Chapter 30
“I am the right stepmother for Mina,” Olivia said for good measure, the idea gaining traction with each word she spoke. The strong maternal feeling she’d experienced for the girl was no fluke. She was exactly the correct stepmother for Mina. The concept sank in with the uncomplicated weight of truth.
The Duke smiled. “I do believe you are.”
Long unused muscles stretched across Olivia’s face. She was smiling, possibly like a madwoman, but smiling nonetheless. “Which means”—Now that the words had begun flowing, she couldn’t hold them in. There were truths that would see light—“I’m the right wife for Jake. My feelings for him weren’t wrong. A woman could give herself fully to a man like him without fear. In fact, she would be a fool not to.”
Another truth would be spoken.
“I’ve been a fool.”
“He will have a viscountess before the year is done, mark my words,” the Duke predicted. “Now ask yourself: have you truly seized the opportunity to move forward?”
Her smile grew hard and determined. “No one else will have him.”
“No one else?” the Duke asked, a canny twinkle in his eyes. She’d played right into his hands.
“No one else,” she all but growled. She’d never felt so ferocious.
“Now, what will you do about it?” he asked, the question the nudge she needed.
The heavy numbness that had been plaguing her since the night of the Duke’s ball lightened and lifted away. An airy and buoyant being was she, untethered by the physical world. It was entirely possible she might up and float off this rooftop.
This was her chance to truly live, and this chance at happiness far outweighed the risk. She must seize it this very instant. What was the alternative? That she would live a life of uncertainty and unhappiness?
That was the life she was living now.
Her prison tower, dependent on no one and nothing for support, listed to the side and, at last, toppled over, crumbling to dust.
The only life worth living was one dependent on another. A person worthy of trust and love . . .
Jake.
Her view went from limited and confining to unlimited and utterly wide open all the way up to the stars.
Oh, the stars . . . He’d been right about them, too.
Her heart accelerated, and she flung off the last vestiges of the haze that had hung about her this last month. She was alive, truly alive, her edges distinct. She shuffled backward, and the Duke released her hand. “How can I ever thank you?”
A discerning smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. “If your father is still out of the country, allow me to walk you down the aisle?”
She nodded once before striking out across the garden and down the stairs, her feet a swift tattoo of lightly descending steps. One foot moved faster than the last, her pace and resolve increasing with each successive stair. She reached for the front door lock and jerked it open with an impatient twist. She shot through the doorway with nary a backward glance.
And with nary a consideration for overcoat, bonnet, parasol, sensible boots, or reticule. Clad in nothing more substantial than a muslin morning dress and paper-thin slippers, her feet hit the sidewalk at a near run. The fact that the Duke’s carriage stood waiting and could be at her disposal never crossed her mind.
She hurried to the end of the row of townhouses, weaving through the few pedestrians braving the London damp, eyes on the lookout for a hackney where her quiet street intersected with Curzon. Her hand shot toward the sky and began waving, fingers waggling, uncaring that she might be attracting unwelcome attention.
What did she care what strangers thought? Or acquaintances for that matter? She only cared for the opinion of one man.
Just when she thought all the hackneys in London were conspiring against her, one rolled into view. She blew a short, sharp whistle, and her hand increased its frantic bid to entice him her way. The driver crossed a lane and pulled his lone horse to a stop in front of her.
“Where canna I take ye?” he called down from his lofty perch as he flipped up the collar of his overcoat against the unseasonable wind.
“Cleveland Row, if you please.”
“And if ye don’t mind me askin’, how will me fare be paid today?”
She glanced down to find her hands empty of reticule or any form of currency for payment. “Oh,” was her reply before she dodged right and set her feet in motion at a hurried, and decidedly unrespectable, clip.
If she’d been paying attention, she might have overheard the driver mutter a discontented diatribe against, “That lot o’ ’oity-toities ’oo ’speck to get sumpin’ for nuttin’ off tha backs o’ tha workin’ folk.”
Olivia, however, had no intention of dithering about when she could be making her way toward Jake. A second without him was a second wasted. Her slippers had curdled into a sloshy mess, and the lightweight muslin of her dress may have turned transparent due to rain now falling in drops heavier than a drizzly mist. No matter. If she kept her focus, she could be on his stoop in twenty minutes.
She cut a quick right through Shepherd’s Market, her clip developing into a steady jog. By the time she reached Green Park, she was sorely tempted to shed slippers that had begun to blister her heels. She banished the idea. She couldn’t arrive on his doorstep unshod. That would be too much.
She was rounding an overgrown corner when, just ahead on the path, she spotted Miss Fox strolling toward her, arm-in-arm with a man . . . A tall, powerfully built man.
Without thinking, Olivia ducked behind the nearest bush, her heart racing and threatening to break. She closed her eyes and waited and tried not to think of who that tall, powerfully built man could be, or the deep pit of despair that had opened inside her at the sight of him.
A throat cleared politely, and her eyes flew open. Before her stood Miss Fox with . . . Not Jake.
Her lungs released. She could breathe again. Her heart could remain intact.
“Lady Olivia?” Miss Fox asked, genuine concern in her eyes. “Are you quite the thing?”
“Oh, yes, quite,” Olivia said, her words a breathless rush. “I’m inspecting this”—She gestured toward the shrub that should have done its job and protected her from view—“gooseberry.”
“Actually, this gooseberry and I know each other rather well. But who am I to tell you?”
Miss Fox pointed toward Olivia’s skirts, drawing her gaze. The devil take it. The dratted gooseberry had ensnared her in its diabolical grip.
As she quietly attempted to wrest the delicate muslin from the tenacious shrub, Miss Fox’s companion said, “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your fine”—He pronounced the word foin and placed himself decidedly out of her and Miss Fox’s social class, a fact Olivia would have found curious any other time—“friend.”
Miss Fox hesitated before relenting, “Lady Olivia, may I introduce—”
“There!” Olivia exclaimed after one last twist of gossamer muslin. The tear was no wider than four, maybe six, inches. No matter. She was free. “Miss Fox, I’m turned around. Could you point me in the direction of—” She stopped cold, good sense preventing her from finishing that sentence.
Miss Fox finished it for her. “Queen Street?”
Good sense would prevent her from reaching Jake if she didn’t finish her sentence for herself. “Cleveland Row.”
Miss Fox’s brow lifted, even as she silently pointed the way.
With nary a care for proper etiquette, Olivia’s feet kicked into a rapid walk that increased into her former steady jog, her chest heaving, droplets of sweat trickling down the sides of her face, the obstinate gooseberry and the curious eyes of Miss Fox forgotten. She had more important matters on her mind. Like not stepping through the fresh rip in her dress.
After what felt like forty days and forty nights, Jake’s Cleveland Row mansion came into view, and within moments her feet were taking the front steps two at a time. Propriety be damned. She had a future to begin.
At the top, she paused, just a breath to collect herself and attempt to tame her stampeding heart. She combed back strands of wet hair off her clammy and surely flushed face and smoothed them down as much as she could. Fat droplets of rain had accumulated over her entire person like so many glittering diamonds.
What a ridiculously glamorous metaphor for the mess she must appear.
No matter. She drew herself up to her fullest height and reached out before her nerve failed her. Once, twice, she rapped the knocker, and waited.
She tapped out the seconds that followed, forefinger striking thigh, and reached thirty before the door cracked open. Jake’s man, Payne, stuck his head out the opening. “May I be of assistance—” He stopped mid-sentence, recognition lighting within his eyes. “It’s you.”
To his credit, the man didn’t shut the door in her face.
“Please announce my arrival to Lord St. Alban,” she intoned in her haughtiest voice, conjuring up generations of aristocratic forebears who in no way had ever resembled her current state of dishabille.
“Is his lordship expecting you?”
“No,” she had no choice but to reply.
The valet probably had to accommodate all manner of deranged women banging down his employer’s front door. Even ones wearing nothing but a destroyed pair of slippers and a ruined muslin dress the color and consistency of a well-used dishrag.
“His lordship is not in. Good day,” the butler offered respectfully, but inflexibly.
To Olivia’s horror, the door began to shut. She’d come too far to allow that to happen. Her foot kicked out, and she tried not to wince when it became wedged between the solid door and the unforgiving jamb.
She pinned the valet beneath her stubborn gaze, reminding him ever-so-subtly that she outranked him, even with a wet string of hair stuck in her right eye. “Is he not in? Or is he out?”
There was a difference, and they both knew it. If Jake was out, then he wasn’t here. If he was not in, then he could be here and had instructed his butler not to admit her.
The first option was a minor set-back, the second a soul-destroying defeat.
“My lady, if you will please . . .” the servant trailed off. He stared pointedly at her obstructive foot. She removed it, and the door shut with a firm snap.
Jake was not in?
Gutted, she stood staring at the closed door for an indeterminate amount of time, all the energy and life that had brought her here, draining out of her. At last, she pointed her feet homeward. And stepped through the rip in her dress. Of course.
She bent and finished what her foot had started, tearing off the bottom eight inches of muslin. She must look fit for Bedlam.
Without Jake, perhaps she was.