As she opened her mouth to speak, Miss Fox beat her to it. “If you will forgive me, I must see to Miss Markley. It seems the tenacious gooseberry has claimed another victim.”
With that, Miss Fox excused herself and left Olivia alone with Jake.
Jake. Enlivening sensation scattered across her skin at the mere thought of his name. He would ever be Jake to her. And now she was alone with him.
“My solicitors have informed me,” he began, “that you’ve looked at another house since I last—” He stopped himself. “That is, since we last—” Again, he stopped himself.
But it was too late. What they’d been doing the last time they saw each other solidified into a near tangible presence between them. She swallowed and addressed the first part of his sentence. “That is correct.”
“Was it to your liking?” he asked, his voice calm, measured, the fluster of moments ago gone.
For all the world, they appeared to be having a calm and measured conversation. How deceptive appearances could be. “It was serviceable enough,” she said, “but it lacked a specific something.”
His gaze lit upon her for the span of a single second before returning to the path ahead. “Magic.”
How she wished her heart didn’t race at that word, at the velvet in his voice when he spoke it. She needed to find a different subject to occupy them, one that had naught to do with magic. “It appears that your wife hunt is progressing nicely.”
“It does appear so.”
Another silence, charged and stubborn, snapped in the air about them. She should make her excuses and go, but she couldn’t. Nor could she stop herself from saying, “Undoubtedly, Miss Fox is the sort who will make someone a proper, spotless wife.”
“Undoubtedly,” he echoed back at her.
She might have detected a hollow note in that single word. But it might be what she wanted to hear. Was it, though? “Well, I wish you the best of luck.”
Beneath her hand, the muscles of his forearm, muscles hardened by years of sweat and toil, flexed and released, and an unruly frisson of excitement purled up her spine. She liked his forearms very much.
“Luck won’t be involved,” he said. A distance sounded in his voice. A distance that was good for both of them. “Marriage is a contract.”
His words were the splash of cold water her body needed. Perhaps she liked his forearms too much. “What a romantic courtship you and Miss Fox will have,” she replied. “How the ladies will envy her.”
“Any lady I marry will understand that romance has naught to do with my needs in a wife. I need a stepmother for Mina and, by extension, a partner for me.”
“A partner? What a strange way of putting it. Like a business equal?”
A curt nod of his head was his answer.
“That would make you different from any man and wife I ever heard of. But you may have the right of it. Marriage isn’t a romantic enterprise, and yet women keep getting tricked into thinking it so.”
“Tricked?”
“Most definitely tricked. If young women truly understood marriage, they would run as fast as their feet could carry them the instant a man got down on one knee. Marriage changes nothing in a man’s life. But for a woman? It changes everything.”
“And not for the better?”
“Not in my experience of it.”
“And what was your experience of it?”
Strangely, a moment that should have scared her witless and sent her fleeing turned sideways and went soft and intimate. A thrill of joy ribboned through her at the curiosity and concern in his voice, at the very gravity of it. It was a seriousness that spoke to the secret craving she had to give up her secrets. His seriousness told her it was safe to do so.
Possibility budding within her, she glanced over her shoulder to see if there was any chance Miss Fox would return. All she saw was an empty path behind them. Miss Fox and her chaperone had quietly taken themselves away. Mayhap that wasn’t the most auspicious start to Jake’s courtship with the lady, but it wasn’t Olivia’s concern, now or ever.
It was safe. That was her only thought. It was safe to tell him. He wasn’t a suitor to her, not really a friend either, but he was safe. She could tell this man anything.
Even the truth about her marriage.
She inhaled, pulling air deep inside her lungs, and allowed it to expand and buoy her into speaking words she’d never spoken aloud to anyone, not even Mariana. On the release, she said, “Shall I tell you how marriage is for a woman?” Her words sailed forth on a cool, blithe breeze, providing the distance she needed to speak them.
