When she spoke the moniker,the Downstairs Menace, the one they used in the papers, he stepped back. She saw something behind his eyes shutter. A vulnerability that had been there blew out like a candle. She couldn’t help feeling a pang of sorrow at the sight. He hadseemedsincere, truly. But she had to remember that he wasn’t. That he couldn’t be.
And besides she was a different person now. She wasn’t a maid in his house any longer, a thousand ranks below him and a thousand times more naïve. She was a woman of three-and-thirty nearly engaged to another man.
His expression returned to a neutral cast. This surprised her. She had thought he would bang out of the house and that would be that.
“I see that the scandal sheets have given you a strange impression of me, Miss Watson. Many people have odd notions of me, so I am not unused to being misjudged. Although I thought we knew each other better.” He turned to Eloisa. “I am sorry to have disturbed you, ma’am. You’re right, of course. It was quite savage of me.”
His gaze fell back on Olivia. His eyes felt intimate, probing, as if he was calling all that had passed between them once into the present. Her body heated under her wrapper. Her flannel night clothes that had felt utterly appropriate for the season now seemed far too warm.
“But rest assured, Miss Watson, this isn’t over.”
“Leave,” Olivia repeated, even though he had already turned his back. “And don’t come back.”
Her voice broke on the last word.
She hoped that only she could hear the sob threatening in her throat.
But he turned.
And, inexplicably, unaccountably, the manwinked.
Then he walked out the door.
Chapter Two
Olivia—
Forgive this liberty. I thought no harm could come from leaving you this note in your tinderbox. I overheard your exclamation the other day over pink ribbons. I leave you this one as a token of my regard. I will check here for your reply. I must know if you are happy with your present.
Augustus
My lord—
I thank you for the ribbon, but it can hardly be proper for us to correspond in such a fashion. I’m sure the countess would object.
Also, I care for green ribbons, not pink.
Olivia
*
Why, in thedevil, had he winked at her?
He had been playing the part of the Earl of Montaigne, perhaps, for a little too long. Lord Montaigne—everyone knew him. He was a rake, of course, but that word was thrown around too liberally these days. It had begun to mean nothing and it didn’t begin to do justice to the place he held in society. He wasn’t like Leith, his best friend, who raked in a way that society could tolerate, taking his mistress-du-jour to the theatre on Friday and then escorting his mother the next evening. And he wasn’t like his other best friend, Trem, before he had married. Trem had been a mischievous ne’er-do-well with a penchant for a tricky situation. Trem had been the type of rake who would tup your unsatisfied wife silly. Once you’d gotten over your affront and remembered that you hadn’t touched the lady in years—and that she would doubtlessly be less sour now that she’d had aliaisonof her own—you could split a tumbler of whiskey and laugh with Trem at White’s. In short, ausefulrake.
But he, the Earl of Montaigne, was a rake’s rake, the kind that societyactuallyreviled, and that only other rakes—the other, tamer types—would half-heartedly defend. He knew that, for years, his antics had been useful ballast for his friends, even if they hadn’t intended to benefit from his terrible reputation. He was the measure by which their own indiscretions appeared palatable, that still got them seated next to young debutantes at dinner, what kept them in the sights of hopeful mamas and in the good books oftonpatriarchs. Montaigne hadn’t been seated next to a young debutante in years. Instead, he was seated with the old bastards no harm could come to any longer. The ones that everyone avoided at society gatherings, who couldn’t be expelled but were only tolerated, the men who had made their fortunes sending children into coal mines or harvesting turtles for terrapin stew.
And, apparently, he was little better. After all, as he had just proven, he was the kind of man whowinkedat a woman in clear distress. Distress, by all accounts, thathehad caused.
He could tell himself that he had done the thing because he was a hardened rake. That he had ruined his moral fiber through his association with villainy. But he had been trying, as of recent, to lie to himself less. And the truth in this case was undeniable.
He had winked at her because he was happy to see her.
And because he still wanted her.
Last night, after he left her townhouse in Bloomsbury, he had been too ecstatic to return to Mayfair. He had walked the streets in a daze. He had only taken opium once, during an ill-fated night with Trem and a truly degenerate associate of theirs from Balliol. He had thought the hour of euphoria hardly worth the comedown. But seeing Olivia’s face again reminded him of opium, the good part, the part that felt like bottled happiness.
For hours, as he walked, that feeling lasted. Even now, even the next morning, he was still foxed with it. Her proximity. The bright brown eyes he remembered widening in pleasure, her pale skin glowing like the moon, the trail of freckles across her cheekbones, and her body, as full as he remembered—he had thought he would never see her again. And, yet, she had stood before him, alive and well and as vibrant as she had always been to him.
