“You do not need to worry about me, Eloisa. Especially not when you should save your concern for Natasha.” The last thing she wanted was to burden Eloisa. Especially, since, technically, she was supposed to be serving her. “You forget my position in this house. I know we are friends, but—”
“Olivia!” Eloisa protested. “How can you say such a thing? You are one of the family.”
“And yet you pay me wages.”
“That does not make you any less one of us. Think of them as a stipend for forbearing with myself, my children, and our quarrels, if you must.”
“Be serious, Eloisa. It is for me to make sure that you have what you need, not the other way around. I do not want to distract you from Natasha’s season.”
“I am concerned for my daughter,” Eloisa conceded, “But she has a protector—a mother who would do anything for her. Who is protecting you, Olivia? I can keep my daughter safe from the Carrington men. But where Lord Montaigne is concerned you are vulnerable. No, don’t protest. I see how he watches you. And I see how you watch him. I don’t want you hurt again. I want you returned safely to Mr. Laurent.”
“I have not yet accepted him, you know,” Olivia reminded her friend, unsure why she felt the need to raise such a reservation. She and Eloisa knew the match was all but set.
After all, Mr. Laurent was the type of safe, orderly man that would promise her a stable, secure future. He kept rooms in Paris and had a small country manor in the same village as Nathanial and Eloisa’s estate. He lived with his elderly mother and saw to her care. Her children with Mr. Laurent would want for nothing and have every opportunity when they came of age. As a woman raised in a London orphanage, it was a rise seldom seen, and one she could not fail to appreciate.
“But you plan to. And he knows it.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
Again, the memory of the alleyway, of Augustus looking down at her, of his warm, strong body pressed against her filled her mind and heated her blood. Did it matter that Mr. Laurent had never inspired in her even a flicker of such wanting? Wasn’t it safer that way?
“I don’t want the earl to interfere with what you have waiting for you back in France.”
She shook her head. They were both being ridiculous.
“He won’t. Augustus means nothing to me now. I have told you—how he treated me. How could I ever lower myself to accept his advances again? Even if he renews his attentions, I could never accept them. I want security, a life, not to be used and then discarded.”
She sounded convincing, she thought. Almost. Even if the words had an air of recitation to them. It was how she felt, wasn’t it?
But, again, she was in the alley with him. They were so close to kissing that she could smell the tea on his breath. And she wanted nothing more than to feel his lips on hers—just one more time.
“Ah, you see I am right,” Eloisa declared, with a laugh. “If you could see your face at this moment, Olivia, you would understand why I worry.”
If Augustus had merely been the man she had imagined before her return, the roué, the beautiful boy who had been lost to vice, then it would be easy to resist him. And yet he didn’t fit that part. His face contained too much of the tenderness, too much of the yearning, that it had back then. But surely, it was just one of his tricks. A practiced ploy to make his prey all the more vulnerable. He had likely honed such postures with a thousand women since they had had their summer of stolen pleasures at Carrington Place.
Olivia almost covered her face in embarrassment. Part of her wanted to admit that her friendwasright—that she was vulnerable. Part of her wanted to beg Eloisa to help her have fortitude in the face of the temptation she shouldn’t feel.
But she couldn’t even admit that frailty to herself. Not fully. So, instead, she lied.
“Do not worry, Eloisa.” She managed a laugh. “The man I want is Mr. Laurent.”
Chapter Six
My lord—
It is a very fine ribbon, which you know very well. But ribbons are not my primary, nor even my secondary, pleasure in life.
If you mean to get in my good graces, a ribbon is not the way.
Olivia
*
Olivia—
I adore a challenge. But you must give me a hint. Or I will have to use methods of discovery that are nothing short of dastardly.
Augustus
