Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
The King’s Theatre
Charles Street, Haymarket
Gabriel hadn’t mentioned Daventry’s ridiculous suggestion.
Neither had Olivia.
Not on the way home from the Order’s office.
Not while searching the library.
Not in the carriage to the theatre, nor over an intimate supper in the private room adjoining his box.
Silence did not mean ignorance. It simply meant neither dared test the boundaries of what was changing between them. Perhaps because neither was sure how the other truly felt.
Since when had honesty become so complex?
Since the outcome truly mattered.
They settled into plush velvet seats, the eyes of the ton fixed on them, not the stage, not the orchestra, not even Lord Morton and his scandalous mistress.
“They’re probably wondering why you married a nobody,” Olivia whispered, gazing at the crowd through a long-handled lorgnette.
She was mistaken. Who would look at her and see a nobody?
She possessed a quiet elegance, the kind that drew notice. No one would deem her anything less than remarkable.
“It’s not you,” he said, hearing admiration in his own voice. It could never be you. “I suspect they’re wondering why a man who despises deceit would want to watch The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.”
“Let them wonder.” She turned from the audience and looked at him, her gaze an unexpected shield. “They don’t know you as I do. How could they when you hide your true self behind a forbidding facade?”
“Do I detect a compliment, Olivia?”
“Gabriel, you’re the finest man I know.”
His chest tightened. He was used to harsh opinions, not honest praise. Even so, it meant more coming from her.
“I doubt you know many.”
“You’re the finest I’ve ever known.”
The words breached his armour.
She saw him. No one ever had.
“Yours is the only opinion that matters.”
The lights dimmed. In the pit below, the orchestra raised their instruments and launched into a rousing overture. The curtains parted, and the play began, the Ides of March mentioned three times in the second scene.
While she listened to every word spoken on stage, he kept hearing hers. It was all he could do to keep his mind on the play, not the woman beside him, her praise an echo he couldn’t silence. Nothing in his life had ever landed so quietly, yet struck so deep.
They sat in silence as the actors spoke of omens and unrest, of fire raining from the sky, of a lion seen prowling near the Capitol, of men claiming they had walked in flames and felt no harm.
Olivia leant forward slightly, her gloved hand resting lightly on Gabriel’s leg, not entirely by accident but enough to draw his attention.
She did not move it.
Nor did he.
Thunder cracked from the stage, part of the storm in Act II, yet the sound tore through his composure as though it were real.
In an instant, he was no longer in the theatre. He was ten years old, hearing his parents argue in the drawing room against the call of distant thunder.
“Someone has forced the lock on my desk drawer,” his father had said, suspicion coating every syllable.
“I suppose you think it was me,” his mother replied, her voice colder than a winter’s chill.
“Who else skulks about in the dark, scheming against me?”
“You really are quite pathetic.”
“Leave if you cannot abide my company.”
“And abandon my son?”
“You don’t give a damn about the boy. He’s nothing more than a pawn to you. A weapon to use against me.”
“To you, he’s merely an heir.”
Distrust had poisoned the house long before it destroyed it.
Years later, during a raging storm, he had confronted his mother in the great hall. His father had already been in the ground for six months, taking Gabriel’s respect with him. She had glared at him, giving her usual list of demands.
“You must choose, Mother. Your son or your lover.” He’d known the answer before the words left his lips. “Your position or your disreputable friends.”
She left that night. No word. No warning.
Thunder rumbled again from the stage, the theatrical clash of cymbals echoing through the auditorium. Olivia’s hand remained on his leg, a gentle pressure that anchored him to the present. She turned, just enough to let him know she saw him. Not the marquess. The man. Her man.
“What is it?” she said. “Every muscle is tense.”
He swallowed, unsettled by the thought of how easily things could change. “I’ve never been comfortable with storms. They always herald something tragic.”
She was perceptive enough to know what he was thinking. “You’re afraid this won’t end well? The case, not the play.”
“I’ve come to expect disappointment.”
God help him, but he needed this to be different.
She must have sensed something in his silence, for her hand slipped a little higher, her fingers brushing along the muscle of his thigh. Not a bold touch, but a gentle, deliberate caress meant to soothe him.
He drew a deep breath.
Then it faltered.
His eyes closed.
There had never been comfort like this. The kind meant to settle a storm. The kind meant to unravel a man and see him undone. Soft. Feminine. A call to the soul.
“Let me help you forget,” she whispered.
He couldn’t refuse even if he’d wanted to. Her fingers grazed his growing arousal, and it took all his strength not to groan aloud in a theatre full of people.
“Olivia.” Her name left his lips, but he didn’t clasp her hand to stop it roaming over the placket of his trousers. “Do you know how easily you undo me?”
God help him, his body had already betrayed him. She must have felt him, hot and hard against her palm, yet she didn’t pull away.
“I have some idea.” A coy smile touched her lips. “You don’t exactly hide it well.”
“Hide it? You’re about to bring the Marquess of Rothley to his knees before the whole auditorium.”
No one else had ever wielded such power over him.
“Let me do this for you, Gabriel. Watch the play.”
He tried to focus. But the next line from the stage—Let us be satisfied!—was devilishly ill-timed.
His wife sat perfectly composed beside him, face angled toward the stage, the picture of decorum. But he felt her deftly slipping the buttons on his trousers, the action hidden from every eye but his.
“Do you mean to test the limits of my control?”
“I mean to ensure betrayal is the last thing on your mind tonight.”
“What I’m thinking now isn’t fit for respectable company.”
“And yet I need to hear it.”
She slipped her hand beneath the placket, a slow, tentative touch. Not practised. Not polished. But it stole the breath from his lungs and scattered reason like leaves in a gale.
“You want to know what I’m thinking?”
“Yes.”
“That I’d rather be alone with you. Doing something far more satisfying than watching this play.”
Her tongue skimmed her bottom lip, that maddening gesture he’d come to recognise. Her gloved hand slowly circled him. Silk on skin. Torment and paradise in one forbidden touch.
“What would you rather do?”
“You know the answer.”
“Tell me.”
“If we were alone, you wouldn’t be touching me like this. You’d be under me, panting my name, urging me deeper, begging me not to stop.”
He felt the gentle tremor in her hand. Heard the hitch in her breath that proved she wanted him. His body was already hers. One more stroke and he’d spend in her hand like a schoolboy.
“And if we were alone,” she murmured, “you’d find just how ready I am for you, Gabriel.”
He hissed through his teeth. “Are you deliberately trying to make me climax in a theatre box?”
“What? Is the staid Marquess of Rothley about to lose control?”
“Damn right I am.”
God help him, it wasn’t just desire. It was the dawning realisation that restraint would soon become impossible. That with her, he lost all semblance of sanity. Yet he welcomed the freedom it brought.
“Our private parlour is mere feet away. When this play ends, I intend to close the door, lift your skirts, and show you precisely what you’ve awakened.”
Applause broke out, sharp and sudden. The curtain fell on the third act. All around them, people stood, the hum of chatter swelling as the familiar rush to the refreshment room began.
He rose, turning towards the curtain that shielded the rear door. With measured movements, he restored his composure and everything her hand had undone.
Then, as though their entire exchange had been nothing more than polite conversation, he turned back to her. His coat lay smooth, his cravat immaculate, yet the truth surely burned in his eyes. Want. Hunger. The aching need to claim her.
He extended his hand. “Shall we?”
She took it without a word. The sultry curve of her smile confirmed she knew precisely what to expect as he led her into their private room.
He drew the curtains. Turned the key in the lock.
He held her gaze while shrugging out of his coat and laying it over the leather chair. “Tell me you feel it too. That you can’t wait until we’re home to have me.”
That you’ve never wanted anything quite so badly.
“Surely the answer is obvious.”
Her eyes settled on the velvet settee, and he knew, with sudden certainty, she meant to ruin him for any other woman.
He stepped closer, his gaze dipping to the same red sofa. “If we make love here, I’ll insist we attend the theatre weekly.”
“Then we should always arrive an hour before supper.” She eased off her slippers, an act of silent surrender. “We’ll have to go home after this and miss the end of the play.”
He sat on the settee, bracing his hands on his thighs to settle his pulse. “I know every line. I doubt we’ll learn anything here, other than how to please each other.”
He parted his legs, then unfastened the fall of his trousers, daring her to watch. There was no mistaking what strained beneath. He made no effort to hide it. Not when she stood in her stocking feet, her slippers abandoned like a promise on the carpet.
“Do you see how restraint is a foreign word when I’m alone with you?”
Her breath caught. Her eyes widened, enough for him to know she understood precisely what was about to happen.