In spite of the late hours she was keeping, she woke most mornings before many of the staff. It was her habit to go to the servants’ hall to carry back her breakfast tray, though either Beetle or Wick would have been pleased to deliver it. She would have preferred to eat with the staff, but comprehended very well they would have been made uncomfortable by her presence. It would have been that way whether or not they knew she’d been a visitor to their employer’s bed. They simply accorded her a certain respect because of how they perceived her station relative to their own.
She often thought she should direct them to inquire of her father. Sir Hadrien would have been delighted to inform them she was no better than she ought to be. He’d made certain of it.
Olivia had removed her wig and was attending to her hair with punishing brushstrokes when she heard a staccato rap at her door. Her heartbeat tripped over itself as she set down the brush, and she felt a tightening in her chest. She could not imagine that it was anyone save Griffin expecting entry at this late hour, and above all things, she did not want it to be him.
She picked up a damp flannel and began removing the rouge, powder, and beauty mark she had lightly applied before she went below stairs to meet patrons at the faro table. The rapping at the door began again, this time a bit more insistently. She sighed. He would not be moved until she answered and perhaps not even then.
Olivia put aside the flannel and carried the candlestick with her into the bedroom. “Who is it?” she asked.
Griffin supposed it was a sensible enough question, but in his present mood it irritated him. “Breckenridge.”
Olivia opened the door a few inches. “My lord?”
He scowled at her. “Will you not invite me in?”
“I’d rather not, unless you insist, then of course you may come in.” She leaned into the opening and sniffed. “Are you foxed?”
He fiddled with the intricate knot of his cravat and impatiently removed it. “Fletcher was foxed. I was his victim.” Dangling the offending article of clothing between his thumb and forefinger, he took a step back and indicated she should join him in the hall.
Olivia was on firmer footing where she was, but she did not want him to know that. She slipped out, holding the candlestick in front of her. “What is it?”
“I cannot find my error.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“My error. I cannot find it.”
“And you think I have it?” There was sufficient light for her to see a muscle jump in his cheek. “Very well, you cannot be amused at this juncture. That is too bad for both of us, I think.” She raised the candle a fraction higher to better observe his face. Strain was evident in the set of his jaw and the twin creases between his eyebrows, but Olivia was unconvinced that his problem of the moment was responsible for the weary tension she saw in the tightness around his mouth. “You will have to tell me something more than you cannot find your error. The nature of it would be a good place to begin.”
“I cannot reconcile the accounts.”
Olivia thought she might not be able to suppress the bubble of nervous laughter that came immediately to her lips, but she managed to choke it back and discreetly covered her mouth as she cleared her throat. “Perhaps if you wait until morning and review your records in a more rested frame of mind.”
“You are supposing I will be able to sleep. I assure you, I will not.”
“Have you tried?”
“There is no point. You may as well come with me.”
Light flickered as Olivia’s fingers tightened around the candlestick. For better than a sennight she had slept alone, quieting her nerves in anticipation of this moment, and now that it was upon her what she mostly felt was a deeply abiding disappointment, though she couldn’t have said with whom she was disappointed more. If she had guarded herself better against hope, would his churlishly issued invitation have hurt her heart?
Olivia stepped outside herself, disengaging from any feeling at all. Numbness masqueraded as serenity. “Yes. Of course I will go with you.”
She allowed Griffin to take the candlestick from her nerveless fingers and fell in step beside him. Aware that she was drawing only shallow breaths, Olivia wasn’t surprised she felt a little light-headed when they reached the door to his bedroom. She slowed her steps.
He didn’t.
Olivia stared at his back, then lengthened her stride to catch up with him. “I thought—” She didn’t—couldn’t—finish that sentence.
“You wish to say something?” he asked, glancing sideways.
She shook her head. “It’s not important.” Every part of her that had been numb was now awash in prickly feeling. It was as if the seat of all emotion had fallen asleep and pins and needles were the consequence of waking.
Griffin indicated she should precede him into his study and gestured vaguely toward his desk. A large ledger of accounts lay open in front of his chair. “You may sit there.”
Olivia greeted this direction with suspicion, darting a look from him to the chair and back to him again. “At your desk?”
“Naturally at my desk. It is unlikely that you can work more comfortably elsewhere. The ledger is unwieldy if it is not lying flat.”
