Chapter 29
One month later
Espied in Mayfair
A discreet retreat for two?
Chits weep: lucky who?
“Pish, these London Diary haikus are becoming truly atrocious,” Lucy exclaimed. In disgust, she dropped the paper onto the breakfast table, where it landed with a light, papery slap. “Whoever could they keep referring to? I thought it was Mina’s father, but what was the ‘A house for his Queen’ one all about?”
A house for Lady Olivia Montfort on Queen Street, Olivia didn’t tell her too astute daughter.
Her stomach filled with acid, and she pushed her croissant away. This was how it felt to be mocked. Of course, the writers at the London Diary had no idea that they were mocking her. They thought they were taunting her.
Well, it wouldn’t be long before they realized how very wrong they were. Today marked the anniversary of her and Lucy’s first week in their new Mayfair townhouse. The matter had been settled at the discreet office of Mister Tobias Dilbey, Esquire, Jake’s solicitor. Money had efficiently changed banks and signatures solemnly scratched across deeds.
On impulse, Olivia had reached across the table to shake hands with Mister Dilbey. He’d stammered a bit before he’d haltingly reached out and tapped her palm with the tips of his fingers.
Life had a relentless way of moving forward. With or without one’s permission.
A movement at the corner of her eye drew her out of philosophical musings doomed to reach no good end. Lucy had cracked open The Bride of Lammermoor. “How was your day, Lulu?”
Lucy stopped mid-chew, and her eyebrows drew together in consternation. If Olivia was reading her daughter’s expression correctly, she was looking at her as if she’d grown horns. “The day has barely begun, Mum,” she said around the food in her mouth. “I’d say that the tangles brushed out of my hair without too much fuss, and it was a pleasant surprise to find that this dress still fits. It seems that my body has decided to grow outwardly of late.” Her head tilted quizzically to the side. “Shall I ring for another pot of coffee? You might need another cup. Or three.”
Olivia grew warm beneath the acuity of her daughter’s gaze.
“Seriously, Mum, you might need a holiday.”
“A holiday?” Olivia asked in all sincerity. She’d convinced herself that she’d hidden her glum state of mind quite well. After all, she was busier than ever.
“How are your art lessons progressing?” Lucy asked in an obvious attempt to change the subject.
“Splendidly,” Olivia replied brightly, too brightly, earning a penetrating double-take from her daughter.
It was a lie. She hadn’t seen Jiro . . . Kai since he’d all but told her to stay out of his affairs. It was too soon. Besides, she was busy with her new life. Kai might be part of an old life better shed and left behind.
“And, of course, I’ve been so busy with the move.”
“Hmm,” Lucy began, her voice a hum ripe with disbelief. “Mum, it’s like you’re everywhere and nowhere at once.” She tapped the small, rectangular missive to the left of her plate, and her eyebrows drew together. “I suppose you know about the letters Lord Percival has been sending me.”
“I’d noticed.”
“Tell me something.”
“Anything.”
“Why did you marry him?”
The question took Olivia by surprise, but she wouldn’t give Lucy any answer other than the truth. She deserved that much. “Simply, I took one look at him and knew I must, that I would perish of unrequited love if I didn’t. There was no other man in the world like him. I was very young.”
“He broke your heart,” Lucy stated, the words flat.
“He did.”
“Don’t you regret him?”
“Never.”
“Why not?”
“He gave me you.”
A small frown pinched Lucy’s mouth and released. “That’s something you must say, isn’t it?”
“Can I speak freely?”
“It’s the only way to speak,” Lucy said with her characteristic certainty.
Olivia smiled for the first time in days. “Now, that is something the Lord Percival I knew would have said. In some ways, you’re very like him.”
Lucy shook her head, protest in her eyes. “I don’t want to be like him.”
“He had some bad qualities, your father, but he had some good ones, too,” Olivia continued. “He was open. He spoke his mind. He loved to laugh.” She reached across the table and squeezed Lucy’s hand. “You’re allowed to embrace the good. You won’t be betraying me, Lulu. It’s your choice to open that letter or not, to forgive or not, but sometimes it hurts the person withholding forgiveness worse. It can turn into the sort of hate that eats away at a person.”
“Have you forgiven him?”
“Yes,” Olivia said, surprised that she meant it with every fiber of her being.
Lucy turned the missive over in her hands a few times before slipping it inside her book. A bittersweet joy sprang up inside Olivia, even as a thread of misgiving ribboned through it. Percy had better prove worthy of her.
A movement outside the front bow window caught Lucy’s attention. “Drummond has arrived.”
“I’ll be here when you come home.”
A month ago, Olivia had stopped picking up Lucy from school. She simply hadn’t been able to brave it, not since Jake was there in mornings and afternoons. Further, it had been hard to miss the steady increase in the number of mothers, all impeccably groomed and polished, personally seeing their daughters off to school and crowding the corridors. Motherly concern for the safe passage of their daughters was at an all-time high at The Progressive School for Young Ladies and the Education of Their Minds.
Surely, it had naught to do with the recently admitted Radclyffe family.
Ha. One mother had run smack into a doorjamb whilst craning her neck for a glimpse of him. The mothers simply couldn’t keep their eyes off him.
“Oh, Mum,” Lucy called out from the doorway, snapping Olivia back into the present, “may I invite Miss Radclyffe for a visit this evening?”
Olivia’s heart stomped out a hard thud in her chest, even as she willed the rest of her body to remain very, very still. “Do you have a project together?”
“Oh, nothing to do with school.” Lucy pulled a disgusted face. “I’ve told her about our rooftop garden, and she would like to observe the sky from up there tonight.”
Sweat slicked Olivia’s palm. Another response she couldn’t control. She could, however, continue to hold herself very, very still. “Of course.”
“Excellent.” Lucy threw her a quick smile and dashed off toward her day, calling out over her shoulder, “And please ask Cook to bake up a batch of her scrumptious shortbread.”
The front door slammed shut, and Olivia sagged into her chair. That name, Radclyffe, was like a long, razor-sharp sword that stabbed through to the hilt every time she heard it. Over time, mayhap its blade would dull and shorten to a more manageable state. A short dagger could be handled. And then, perhaps, someday she would feel nothing at all when she heard the name Radclyffe.
Her stomach twisted. That day hadn’t come. If their lives continued to be intertwined through their daughters’ friendship, it would inevitably happen, correct?
Of course, it would. It must.
She clenched her fists at her sides and allowed the nails to dig in deep. One sort of pain could replace another and draw her more fully into the present. Lucy hadn’t been wrong. Lately, she was everywhere and nowhere at once.
Since the day after the Duke’s ball, she’d filled every moment of every day with one task just completed, another task to complete. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d been more occupied, both physically and mentally. After all, she had a new house and a new life. A life she’d striven tooth and nail to achieve. A life that offered freedom, independence, security, predictability. Everything she’d wanted, she’d gained. She’d secured the predictable life cycle of an English rose.
And if in the quiet of the night, when the house fell silent and only the whisper of her breath broke through the stillness, her mind protested that this life felt empty and lonely, that she’d never felt so empty and lonely, she rolled onto her side and began compiling mental lists for the next day’s tasks.
“My lady,” she heard as if from a very far distance. She glanced up to find her butler, Wilkins, standing in the doorway not ten feet away. “His Grace, the Duke of Arundel, has arrived.”
Olivia’s spirits experienced an immediate lift, and she pushed away from the table. With a somewhat renewed spring in her step, she rushed to the foyer and found the Duke taking in the room.
“This house suits you, my dear.” His eye followed the coiled staircase up to the skylight, bright and cheery, even on a gray and dank day like today. “I can see why you chose it.”
She landed a quick welcome kiss on his cheek. “I’m glad you like it.”
He took her hands in his and stepped back, assessing her. “You’re looking”—Did she catch a slight hesitation?—“well.”
She looked peaky, at best, and they both knew it. The Duke noticed everything.
“Has Lulu left for school?”
“You’ve just missed her, I’m afraid.”
“Good,” he pronounced, eliciting a start of surprise from Olivia. “Now, show me this magnificent rooftop garden everyone is talking about.”
“It would be my pleasure,” she replied smoothly, even as dread blossomed in her gut. He’d all but pronounced that he wished to speak with her privately, and she couldn’t help feeling she wouldn’t like what he had to say.
With the Duke at her heels, she placed a balancing hand on the bannister and a few short minutes later, they reached the rooftop. Despite the London morning oppressive with soggy clouds, she experienced the same rush of love for this oasis that she’d felt from the very start. Unlike her dark and wintry state of mind, this rooftop, with its colorful riots of peppermint tulips and marigold forsythia, illustrated life’s ability to move forward into spring, bright and effulgent.
She couldn’t bear the glory of it and looked toward a sky indistinct and fuzzy with cottony mist. Indistinct. Fuzzy. Words that nestled inside her with disconcerting familiarity. Nothing lately was sharp or acute. Like the clouds hanging above her head, so close she could reach up and touch them, she’d gone indistinct at the edges, like a walking blur. Would she ever be sharp again?
“When my solicitors first informed me of your intention to purchase a townhouse in Mayfair—”
“Your solicitors?” she asked, his words jarring her out of her cloud.
“Of course, my dear. Did you think they would keep your correspondence from me? They understand who butters their bread.” He held out his arm to her, and they began strolling along the crushed granite path. “My first thought was that it would be a fitting endcap to these last several months of courage.”
“I’m not certain courageous is the word I would use to describe myself.”
“I agree, my dear. You’ve turned out to be quite the little coward, haven’t you?”
Her body drew up in a rigid line, and she opened her mouth to speak, but only a rough, unformed croak emerged. When she began to pull her hand from the Duke’s arm, he subtly tightened his hold. It appeared he’d only gotten started. “I thought you’d finally allowed yourself the opportunity to move forward with your life, to fully unburden yourself of the ghosts of your past.”
“I have,” she said, her voice still a raw scrub against her throat, but, at least, she could now form words, even if only monosyllabic ones.
“Percy was a boy,” the Duke began, “a boy I loved with all my heart, but a spoilt one, I can admit. He was the spitting image of his mother, and I couldn’t help doting on him. A willful child can be charming, no? A willful man, on the other hand, can be decidedly less so.”
“I know exactly the sort of man Percy was . . . is,” she retorted, a snap in the words. She had no desire to speak of Percy.
“Yes, I’m afraid you do.” He hesitated. “I didn’t want the two of you to marry. Did he tell you?”
“I had no idea.” Betrayal and hurt rushed through Olivia, feelings that had become too familiar of late. Tears welled up behind her eyes, and she dare not blink lest they break and stream down her cheeks.
The Duke squeezed her hand. “Oh, my dear, it isn’t like that. The rush of your young love was so sudden and complete that I advised Percy to extend the engagement, to give you time to know one another. I rather think my advice had the opposite effect as you were married by the end of the Season.” He shook his head, bemused. “Percy wanted what he wanted, and he found a way to have it. He wanted you, and he had you.”
“Until he didn’t.” She hated the bitter note that sounded.
“I won’t defend him, but I shall say this. Percy was like every other young man of wealth, popularity, and rank in London. But you, my dear, weren’t like every other young lady. I saw from the beginning that you would want more from your marriage than he would. Percy wanted a marriage that would allow him to skim across its surface. You wanted something deeper. But once you married, I was powerless to do anything about it. Then Percy ran off to the Continent and got himself blown to bits.” He pinned her into place with his piercing gaze. He wanted her to know that she was seen. “Do you know what I saw through the dark haze of my grief for him?”
She shook her head, unable to speak.
“I saw a ray of light for you. You were free of my willful, spoilt son, and my guilt lifted.”
“Guilt?”
“I could have stopped your marriage. I could have saved you from the misery of it.”
“We would have found a way. Percy wasn’t the only willful, spoilt child in our relationship.”
“Over the years, I watched you grow and blossom into an accomplished woman, a woman who I was and remain proud to call daughter. Then Percy rose from the dead, and I’ve never been more grateful to God in my life.”
“Of course.”
“But when you told me the news, I heard the tremor of your voice, saw the tremble in your hands. Before me stood a woman fearful, but determined, to set her own course. At once, I knew I would move heaven and earth to see you free to pursue the life you wanted, not the one imposed on you by an unhappy marriage.”
“Even if it meant helping me divorce your son.”
“Percy was . . . is my son, but you, my dear, are my daughter.”
Wind sharp with the last remnants of winter gusted across the rooftop, and Olivia closed her eyes, allowing the Duke’s words to surround her in warmth and love. As a newlywed, she’d come into his house, and he’d accepted her like a long lost daughter.
The feeling, however, was short-lived when he cleared his throat and said, “Now, getting back to that one pesky word, courage.”
Her eyes flew open, and she steeled herself.
“It takes a good bit of courage to pursue a free and happy life. I thought you understood that.”
A hot, shamed blush flared across her skin, pinpricks of perspiration pushing to its surface.
“May I be bold?”
“Please,” she replied, bracing herself against the shifting sand of this conversation.
“St. Alban is no Percy. Percy was a boy, not yet formed into a man. In fact, I haven’t the faintest clue what sort of Percy will someday find his way back to London. But St. Alban is very much a man who can be depended upon. The sort of man who will make an excellent viscount and an even better husband. According to Lucretia, quite a few chits have set their caps at him.”
“I’m sure they have. Perhaps one will even convince Jake to fall in love with her.”
“Love?” the Duke scoffed. “How many unions of our class have naught to do with love? Jake”—She heard the emphasis on the word, understanding at once that she’d given herself away—“knows his responsibility and won’t shirk it. He will marry for reasons other than love, if he must.”
“I’m not certain how much you’ve gathered about my relations with Lord St. Alban”—It appeared more than a bit—“but a future between us is impossible. His daughter needs a stepmother of impeccable reputation and social standing.”
“And you think you can’t be that stepmother?”
“I know it.”
“Well, I agree with you on that front, but I think you’re viewing the matter from the wrong angle,” the Duke said. “I met the young lady in question yesterday at Lucretia’s manse. She’s a remarkable girl, but an unconventional girl, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Most definitely.”
Her mind traveled back to the night of the Duke’s ball. Of the way she’d found Mina in the study with Hugh, after she’d called him a simpleton. How Olivia wished she could’ve seen the impact of that word on his face.
“So what sort of stepmother does Miss Radclyffe need?” the Duke continued. “One who would render her into an unoriginal copy of a thousand other young ladies?”
Olivia remained silent, even as butterflies began fluttering in her stomach. What was he getting at?
“Would she be happy with the life a conventional stepmother would impose upon her?”
“I . . . I,” Olivia stammered, “I can’t imagine.”
“What Miss Radclyffe needs is a stepmother who will nurture and reinforce the remarkable young lady she is. One unafraid of the unconventional and extraordinary. Viewed from this angle, the stepmother Miss Radclyffe needs is—”
Olivia interrupted the Duke without a single, staying thought. “Me.”