She wanted to feel his forehead to see if he were feverish, but she couldn’t trust herself to touch him without tackling him to the ground and ravishing him, so she kept her deviant hands to herself.
“Considering you were concerned enough to want to meet only hours from now, and it was your idea to step in and do something about this in the first place, I rather think my assumption is an accurate one.”
Alexander swallowed hard and Olivia averted her eyes from the muscles in his throat lest she do something crazy like press her lips to them.
“I think,” he said rather gruffly. “I think it’s possible that he means to meet her in Hyde Park.” That didn’t sound so bad. But he wasn’t done. He heaved a great big sigh before continuing. “He means to take her to Scandal Lane. And she has agreed to go there with him.”
Olivia felt a pang of shock.
She had been thinking that Jane was starting to care for Mr. St. Clare, especially considering her carry on at breakfast.
But she couldn’t believe that Jane would allow herself to be taken to such a place. A place where, if rumours were to be believed, ladies of their night shared their wares with anyone who possessed a spare guinea. Where gentlemen fought duels. Where ladies lost far more than their good name and standing. She wouldn’t believe it. No good could come of it. For her or for Jane.
If Alexander’s friend ruined Jane because he had brought him into their lives, then the Daringtons would never see or speak to him again. He’d be gone from their lives like so many of their old friends.
Steeling her heart against any sort of compassion for her silly, innocent sister, and any stupid, idiotic feelings of hurt the thought of not seeing Alexander again evoked, Olivia raised her chin and made sure to look absolutely fierce.
“Stuff and nonsense,” she said with a laugh. “Jane might be naïve enough to be forming an attachment to the cad, but she would never be so foolish as to be seduced by someone of your ilk.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Only that your friend is a deplorable blackguard, and you know what they say. You are the company you keep.”
She could practically see the wheels turning in his pretty head, trying to work out where the bitterness that she could not disguise was coming from.
“What is this really about?” he demanded; his voice low.
Olivia huffed out a frustrated breath. This wasn’t how she had wanted this conversation to go. They were supposed to be discussing how to keep Jane and St. Clare apart. Now, he was questioning her anger. And that was a question she really didn’t want to answer. Because she’d have to confess that she’d heard what he’d said about her all those years ago after their almost kiss. When he’d told his mother what he really thought of her, while she’d been convincing herself that he cared…
Raising a brow and making every effort to appear utterly nonchalant, Olivia gave another, brittle laugh.
“It is about stopping Jane from making a colossal mistake. I thought webothagreed on that.”
For a moment, it looked as though he would argue with her. But finally, he sighed, the sound wearier than any she’d ever heard from him and shook his head.
“We do agree. It would be a mistake. For many reasons. So, what do we do?”
Five
It was exhausting, Oliviadecided hours later, planning strategies of war with her arch nemesis, instead of against him.
When she’d insisted on marching straight inside to his odious friend and giving him what for, Alexander had threatened to carry her bodily from the property. And because she believed that he’d do it, she mutinously agreed to leave and meet him later this evening as previously arranged.
“We have a better chance of talking some sense into Jane when she sees how bad things can get around there,” he insisted. “If you go running in there now, they’ll only get sneakier about meeting. And don’t forget, there are a pair of them in this. It’s not only Elliot.”
She hadn’t been able to argue the toss because he was right. Jane was seemingly just as eager for her complete ruin as Mr. St. Clare was to provide the means.
The sky was already dark at this hour. And snow had started coating the ice-hard road beneath her boots.
She shivered in her velvet winter coat, wishing she hadn’t mutinously refused to wait in the earl’s carriage with blankets and a warming brick.
“You’re freezing,” Fincham’s voice sounded close to her ear and this time her shiver was very muchnotfrom the cold.
“I’m f-fine,” she answered stubbornly, but it was ruined somewhat by the chatter of her teeth.
Jane had tried to sneak out of the house unnoticed earlier, but Olivia had been on to her. Papa was presumably at another gaming hell, thinking he was going to save them all but more than likely pushing them further toward utter poverty.
Mama was having an attack of the vapours in her room.
