“Of course you do.” He lowered the book over the side of the chair and let it drop to the floor. She settled comfortably against him, finding just the right niche for her shoulder, for her hip, and finally, for her head. “What news of the gentleman villain?” he asked.
“None at all. He never showed himself to me. I told you he would not find me at Jericho Mews.”
“Just because he did not show himself, it doesn’t follow that he wasn’t there.”
“He does not deserve so much of your attention. I am here, aren’t I? And all of a piece. Enough has been said on that matter.” She pressed two fingers to his lips to stay his objection, and she was not swayed when he caught her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Tell me the rest,” she said in a tone that was both gentle and firm. “All of it. You will have no good sleep until you do, and you are already fair on your way to exhaustion.”
He did not release her hand, but set it against his chest and covered it with his own. “She had consumption. Had been seen by doctors well over a year ago. In Italy first, then France. One of them recommended the hot springs at Bath. She returned to England, most reluctantly, I believe, as by her account she’d been engaged in a splendid liaison with the Comte Auguste DeRaine, and presumably all of his liveried servants.”
“Griffin.”
“I’m sorry. It’s what she told me, what she wanted me to think. I don’t know if it’s true. DeRaine did not accompany her to Bath. There are similar springs in France that would have served as well. The comte may have sent her out.” His chest rose and fell with his next deep breath. “It speaks to Gardner’s wealth of contacts in every kind of society that he was able to find her. She had been in Bath less than three months, living as the widow Jeannine Aubert, though a more accurate description of her state would be that she was dying as that widow. Gardner did not learn that particular detail until he met her.”
Griffin rolled his shoulders slightly, shedding some of the tension that was pulling his back taut. “Elaine used her own name—her maiden name—when booking passage, and she came through London. Gardner and his men followed that trail from inn to inn, found variations of the name, and traced the permutations until they led to the widow. I don’t know if I’d have sent him after her if I’d been aware she was dying. I don’t know if he would have gone. Faced with the choice of what to do when he came upon her, the truth of her condition obvious to his eyes, he tells me he simply explained why he was there and asked her if she would accompany him back to London.”
“And she agreed,” Olivia said softly. “How extraordinary.”
“Extraordinary.” His tone communicated it was none of that. “She had her reasons, Olivia. Atonement was not among them.” He closed his eyes briefly against the press of the firelight. “God’s truth, but I didn’t know it would be so hard.” He squeezed her hand, tilted his head, and regarded Olivia’s calm, yet somehow expectant features. “There is a child. A boy. Hers, she says, and I cannot think why she would lie about that. Mine, she also says, but then why would she say otherwise when she wants legitimacy for him and for herself?”
“Are you so certain he is not yours?”
It was the directness of the question, the lack of surprise in her eyes, that let Griffin know Olivia had had some hint of what he’d found so difficult to say. “Someone told you.”
“I’ve been here since the day you buried your wife, Griffin. It would have been impossible for me not to learn of it in all that time. Still, it was not revealed in a deliberate fashion. It was not even the thrust of the conversation, merely an aside. Impulsive, really.”
“Beetle,” said Griffin. “Or Wick. But I am wagering on Beetle.”
“You’ll get no name from me. Except for that once, no one talks about it in front of me, and I have not asked. It was your place to tell me, and so you have. Now, I want to know if you are certain he is not yours.”
Griffin was a long time in answering. “No. No, I’m not.”
And because she understood that had been the very hardest thing to say, Olivia cupped his face with her free hand and brought his dark, troubled eyes back to hers. “You do not like to recall that you were intimate with her after you had full knowledge of her adultery.”
“Once,” he said. “Only once.” To his own ears he sounded like the veriest schoolboy offering that most ridiculous of defenses to the headmaster. He’d done better when hehadbeen a schoolboy. “Bloody, bloody hell.”
“He must be six or there about.”
“Six in three months. June. The timing…Hell, it is not merely timing, but a precise calculation. I would not expect less from her. Whether it is his true birth date, I doubt if I will ever know. He says it is, but what else would she have taught him to say? There were documents, though. A record of his birth. It does not mean a great deal to me. According to Elaine, the physician attending her at the birth wrote it out. Perhaps it is a common practice in Italy. I don’t know. Perhaps it is merely an invention, something done because she was always capable of taking the long view and thought there might be need for it some day.”
“Does he look like you?”
“He looks like her.”
“How is he called?”
“Nathaniel. He is Nathaniel Christopher Wright-Jones.”
“I see.” One corner of her mouth edged up in a sad parody of a smile. “Of course he would have your surname. Does it trouble you?”
“Trouble me? That is making much too little of what it does to me. If I denounce his mother, I shame the boy. If I accept him as my son, I have a bastard for my heir. If that is not being placed squarely between Scylla and Charybdis, then I cannot comprehend what is.”
Olivia swept back a lock of hair that had fallen over his brow. “Homer again,” she said, her smile tender. “But you have it exactly right.”
Chapter Thirteen
Olivia could not recall that Griffin had ever slept before she did. The novelty of being awake after he’d found sleep gave rise to curiosity. Indulging herself, she raised her head on her elbow and studied his face. In the dim candlelight, the shadows beneath his eyes disappeared. Lines of fatigue lost their definition. He looked infinitely less weary than he had standing before her so short a time ago. The scar that bisected his cheek had the effect of raising one corner of his mouth, his beautiful mouth, just enough to lend the impression of a wry, yet somehow contented smile.
She wondered at his dreams, if he had any. He looked as if he embraced one now, something pleasant and darkly humorous. The thought of it raised her own smile, and she touched his cheek with the back of her knuckles and drew them down ever so lightly toward his jaw. He murmured something unintelligible; it was enough to make her withdraw her hand.
