Chapter 9 #2
The letter in her hands wasn’t even damp. But then again, why would it be? It had been safely stored inside the pocket of Phineas’s jacket—the one which had stayed dry in the shed when the rain had started, and which now rested around her shoulders—for a few days, judging by the posted date.
Usual offer…Aberdeen Jones…Holy Land…leave immediately…send word of your arrival…looking forward to discussing details with you soon.
It was signed by the Board of Directors for the Society of Archaeology.
Olive’s hands shook as she folded the letter and returned it to the pocket of his jacket, tears threatening to spill.
Phineas was leaving her.
He was going to London to hear the particulars of this latest mission, and then he was going to the Holy Land to retrieve a Roman chalice from a city which shouldn’t even exist. He was leaving.
And he’d known it for days.
He’d known it when he’d suggested the archaeological dig with her.
He’d known it when he’d kissed her.
He’d known it when he’d allowed her to seduce him, to behave in the most wonderfully wanton manner. He’d known it when he’d made love to her beautifully enough to make her sob.
He was leaving.
With a sigh, Olive pulled her spectacles from her face and pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to squeeze the tears back inside her head. She knew she couldn’t cry right now. She simply didn’t have the energy.
She should march after Phineas, hand him the letter, and demand answers. But did she really want them?
Leaving the storage shed, not even an hour ago, she’d been struck by a sense of loss. It had been a wonderful interlude—the excavation and the intercourse—but it clearly wasn’t something that could happen again.
And now it wouldn’t, because Phineas Oliphant was leaving.
Or rather, Aberdeen Jones was leaving.
And she loved them both.
If only they—him—either of them—loved her.
But no, she’d thrown herself at a man she’d long admired, and he’d taken what she’d offered, hadn’t he? Could she blame him?
Could she blame herself?
She sighed again and slipped her spectacles back on. She needed to find him, if only to return his jacket and his letter, and tell him she didn’t expect anything from him in the future, since he was leaving. He’d likely accept the assurance gratefully.
The memory of him spilling his very essence inside her, and how she’d never felt closer to another human being in that moment, threatened to overwhelm her.
No, no, she couldn’t think of that. Best to get changed, hold onto her resolve, and say what needed to be said. To his face.
Should she bother sending for Mary? Olive stared down at her damp blouse and skirts, wondering if it was worth it.
She’d managed to get out of these clothes on her own earlier—although she’d had a much more interesting motivation—and more-or-less back into them. Phineas had helped her, but she could manage to change on her own.
Stalwartly, she pushed the memory of Phineas, and what they’d just shared, from her mind. She was unwilling to address that just now; her feelings were too raw.
“Knock-knock. Have you seen Tiffan—oh!”
Olive’s head snapped around to see Bonnie stopping short just inside the doorway. It appeared that she took one look at Olive and froze, one foot mid-step. “Oh dear,” she whispered.
Defensively, Olive wrapped her arms around her middle, pulling Phineas’s jacket tighter. “What? And did you just say knock-knock instead of knocking?”
“It was easier,” murmured Bonnie, already turning to reach for the door.
“And you left the door open. I have been trying to find my sister to drag her back home.” She nudged it shut so the two of them were alone in the room.
“Oh dear,” she repeated with a sigh as she turned to survey Olive once more.
“What?” Olive snapped again, lifting her jaw. “Have I grown a second head? Sprouted a mustache? Dribbled soup down my front? Tried to explain why Herodotus’s accounts of the Greco-Persian wars were flawed? Mispronounced something?”
Bonnie smiled faintly as she crossed the room. “The fact you consider the last to be as heinous as the first says a lot about you.”
“The fact you people do not care about Herodotus’s effect on our histories says something about you.”
“I care, just perhaps not as deeply as you.” Her new friend stopped in front of her and offered Olive a smile. “But I was oh dearing because you look like you might want a nice long cry.”
“Well, I do,” snapped Olive again, turning away but not going too far, because her friend’s comfort was welcome, “but I am not going to.”
“Are you going to get angry instead? That works for my sister. Well, Tiffany. Our other sister, Ember, seems to have infinite patience.”
Bonnie and Tiffany had a third sister? Why wasn’t she attending the house party?
With a sigh, Olive felt all the tension and irritation, leach from her shoulders.
“No,” she whispered, staring at the cluster of hair pins on her dressing table. She’d lost any number of them in the storage shed at the excavation site, and somehow, it hadn’t seemed to matter at the time.
Bonnie’s hand rested on her shoulder. “What is it, Olive? You can tell me. I know we just recently met, but I like to think of you as a friend. One I bonded with over our love of the printed word.”
It was true. Of all the young ladies attending the Dumpkins house party, Bonnie had seemed like such a kindred spirit. Would it hurt to share the truth?
It will make you feel better.
“I think I…” Tears pricked at the back of Olive’s lids. “I think I love Phineas.”
“Ah.” Bonnie was quiet a moment, then ventured, “And that is a bad thing?”
“It is if he does not love me back.”
To her surprise, her friend snorted a laugh, but when Olive swung around to glare at her, Bonnie shrugged.
“Forgive me, Olive, but…” She snaked her arm around Olive’s shoulders, while simultaneously nodding to her blouse. “It is fairly clear you have been loved quite thoroughly.”
With a gasp, Olive slapped her hands over her buttons, only to discover they were, in fact, done up incorrectly. That, combined with her mess of a hairstyle, and the fact she was wearing Phineas’s jacket, was fairly damning.
But she refused to be damned.
So she lifted her chin and shrugged Bonnie’s arm away as she began to undo her buttons completely. “Well, what of it?”
Her friend’s smirk was obvious in her voice when she asked, “So you have been loved?”
“I have been sexed.” Olive bit her lip as she shrugged out of the jacket, which she tossed over the back of a nearby chair, and then her blouse, letting that drop to the floor. “Is that the right tense? To sex? No, that is not it. Intercoursed? No, that is not a verb either.”
Bonnie’s eyes gleamed “Grammatical tenses aside, I think what you and Phineas just shared is called ‘making love.’ Here, let me help you.”
Olive gave up and accepted the offer because her fingers were shaking too much.
“We did not make love,” she muttered. “He does not love me.”
“Oh really?” Bonnie helped her out of her skirts, then went to work on the slapdash corset closures. “Then what does he feel for you?”
“Lust, perhaps, although why a man such as him could feel that for me…”
He didn’t have to feel lust for her, did he? Because she’d all but thrown herself at him. And he, being a gorgeous and virile man, had accepted.
Bonnie didn’t contradict her though. Instead, she asked thoughtfully, as she pulled Olive’s damp chemise over her head, “What does he say about such things? I mean, does he consider you undesirable?”
“Well…no.” In fact, he said wonderful things about her.
“So perhaps him being ‘in lust’ enough to make love to you is a bit more complex than you are making it. Here is a dry chemise. What does he say about you?”
Olive’s voice was muffled as she pulled the dry linen over her head. “He told me I am beautiful. And smart. And a worthwhile partner.”
When she emerged, Bonnie was standing there, her hands on her hips, looking exasperated. “And you did not believe him?”
“What?” Olive frowned in confusion.
“The man has said wonderful things about you. He cares for you; all of us can see it. But you, who has never believed in yourself, cannot see it!” She threw up her hands and stomped for the wardrobe which held Olive’s gowns.
“You are brilliant, Olive. You are intelligent and funny, and yes, a little bit different, but so am I, and I have to believe I am loveable, so therefore you must be loveable as well.”
It was a logical argument.
Still, Olive weakly protested, “You are my friend. Of course you would feel that way.”
“Yes, and Phineas is your friend too.” Bonnie pulled a blue day gown from its place. “And he could be more, if you could get your admittedly brilliant head out of your arse and accept that.”
“He is going to leave me.”
She probably shouldn’t have blurted it out, but when Bonnie turned, holding the gown, with an incredulous look on her face, Olive sighed and explained all about the letter she’d found in Phineas’s jacket pocket.
Frowning, Bonnie helped her dress, and Olive was grateful she’d accepted her friend’s help. She felt drained—empty—now that she’d shared all of her feelings, and was glad Willow and Hazel weren’t the ones here judging her.
When she was dressed, Olive’s new friend hummed. “And he never once said anything to you about leaving soon?”
“No. He let me trot off with him and pretend at being an archaeologist—he let me throw my body at him—without mentioning he will be leaving me. Us.”
His family, his sister, his new brother. Leaving Olive.
“Then did it ever occur to you, Miss-Brilliant-Scholar, that he is not accepting the invitation? It does not seem to me that he is lying to you or taking advantage of you…but more as if he just forgot the letter, or has decided not to act on it.”
“No,” Olive said flatly, turning so her friend could button her up. “No, that did not occur to me. Because it is wrong.”
“Or…” Bonnie spun her back around when she was finished and tapped Olive on the nose. “I am right, and you are just embarrassed I thought of a theory you have not.”
Rolling her eyes, Olive crossed her arms. “My theory is more logical.”
“But it is wrong. I am certain that Phineas received that letter before you started on your”—she waggled her fingers dismissively—”digging in the dirt adventure. He cares for you, Olive. He would rather spend time with you than worry about the Society for Thingy-whatever.”
“Archaeology,” mumbled Olive vaguely, but she wasn’t really paying attention. She was busy thinking about Bonnie’s argument. Was it possible Phineas wasn’t leaving her? Was it possible he really did think she was brilliant and worth staying for?
The time they’d spent excavating that winding riverbank had been some of the happiest hours of her life. And that had been because he’d treated her as an equal. Someone worth loving.
Her eyes widened.
“Olive…” When Bonnie placed her hands on her shoulders, Olive blinked and focused. “I know we are new acquaintances, but now that I have seen you mostly nude, and helped you through a crisis—you are welcome, by the way—I feel compelled to offer advice, so shut up and listen.”
Olive blinked as Bonnie took a deep breath and launched into her lecture.
“If books have taught me anything, it is that life is…well, it is twisty and turny, is it not? It can bend back on itself sometimes, like a lazy, slow river, or sweep us all along like an angry, fast one. But if you have the love of someone—a friend, a family member, or if you are lucky enough, a good man—then the twists and turns do not matter as much. You and I are friends, and will remain so, and you have your sisters, no matter what happens, but…” She leaned in and gave Olive a quick hug.
“But you could also have Phineas. And that is worth fighting for.”
Olive had gone stiff.
It was Bonnie’s river analogy—as rambling and windy as a Highland waterway—which had triggered something deep in her mind.
Perhaps it was because the analogy—it really was a terrible analogy—had come so close on the heels of her thinking about the excavation, but whatever it was, Olive was having A Thought.
A rather important one.
“Olive? Olive, you can cease shutting up now and say something.”
“A bend in the river,” Olive whispered, her eyes wide. “Where the current sweeps things, then slows and deposits them along the riverbank.”
“Um…yes?”
“Where they sink into the mud, quite a distance down from where they are supposed to be, and are hidden by more mud?”
Bonnie winced. “Well, I think you are belaboring what was a rather inept analogy to begin with, but I suppose that could be true.”
But Olive wasn’t seeing her friend. In her mind’s eye, she was tracing the map of the excavation.
Outside, much more than a thousand years ago, the river had bordered the little Roman outpost. The original excavators had assumed the edge of the town was built up against a street, but she and Phineas now knew it was the riverbank.
And the map of the town had curved around, following the bend in the river.
The bend in the river, where the current might sweep things and deposit them.
Like architectural elements fallen from the roof ridgelines of important buildings.
The golden sphaera.
“Olive? You have gone all glassy. Have I broken you? Oh dear, I have broken you, have I not?”
“No,” Olive breathed, suddenly full of excitement. “You have given me an idea.”
“An idea about how you should march up to Phineas Oliphant and declare your love for him?” Bonnie asked, sounding a bit nervous.
“I threw my naked body atop his,” Olive quipped drily. “I think he got the message already.”
She pulled away from her friend and reached for her hairbrush, determined to braid her hair up as quickly as possible so she could head to the excavation again. Now that the sun was out, the ground would be steaming, but she could still make some progress.
“Then what are you going to do?”
Olive lifted her chin and stared at her reflection in the mirror, a sense of certainty about her own worth filling her for the first time ever.
“I am going to prove I am as brilliant as he thinks I am.”