That was the first thought that popped into Olivia’s mind as she cut a discreet glance his way, his eyes already upon her, watching her, absorbed in her as if she was the only person who mattered in this room, even in all of London. No one had ever looked at her like that.
Her pulse wanted leave to gallop through her veins. She inhaled to tamp the feeling down. It wouldn’t do to let gratification sway her into a course at odds with her goals.
She shifted her perspective and attempted to view him the way the rest of London must see him, as distant and unapproachable. It was his impeccable, physical perfection and those inscrutable eyes that refused to surrender a hint of his private thoughts.
Yet her perception of him continued to differ from Society’s. Their encounter on Ludgate Hill, for instance, away from the prying gaze of theton, the informality of it, the intimacy of it. The way he’d snatched her from certain death and held her against his long, adept body for one, two, three heartbeats too long. Indeed, he wasn’t the sort of man who let a woman fall.
He wasn’t distant and unapproachable to her.
She tore her eyes away, determined to rejoin the conversation around her. “Lady Olivia,” said Lady Bede, a lively, if slightly eccentric, Society matron, “you must tell me about this artist. He is quite good, I’d say.”
“Lady Bede,” Olivia began, “heis ashewho works from Le Marais in Paris.”
A few scandalized titters rippled through the small group. A shock borne of delight rather than of narrow-mindedness.
“A woman, Lady Olivia? A woman painted these?”
She couldn’t contain a smile at Lady Bede’s enthusiasm. She’d provided the woman a delightfulon ditthat would have her enthusing for days.
“But the paintings in the final room,” Lady Bede said, appearing both flabbergasted and captivated at once. “Such sensuality . . . created by a woman’s hand?”
“Indeed,” replied Olivia, relieved to feel engaged by someone other thanhim, even if only for a moment. “A new style is emerging from the Parisian schools. A realism in painting unlike anything that has come before it, except perhaps by the hand of Caravaggio. Exciting, isn’t it?”
“Hear! Hear!” cheered a lord on the periphery of the group, eliciting a host of snickers.
Olivia used the commotion to step away. They wouldn’t miss her. Her gaze cut toward Lord St. Alban.Gone. Impossible this heaviness in her chest was disappointment.
An arm slid through hers from behind, and, before she knew it, she was secured fast to Mariana’s side. “You will be delighted that I have brought a bank check, but no husband.” Mariana wasn’t one for small talk. “So I am free to spend said check exactly as I please.”
A laugh complicated by nothing other than pure, familial love bubbled up from deep inside Olivia. “Is Nick traveling?”
“He and Lavinia have hied off to the north country in search of the perfect bay stallion. That girl loves horses more than just about anything, and that man loves our girl more than just about anything. So there you have it. A father who will do anything for his daughter, and a daughter who knows it.”
Domestic bliss radiated off Mariana in waves. Olivia still hadn’t adjusted to her sister’s wifely happiness. It was difficult to imagine now, but Nick and Mariana had been estranged for most of their marriage.
Then, six months ago, Paris happened. Like a magic trick, one moment, their marriage was smashed into pieces, irreconcilable, and the next—the wave of a hand, the flourish of a cape,et voilà!—they were whole again, reconciled with nary a chip on the surface. It was as if their preceding ten years of estrangement never happened.
Except it wasn’t only Nick and Mariana who were affected when they’d emerged from those Parisian shadows, bringing with them into the light a resurrected Percy. Olivia hadn’t been able to breathe when she heard the news, the life she’d built for herself threatening to collapse on her. To be a wife again . . . To lose her hard-won freedom . . . Unthinkable.
The old soldier’s words came back to her.A right selfish and unnat’ral wench. She could accept that descriptor if it meant keeping her freedom.
“But, Olivia, I’d like to change the subject,” Mariana said, a spark of mischief in her tone. “Have you been holding out on me?”
“Pardon?” she asked, buying what little time she had left.
“Come now. As your elder sister, I can see straight through you.”
“You are older by three minutes. I hardly think that qualifies aselder.”
Like a bloodhound on a scent, Mariana pressed on. “When I spoke with theveryhandsome viscount tonight, I formed the distinct impression that the two of you are, let’s say,acquaintedwith one another.”
Olivia turned away from Mariana on the pretext of fixing a flower arrangement. Hereldersister would see the truth in her eyes in a second flat.
“Lady Olivia Montfort, you have been holding out on me!” Mariana said, her voice an excitable whisper. She snuggled closer. “Tell me everything.”
“Mariana,” Olivia began in the most patronizing tone she could muster, “you make it sound so . . . so”—What was a good word for it?—“tawdry.” Maybe that was too good a word for it. “He’s simply interested in our little progressive school for his daughter. The Dowager Duchess of Dalrymple sent him my way, and I answered a few questions for him. That is all.”
As lies went, it wasn’t bad.
