Chapter 1
London
4 April 1825
Olivia stepped inside the sweltering ballroom and felt as if a finch had been pulled on her. The Duke had assured her of a small Salon.
Instead, she stood amidst the crush of the Season. The champagne punch flowed with no end in sight, as did the gossip, and the ballroom brimmed with every member of thetoncurrently in London.
How alone a person could feel in a crowd of people.
“Lady Percival,” she heard a perfectly cultured lady’s voice identical to every other perfectly cultured lady’s voice in the room call out. “Or is it Lady Olivia now?” Soft giggles muted by raised silk fans floated on the air.
Before Olivia, an intimate circle of four couples radiated excitement, anticipating a gossip-worthy exchange, the ladies snickering in delight, the gentlemen shifting from foot to foot, discomfort evident.
“Lady Olivia will do,” she replied, with a succinct snap in her voice, and immediately regretted it. She shouldn’t be using that tone tonight, her first night back in Society after a six-month absence. It could reveal anxious nerves. She’d believed herself prepared for the stir her presence would create, but her body told a different story. Her heart was a hammer in her chest, and sweat slicked her palms.
“We were just speaking of you, and now here you are.” The chit’s smile curved a smidgen too wide.
Her name was Miss Fox, and Olivia knew not a whit about her. She didn’t much keep up with her Debrett’s.
“Your gown is ravishing. You must give me the direction of your modiste. A scandalous French one, to be sure.” Sensing blood in the water, Miss Fox pressed, “It’s so rare these days that you grace Society with your presence.”
A silence so taut a pin could puncture it expanded as the tight circle of couples awaited Olivia’s response. No choice but to proceed as she meant to go on, she drew herself up to her fullest height and met Miss Fox square in the eye. “One must be careful about the company one keeps at a large and indiscriminate gathering such as this. It isn’t asselectas one might wish.”
Her gaze swept up and down Miss Fox, and the vulpine smile fell from the younger woman’s lips as the implication of Olivia’s words hit her. No one could deny the fact that though she may be this Season’s scandal, Lady Olivia Montfort still outranked Miss Anne Fox. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Olivia didn’t await a response before gliding away across the ballroom’s polished mahogany floor to seek sanctuary in the ladies’ retiring room. A single, bracing moment of peace and quiet should shore her up for this night.
She’d hardly exhaled the sigh that had wanted release all evening, when the outer door opened and closed with a muted, but distinct, click. She was about to peek around the screen when a firm, matronly voice rang out. “I say, she is lucky to be received in polite society, and you know it, Clarinda. But with a benefactor like His Grace at her disposal, well, who can refuse her?”
Olivia startled backward, breath suspended in her chest, ears attuned to whatever words would come next.
“Now, Ernestine, His Grace isn’t her benefactor. She is his daughter by law. Besides, Lady Olivia Montfort is the daughter of the Earl of Surrey. She isn’t the sort of woman who needs a benefactor.”
“Wasthe Duke’s daughter by law, you mean,” Ernestine huffed.
“Yet,” Clarinda began on a conspiratorial whisper, “it was the Duke who backed her petition for divorce at the House of Lords.”
“From his own son.” Ernestine lowered her righteous voice an octave. “Shepetitioned for the divorce, Clarinda. What is this world coming to that a wife can petition theHouse of Lordsfor a divorce? Then have the audacity to continue living beneath the roof of her divorced husband’s father? I daresay, we may be near the end times.”
That went to show what this battle-ax understood of these matters: The House of Lords hadn’t the legal or ecclesiastical power to grant Olivia a true divorce. What they had was the power to set the marriage aside. It was called adivorce a vinculo matrimonii, and she was only the fourth woman in England to be granted one on the grounds of desertion.
Still, the gossipy duo was correct about one point: The Duke had thrown his support behind her in the endeavor. In fact, he’d been the one to suggest it, promising to ensure that her daughter Lucy remained, if not legitimate to the exact letter of the law, a fully-fledged member of the powerful Bretagne family. She was the granddaughter of a duke, and no one would dare forget it.
The daughter of an earl herself, Olivia understood power and privilege, or thought she had, until the Duke had chosen to flex his ducal muscle on her behalf and the might of the dukedom was revealed to her in its full glory and scope. It was a magnificent and awe-inspiring thing, that sort of power, and she’d never felt so humbled in her life as when it worked on her behalf. With nary a whimper of contradiction, the House of Lords had acceded to his directive in the matter. Still, she understood that if Percy hadn’t been a younger son, or if their daughter had been male, the outcome might not have settled so satisfactorily in her favor.
“But, Ernestine,” Clarinda’s voice lowered a conspiratorial octave, “Lord Percival Bretagne was alive these last twelve years. Can you believe it? We mustn’t be too hard on the poor chit.”
“The woman spent a decade running around with those artistic, bohemian types while her husband lay dead in Spain.”
“But hewasn’tdead in Spain,” Clarinda insisted.
“What sort ofproperwidow spends her time inthosecircles? I daresay,” Ernestine continued as if Clarinda hadn’t spoken. Olivia imagined brows lifted to the ceiling in damning hauteur.
“But the girl wasn’t a widow at all.”
“Girl?” Ernestine spat.
