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 wordfoinand 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’syou.”
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 henot in? Or is heout?”
There was a difference, and they both knew it. If Jake wasout, then he wasn’t here. If he wasnot 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 wasnot in?
