“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 youdoabout 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 totruly live, and this chance at happiness far outweighed the risk. She mustseizeit 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.
