She moved towards the exit, where the carriages would be brought round. He lunged for her, grabbing her arm.
“Olivia,” he said, turning her so that she would face him.
He said her name the way he would a prayer.
Olivia Watson turned. When she saw him, she startled and tried to step away.
At that moment, he knew two things were absolutely true.
First, Olivia Watson was as beautiful as ever. He had told himself for years that, in retrospect, he exaggerated her comeliness, that he had been a lovelorn boy who hadn’t known any better. But, before him, she was all the same—wide brown eyes the color of honey, her full body the epitome of loveliness—and her effect on him was just as he remembered. He could feel, even in this charged, mad instant, that keen desire for her that he had always had. His fingers tensed on her wrist. Even that slight contact tantalized him.
And second, Olivia Watson did not look happy to seehim.She reeled back in disgust, pulling her wrist from his fingers as if his touch scalded her.
Olivia backed away. A dark-haired woman a decade older than herself brought a hand to her shoulder, as if trying to shield her. That lady was flanked by a young man and a young woman hardly out of their teens, both of whom looked at him with perplexed expressions. He had no idea who these people were or why they were with Olivia. Before he could even contemplate the question, they filtered out the door, taking Olivia with them.
She was vanishing again.
“Olivia!” he bellowed.
Montaigne did not care if he made a scene. He pushed into the crowd, even though he could no longer see her.
He ran out into the night air. When he gained the steps of the theatre, he was just in time to glimpse her profile in the window of a departing carriage.
She was gone.
But he would reach her.
He would find her.
Tonight.
Chapter One
Later that same evening
Bang. Bang. Bang.
From within semi-consciousness, Olivia was aware that the walls of the townhouse were shaking.Housebreakers have beset us, she thought, unable to move, her mind still viscous with sleep, the pounding seeming to be all around her.
How could a sound be everywhere at once? Was this an earthquake, the kind that Eloisa had experienced in the West Indies as a child, the type that brought down walls and disturbed the ocean?
Her eyes flew open. Suddenly, she was awake. Because she knew. She hoped that she was wrong, prayed that it was so, as she threw on her wrapper and headed for the door of her bedroom. But even still, she knew only one man who would be entitled enough to make such a racket. It was a wonder that she had been able to fall asleep at all, after what had happened at the opera.
Olivia took the stairs two at a time, her feet bare on the lush carpets. The painted walls shone with the hues that Eloisa had been guaranteed would be stylish in Mayfair that season. Indeed, the entire home had been buffed and manicured to a point of almost painful fashion. Eloisa would never allow herself or her daughter, Natasha, to appear desperate for the approval of society—only the house itself came close to showing the intensity of the hopes that had driven them from Paris to London.
Voices rose to meet Olivia as she descended. Even though she had known, in her bones, who it was, when she heard his voice, it chilled her blood.
“I only need to speak with her,” he said, his tone low and controlled, confident and ineffably aristocratic, “I am very sorry to disturb you, madam, but I cannot leave until I have seen her.”
“My lord, my lord,” protested Chassey, the butlerandhead footman (Eloisa might be rich, but she wasn’t above economy, especially in temporary lodgings), “the lady, much like the rest of the house, is—”
“I suppose you think by virtue of your rank,” Eloisa herself broke in, “that I will overlook you nearly breaking down my door at this unholy—”
Eloisa stopped speaking when she saw Olivia. If the situation had been different, Olivia might have laughed at her expression. Her lips had formed a perfectOof surprise and she almost looked chastened—a rarity for her friend and the woman who was still, technically, her employer.
She didn’t want to look at him. If she could have chosen, she would have kept her eyes trained on Eloisa. A beautiful woman of forty-five, her dark hair well-coifed despite the hour, her skin still gleaming from her nightly cosmetic ablutions, her chestnut eyes kind, Eloisa was a comforting, familiar sight. No, if she could choose, she would never let her gaze dart away from Eloisa, the woman who had given her safe harbor thirteen years ago after—well,him.
But Olivia had never been able tonotlook at Augustus Carrington, the Earl of Montaigne. Her eyes were drawn to him, even after such a long period, in the same way her face tilted towards the sun on a brisk autumn day. It was a reflex, it seemed, of her blood.
