Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
LONDON, A MONTH LATER
Comfortably seated inside Viveca’s sumptuously appointed drawing room, Saskia took afternoon tea with her sister.
But, really, she was waiting.
Waiting for a certain subject to be broached pertaining to a certain someone.
For the last hour, however, Viveca had been content to go over the Sirens’ finances for the week—first the circulating library, then it was on to the publishing house.
A few new authors had caught her fancy. “We’ll need to bring them out during a month when you don’t have a release.
” Viveca took a sip of her tea. “Speaking of which, when do you expect to have your next Harriet LaPlume novel turned in?”
Harriet LaPlume wasn’t the certain someone Saskia had been waiting to discuss. “I, erm…”
Viveca’s brow crinkled ever so subtly. “Have you been writing?”
“I have.”
And she had, truly. She’d been writing steadily this last month, but the fact was Harriet LaPlume was nowhere near to being ready to deliver her next novel.
The book she was working on wanted to take a different shape from her previous books, and she wouldn’t be sharing it with anyone—not even Viveca—until she understood it better.
Likely, she suspected, it would end up in the rubbish bin.
“I could read some pages, if you like.”
“I’d rather hold onto them for now.” Saskia gave a little shrug. “They may be nothing.”
Viveca’s bright blue eyes took on that glint of fervor that anyone who knew her knew to watch out for. “Nothing you write, Saskia, is nothing.”
Oh, that everyone could be loved by a loyal-to-the-bone sister. “I’ll share it with you soon, I promise.”
Somewhat mollified, Viveca nodded and smoothed clotted cream onto a scone before topping it with a dollop of strawberry jam. “Thank you for bringing Mrs. Stanton’s clotted cream. It is divine.” The last word was muffled by a too-large bite. “I must convince her to share the recipe with our cook.”
Saskia shook her head. “Mrs. Stanton doesn’t share her recipes.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Viveca. “I almost forgot to ask.”
Again, Saskia found herself on edge, still waiting for that certain subject about that certain someone to be broached.
“Do you have any news relating to the memoir?”
And there it was—the conversation Saskia had been waiting for. “None.”
“Have you received any word from him?”
Him.
They both knew who.
“Not since the Derby.”
Well, the morning after the Derby.
Information she would keep to herself.
Viveca’s head tipped to the side. “What should we call him now, anyway? Liam Cassidy will no longer do.”
“Your lordship, I suppose.” Saskia had given this some thought.
“My lord,” said Viveca. “The servants will call him milord.”
“Bolton?” suggested Saskia.
Liam, she didn’t say.
Even with all those other changes to his name, Liam still applied.
Viveca shook her head in wonder. “Bolton.”
“You might hear an odd rumor about me… And it might turn out to be true.”
And hadn’t it?
Within a week, rumor had become fact, which had become the most delicious gossip society had enjoyed in years. The most famous and successful jockey in the land, Liam Cassidy was the by-blow of the Earl of Bolton.
Except…
He hadn’t been illegitimate at all. A secret marriage between the earl and his cook had preceded Bolton’s marriage to the lady all society knew as his countess. And when the earl died last month, the truth had come flooding out and hit society like a tidal wave.
“No one has seen him since the news became public,” said Viveca conversationally. “Where could he be?”
“At an ancient family pile somewhere in the countryside?” That was Saskia’s best guess, anyway.
Viveca nodded. “I suppose he’ll be learning how to be an earl.”
His parting words to her the morning after the Derby…
the morning after, well… Anyway, those words had intrigued her—how could they not?
—but it wasn’t until a week later that they’d made sense, and an entirely obvious realization had struck her.
The night of the Derby when he’d come to her room, celebratory bottle of whiskey in hand, he’d known of his ascendence into the peerage—and he hadn’t come to celebrate at all.
He’d come to talk to her about anything else and drink and distract himself.
And how did she know this?
The desperation she’d detected in his eyes, she now understood it.
And she understood something else, too.
The earldom…
He didn’t want it.
For him, it wasn’t the windfall most would consider it. Liam Cassidy hadn’t needed a hereditary title to secure his place in the world. Further, he didn’t need a title to prove his worth to the world. He’d done that all on his own, through his own talent and drive.
“There can’t be much to being a lord,” continued Viveca, “going by how most lords conduct themselves in The Archangel. The stories Blaze can tell. Now, my husband could write a memoir to end all memoirs.” She spread her hands wide. “Licentious Lords and their Lusty Lives.”
“Rather a mouthful.”
“A work in progress,” allowed Viveca, her mind clearly working on this new prospect. She exhaled a sigh. “I suppose the Liam Cassidy memoir won’t happen now.” She couldn’t hide her disappointment.
“I suppose it won’t.”
A sharp, little pain needled through Saskia. That very thought had struck her—and kept striking her, sending that sharp, little pain needling through her every time.
“I’ll contact him once his life has calmed a bit,” said Viveca. “Just to make sure. But surely, he won’t be a jockey anymore, will he?”
“Surely not.” How glum she sounded.
Viveca angled so she faced Saskia squarely. “Now, I have news.” Her eyes sparkled with a secret bursting to be revealed. “Another work in progress, one might say.”
Before Viveca could speak another word, Saskia knew what her sister was about to say.
“I am with child,” pronounced Viveca.
Though she’d suspected, instant tears sprang to Saskia’s eyes, and she wasted no time gathering Viveca into her arms. “Oh, I’m so happy for you, sister.” A wet laugh escaped her as she swiped tears that had already begun streaming down her cheeks. “And for myself.”
She loved being an aunt to Gabriel’s and Tessa’s children, and Viveca’s would be no different. Unexpected, that had been, how much she enjoyed her nieces and nephews. She angled back. “I’m surprised it took you and Blaze this long.”
Not the most proper observation, but she and Viveca could say such things to one another. It had always been so.
Viveca, of course, paid the impropriety no mind.
“Oh, we decided to have a few years of just us. Blaze can be incredibly disciplined when he chooses. Really, you can’t imagine the ways he can be disciplined.
” A dreamy sigh distracted her before she snapped back into the present.
“Besides, I wanted to make sure Sirens was firmly on its feet first.”
“Oh, sister, you will make the best mother.”
“Tessa will always be the best.”
“You’re right,” Saskia allowed. “Second best mother, then.”
“I’m content with that.”
No one compared to Tessa in the eyes of Saskia and Viveca.
Viveca settled back and pinned Saskia with a long, assessing stare. “I have something else I would like to say to you today.”
“How can there possibly be more?” Saskia tried for levity, even as she knew it was no use when Viveca had that look in her eye.
“You should get out in society more often.”
Saskia snorted. A reflex, really. “Why on earth would I spend my valuable time socializing with that lot of twits more often than I already do?”
Viveca crossed her arms over her chest. “Which is how often precisely?” Before Saskia could answer the first question, her sister asked a second. “Have you attended a society event since the Derby?”
Saskia had no choice but to admit, “I haven’t.”
“So, then we’re agreed.”
Oh, no. Viveca was doing that thing she did when she was determined to have her way.
Saskia had ever delighted no end watching her sister perform this conversational trick on others.
But never had she been on the receiving end, and she liked it not one bit.
“What exactly are we agreed upon, sister?”
“That you need to get out more often.”
“I’ve agreed to no such thing.”
“But Saskia…” Viveca reached out and took her hand. “There’s no other way.”
“No other way?” Irritation flashed through Saskia. “Viveca, will you just speak plainly?”
“I want you to have what I have with Blaze.”
“I believe it’s safe to say no one on the planet has what you have with Blaze.”
But Viveca wasn’t inclined to let up. “I want you to have your own version of it, sister. The version that makes you happy.”
“I am—”
Happy.
But she couldn’t speak the word.
It refused to pass her lips.
She could usually say it, because usually she considered herself happy. She was happy with her life—her writing, her business, her comforts. But sitting here with Viveca, hearing her baby news, Saskia understood there was a whole level of happiness she had no notion of.
Yet…that wasn’t completely true, was it?
Liam Cassidy—or whatever he was called now.
Their time together…their night together… Didn’t they offer an inkling of that other level of happiness Viveca wanted for her?
Unbidden, that night returned to her. All the next day, her body had felt deliciously used—a little sore, but also pleasured.
A thoroughly pleasured body.
But it was more than that, too.
Something else had been both sated and awakened that night. As if she contained another desire alongside the desire of the body. Desires that were both linked and separate. One could influence the other, but they could also exist discretely.
And this other desire, what was it?
Not a desire of the mind.
Nothing so flimsy as that.
A desire of the soul…of the heart.
Both desires now awakened within her.
Instinctively, she understood this was what Viveca wanted for her. Someone who inspired those linked desires in Saskia the way Blaze did for her.
Viveca continued. “I suppose you received an invitation to the Duke and Duchess of Rakesley’s ball next week?”
“I did.”
“Of course, you know who will be attending.”
“I do.” The duchess was Liam’s sister, after all.
But, oh, Viveca was too sharp for her own good sometimes.
“I suppose it’s his come-out ball.” Viveca’s head tipped to the side.
“Do earls have come-out balls?” She shrugged.
“Well, this one is, and anyway, Saskia, you should go.” She nodded, clearly liking her idea more by the moment.
“And you can speak to him about the memoir. After all, you already have a relationship with him.”
Saskia gasped—actually gasped. “I do not have a relationship with Liam…Mr. Cassidy…Bolton!”
Within Viveca’s subtly narrowed eyes, Saskia detected triumph. “I only meant that you’ve worked together on the memoir,” she said, oh, so sweetly. “The two of you would naturally have an established rapport.”
Caught out, that was how Saskia felt—and there was no doing anything about it. Still, she had a fighting spirit and would try. “Oh, erm, yes, I…we have that.”
Would that she could sink into the sofa and through the floorboards below and live through the next hundred years of mortification blessedly alone.
But the universe offered no such sanctuary.
What it offered instead was Viveca’s unblinking gaze that possibly—likely—saw too much.
Saskia cleared her throat. “I’ll attend the ball. Now,” she continued, awkwardly coming to her feet, “I must go.”
Outside, Saskia’s feet marched steadily up Tichborne Street as she made her way homeward. It was a sweltering July day, but no hotter than her cheeks and the tips of her ears, which yet blazed with mortification.
One simply couldn’t hide from Viveca and that clever mind of hers.
Saskia almost felt badly for her future children.
They would get away with nothing. Actually, with a rogue for a father like Blaze Jagger, that might not be true.
But one thing was certain—the future children of Viveca and Blaze would be diabolically clever, and there was a tiny, mischievous part of Saskia that couldn’t wait to see it.
But that was years into the future, and Saskia had the here-and-now to contend with.
Namely, that she would be attending a ball next week—the come-out ball of the 4th Earl of Bolton, to be exact.
What would he be like?
He was Bolton now.
But was he still…Liam?