“Good morning, Mum.” Lucy landed a fat kiss onto Olivia’s cheek and plopped into her usual seat to Olivia’s right.
From the corner of her eye, Olivia watched Lucy pick up the unopened letter that lay beside her place setting. Her mouth pinched tight and released before she half slid it under her plate, seal intact.
It was another letter from Percy. And like every other letter he’d sent his daughter these last six months, it had suffered the same fate of utter disregard. At least, outwardly. Inside, Lucy must feel pained and confused. But Olivia must wait for Lucy to broach the subject when she was ready.
Across the table, the Duke took his customary place. “I trust all is well with you this morning?”
“Thank you, Your Grace, all is well,” she replied, relieved by the welcome distraction of routine.
Lucy, familiar mischievous glint returned to her eye, reached out and lifted theLondon Diaryfrom Olivia’s hands. “Let’s have a little gossip for breakfast, shall we?”
Olivia couldn’t resist an indulgent smile at her daughter. And judging by the smile tipping up the Duke’s lips as he perused his seriousMorning Chronicle, neither could he. Doubt, subtle and sly, wormed its way into her goals for her future independence. The Duke doted on his granddaughter so . . . Wouldn’t it be easier to stay?
No. She couldn’t allow uncertainty to undermine her resolve.
“What have we here?” Lucy began, thumbing through the pages. “A few changes to Almack’s . . . Lady Jersey said . . . boring, boring, and more boring . . . Ah, this is a new feature,” she said, her tone growing bright. “It’s a haiku.” She cleared her throat before reading aloud:
Returned to Albion
How to Orient himself?
Breath held, ladies plot.
“Who could it be?” Lucy stared off into the distance, eyes narrowed.
The Right Honourable Jakob Radclyffe, Viscount St. Alban.
Olivia knew it instantly and with a certainty she would rather not consider. It hadn’t taken long for thinly veiled riddles about him to start popping up in the gossip rags now that he’d officially entered Society.
Two days, it turned out.
“Oh, I know,” Lucy cried out. “This must be the dashing new viscount everyone is talking about.”
“Everyone?” Olivia asked, unable to resist.
“Oh yes, everyone,” Lucy confirmed, but a faraway note sounded in her voice, indicating she’d lost interest in the subject.
Their dance with its talk ofbodies,essences, andscentswedged itself into Olivia’s mind, softly insinuating that, indeed,everyonefound Viscount St. Alban irresistible.
She gave herself a mental shake. The haiku was simply a few lines written in a rag. He was nothing to her.
A little more than nothing.
The memory she’d been suppressing since yesterday refused to be subdued any longer: her collision with him on Ludgate Hill as she’d been returning from Jiro’s studio. While she tried to dismiss it as mere curiosity—what had the dratted man been doing in the East End anyway?—her body overrode all the intellectual considerations she threw at it.
Perhaps the high drama of the moment explained her reaction. After all, the instant her footing had slipped out from beneath her, and her body had begun to fall backward into the street, the thought had flashed across her mind that it might be the end for her.
Instead of the inevitable impact of a horse’s hoof against her skull, she’d been snapped upright into full—there was no other word for it—carnalcontact against Lord St. Alban, the insistent pressure of his body against hers. She’d only wanted to soften against the long, rigid length of him.
Oh. That wasn’t quite the correct way of putting it.
It was simply that over the last decade she’d forgotten the specific pressure of a man’s body clasped tight against hers. And Lord St. Alban’s body . . . It was best if she never considered the particulars of his body ever again.
She swallowed, hard. What was a lady’s proper reaction after having been snatched from the jaws of death supposed to be? Etiquette books offered no guidelines for that particular scenario.
A servant’s voice cut in. “Lord St. Alban has arrived, Your Grace.”
“Please show him into the room,” the Duke said without looking up from his newspaper.
