“Does he?”
Olivia didn’t believe he’d never noticed, but she didn’t challenge him. “Mmm. Like you.”
“It doesn’t signify.”
“It doesn’t have to. It’s endearing.”
Griffin thought about that. “He is rather more interesting than I supposed he might be.”
Chuckling, Olivia straightened and began to pull him down the stairs. After the first few, he held her back. She looked up at him, saw the gravity of his expression. “What is it?”
“I was thinking about you.”
“Me?”
He nodded. “When I was looking at Nat, I was thinking about you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You were his age, probably every bit as small and fragile as he, and someone looked at you and decided…” His voice trailed off as words failed him. He cupped the side of Olivia’s face in his palm. “It is incomprehensible to me.” What he glimpsed in her eyes told him it was the same for her. “Was there no one, Olivia? No one who stepped forward to offer protection?”
“There was.” The memory raised a bittersweet smile. “Honey Shepard.”
“Your nanny?”
“Yes. You look surprised.”
“You were packed off to school. How could she have known what was happening?”
“She didn’t. I have always imagined she thought I was well out of it there. It would have been a reasonable assumption.”
Griffin frowned. The implication was that she had not been safe at Coleridge Park. “Well out of it?” he asked. “Or well away from it?”
“The latter, I suppose.” Olivia shook her head as he would have posed another question. “This is no place for it, Griffin, and you should be very certain you want to know because there is nothing you can do as a consequence of it.” She tugged lightly on her arm and was released, then pivoted on the step and hurried off.
Olivia lingered in the gaming rooms after the hell’s patrons had taken their leave, completing her own duties with something less than her usual efficiency. It was only when she began to find reasons to be dissatisfied with the work of others that she realized what she was about. Griffin, also, would be aware of her delay and know the reason for it. She recalled how he’d tested her that first day, standing imperiously at the top of the stairs, pinning her back with that dark, remote glance of his, then walking away as if he were indifferent to what he saw.
It had been a pretense, but she hadn’t known it. He was not indifferent then, and he was certainly not indifferent now.
And that made her fear for him.
She found him stretched out on their bed, his head cradled in his palms, his feet crossed casually at the ankle. He’d removed his frock coat and waist coat, loosened his cravat, and tugged at the tails of his shirt so it was bunched negligently about his waist. She imagined him in such a pose on a grassy bank, dappled by sunlight and disturbed by a light breeze. His fishing pole would be resting beside him, the hook merely dangling above a swiftly running stream. His face would be similarly set in contemplation, but the nature of his thoughts on that occasion would be far less troubling.
Griffin lifted his head a bit to acknowledge Olivia’s entrance. His eyes followed her to the dressing room, then he closed them again as he heard the familiar sounds of her washing away her painted face and removing her auburn wig. He said nothing when she took longer than usual to make her ablutions and dress for bed. Some evenings he played the lady’s maid for her, but tonight she did not ask for assistance and he offered none. It was not her way to avoid him for long, so he respected her unspoken wish to be permitted these private moments.
When she came to the bed, he held out his hand and invited her to sit. His occupation of the mattress on the diagonal gave her room enough on the edge. She turned sideways, drawing one leg up under her and supporting the other by hooking her heel on the frame. His thumb absently brushed the back of her hand.
“You are certain you want to know?” she asked quietly, picking up the thread of their earlier conversation.
Griffin nodded. “It will not change what I think of you, feel for you.” He held her eyes. “You were a child, like Nat. Remember that when you suppose there was something you could have done. Think of him and know you were without weapons.”
“I am not without weapons now,” she said. “And neither are you. Promise me, Griffin. I would have your promise that you will take no action on my behalf.”
He considered her words carefully, then his own. “As you wish.”
Olivia took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Very well. I feel certain you understand more than you let on, but since you cannot yet know the whole of it, it is this: Sir Hadrien regularly came to my room at Coleridge Park. I do not know how old I was that first time. I am not even certain I recall it. He didn’t hurt me, though, I am sure of that. What I have come to remember is there were many occasions that I was simply invited to crawl into his lap. That was pleasant enough, or it seemed so at one time. Later, I was invited to touch him. It was a game, the touching. Tickling. Squeezing. He touched me also, praised me warmly. Such a good girl. My own dearest girl. I might have invited him to touch me as well. I don’t know. It is difficult to know now what was my idea and what was his. I know I wanted to please him. It was important to me. There was his wife, my stepmother. And Alastair. My family had changed and my place seemed secure only as long as I was in my father’s lap.”
“It was his idea, Olivia. All of it was his idea.”
