Chapter 19
Olivia tapped the mother-of-pearl face of her newly fashionable wrist watch. Five minutes until ten o’clock. She’d been awaiting his arrival in the quasi darkness of a dimmed lamp since nine-thirty.
She’d been close, so very close to putting him behind her. She’d fulfilled her end of the bargain—Miss Radclyffe would begin school tomorrow—and, as far as her search for a townhouse went, she’d resolved not to involve him further. She only needed the services of his solicitors. Once the house was purchased, they could go their separate ways as if nothing had ever occurred between them.
Then, this morning, she’d opened the London Diary and saw it, the haiku.
They were known by someone. But who?
Some hack with a pen and an inflated sense of his own power and importance. The individual mattered not, in reality, only the scope of his voice. There was but one way to silence that voice: to truly end matters with Jake. Scandal wouldn’t much change her life, but for him it would decrease his chances of finding a perfectly perfect, suitable, spotless wife.
Of course, the London Diary’s speculation would become confirmed fact if she bought this house. And Miss Fox was clever enough to figure it out. Their one saving grace was that Miss Fox didn’t seem the type to read such a frivolous publication, which, of course, was none of Olivia’s concern.
She lifted her face to the ceiling and took a slow spin, winding round alongside the magnificent staircase that coiled all the way up, up, up to the circular skylight now black with night. She located the small, unobtrusive door she’d missed on her first visit.
Earlier today, Jake’s solicitors had passed along an instruction from the house’s owners that she enter the gray door at the top of the staircase. No further detail was provided her. All very mysterious.
The girl from her youth, the girl who loved gothic novels and currently resided within Lucy, reared her head. Olivia loved a good mystery. Secret doors at the top of staircases were the stuff of her girlish fantasies.
A frisson of anticipation raced up her spine, which, of course, had nothing to do with the fact that her wristwatch now read two minutes to the hour. Two minutes until Jake’s arrival. When had she begun thinking of him as Jake?
She was being disingenuous. She liked this diminutive of his given name, Jakob. It was a name at ease with itself, making him feel more accessible to her. Not that she desired more access.
That, too, was disingenuous.
Except, this feeling wasn’t specifically about access. The diminutive explained something about him, about the man who wasn’t supposed to be The Right Honourable Jakob Radclyffe, Fifth Viscount St. Alban. That man had been Mr. Jakob Radclyffe to many, Captain Radclyffe to some, and Jake to few.
In London, he was Lord St. Alban to all, and Jake only to her. A warm feeling at odds with the chill of the empty house stole through her. It was a feeling she liked too much. A feeling she could nest inside and settle too comfortably within.
She drew in a breath of night-cooled air and glanced again at her wrist watch. Ten o’clock on the nose. One more tick of the gold minute hand, and he would be late.
She picked up the dim lamp and crossed the room to the staircase. Her fingertips feathered across silky smooth walnut. No detail of this house had been ignored. It was light and airy, even in the dark of night. It would have to be this house. The one with a memory of him etched into it. She kept getting herself wrapped up ever tighter with him.
Oh, this house would be her undoing. Doubtless, there would be another haiku published within a week of its purchase. One less opaque. One more specific and pointed. One which would possibly name names. Society dined on this sort of gossip for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, at once satisfied and ravenous for more. But there was no help for it. The heart knew what it wanted, and hers wanted this house. She refused to think about what else her heart might want.
She tilted her wrist watch toward the dim light of the lamp. One minute past ten o’clock. Jake was late.
The clear and distinct echo of footsteps sounded down the hallway, drawing nearer and louder at a brisk but unhurried clip, his clip.
She tried to relax by clenching, then unclenching her fists. At last, he came into focus in the doorway, which neatly framed his lean form. It was as obvious to her as it was to every other woman in London that he was simply impossibly handsome. Even in the near dark. Maybe, especially in the near dark as the shadows played with the angles of his face.
Yet there was something more in addition to the impossibly handsome: the impossibly sensuous. When had he become impossibly sensuous?
A vexed frown pinched her lips.
“Am I late?” he asked in a tone that didn’t sound as concerned as his words might have suggested.
“Yes,” she replied, sounding distressingly like Lucy on a petulant day.
“My apologies,” he said on a shallow bow, even as his mouth, that talented, efficient mouth of his, maintained its familiar firm line.
“No need for apologies, my lord. In fact, your tardiness is promising evidence that you are settling into the viscountcy quite well.” She liked the way his eyes narrowed at her stern tone, a tone she couldn’t help borrowing from Mrs. Bloomquist. “It is the first rule of the nobility. Everyone can wait.”
“Then my apologies for not having made you wait longer.”
A begrudging smile found its way to her lips. “Now for the second rule of the nobility.” She allowed a beat to pass. A flash of pleasure coursed through her at the very idea that she could hold this glorious man in suspense. It wasn’t every woman who could boast that particular thrill. “Never apologize.”
He stepped forward, halving the distance between them, and took another bow. “Again, my apologies.”
His gaze pinned her in place, and, like that, the power of the moment shifted to him. Oh, how an unmanageable part of her wanted him to use it. This felt dangerously like flirting. Was she flirting?
She was. In the presence of the tease playing about his eyes and mouth, she couldn’t seem to help herself. She tried clearing her throat, hoping to clear her head in the process.
He should be more careful with that smile. It could give a woman ideas.
“I take it we’re in accordance about what’s to be done?” she both stated and asked, desperate to change the subject.
His eyebrows lifted, and now it was his turn to let a beat pass before replying. His turn to hold her in suspense. Mayhap he would ignore her query and make one of his own. One less pragmatic. One more in line with the subtext rippling between them. His reaction to her confession yesterday had the unanticipated effect of only strengthening her desire for him.
No wife of mine will ever be subject to such a marriage.
A shiver, warm and liquid, purled up her spine.
“About this house?” He broke eye contact. “I think you should take it.”
A chill spiked through her. As if the cells in her body recognized his switch from warm to cool before her brain could process it. As if she understood him on a cellular level. The only logical conclusion to that thought was that he’d become part of her.
Unsettled by logic surely flawed, she gave herself a mental shake. “No, Ja—my lord”—She simply must stop giving herself leave to think of him as Jake—“about the London Diary.”
“Ah.” He craned his neck and glanced up at the blackened skylight. “Shall we take this conversation upstairs?”
She tore her gaze away from him as a measure of self-protection. His words didn’t mean what her body prayed they did. All she could say in return was, “Pardon?” And what a weak return it was.
“An intriguing bit of information about this house has come my way.”
It just occurred to her to ask, “Is it related to the gray door at the top of the staircase?” At his nod, she continued, “I know about it.” An exaggeration, of course, but short of an outright lie.
“Then you must be as curious as I to see it.”
He stepped toward the staircase, and, for a charged second, she thought he was stepping toward her, an idea that made her not unpleasantly uncomfortable. Then he swerved left, his arm a light, fleeting brush against hers. His step might have hesitated, she couldn’t be sure, but then shook off the notion when he slipped past her.
His athletic form took on the steep and winding staircase two steps at a time as if it were an easy London sidewalk. A tiny stab of envy pricked her. If her mode of dress had allowed it, she would have raced him to the top, perhaps even beating him, likely not.
Instead, she followed at a sedate, ladylike pace. A pace that might be construed as demure to the observer who lacked insight into her most intimate thoughts. They had gone reliably astray at the sight of his gorgeous form in motion. Impossibly handsome was too tame.
Impossibly gorgeous male. How was that for a more specific descriptor?
Her feet three steps from the top, the impossibly gorgeous male disappeared through the discreet open doorway, connecting to a short hallway that dead-ended into a solid black door. “Do you have the key ring with you?” he called out.
Silently, she extended the keys as she approached. They jangled excitedly in an anticipation mirroring her own. The close proximity to him in the darkness of an enclosed space did specific things to specific parts of her body. Parts of her body that weren’t satisfied by phantom memories of his touch.
She was about to take a step backward to put a bit of comfortable distance between them when he turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open. He disappeared through the doorway, and a gust of damp London air hit her. Curiosity propelling her forward, she followed. Her feet crossed the threshold, and the breath caught in her chest.
A rooftop garden, lit only by the moon and stars above, transported her into another world, one not bound by the rules of this one. One lush with green grass and springtime tulips and lit only by moonlight and twinkling stars. This rooftop was magic, pure and simple.
She whipped around to find Jake—how could his name be any other in this moment?—and detected foreknowledge in his eyes. He’d known, but he hadn’t wanted to rob her of the pleasure of discovery.
What a lovely act of generosity.
“This is it,” she heard herself say, feeling all distance between them, both physical and emotional, vanish.
The intimacy of this space also worked another sort of magic on her. Her face broke wide into an unreserved smile, uncaring of where such a smile could lead her, could lead them . . .
“This is my home. This is the magic I’ve been searching for,” she whispered, never once breaking eye contact.
~ ~ ~
Jake was the first to break it.
He couldn’t hold her gaze and say what he must. “Then there is no reason for us to discuss how to handle the London Diary haiku.”
“Pardon?” she asked, puzzlement in her voice.
“We have each fulfilled our respective ends of the bargain.”
Cautiously, he watched for her reaction. Even in the half-lit darkness, he saw her posture go rigid. Fading fast was the openness of one minute ago, her face closing off to him with the beat of each consecutive second. Her tongue began worrying her one wayward tooth, and he tore his eyes away. A pang of loss pierced him for what he must release from his grasp.
“The London Diary situation will sort itself out, if we leave any concept of us on this rooftop.”
He wouldn’t blame her if she slapped his face. In fact, he craved the contact, any contact, from her. But she didn’t. Her body held as still as the night surrounding them.
His very soul deflated like a sail that was at one moment sailing the boundless blue sea, the next, slack and limp, deprived of the breeze that gave it life seconds ago.
They’d gotten what they wanted out of each other. No, that wasn’t precisely true. They’d gotten what they needed out of each other.
Yet he wanted her beyond the physical, which wasn’t at all what they needed. What they’d needed was simple and straightforward, a bargain struck and a bargain fulfilled.
He turned away and snapped a tiny branch off a potted dogwood. He’d deceived her. He’d used her. He’d fallen for her. An impossible situation, given the preceding two points.
“That is all?” she asked.
Through the fog of a nascent bitterness, he managed to reply, “I would say so.” He didn’t understand how his voice maintained its cool indifference when inside he felt neither cool nor indifferent.
“You do say so.” Her tone dissipated the fog. “You will, of course, understand when I don’t acknowledge you at the girls’ school or at the Duke’s mansion. We don’t want to promote any concept of us, do we?”
“I’ve informed the Duke that I shall be discontinuing our meetings.”
He caught a flash of stormy azure eyes just before she pulled her shoulders back, adding a good two inches to her height, and strode toward the door. She grabbed the handle, twisted, and pulled. The door remained shut and unmoving.
She twisted and pulled again. Again, no movement, not even the slightest hint of a hinge turning. It refused to budge.
She gave it a testing jiggle, to no avail.
She began to appear comical in her struggle before going completely still. She was weighing her options. Namely, whether or not to request his assistance. When she began jiggling the handle with more purposeful ferocity, he realized she would rather walk across hot coals than ask him for help.
He stepped forward. “May I be of use?”
Again, her body stilled, her shoulders hunched in thwarted effort. Eyes wide with disbelief met his. “It’s, um, locked.”
“Locked?” He drew level with her, facing the obstinate door alongside her. “It must be stuck.”
She stepped left and away from him. “The wind must have blown it shut.”
“Won’t the key open it?” He watched her, waiting for her to produce the item.
“I believe the key is in the lock.” She stared at the deadbolt. “On the other side.”
Alarmed, he took the door handle in hand. He tried every angle with varying levels of force and gentleness in his efforts to alternately compel and coax the blasted door open. He shrugged off his overcoat and absently handed it to Olivia at one point in his struggle.
At long last, his hands dropped to his sides, and he gave up the battle. The door was well and truly locked.
He chanced a sideways glimpse of her, expecting to find her stewing in anger. Instead, he found a perverse little smile idling about her lips. That smile, at once playful and mocking, charmed him. “I thought you were angry.”
“It’s a trifle difficult to be angry with a man who is trying to save the day.” Her smile twisted in mischief, and she handed his coat back to him. “And one who looks ridiculous while doing so.”
He lifted his hands and shrugged. It wasn’t the first time this woman had called him ridiculous. He didn’t mind it in the least. He enjoyed pulling smiles from her.
Additionally, he wasn’t all that bothered by a situation that held a very real potential for calamity. If they were discovered and forced into a scenario where he would be compelled to do the right thing, well, he wasn’t certain he would mind all that much.
As if she could read his mind, the smile dropped from her lips, and she took a step backward. In a flurry of skirts, she swiveled around and began following the graveled path that wound tightly through the garden between potted trees, blossoming tulips, and classical statuary.
“I’d thought to be discreet,” she called over her shoulder, a languid fingertip brushing across a Venus’ cheek. “But apparently the gods have other plans for us.”
“Such as?”
“Whoever finds us will have quite a valuable story to sell to the gossip rags.” She hugged her arms tight across her body. “Perhaps she will be a housemaid who would like a new frock. Perhaps she’s never owned a single new thing in her life. Perhaps one must forgive such a girl for selling our tawdry little tale.” She stopped and pivoted around on one heel to face him. “Well, here we are, my lord”—Her hands lifted in a gesture of surrender—“a housemaid’s chance at a shiny new dress.”
“I’ll consider raises for my staff in the near future.”
A wry chuckle scraped across her throat, and a few drams of tension drained from his body. A feeling of ease, a natural ease that existed between them when they allowed it, settled over him.
She took a step back, holding eye contact, before spinning around to continue along the path, her again ahead of him, silently taking in the beauty of the garden on this rare, clear night. They happened upon a pair of reclining chairs, and she settled herself onto one, again hugging her arms across her body.
“Are you chilled?”
“A bit.”
He extended his overcoat toward her. Her eyes, wide and watchful, considered him for one, two, three heartbeats before she reached out and draped the woolen mass across her supine body.
“Consider it yours for the night,” he said, settling into the chair beside hers. “Who knows how long we shall be up here.” A deep contentment settled over him as they gazed side by side into the infinite sky spread above them like a blanket. “At least it isn’t raining.”
“There is that.”
“Mina knows every star and constellation up there by heart.”
“Oh?”
He liked the enchanted quality in her voice as they shared this wondrous night sky together. “She was quite taken by the ceiling at your soirée.”
“You must install the stars on her bedroom ceiling. Mayhap for her name day.”
“I wouldn’t know which one to give her: the one of her birth, or the one of her childhood, as she was born in Japan, but raised in Singapore.”
“The one she misses most, I think.”
“Her mother loved the stars.” Before Olivia could reply with the requisite platitude that Mina must take after her mother, he continued, “She spoke to me once of her childhood sky. How she wanted to see it again.”
“How so?”
“She claimed the sky was different in the Orient, but in Japan it was mostly the same sky.”
“I don’t understand”—Olivia sat upright and cocked her head—“different how?”
His brain sounded the alarm. He’d become too comfortable with her and slipped up.
A decision stood before him: continue the lie or speak the truth. A truth known only by him, Mina, and one other man in London. A truth that he suddenly, and instinctively, knew he could entrust this woman to keep secret.
There would be no turning back from here. Before his head could convince him otherwise, he met her questioning blue gaze and followed his heart. “Mina’s mother was Dutch.”
Olivia’s brows creased as if she was trying to add one and one together and kept coming up with three. “How can that be?”
“Mina isn’t my daughter by blood.”