“So he has restored your allowance. That is good.” She took a small bite of the soused fish. Cooked in vinegar with onions and peppers, the fish had a pungent taste that did not agree with her, and she set her fork down to sip from her glass of wine. “I will go no farther than the park if you like, and at such times when it is unlikely to be crowded. That way you can be assured that no word will reach him from any quarter.” She saw it made him uncomfortable to state that it was indeed his preference, but she would not carry his discomfort for him.
“I would prefer it. Mother is likely to hear you have returned first, and we know she is a tattle.”
“So you say. I do not remember her well.” Olivia regarded her brother over the rim of her glass. “Before I thrust myself into your life, Alastair, had you ever spared a thought for me?”
He shifted uneasily in his chair. “Yes. Yes, of course. You were a great mystery to me growing up. Mother sometimes spoke of you, just incidental comments that seemed to surprise her when she heard them aloud, as if the words had escaped. I wondered about it, but questions were not encouraged. She once tried to tell me that you died, but I never believed her. There was no vault in the mausoleum to account for it, and I was old enough by then to know when I wasn’t being given the truth. I supposed that if she felt compelled to lie to me, no one else would be inclined to impart the truth.”
“You never told me that.”
“No, well, it is not the sort of thing I thought you’d ever want to know.” He tilted his head to better take her measure. “I have almost no memory of living with you at Coleridge Park.”
“That is not surprising. You were hardly more than an infant when I was sent away. I was uncertain you would even know who I was when I sought you out at university.” Olivia had never forgotten who she was, but there had been a concerted effort at Coleridge Park to put her away. “You did know me, though, and never once hesitated to invite me in.”
“I was curious,” he said, “and possessed of a certain amount of guilt. I wish I could say I was generous, but you know now that I am not that man.”
“Your honesty gives me hope that you will be some day.”
“Ah,” he said, flushing a little at the rightness of her words. “You know just where to drive the nail.”
They ate in uneasy silence after that, but when she retired to the drawing room, he followed her. Olivia picked at the stitches of a tablecloth she’d begun to embroider months earlier and abandoned when Alastair had gone missing. It had not been an inspired effort from the beginning, merely a way of passing time, and now she undid her work and wondered what it would be like to tug at the threads of time in the same manner.
When Alastair turned away from poking at the fire he caught sight of his sister’s gentle smile. “Are you in love with Breckenridge?”
Olivia’s smile remained unchanged. She didn’t glance up. “If I am, you will not be the first person I tell.”
“You will probably find it strange, Olivia, but I like him. I know he does not return my regard, but it does not change my respect for him.”
“You were enjoying the affections of his mistress while she was still under his protection. I think it is difficult for him to respect that.” She lifted her head. “Have a care how you respond, Alastair. You gave me to him, remember.”
“It wasn’t like that. Or not precisely like that. I never meant that you should—”
Olivia stopped him with a look. “Let us not speak of it. I am content, and you did no more than our father before you.” Perhaps it was the way of the Cole men to make whores of their women. She bit her tongue on this last thought and returned her attention to ripping the uneven stitches. “Are you still visiting Mrs. Christie?”
Here was a subject Alastair did not wish to pursue, yet he was startled into replying. “She is under my protection, yes.”
“She is significantly older than you.”
He shrugged. “Father approves. I told him about her. He cautioned me against losing my heart and making a mad, foolish, and wholly unsuitable proposal, but that was the extent of his concern.”
“I’m sure it was.”
“He is a practical man, Olivia, with sensibilities of entitlement. In his prime I imagine his lovers were legion.”
Olivia jerked, pricked her finger. She turned her hand to keep from staining the tablecloth with blood and raised her finger to her lips. When Alastair inquired after her, she merely nodded to indicate she was fine even as memories best forgotten began to churn.
She’d bled the first time she’d been taken from the convent. Other times as well. Her hand shook with fear that she might bloody the tablecloth. They would make her scrub it clean, erase the evidence of her sin. Was she the sin? Was she the sacrifice? It had been an age since that particular memory had come to her, but no amount of time was too far in the past. Now, tasting blood on the tip of her finger, it was as if it were happening in this very moment.Look at what you have done, my sweet girl. My own dearest child. Can you smell the blood?
“Olivia?” Alastair left the fireplace and dropped to his haunches in front of her. “You are pale. I don’t think—”
She pushed the tablecloth off her lap with such force that Alastair almost toppled backward when he tried to gather it up. She stood, stepped around him, and murmured her apologies before she fled the room as if she were about to be set upon by all the demons of hell.
“It was most peculiar,” Alastair said, lying back to cradle his head in his palms. “I tried to speak to her later, but she would not open the door to me. I think she had been weeping.”
Alys Christie made appropriate consoling noises. “Then she would not want you to see her in such a state. It does not matter that you are her brother. You are a man, and no woman is fond of being looked upon at such moments. Unless she cries prettily; that is altogether different. In that event, she does well to be seen as it can often be employed to her advantage.” She walked her fingers down the center of his chest. His skin was pale and smooth and firm. Her nails left faint pink crescents wherever she pressed. She felt a surge of tenderness toward him and that pleased her. He was very young, she thought, but not entirely unschooled, and that pleased her as well. “Does your sister cry prettily?”
Alastair sucked in a breath as Mrs. Christie’s fingers slipped under the drawstring of his drawers. She had the lightest touch when she teased him. He could feel his cock stirring. What had she asked him? “Prettily? No, I don’t think so.”
“Then ease your mind. There is nothing she expects from you.” She turned a fraction more in to him and kissed him on the mouth while her hand slipped lower. “You were right to leave her. I cannot be sorry for it has brought you here.”
