Chapter 25
Olivia’s lips ached.
Blithe social smiles held for hours on end tended to have that effect on the muscles of one’s face. Yet soldier on she would, for this was the Duke’s ball, a wild success, judging by the number of luminaries populating the room. Was that the Duke of Wellington leading Mrs. Arbuthnot onto the dance floor? Those two couldn’t help but invite scandal.
She tapped bored fingers against her thigh, but remained glued to her spot of wall. For the last decade, she’d played default hostess at the Duke’s gatherings, but not tonight. On this occasion, nothing was required of her. The moment the Dowager had arrived, her part had become entirely superfluous. The woman had issued a series of commands to the staff and seized control of the room.
Really, there was nothing for Olivia to do but stand aside and observe, which wasn’t the worst thing. Really.
After all, it was impossible to be indifferent to the thrum of exhilaration whirring around the ballroom. The guests understood why they were here: to witness the engagement of the Duke of Arundel to the Dowager Duchess of Dalrymple. It mattered not that the marriage would be the second for both bride and groom. The union of two grand families generated excitement and reinforced the rightness of their enclosed world.
She was happy for the Duke, truly she was.
Across the cavernous room filled with sparkling diamonds and eyes to match, she watched for him. A few minutes ago, she’d left Lucy with a newly arrived Miss Radclyffe, so she knew he was here. The man who said words like, We’ve only scraped the surface of our beginning.
She exhaled a clearing breath. He’d been absolutely and utterly wrong: he and she were finished. Finished? That wasn’t correct. They never were. They would have had to have begun to be finished. Except . . .
Hadn’t they begun something? Was he so absolutely and utterly wrong?
Placid, social smile affixed to her lips, she snatched a glass of champagne off a passing waiter’s tray and gazed across the crowd before closing her eyes and allowing the music to seep into her at the cellular level. It really was lovely. One-two-three, one-two-three . . . The human body was meant to move in time to such a rhythm.
Of a sudden, her feet longed to swirl around the ballroom. She settled for tapping out the rhythm with her fingers against the glass. Was this how spinsters and confirmed widows did it? Tapping out rhythms with fingertips and feet hidden by skirts as they sat virtuously by the wayside. Was this her future?
Her eyes flew open. She might need another glass of champagne to brave the thought further.
Yet the thought refused to wait. When she’d petitioned the House of Lords to set aside her marriage, this was the fate she’d carved out for herself, forever to be on the periphery of events, but never in the stream of them. She’d known that freedom would have its price. Tonight, she was beginning to understand how Society would exact payment in the years to come.
Yes, another glass of champagne would be necessary.
A voice, sharp and vulpine, cut into her thoughts. “Lady Olivia, may I congratulate you on the Duke of Arundel’s impending nuptials?”
Olivia’s eyes startled left and found Miss Fox at her side. She nodded and kept her silence, unable to trust herself to discuss nuptials with Jake’s future bride.
“I now understand your need for discretion a few days ago,” the chit continued. “Might this marriage shift your position in the Duke’s household?”
Olivia felt her mouth start to gape open and snapped it shut, clenching her teeth together. The cheek of Miss Fox.
“Unless, of course,” Miss Fox added slyly, “you have other plans.”
She was referring to the haikus, Olivia knew it. “Miss Fox, you mustn’t rely on gossip for your facts. How surprising that you read the London Diary.”
Miss Fox’s gaze shifted toward the dance floor. “Something like that.”
Emboldened, Olivia said, “Of course, soon your own wedding banns will be read.” She was being imprudent, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. Miss Fox never failed to provoke her.
A tight, knowing smile hinted about Miss Fox’s mouth. “You needn’t fear that particular outcome, Lady Olivia. I shan’t be marrying Lord St. Alban.”
“That is rather a surprise,” she said, somehow managing to suppress the lightning strike of joy that bolted through every cell in her body.
Yet it changed nothing. Mina needed a proper stepmother.
Miss Fox’s brow lifted. “Is it? I would think it rather obvious that we don’t suit. The man is a thoroughbred stallion to my one-eyed cart pony.”
Startled by Miss Fox’s words, spoken with such clarity and confidence in their truth, Olivia looked at the other woman, really looked at her. The chit was of a height with Olivia, but slighter, airier in some way, as if a strong wind could blow her off a cliff. While some might deem her features unremarkable, the more discerning would see finely wrought bones beneath translucent, milk-pale skin that a Michelangelo marble would envy.
“Miss Fox, you speak too ill of yourself. One would be a fool to miss your delicate beauty.”
A blush the soft pink of a spring rosebud stained Miss Fox’s cheeks. The chit had the prettiest blush Olivia had ever seen. Still, she stared ahead, clearly unused to flattery of this sort.
“Flashy beauty isn’t the only sort,” Olivia continued.
“No?” Miss Fox asked, notes of her familiar acerbic tone returned. She gestured toward the dance floor. “It does seem to arrest people in their tracks, though, doesn’t it?”
Olivia glanced across mahogany buffed to a mirror shine and caught sight of a familiar figure. Mariana. A relieved smile found its way to her lips. This night wouldn’t be so bad, after all. Then she remembered the woman at her side. “Mariana does manage to attract a few eyes,” she conceded.
In parallel, Olivia and Miss Fox watched the string quartet strike up a waltz and Nick appear at Mariana’s side. Mariana didn’t light up at the sight of her beloved in the way of some women with a wide, glorious smile. Instead, a radiant blush softened her cheek, and the heat of her gaze increased tenfold.
“She does love him rather a lot, doesn’t she?” Miss Fox asked, her tone rhetorical. It was obvious to anyone with eyes.
Nick took Mariana’s hand, and from across the room Olivia felt the electricity of that touch. Miss Fox must, too. Mariana knew the secrets of that magnificent man, and he knew the secrets of her. He led her into the stream of the waltz, and they were swept away in its current.
A crystalline memory of their first Season came to Olivia. While Olivia had pursued Percy, a boy full of light and near her own age, Mariana had abstained from giving herself over to London’s entertainments. It wasn’t until a year later that Olivia understood why: Mariana had been waiting for the return of the elusive Lord Nicholas Asquith from the Continent, a man the polar opposite of Percy. Experienced. Worldly. Opaque. Where Percy was a boy, Nick was a man.
“Just look at the way he gazes upon her,” Miss Fox said. “They do make one feel like an intruder for watching. But . . .” Her voice fell away.
“Just try not watching,” Olivia finished for her, forging an unexpected kinship between them. She might like this Miss Fox, fellow intruder.
“Right. They’re just so . . . so . . .” Miss Fox said, her mouth twisted to the side in search of the right word.
“Perfect,” Olivia said.
“Perfect,” Miss Fox agreed. “They have what everyone wants.”
Yearning, fierce and pure, shot through Olivia, threatening to unravel her thread by thread until nothing remained but the raw, quivering core of this longing. Miss Fox’s words were the simple and absolute truth. She wanted what Nick and Mariana had. Wanted it so bad, she could taste it. It tasted of . . . Jake.
If she was being honest with herself, she longed for a different sort of freedom from the one she’d fought so long and hard to obtain. She longed for the freedom to gaze upon Jake the way Mariana gazed upon Nick. To claim him in front of the ton for a single dance as hers . . . As hers?
She blinked, once, twice, and snapped to. He wasn’t the man for her. And she wasn’t the woman for him. They’d made those facts very clear to each other.
Another tray littered with bubbly champagne appeared to her right, tempting her with its happy dance. She found her own glass empty—when had that happened?—and traded it for a full. She took one . . . two . . . three . . . whoo! . . . bracing gulps. The bubbles effervesced all the way up to the tippy top of her head, and she felt lighter, floatier, even if she didn’t feel precisely better.
“They waltz as if no one else in the world matters,” Miss Fox said.
“Mm-hmm,” Olivia assented around the lump in her throat.
There was a proper way of dancing the waltz that involved distancing oneself from one’s partner, back held straight and rigid, arms stiff and unyielding, eyes averted and aloof. It was entirely possible to remain separate from one’s dance partner, both in body and spirit, during a waltz, if one put enough effort into it. If one cared to put enough effort into it.
Clearly, Nick and Mariana didn’t, their bodies flat up against each other, the entire length of her body pressed full length against his. Mariana, feline and sensual, stretched up to whisper into his ear. A quicksilver smile flickered across Nick’s lips, and his eyes glowed with promise.
“It looks like the prelude to a coupling,” Miss Fox whispered.
Olivia ripped her gaze away and stared down into her champagne glass. It wasn’t only yearning that was turning her stomach into knots. It was jealousy, pure and primitive. She wanted what her sister had.
She wanted the carnality and the passion . . . the love and the ease . . . She wanted it all.
And it wasn’t possible. Not for her.
What Nick and Mariana shared was unique to them. Olivia would wager her new townhouse that no other couple in this room experienced that sort of love, singular and true. During their courtship, she’d thought she had it with Percy. Their marriage had shattered that particular illusion. But she now understood she could have it with the right man. And in her very soul she knew who the right man was.
But she couldn’t have him. She was the wrong woman.
The music ended on an upbeat flourish, and the couples cleared the floor to make way for a new set. Nick and Mariana melted into the crowd.
“That was quite an elucidating experience,” said Miss Fox, a bewildered smile belying her sardonic tone. “Is it only me or has this room warmed by a few dozen degrees?”
A wry chuckle escaped Olivia. “I’m afraid my silk fan may not be up to the task of cooling me sufficiently after that display.”
Miss Fox’s familiar vulpine smile spread across her face, even as an unfamiliar warmth reached her eyes. “Lady Olivia, I rather like you.”
With that, Miss Fox departed on a shush of silk skirts, taking the moment of levity with her. Olivia closed her eyes and exhaled a sigh on the hope that her breath could force out the horrible feeling gnawing at her stomach.
“You should be dancing.”
Her eyes startled open on a surprised gasp. “Jake?”
Could it be? She blinked. It could.
He bowed. “In the flesh.”
Flesh. The word caught between the chinks of her armor, and her heart hammered in her chest. It was possible that her heart would break free of her ribs and reveal itself to him. “It’s really too bad that yours is—”
She stopped herself from finishing that sentence. So thoroughly covered.
Had she been about to speak those words aloud?
The smile that curled about his lips and reached all the way up to his eyes told her that she didn’t need to. He’d done it for her in his head.
A flurry of anticipation shivered up her spine. She liked that he had. The way he was looking at her . . . She liked that, too. It was entirely possible she liked everything about this man.
On a reckless wave of abandon and desire, she stepped forward, a slight wobble in her step. From two glasses of champagne? Lord, she was light as a titmouse when it came to wine. He likely noticed, but she cared not. She lowered into a deep curtsy that might have listed left. She steadied herself before rising and extended her hand. “Lord St. Alban, would you do me the honor of the next dance?”
The arctic blue of his eyes warmed, and the distance between them melted. He reached out and wrapped his gorgeous, capable fingers around her hand. “It would be my utmost pleasure.”
He led her onto the dance floor just as a quadrille struck up. Tittery, gossipy shock rattled the air around them, its silky sibilance ascending into a soft buzz, continuing to rise in volume until it crescendoed into a roar, excited and delighted. The music ceased on a jarring and discordant note, eliciting disgruntled rumblings from everyone eager for a little scandalous drama. What could be more delightful at a ball?
Two familiar-looking young bucks brandished what appeared to be a bundle of bank notes at the musicians. Next, a violin bow swept across strings, and the quadrille transformed into another waltz. The ton wanted a show, and she and Jake were to provide it.
She moved with him on a wave of champagne bubbles. She’d never felt so light, so free, as when she placed her hand onto his shoulder, felt the sinewy flex of hardened muscle, and their feet glided into motion to the buoyant one-two-three rhythm of the waltz.
His warmth enveloped her in a cocoon at once safe and precarious, and she was absolutely lost. It was dangerous to be here with him, to expose her vulnerability to the ton, but she couldn’t help herself. Her entire being pulsed with the particular joy that sprang up from one’s heart when its desire was fulfilled. She was powerless beneath its sway.
She should set her gaze over his shoulder. She should keep her posture rigid and her arms stiff. She should keep him at a proper distance. But, oh, how she didn’t want to be—
Safe.
The word jolted her out of this sugar-spun fantasy borne of want and ache and unbridled joy. What was she doing? This waltz, this night, would end, reality would reestablish itself, and what would she have done?
She had no business dancing the waltz the way Nick and Mariana had. A mortified blush crept up her décolletage, and she aligned her spine into an upright rod and set her arms at a stiff angle.
How close to the edge she’d come. How close she still wanted to come.
Oh. That sounded wrong.
And true. Oh, so true.
And wrong. Utterly wrong.
Champagne.
Tomorrow, she would blame it all on champagne, bubbly and bright, seductive and beguiling temptress.
Next to them, a couple danced too close and brushed Olivia’s skirts. A usual occurrence at a ball. It was somewhat odd, however, that this was the first such occasion during this dance. She glanced around, and her heart jumped into her throat. They were one of only four couples dancing. Of the two hundred or so guests, at least half formed a loose circle around the dance floor, watching . . .
Her and Jake.
How had she forgotten them?
Abandoning her arm’s length distance, her erect posture, and her stiff arms, she gathered into him, pressed full-length into his body, and strained toward his ear. “Do you see how they watch us?” she asked, keenly aware of the ton intently, delightedly observing Lady Olivia Montfort make a spectacle of herself with the Right Honorable Viscount St. Alban.
“Of course.” His warm breath tickled the fine hairs of her neck. “The haiku.”
How had she forgotten the haiku? She spoke her next words before they stuck in her throat. “They assume we are lovers.”
“We are lovers.”
“Were,” was her automatic reply. But she wasn’t certain there was enough conviction in that word to give it the weight of truth.
As if scalded, she pushed away from him, their only points of contact where their hands rested on necessary stretches of clothed skin. She resolved to ignore the side of her that longed to luxuriate in the long length of him flexing and moving beneath his form-fitting superfine. He was long in more ways than one . . .
Oh. Where had that come from? She could blame it on the champagne, but it was no use.
Soon, not soon enough, she recognized the final bars of the waltz. It was finally, blessedly, coming to an end. She made to step backward, to separate from him, but he pulled her in, reducing her physical rectitude to bits. Again, his body pressed against hers, his mouth brushing her ear. “Meet me in the center of the Duke’s labyrinth thirty minutes hence.”
She opened her mouth to reply that she had other plans for the evening. Plans that involved at least two more glasses of champagne and no trace of him.
“Say yes, Olivia,” he said, his voice low, raspy, a masculine rumble in his chest that sent shivers racing across her skin, down the length of her spine, threatening to reduce her to jelly right here in front of the ton.
She couldn’t think of what to say, her mind wiped clean by him. So she nodded her acquiescence once, a light brush of her soft cheek against the rough stubble of his, imperceptible to the avid crowd hemming them in.
The music ended on a stirring flourish, and the two young bucks alone shouted a raucous cheer that the rest of the assembled indulged with rolled eyes and inflexible smirks.
Jake walked her to the edge of the dance floor, bowed, and strode in the direction of the billiard room. Refusing to give the ton what they wanted by watching him walk away like a love-struck girl, Olivia turned to seek out another servant bearing the nectar of the gods. Ever more and more champagne would be needed if she was to survive this night intact.
But he’d been correct: they did have a few matters to unravel between them.
And the tight center of an elaborate labyrinth seemed the perfect setting.