Lucy’s face lit up, and she squealed. Olivia’s butter knife clattered onto her plate. Had her thoughts the power to conjure the dratted man out of thin air? She steadied her voice before asking, “Why is Lord St. Alban . . .” She stopped short. “Your protégé.”
Movement caught the corner of her eye, and her gaze swung over in time to watch Lord St. Alban stride through the doorway, looking every inch the noble lord from his hunter green cutaway coat to Wellington boots buffed to a mirror shine. He was the viscount of a young lady’s fantasies.
Of course, given the clamor surrounding his arrival at the Dowager’s Salon, it wasn’t only young ladies who fantasized about this particular lord.Everyonedid.
Why did the thought unsettle her so?
“Speak of the devil,” the Duke said over his paper, an ironic twist to his mouth. “If it isn’t the most dashing viscount in London.”
Lord St. Alban’s brow lifted. It was possible he had the most handsome face she’d ever laid eyes on. From an artistic perspective, of course.
“Perhaps I’m interrupting . . .” he began.
“Nonsense,” the Duke dismissed, “I instructed the servants to bring you through.” He pushed away from the table and stood. “St. Alban, this is my very silly granddaughter, Miss Bretagne.” Lucy giggled. “And you’ve met Lady Olivia.”
St. Alban turned and found Olivia’s eyes. “My lady.”
Across the table strewn with various and sundry breakfast items, their gaze held, and Olivia’s heart accelerated as she returned a simple, “My lord.” It was all she could manage. For such a short acquaintance, they had certainly accumulated a fair amount of history between them.
“Now,” the Duke said, “if you will follow me to my study, we can converse about the only five matters a gentleman of means need attend to.” He held up his hand and ticked the items off, finger by finger. “Lords to befriend. Lords to avoid. The right tailor. The right club. And the right horse.”
The Duke strode out of the room, and St. Alban turned to follow his host, but not before casting one more glance in Olivia’s direction. The look was one part bemusement, one part curiosity, and wholly familiar. It struck her that she was beginning to be able to read the dashing viscount. How very disconcerting.
Then he was gone. Next, Lucy was pressing a good-bye kiss against Olivia’s cheek. “Drummond has brought the carriage around.”
Drummond was the Duke’s ancient, mostly retired valet who saw it as his sacred duty to escort Lucy to school every morning.
“I’ll see you later, my love,” Olivia said to Lucy’s retreating back. Like that, she was alone in the room. Life tended to happen fast around Lord St. Alban.
She’d vowed to leave that man in the past, which was, of course, an impossibility when he collided with her on fetid East End byways and arrived during breakfast for viscount lessons the next day. He wasn’t part of a past left behind and unbegun. In fact, with each passing day, their lives grew ever more entwined. How very curious.
She pushed away from the table and stood, intent on proceeding with her day. Her plan was to spend the morning salvaging her sketches,ifthey were salvageable. If not, she would return to Jiro’s studio tomorrow to begin a new set from the original paintings. Another example of the strange way this new viscount kept influencing and entangling himself in her life.
When she reached the doorway, her resolve faltered. To her left, lay a short series of hallways that led to her studio and the rest of her day. To her right, she picked up a low murmur of voices drifting from the Duke’s study. She supposed they were discussing one of five topics.
Of their own volition, her feet hooked a right. It would be only a minor detour.
As she drew level with the Duke’s study, his voice rang out, “Lady Olivia, my dear, can you answer us a question?”
She hesitated. They weren’t supposed to have noticed her. That wasn’t part of the plan. She should make an excuse and continue on her way. Yet her body continued moving forward, and she was inside the room in three steps.
The Duke turned to St. Alban. “You’re on Cleveland Row, you say?”
“Aye,” Lord St. Alban responded in the curt manner of a sailor, calling to Olivia’s mind the rumor that he’d been a ship captain.
“Then you’re all set with horses. The Russell Court Mews is just up the street from you. Mention my name, and you’ll find yourself the owner of a fine piece of horseflesh. Now, Olivia,” the Duke said as he pivoted toward her, “how many servants would suffice as the skeleton staff of a closed estate?”
“It depends on the estate, Your Grace.” She stepped deeper into the study, which smelled of old leather, rich mahogany, and earthy tobacco. “Is it a working agricultural estate with tenants and cattle? Or an ornamental estate with a grand house and nothing much else?” Keen awareness of Lord St. Alban’s steady gaze on her profile suffused her body, cell by cell. Why hadn’t she turned left and gotten on with her day? “Mrs. Landry might be a better source for the information you seek.”
“Excellent point, my dear,” said the Duke, already moving toward the door. “I haven’t yet had the bell in this room repaired. Keep thedashingviscount company while I seek out Mrs. Landry, will you?”
She responded with a gracious, “Of course.” One didn’t refuse the request of a duke lightly, except now . . . Only she and Lord St. Alban occupied this room.
The study, immense and airy with its floor-to-ceiling windows and vast swaths of uncluttered space, had ever been a place of refuge and safety where the mind could wander unfettered by concerns outside its four walls. But now it contracted into a tight cocoon, dense and close, as its rich woods and scent of earth turned stifling and dangerously intimate.
In desperate need of distraction, she skirted a leather chaise longue and made her way to the bookcase running the length of an adjacent wall. She pulled the first book at hand and set about feigning interest in a collection of Alexander Pope’s poetry. She abhorred Alexander Pope.
“Can you answer me one question?” Lord St. Alban asked from his place at the periphery of her vision.
