“Are the clothes in any way unsatisfactory?” asked Griffin.
“Only in that they are unwanted.”
Griffin’s hands dropped to the arms of his chair. “We are at something of an impasse, I believe. I have decided that you shall have them.”
“Did you not hear me say that we cannot afford them?”
“We? You’ve said that before. You do not owe me a farthing.”
Olivia was not deceived by his apparent largesse. “And if Alastair does not return?”
“Have you changed your mind? Do you think that’s likely now?” He held up one hand to stave off her reply. “Don’t trouble yourself to answer that. If you deny it, I don’t know that I would believe you. It is better that we just wait and see what tomorrow brings. And the day after that. And so on.”
“His debt is also mine,” she said softly. “That is the way of things between us.” She imagined it was precisely what her brother was counting on.
Griffin could find no reason to question her sincerity, only her wisdom. Accepting responsibility for her brother’s foibles was foolish beyond measure. He shook his head, a barely perceptible movement that he masked further by tunneling his fingers through his hair.
“The clothes are a gift,” he said at last. “There was never any intention on my part to add their cost to what is owed me. Rest easy and have joy of them.”
Realizing that she was being summarily dismissed, Olivia required a moment to collect herself, then a moment longer to collect her thoughts. “Is it a surfeit of arrogance that leaves you with no room for compassion?” She lifted one hand, palm out, in a gesture that mirrored his earlier one. “No, don’t favor me with a reply. If you deny it, I don’t know that I will believe you.”
She pivoted on slippered feet, giving him her very cold shoulder, and started toward the door. It occurred to her that he might be moved to call her back but before she could consider how she might respond to that entreaty he was blocking her path. She fairly vibrated in place as she drew up short to keep from stumbling into him. Pressure built in her chest until she realized she was holding her breath. She let it out slowly.
It was Griffin who took a step back, though not a step aside. He made no attempt to reach for her. “You are not easily intimidated,” he said.
“Do you think so? I am not at all certain that’s true.”
“You hold your ground.”
“I make a small footprint. It is little enough to hold on to.”
His faint smile was edged with regret. “I have bullied you. Forgive me.” Now he stepped aside. “Won’t you sit down?”
Olivia hesitated.
“Please?”
She shook her head, afraid that she might finally give in to tears.
“Very well,” he said. “Naturally you are free to go.”
She did not mistake his meaning. She was free to go as far as her room. Her feet, though, remained rooted to the floor.
Griffin took advantage of her immobility to press his argument regarding the wardrobe. “I would have you accept the clothes, Miss Cole, as a favor to me. Someone should have use of them.”
“It seems I cannot make you understand,” she said. “They are gowns and dresses made for another woman, one who is not little more than a prisoner here.”
Griffin’s dark eyes took on a vaguely bitter cast. “As it happens, Miss Cole, they were made for my wife, but you will not be surprised to learn that she shared some part of your opinion. She was fond of pointing out that marriage to me was its own kind of prison.”
Chapter Five
The passage of the following sennight without any word from Alastair helped Olivia arrive at the realization that she would have to make her own way. She tried not to think of his absence in terms of its finality. Even the most fleeting thought that he might have met a very bad end had the power to bring her to her knees. It was the same when she considered that he meant to abandon her. She knew a depth of such despair that it incapacitated her, and the hollowness of that feeling added to her fear.
Alastair’s failure to present himself had other explanations that Olivia preferred to entertain. At the forefront of these was that Sir Hadrien had refused to advance Alastair’s allowance. Olivia reminded herself that this turn did not mean her brother would not return, but merely that she could expect he would be a very long time coming.
It would be as it had been.She’d managed to live on her wits—and not much else—once before. There had been no expectation then that she would be rescued; indeed, she had never thought of her life in terms of captivity. It was as it was. She managed each day as she had each yesterday, and if she allowed herself to think that something might be different on the morrow, it was just in those moments before she slept and only in the early days when she still believed she could order her dreams.
Olivia knelt on the cushioned window bench in Breckenridge’s bedroom with her palms pressed to the glass. Looking down her nose at Putnam Lane in only the most literal sense, she could easily count the number of pedestrians at this time of morning. A mere hour earlier, when Mason had escorted her to the park, there’d been almost no one about. She’d had occasion on some of her walks to spy late-night revelers finally stumble from the hells or glimpse gentlemen in the act of straightening their frock coats and flies as they departed the brothels. Mason invariably steered her away from these sights, although Olivia suspected it was done as much in aid of preserving his own dignity as it was in acknowledgment of her sensibilities.
