“Expectations and surfaces matter not to me,” Mina said. “It’s workings beneath the surfaces that interest me most. But I’ve observed the English to be wholly different. They would be content to build a society composedentirelyof surfaces. They don’t seem to care about the substance behind them.”
Olivia handed Mina’s telescope back to her. “Don’t be too quick to paint us all with the same brush. Some of us may surprise you.”
A smile found its way to Mina’s lips, and relief flowed through Olivia. “For all that you and Lucy are very different, she’s also very like you,” Mina said as she came to her feet. “Lady Olivia, thank you for joining me out here. I’ve enjoyed our conversation very much, but I must join Father in the ballroom. I hope we have the pleasure again soon.”
As she watched Mina rush toward the ballroom, Olivia rose and followed slowly in Mina’s wake. She liked the girl and saw how easily she could form a maternal attachment to her. Mina would turn out all right, Jake would ensure that. And he would find exactly the correct stepmother to help him, too.
A little voice reminded her that he’d askedherto marry him. He’d askedherto be that stepmother. And she’d saidno. A strange numbness that insulated her from the devastation of his proposal and her refusal filled her from the far depths of her soul to the surface of her skin, her entire being insensate to the very air around her.
Across the green expanse of tufted lawn, rendered slate gray by the indifferent moon above, stood the Duke’s mansion, blaring its chorus of music, light, and general gaiety. The stars dimmed their collective glow, overtaken by so much ducal glory.
She touched fingertips to the tense patch of skin between her eyebrows and applied pressure. The beginnings of a headache stirred as her feet delivered her to the outer terrace beyond the edge of light.
Inside the ballroom, the quartet stopped mid-stroke, and the crowd quieted to a monotone hush at the sound of a metal object purposefully striking glass.Ding-ding-ding. There was to be a toast.
From her vantage point, she could all but see a frisson of excitement ripple across the ballroom floor. The Duke and the Dowager stood at the top of the grand staircase. Below them, arranged on the steps like a descending waterfall of privilege, gorgeous and aristocratic, stood the entirety of their two families. She located Lucy. Mina, too. She knew every face shining out at the gathered multitude, all reaffirming examples to thetonof the rightness of a world where they made its rules. If she were to put this scene to canvas, her color palette would barely extend beyond stark whites and yellow golds, so bright was their combined glory.
She didn’t give much credence to theright to rule, but many of those gracing the staircase did. Take the Duke’s heir, for example, Lord Michael Bretagne, the Marquess of Exeter. As Percy’s elder brother and the Duke’s only other surviving child, she’d had plenty of time to observe him, and he most definitely believed in divine right. To Exeter’s left stood his heir, Lord Avendon. Lucy called him by the diminutive Huey, but she suspected only Lucy could secure that particular right with a young man like Hugh, so self-serious. What had she interrupted between him and Mina? Had she really called him a simpleton?
Her eye swept across the staircase. Both families claimed descent from the reign of William the Conqueror and all made jolly on this joyous occasion, but their place in the world was a serious business, and none of them would stop at anything to keep it secure. In a way, she could relate to the feeling. It was that particular feeling, the need for security, that had bound her life together this last decade and kept it from falling apart. It was the same need that had predetermined the outcome of this night.
She couldn’t give up the security of the life she’d built around herself for the uncertainty of a life with Jake. The trade-off was too fraught with instability. A moment’s grief now was nothing to a lifetime’s worth of mourning should their experiment fail.
The stately rumble of the Duke’s voice cut through the still night. “I would like to thank everyone for gathering here tonight to celebrate this most special of occasions.” The Duke’s hand extended toward the Dowager, who brusquely swiped at tears that dared stray from her eyes. “Please raise your glasses in a toast to the Dowager Duchess of Dalrymple, soon to be Her Grace Lucretia Bretagne, Duchess of Arundel.”
A little “squee!” of excitement sounded from the staircase, eliciting delighted snickers all around. Olivia’s gaze found a flushed Lucy, and a grateful smile for the moment of levity crinkled the corners of her eyes, even as every single one of tonight’s unshed tears rushed forward.
“Hear, hear!” chorused the crowd while the quartet struck up a lively country reel.
The Duke, majestic and assured, led his future duchess down the staircase and into the center of the ballroom. They instantly fell in step with the music that would have been popular in their youth. The assembled nobility lost all awareness of its aristocratic airs and joined together in clapping a beat to the rhythm of the strings, harkening back to roots that no city aristocrat ever left completely behind. The land was in the blood of every English nobleman. They were nothing without it.
As her eyes picked over the two families soon to be one, Olivia finally allowed herself to settle on the one head she’d been most carefully avoiding. Apart from Lucy, he shone the brightest of all, his serious gaze sweeping across the crowd as if he was looking for someone . . .
A shard of pain stabbed through Olivia. He was looking for her.
He might love her.
Her breath caught in her chest.
He’d lied to her. He’d followed her. He’d betrayed her trust.
She’d vowed years ago never again to put herself in the position where a man could betray her. And, yet, she had.
He’d asked her to marry him.
What if there’s a babe?
A babe was the least of her worries. She would never marry without love.
What if I loved you?
She would never marryforlove.
Olivia,you’rethe prize.
She shook her head and forced her breath to release. She must go it alone. As she’d done for so many years. Surely another decade wasn’t a problem.
Happiness may be held at arm’s length, but so, too, would heartbreak. She would be safe from the inevitable betrayal of marriage inside the marble prison tower that she’d so carefully and thoroughly constructed for herself.
