She shifted backward to better meet Olivia’s gaze. “No matter what.”
Olivia nodded once before swiveling and dashing down the corridor to say good-bye to Lucy. Her eyes fast on Olivia’s receding back, Mariana knew that Olivia’s course was set, and that she would share her decision when she was ready. Mariana experienced a rush of hope for her sister.
She allowed a few minutes to pass before she made her way back to the drawing room where Lucy and Lavinia were still busily composing lyrics to Herr Mozart, blessedly oblivious to recent familial developments. There would be time for that in the coming days, weeks, and months, she suspected.
As if drawn by a magnetic force, her feet carried her past the girls and through the room, nimbly navigating Aunt Dot’s haphazard groupings of settees, tables, and randomly acquired bibelot from years of indiscriminate shopping excursions.
At last, Mariana found herself standing before the set of French doors overlooking the terrace, across a wide expanse of closely cropped grass, and on down to the copse of trees on the other side of the ha-ha.
Another moonlit night came to mind. A girl full of wild hopes, fears, and dreams she’d been that night. And now?
Now she wasn’t as far removed from that girl as she liked to believe. Those wild hopes, fears, and dreams were like sticky burrs caught within her heart, tenacious little irritants that refused to let go and let be.
Now that she’d told Olivia the truth, she understood it was impossible to continue with the fiction that she’d left Paris behind. Paris had followed her.
Paris had reminded her of who she’d been all this time. She didn’t want to be a married spinster. She knew that fact deep within her bones. And she could no longer deny it. Perhaps there was a man for her out there . . .
Her gaze caught a movement at the edge of the woods and narrowed. A responsive spark raced through her, lighting up dormant nerve endings as it went. Only a few weeks ago, she would have thought nothing of that shadow. Now she pressed her nose to the glass and tracked the shadow as it moved along the edge of the tree line. It could be a deer, a hare, an owl on his first flight of the evening . . . Her gut told her otherwise. She waited, her breath accelerating . . . And waited, her heart threatening to pound through her chest . . . She waited so long that she nearly gave up—patience had never been her signature virtue—when the shadow emerged from the copse, efficiently scaled the low ha-ha wall, and sprinted across the lawn toward the house.
Uncle Bertie’s study lay at the end of that particular wing, and only one man moved like that particular shadow. Paris wasn’t finished with her yet.
Instinctively, she turned the door handle and was halfway across its threshold before she remembered the girls. “I think I’ll catch a breath of moonlight,” she called over her shoulder.
Just as the door was closing behind her, she heard Lucy’s voice sing out, “Lavinia, let’s try Moonlight Sonata!”
The door snapped shut, muting the raucous sound of Lucy and Lavinia, and night quiet settled into the air around her. Her back pressed against a chilly pane of glass, and her heart raced to the speed of her mind. She couldn’t be absolutely certain that the shadow had beenhim. There was but one way to find out.
She flattened her body against the house and began moving carefully in its shadow, her feet creeping along its length, her deepest dread the snap of a twig or the twist of an ankle. Although it felt like it took forever, she reached the nearest window of Uncle Bertie’s study in a matter of seconds. Cautiously, she ducked and stopped, hoping to steady her breath.
On the surface, all she could hear was the symphony of night—crickets chirruping, frogs croaking, owls hooting. As her breath settled, she began to discern another sound, a sound soft and persistent. The muffled sound of deep, masculine voices at odds, but intent on privacy, drifted from the study.
A quick appraisal of the French doors to her right revealed them to be cracked open a sliver. From her crouched position, she waddled closer in small increments. With each inch, the soft murmur of the voices coalesced into syllables, then words.
She counted to three before venturing a peek through glass. It was as she suspected: Uncle Bertie and Nick. While instinct bade her rush in and confront the two men, good sense dictated she stay put. More was to be gained from listening. For now.
“Those men in your hotel suite were intended to scare you off, except—” This was Uncle’s deep, mellifluous voice.
“They didn’t,” Nick interrupted. “I stayed and went underground, and you had to find a way to flush me out.”
The deep notes of his voice emerged strong and assured, appealing to the wrong side of her. She had an incurable sickness for the man.
“I figured she would do the trick.”
She? In a flash Mariana knew that she wasshe.
“You didn’t count on her partnering with me,” Nick stated flatly.
Partnering? The word sounded so very . . . equal.
Was that how Nick saw her? As his equal?
“I didn’t think you would be foolish enough to involve her,” came Uncle’s response.
What was so foolish about involving her?
Before she could reconsider, or even consider, her intent, her palm pressed flat against the door, pushing it wide, and her feet boldly led her through its threshold.
Twin incredulous expressions greeted her, releasing another frisson of excitement inside her.
