.” Belinda shuddered.
“And your mother knows that we went off to find the crying. She will tell Stephen and the others. They will start looking for us when we don’t come back.”
“But they won’t know where we are. We could have gone outside or—or vanished.” She said the last word in a hushed voice, as if speaking it aloud somehow gave it reality.
“I don’t think Stephen will assume we have vanished,” Olivia said dryly.
Belinda laughed lightly. “No, that’s true. Stephen will not think that the ghosts have taken us. We can count on him.”
“Yes. And I think they will search the house before they assume we went outdoors, as well. After all, we heard the sound inside. Surely, after a while, they are bound to realize that we might have wandered over into this wing of the house.”
Belinda nodded. Olivia could feel her straightening beside her. “Of course they will. They will find us.”
It was then that they heard the rapping.
The knocks were short and fast and came from above them. The hair on the back of Olivia’s neck stood up. For an instant neither of them spoke or moved. Indeed, Olivia thought she did not even breathe. Belinda’s hand squeezed convulsively around Olivia’s. There was silence, and then, just as Olivia began to relax, there came another noise—distant and faint and eerily like a voice.
For an instant Olivia was enveloped in a primitive terror. Then reason reasserted itself, and she jumped to her feet.
“Here!” she shouted, her voice ringing out shockingly loud in the dark. “We are here!”
“Olivia!” Belinda shrieked, rising up, too, in agitation. “No! Don’t draw it to us!”
“It’s not ghosts, Belinda.” Olivia cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted again. “Stephen! We are here!”
“What?”
“It is Stephen! Come to rescue us,” Olivia explained. “I’m sure it is. That knocking we heard was simply him walking across the floor above our heads, and then I heard a voice. If we hadn’t gotten into a such a state of fear, we would have realized it. It’s not ghosts, just people searching for us.”
“Olivia! Belinda!” There was the thundering sound of feet on the stairs, and suddenly a glow coming down another corridor toward theirs.
Belinda let out another shriek, this time of joy, and began to cry. “Stephen!”
They ran toward the light, and at that moment Stephen came hurrying around the corner, lantern held high in his hand. He saw them and set the lantern down with a thud, then ran the next few steps. Belinda jumped into his arms. Olivia, running with her, remembered belatedly that while Stephen’s sister had a perfect right to throw herself into his arms, it was not appropriate for her to do so.
Stephen, however, shifted Belinda into his left arm and with his right reached out and pulled Olivia to him. For a long moment the three of them stood that way, locked in an embrace of relief and joy. Olivia thought she felt the brush of Stephen’s lips against her hair.
“Miss Olivia!” Tom Quick’s voice came from the opposite direction, and Olivia turned her head to see him sprinting toward them, his lantern swinging with every step. “I nearly dropped me light, I did, when I ’eard you call. I couldn’t picture wot ’ad ’appened to you.”
“Tom!” In her happiness, Olivia turned and gave him a quick hug, too. “I am so glad to see you.”
“We didn’t know wot was goin’ on, did we, guv’nor?” Tom went on, addressing Lord St. Leger, a grin splitting his face.
“I had no idea,” he admitted. “Mother was having hysterics and saying a ghost had gotten you. It took me ages to calm her down.”
He picked up the lantern, and they started walking back toward the main wing as they talked. His arm was still around Belinda, but Olivia had recovered her self-possession enough to stay at a discreet distance from him. Tom Quick strode off in front to light the way, turning back now and again to interject a comment as they explained how they had searched all through the house and had even combed the gardens before deciding to try the unused wing of the house.
“One of the maids said she thought she’d seen you two running up the back stairs to the servants’ floor, so we went up there. When we came upon an open door into the old wing, I realized that you must have gone in there.”
“It was awful!” Belinda told him. “It’s hopelessly confusing, and then it started to get dark, and by that time the crying was gone. Just vanished, and we were lost. We tried to get out the back door to the outside, but it was locked.”
“Crying? Who was crying? What are you talking about?”
“Didn’t Lady St. Leger tell you?” Olivia asked.
“Nothing very useful. She said you had gone running after some ghost or other, and Madame Valenskaya kept nattering on about ‘lost souls’ and ‘lonely spirits.’ All I could think was that you had caught someone pulling a trick and were chasing him. I was afraid he might have hurt you. So I got Tom and some servants, and we started looking for you.”
“We heard someone crying,” Belinda explained. “But there was nobody in the hall or anywhere around. It sounded as if it were right there in the room. It gave me goose bumps, I’ll tell you. But Olivia said it was coming from the fireplace, and then she went tearing out of the room—”
“Of course!” Stephen exclaimed. “Mother said that you were sitting in the rose sitting room.”
“Yes, we were,” Olivia replied, looking puzzled.
By this time they had reached a set of double doors. Stephen opened one of them, and they found themselves once again in the main part of the house.
“We were so close!” Belinda cried.
“Yes. If we had started on the ground floor instead of the top, we’d have found you pretty quickly.”
They walked along the long gallery toward the front stairs. Olivia, her mind still on Stephen’s earlier comment, asked, “What did you mean by ‘of course’?”
“What? Oh. Just that you can hear things by the nursery fireplace that are said in the sitting room below. Roderick and I used to sit there and listen to Mother gossip with her friends. You have to take up a couple of the tiles there. They come off easily. No doubt the sound works the other way, too.”
“I knew it!” Olivia exclaimed triumphantly. “I knew someone was up there, pretending.”
“Why did I not know about that?” Belinda asked indignantly. “No one ever told me you could spy on people from the nursery.”
“Roderick and I were too much older than you. We were grown by the time you would have been interested in that knowledge. We only found out one day when we were trying to find a hiding place for some ‘treasure’ or other, and we realized that one of the tiles was loose. It came right off. No hiding place behind it, but we heard two of the maids talking in the sitting room below us.”
They reached the great hall and saw Lady St. Leger, Lady Pamela and Madame Valenskaya and her party all standing at the bottom of the stairs. Lady St. Leger was wringing her hands, and Madame Valenskaya was patting her arm soothingly, when Irina Valenskaya looked up and saw Olivia’s group.
“Mother! Lady St. Leger! Look!” Irina cried, pointing.
Lady St. Leger turned, saw them and began to cry, hurrying toward them with her arms outstretched. “Belinda! Sweetheart! Are you all right? I thought something horrible had happened to you. And Lady Olivia! Thank goodness you’re here.”
“Heavens!” Lady Pamela advanced toward them more slowly, her eyebrows raised sardonically. “You are both covered in dust. Where in the world have you been?”
For the first time Olivia thought of what she must look like, and her heart sank. She was, as Pamela had pointed out, covered in dust. It was on her skirts and hands; she could see that now, in the light. Worse, no doubt it was on her hair and face, as well. She remembered the cobweb that had settled over them and how she had scrubbed at her hair and face, trying to rid herself of it. She must look a fright, her hair all mussed and coated with dust and cobwebs, her face streaked. It was doubly mortifying to look so in front of the poised and beautiful Pamela.
Olivia curled her hands into fists, refusing to give Pamela the satisfaction of letting her hands fly to her unruly hair, as they wanted to. “We have been in the other wing of the house,” she said with a calm she was proud of. “I’m afraid it is rather dusty.”
“But, my dear, why ever did you want to go in there?” Lady St. Leger asked.
“We were chasing the crying, Mama,” Belinda said, adding, “did you know that sound travels between your sitting room and the nursery?”
“What?” Lady St. Leger looked confused. “I don’t understand. How could you ‘chase the crying’? It was some poor lost soul. It wasn’t something you could chase.”
“It was a person, my lady,” Olivia said with all the gentleness she could muster. “Not a lost soul. A person who went into the nursery and cried by the fireplace, where the sound would come down into your sitting room.”
Lady St. Leger stared at her. “But, my dear, why would anyone do such a thing?”
“To convince us, perhaps, that there are lost souls here.”
Lady St. Leger gasped. “Lady Olivia! You must be overwrought. It is quite understandable, of course, what with the ordeal you and Belinda have been through, but you can’t have thought—you are implying that—”
“Yes, my lady. I can see no other possibility.”
“Disbelievers...” Howard Babington spoke up, sighing and giving a sorrowful shake of his head. “They will concoct any preposterous story to keep from admitting what is right in front of their eyes.”
“Yes. Someone was in the room with us, crying,” Lady St. Leger said. “We all heard it. You yourself checked the hall. It couldn’t have come from the nursery. It is too far away.”
“You have only to take up a tile at the fireplace—” Stephen began.
“Did you see someone doing this?” Babington asked innocently.
“No. They had left the room. They started the crying again and led us away, into the unused wing of the house.”
“That’s right, Mama,” Belinda interjected. “We followed it until we were lost, and then it just stopped.”
“But, darling, if you didn’t see anyone, how can you know that it was a person?” Lady St. Leger asked her daughter reasonably. “And Madame Valenskaya was right there in the room with us. She couldn’t possibly have done such a thing. You must see that you are being very unfair to her.”
“Her daughter and Mr. Babington were not with us,” Olivia pointed out.
“But they are right here. They have been with me for some time.”
“Sometimes the spirits can be unkind,” Mr. Babington said with the air of one imparting a sad truth. “When they are caught here, unable to reach the other world where they belong, they can be bitter. They will play tricks, frighten people, lead one astray.”
“Yes.” Madame Valenskaya nodded her head sagely. “Is true. I haff seen it. Ferry sad.”
“Lady Olivia,” Pamela drawled, “while I admire your desire to support Lord St. Leger’s views of Madame Valenskaya and her friends, I feel I must point out that they are strangers to this house. How could they have known this trick with the tile in the nursery? I had never heard of it. Did you know about it, Lady St. Leger? Belinda?” At their negative shakes of the head, she went on, raising her eyebrows. “You see? If even we did not know about it, having lived in this house for years, how could these relative strangers have guessed that they could do it?”
“Yes, of course. It would be impossible,” Lady St. Leger agreed, pleased. She patted Olivia on the arm, giving her a sweet, understanding smile. “I am afraid you have been listening too much to my son’s doubts. Stephen has become much too cynical in the years he’s been away. But you can see that Madame Valenskaya and Miss Valenskaya and Mr. Babington could not have done such a thing. It was, I fear, as Mr. Babington mentioned—a restless spirit playing tricks on us.” She sighed, turning toward the medium. “We really must try to communicate with the spirits again, Madame. Clearly we must do something to try to help.”
“Yes, of course. As you wish,” the squat woman replied, her eyelids lowering over a gleam of triumph. “We try again.”
* * *
EVEN LADY ST. LEGER agreed that the séance must be put off until the next evening, as Olivia and Belinda had been through too much that day to participate. Olivia was a little surprised that Lady St. Leger wanted her at the séance at all. She was fairly certain, from a single malevolent glance Madame Valenskaya delivered to her, that the medium would have been more than happy to have her gone entirely.
However, she began to realize that Lady St. Leger was hoping to win her over to the side of the believers and that she felt sure another séance would do so. Lady St. Leger smiled benignly and patted Olivia’s hand the next morning after breakfast, assuring her that the séance would straighten everything out for them.
“You will see, dear,” she said, giving her a twinkling glance. “And then, perhaps, you will be able to persuade my cynical son.”
As for Lady St. Leger, her own faith in the medium appeared to be unshakable. When, that afternoon, Stephen showed Lady St. Leger and Olivia the loose tile in the nursery schoolroom and demonstrated that sound could indeed travel down to the sitting room below, she did for a moment look uncertain.
But then she shook her head and said, “No, Stephen, my love, how could Madame Valenskaya or her daughter or Mr. Babington have done any of that? It is too absurd. Madame Valenskaya is a dear friend. She has helped me so much the past few months. It would be most unkind of me to suspect her of playing such tricks. And, anyway, they are strangers to this house. They could not know about the nursery tile, and they certainly could not have led Belinda and Lady Olivia into getting lost in the old wing. Surely you must see that.”
“They could have explored the place,” Stephen said. “They have been here an ample amount of time, and it isn’t as if we keep watch on them all the time.”
“My dear! Of course not—what a thing to say.” She shook her head a little sadly. “You have set your mind against the possibility of the spirit world. You should be more tolerant, more open to new ideas.”
“Mother...”
She smiled, patted his hand and sailed out of the room. Stephen gazed after her in frustration.
“It is something of a sticking point,” Olivia admitted. “How could they have known of the loose tile? I feel sure they could have explored the old wing and set up that trick, although I’m not sure to what purpose. I mean, Belinda and I would have suffered nothing more than an uncomfortable night, and probably not even that. You would have been bound to search the whole house.”
He shrugged. “They gave you a scare. With some, it might have been enough to convince you that there were ghosts, or even make you decide to pack up and leave. They could not have known it would make you more determined to uncover their perfidy.”
There was an admiration in the tone of his voice that warmed Olivia, but she pulled herself back to the point at hand. “However, even if it’s possible they explored the house, it seems unlikely that they would have thought of prying up all the tiles around the fireplace in the nursery to see if they could be heard downstairs.”
“Perhaps Roderick’s ghost told them,” Stephen said wryly, then sighed. “I don’t know how they found out. Maybe they discovered them in the same way Roderick and I did—they could hear faint voices, and they investigated and realized the tiles came up.”
Olivia nodded slowly. “It wouldn’t be surprising if they were investigating the room above the sitting room your mother uses most to see if they could rig up some trick through the ceiling. And the nursery is someplace people never go, so they wouldn’t fear being discovered.”
“Possible. Even plausible. But not enough, I’m afraid, to convince my mother.”
“Tom went through the other wing of the house this morning,” Olivia told him. “He opened the windows and took a lamp to search the dust on the floor for footprints.”
“Did he find any clear ones?”
“Much of the halls was a mess, with you and Tom having walked them, and Belinda and I backtracking several times. But he did find in two hallways a single set of footprints in the dust on the floor. Belinda and I were never apart. He also found footprints apart from the two pairs together that Belinda and I made. There was obviously another person up there.”
Stephen nodded. “Of course, we were sure of that to begin with. Convincing my mother is another matter. I am afraid it is going to take something much more blatant.”
“I know.” Olivia sighed. “I should have caught them yesterday. I was foolish. I said right out loud that the sounds must be coming from the fireplace. I didn’t even think about the fact that whatever was said in the sitting room probably traveled right back to them. So they knew I was coming after them, and they were able to get away.”
“Don’t fret over it.” Stephen smiled and took one of her hands in his. “You have been doing an excellent job. I couldn’t have asked for more.”
She looked up into his face, her heart fluttering a little in her chest. When Stephen smiled at her in that way, she didn’t know what to say or do. He stepped closer to her, still holding her hand.
A voice came from the doorway. “Oh! My goodness! Have I interrupted something?”
Olivia took a quick step back from Stephen, blushing, as she turned toward the doorway to see Pamela standing there, an amused smile on her lips.
“I am so sorry,” Pamela said, her tone indicating she was anything but, and strolled forward into the room.
“Hello, Pamela.” Stephen’s voice was stony.
“My lady.” Olivia glanced around uncomfortably. Pamela had a knack for making her feel wrong and out of place, and the fact that she did so bothered Olivia even more. It was also most annoying that she felt guilty, when she and Stephen had been doing nothing wrong—and Pamela had no rights over him, anyway.
She cast a quick glance up at Stephen, who was looking at Pamela, his face unreadable. She could not help but wonder if, when he saw Pamela, he still felt the same rush of passion he once had. Was it anger or love in his heart—or a combination of both? Whatever it was, Olivia had a sudden urge to get away from the sight of them.
“I—um,” she began. “I was just about to go, um, work on something. If you will excuse me...?”
She turned and quickly left the room.
Pamela did not spare a glance at Olivia’s retreating figure. She looked at Stephen, her head tilted a little to one side, a slight smile curving her lips, her blue eyes twinkling with amusement.
“Really, Stephen,” she drawled. “Don’t tell me you are trying to make me jealous.”
His eyebrows rose. “I beg your pardon?”
She nodded toward the door through which Olivia had left. “That little scene with the duke’s dowdy daughter that I just witnessed. Holding her hand, looking into her eyes. Going riding with her...oh, and that touching moment last night when she came dragging in from the other wing, your arm solicitously around her waist.”
Stephen gazed at her coolly for a moment. “I am certain it will come as a great shock to you, Pamela, but nothing I have done with Lady Olivia has had the slightest thing to do with you.”
Pamela strolled forward, her skirt swaying gracefully, her eyes intent on Stephen’s. “Come, now, my dear, you can’t expect me to believe that you have any interest in the little thing. You forget, I know you.”
She stopped in front of him, only inches away. She put a finger on his chest and trailed it down the front of his shirt, saying, “I know your passion. She could never satisfy that. I know exactly the sort of woman a man like you wants.”
Her eyes glowed as she looked up at him, the full power of her charm turned onto Stephen. Smiling seductively, she slid her hands up the front of his chest, then went on tiptoe and kissed him.