“What?”
He sighed. It might help her understand.
“Well, there was something—comforting about it, after a while. They were always such nice girls. And the type I would never have gotten the chance to speak with otherwise. They were charming. I never had women friends outside of my sisters. I enjoy talking to them. I like hearing about their lives. Sometimes, we’ll play backgammon or chess. Often, I will order a meal from the kitchens. Many of them are underfed. They love eating dainties that they help prepare but are seldom allowed.”
He looked up at Olivia. She was looking at him in a daze of confusion. She blinked rapidly a few times.
“You don’t bed them?” she repeated. “You play backgammon and talk about sheep farms in Yorkshire and eat dainties from the kitchen?”
He shrugged.
“Their tendency to disappear after such liaisons does give the whole thing a slightly sinister cast, I will concede. Recently, when I was at the Dalrymple rout, a lady’s maid named Alice pulled me into an alcove. That happens sometimes. She left her post a few days later. Lord and Lady Dalrymple blame me, apparently. They think I ravished her into fleeing their home. Easier to blame me, then acknowledge that they underpay their staff. Alice was making less than a scullery maid at my house.”
“I—I don’t know what to say.”
“It doesn’t matter what you say,” he said, exhaling. He was so relieved to have explained it to her—and that she didn’t seem angry, merely a bit perplexed. “I just wanted you to know. The truth. No one else knows it.”
“And now you want—you want to bed me again. That’s why you are telling me all of this?”
Bed her again? He wanted so much more than that. But it seemed very difficult to say that now. He had already revealed so much.
“Bed you—and spend time with you,” he qualified, lamely.
“But it doesn’t change anything. Not really.” She said the words, softly, and his heart sunk.
He had intended to propose marriage. It was the only proposition that seemed to capture his feelings for her. But such a heavy declaration felt like it would overwhelm them right now. She already seemed so shocked.
Montaigne thought of what Catherine might advise in this circumstance. He had wanted to drag Olivia into a room and make her hear him at his ball—but Catherine had shown him why such an action was rash. He needed to start on a smaller scale. He had done that with Olivia once. Sending her ribbons and sweets. Back then, he hadn’t known to think large. And it had won her the first time.
Once she could trust him again, they could speak of marriage. Now, he just needed her to see that he didn’t intend to hurt her.
“I understand that I hurt you in the past, Olivia. That I disappointed you. I just want to make up for it.”
“How will you do that?” The words came out in a near whisper. Her eyes met his and he felt hot all over.
Montaigne swallowed. He needed to think. He couldn’t get distracted.
“By courting you,” he said, the words coming to his lips as he thought them. “I want to court you. Formally.”
Chapter Twelve
Olivia Watson shouldnot have laughed when the Earl of Montaigne asked to court her, but she could not help it. If Lord Brightley had been able to see Augustus asking to court such a lowly personage as herself, the viscount would have an apoplexy.
Her head was still swimming with all that he had told her about the scandal sheets. She supposed that she believed him. The story he had told her seemed too fantastic to be pure invention. If she believed him, it meant that he was not the exploiter that she had thought. Instead, he was a man who had used her badly and gone on to rakish ways afterward, but not ones that involved taking advantage of dependent women. Nevertheless, his revelation did simplify the meaning of his attentions.
She could decide to forgive him, to finish the affair that had been cut short in the past, and it was only her pride that she would be swallowing. At least her values, her sense of right and wrong, would not have to be ignored along with it.
And there was still the matter of the ten guineas. He had explained it so coolly. He clearly hadn’t remembered. He had once jested with her that he should pay her ten guineas for every time—she couldn’t even think of it to herself. It had been too sweet and wicked. And too humiliating to think of how it had been used against her afterward. That note and ten guineas, laid out for in her tinderbox, where they always left their correspondence for one another, right after he had departed for one of his jaunts to the countryside. The note had made clear she should be gone by the time he returned.
“Court me?” Olivia finally gasped. “But courtship—surely, I do not need to explain this to you, my lord, but courtship is a prelude to marriage, not the bedroom. And you cannot think that I have any marital designs on you. Surely, you must see that there is nothing I could desire less.”
His expression remained placid at these words. And then he smiled, a dimple visible in his cheek. He looked all mischief. He looked like the Downstairs Menace. “So, you would bed me, but not marry me, Miss Watson? I’m not sure I’ve ever been so scandalized.”
“Very amusing,” she said, huffing to cover the arousal that spiraled through her at his flirtatious tone. She shouldn’t be vulnerable to it. Nor the lowered gaze or the dimple or the piercing blue eyes. She knew the entire manner had been designed to slay the frailties of women like her, those who thought they’d never receive the opportunity in this lifetime to be with someone as beautiful or powerful as him.
But, of course, she realized suddenly, that wasn’t true. He wasn’t that kind of seducer, after all.
It was difficult for her to accept. It had become the central fact through which she understood him.
