Chapter Two
Olivia—
Forgive this liberty. I thought no harm could come from leaving you this note in your tinderbox. I overheard your exclamation the other day over pink ribbons. I leave you this one as a token of my regard. I will check here for your reply. I must know if you are happy with your present.
Augustus
My lord—
I thank you for the ribbon, but it can hardly be proper for us to correspond in such a fashion. I’m sure the countess would object.
Also, I care for green ribbons, not pink.
Olivia
*
Why, in thedevil, had he winked at her?
He had been playing the part of the Earl of Montaigne, perhaps, for a little too long. Lord Montaigne—everyone knew him. He was a rake, of course, but that word was thrown around too liberally these days. It had begun to mean nothing and it didn’t begin to do justice to the place he held in society. He wasn’t like Leith, his best friend, who raked in a way that society could tolerate, taking his mistress-du-jour to the theatre on Friday and then escorting his mother the next evening. And he wasn’t like his other best friend, Trem, before he had married. Trem had been a mischievous ne’er-do-well with a penchant for a tricky situation. Trem had been the type of rake who would tup your unsatisfied wife silly. Once you’d gotten over your affront and remembered that you hadn’t touched the lady in years—and that she would doubtlessly be less sour now that she’d had a liaison of her own—you could split a tumbler of whiskey and laugh with Trem at White’s. In short, a useful rake.
But he, the Earl of Montaigne, was a rake’s rake, the kind that society actually reviled, and that only other rakes—the other, tamer types—would half-heartedly defend. He knew that, for years, his antics had been useful ballast for his friends, even if they hadn’t intended to benefit from his terrible reputation. He was the measure by which their own indiscretions appeared palatable, that still got them seated next to young debutantes at dinner, what kept them in the sights of hopeful mamas and in the good books of ton patriarchs. Montaigne hadn’t been seated next to a young debutante in years. Instead, he was seated with the old bastards no harm could come to any longer. The ones that everyone avoided at society gatherings, who couldn’t be expelled but were only tolerated, the men who had made their fortunes sending children into coal mines or harvesting turtles for terrapin stew.
And, apparently, he was little better. After all, as he had just proven, he was the kind of man who winked at a woman in clear distress. Distress, by all accounts, that he had caused.
He could tell himself that he had done the thing because he was a hardened rake. That he had ruined his moral fiber through his association with villainy. But he had been trying, as of recent, to lie to himself less. And the truth in this case was undeniable.
He had winked at her because he was happy to see her.
And because he still wanted her.
Last night, after he left her townhouse in Bloomsbury, he had been too ecstatic to return to Mayfair. He had walked the streets in a daze. He had only taken opium once, during an ill-fated night with Trem and a truly degenerate associate of theirs from Balliol. He had thought the hour of euphoria hardly worth the comedown. But seeing Olivia’s face again reminded him of opium, the good part, the part that felt like bottled happiness.
For hours, as he walked, that feeling lasted. Even now, even the next morning, he was still foxed with it. Her proximity. The bright brown eyes he remembered widening in pleasure, her pale skin glowing like the moon, the trail of freckles across her cheekbones, and her body, as full as he remembered—he had thought he would never see her again. And, yet, she had stood before him, alive and well and as vibrant as she had always been to him.
Their love, the one that they had experienced, had been of the type that, when he had lost it, he knew he had no hope of ever replicating. It had been that seamless blend of regard and lust that he didn’t believe a person could find more than once in a lifetime. Her body had been sacred to him, and back then he had worked to learn about her pleasure, how he could bring it to her again and again. It had been a privilege to do so.
Of course, last night, she hadn’t even wanted to speak to him. That fact—he knew it should perturb him more. A woman that you loved to distraction disappears without a trace, without an indication of where she is going, and then when she returns, she claims she wants nothing to do with you. It was, granted, not a promising sequence of facts.
And yet, if she was here, if she was alive, then he could know her, surely. If she would let him.
Furthermore, he flattered himself that having spent a great quantity of time in the company of ladies, and having no less than four sisters himself, he understood something about women.
And the look in her eyes, when she had cast him from the house—it wasn’t disgust or repulsion. It wasn’t the look you gave an old lover that you wished gone from the premises. She looked, if he had to put a finger on it, hurt. And she hadn’t been able to conceal that flicker, that little wanton spark, of desire in those brown eyes. He knew her too well for that. Even now.
No, he had always told himself that something had happened that he hadn’t understood. That she had been mistaken, that she had thought for some reason that he didn’t want her anymore, and, if he could only find her again, he would be able to make amends.
Last night, he hadn’t gotten the chance.
But he had waited thirteen years.
A few more days or, even, weeks were, at this point, nothing to him.
He wasn’t about to let anything stand in the way of a perfect understanding between them.
How, exactly, he would bring about this éclaircissement between he and Olivia, however, he remained unsure.
By morning, he was done walking around London. And he knew what he needed to do.
He returned to his town house, changed to morning dress, and sent Leith their emergency symbol with one direction: Hyde Park, 10 o’clock.
He and his best friends—the Marquess of Leith, the Viscount of Tremberley, and the Duke of Edington—had used the symbol since Eton. It was the first initial of all four of their titles (or, well, all three of their titles and John’s back when he had merely been the Marquess of Forster) overlaid on one another. The resulting rune was like a little four-paned window. They only used it when they were completely earnest, so Montaigne was not surprised when Leith appeared in the park at exactly ten o’clock looking somewhat alarmed.
Relief washed over him when he saw his best friend. While he loved Trem and John like brothers, he and Leith had always had a special closeness. Seeing that he had arrived as requested was a balm to his distress.
However, when Leith pulled up alongside him on his black stallion and jested that he was surprised he had risen so early, his gratitude dimmed. Olivia’s words rang in his ears—it would be fatal to my reputation if I were to grant a private audience to the Downstairs Menace—and Leith’s tone didn’t sound too far off from hers in tenor. He had long given up convincing his friends that he had reformed his ways since the drunken years of his—and, he might add, their—early twenties. In fact, if he was honest with himself, he found it easier to let his friends and all of society think that he was an abandoned hunter of domestics, a kind of beast with a penchant for scullery maids and housekeepers. When they thought such things of him, no one asked other questions. Questions he didn’t want to answer. Well, now, he thought ruefully, he was paying the price for that convenience.
As was his usual custom, he shrugged off Leith’s comment with a smile.
“Come,” he said, indicating that he wanted to walk, and so they set down the path, leaving the horses with the grooms.
“Monty, you know better than to send that symbol for nothing,” Leith grumbled, as they made their way out of earshot of the morning riders and their attendants, “What the devil is it?”
“Olivia,” he retorted, once he knew they were alone. “She’s back.”
Leith groaned. “Brother.”
He said no more, but Montaigne understood his reaction. They hadn’t talked about it much back then and yet, after her disappearance, he hadn’t been able to hide the source of his agony from his best friend. Leith had seen him drink himself into a stupor for a solid year. And, in the years after that one, Leith had watched him swill away any reputation he had on antics that, while done in a state of greater consciousness, must have appeared no less reckless.
And yet he couldn’t care. He needed someone to share in his jubilation and it would be Leith, because he had known the most of the affair in the first place. When he and Olivia had fallen in love thirteen years ago, he had only been twenty, and he had of course told his best friend all about it. John and Trem had been on their Grand Tour at the time, so they had been spared his effusions. By the time they had returned, Olivia was gone. Whether Leith had ever said anything to them about it, he didn’t know.
“She’s back,” he repeated, trying to impress on his friend the good fortune of this event.
“And did she welcome you with open arms? Explain that despite her thirteen years’ absence, she wants nothing more than to be your mistress again?”
Montaigne laughed, although Leith’s sarcasm cut him. Must he always be so caustic? Must he always measure everyone by the yardstick of the social world that he supposedly disdained but, more and more, dictated his actions?
“I’m serious, Monty,” Leith said, turning towards him. “That wench left you in the lurch. She vanished. It only spells trouble.”
“I know that might be how it appears,” Montaigne said, trying to find the words to make Leith understand. “But something happened thirteen years ago. There is something that I don’t understand. A woman just doesn’t—anyone just doesn’t—after the passion—”
He broke off, realizing how he sounded. He knew, if he looked over at Leith, his friend’s eyebrows would have disappeared into his hairline.
“I can’t believe I am about to say these words to the man regarded as the most abandoned rake in England,” Leith began, his voice a strange medley of pity and barely contained hilarity, “But women aren’t always sincere, Monty. In fact, people aren’t always trustworthy.”
“Thank you for informing me,” he replied dryly. “But I am telling you that I must find out if she is…was—sincere or not. I have no other choice.”
Leith sighed. “I don’t recommend this course of action.”
“But if I was going to do it anyway, how would you suggest I proceed?”
“Really?” Leith said, “You are going to make me advise you on how to pursue the paid companion of a rich man’s former paramour?”
Montaigne felt a ping of shock that Leith knew so much about Olivia’s current situation.
“How do you know that she is a lady’s companion?”
“Trem. You know he loves to gossip. Apparently, three nights ago, Mrs. Mapperton—who, by the way, goes by that name, but who is rumored to not actually be entitled to use it—brought her daughter to an assembly at Mr. Templeton’s townhouse. You know, that garish banker?”
“Who half the ton is in debt to, you mean? Yes, I am aware of the man.” Really, he was beginning to find Leith’s miming of aristocratic hypocrisy rather trying. He used to understand it as a put-on, but lately it had seemed increasingly a feature of his real personality.
“Yes, that Mr. Templeton. Well, apparently, after his rout, everyone was ablaze about this Miss Natasha Mapperton. She is making her debut this season, or what passes for a season in that milieu—”
“That milieu?!” Montaigne objected. Truly, Leith had become too much. “Mr. Templeton is admitted nearly everywhere you are.”
“Yes, but few of those people attend his entertainments. Anyway, the daughter is debuting, although no voucher to Almack’s, of course. Nevertheless she caused quite a stir. And now Mrs. Mapperton and her daughter are on everyone’s lips. I dare say they will be invited to functions by a few of the curious.”
“What do they say about Olivia?”
Leith looked at him with a perplexed expression. “Well, nothing. Of course.”
Montaigne didn’t enjoy the flavor of that of course. Even from his best friend. Even when the woman had thrown him out of her house yesterday evening.
“Why ‘of course’?”
Leith sighed. “I don’t say this to upset you. But, in the eyes of most, she is the rather plain, rather…too-plump companion of a woman already living on the edge of disgrace.”
Montaigne stopped. He felt a sudden, overwhelming need to punch Leith in the gullet. He loved the way Olivia looked. Even after the interlude of thirteen years, when her physical reality had to compete with his most fevered fantasies, he had not discovered last night one thing he would change about her.
All those years ago, he had loved her body, her fullness, the generosity and bounty of her unclothed. He had still never seen anything as beautiful as Olivia Watson without her clothes on. He had been surrounded by luxury his entire life, but he had never known true luxury, not really, until he had been with her. It hadn’t just been her body, the thought of which threatened to give him an erection in Hyde Park (not an experience he wanted added to his repertoire of societal sins, thank you), but how she had given herself to him without reservation. He had always been a spoiled boy, one doted on too much, perhaps, by his mother and large family. And yet he had never felt fully sated except for with her.
For him to feel this way, and to hear Leith’s detached tone, the contrast was, for a moment, unbearable.
But he couldn’t say all of that to Leith, of course.
“Olivia is perfect,” he finally managed.
Leith must have caught something of his mood.
“Calm yourself.” His voice was softer now. “I agree she is comely. But you know how the ton assesses these matters. Any little deviation from the ideal hardens into a flaw when the rank of the person in question is deemed inferior.”
“Is that how they see the world or how you do?”
Leith startled. For the first time that day, his friend looked at him with an earnest expression. When he did, he looked ten years younger. All at once, Montaigne could see the old Leith. He saw the boy with whom he’d crawled into a farmer’s patch near Eton to steal strawberries; the friend so close to him that they’d learned each other’s handwriting, so that Montaigne could complete Leith’s history assignments and Leith could do his Latin; the one who had provided a road to the world outside his family and with whom he had adventured forth to meet its challenges. In short, the friend who had been his steadfast partner in the endeavor of growing up.
“That’s how they see it. Not me.” Leith sighed, real pain shooting across his countenance. “I think your Olivia is a beauty and I told you that at the time. I’m only worried for you.”
“Don’t,” Montaigne shrugged, but he couldn’t say he did not appreciate the sentiment. Perhaps, even, Leith was right to be concerned, given how desperate he was feeling.
“You really will pursue her? No matter what?”
He stopped again on the path, turning towards his best friend. “Nothing will stop me.”
“Well, if you want to get closer to her, there is a clear way.”
Montaigne laughed. Leith didn’t give him enough credit, although he supposed he could not be too offended, given how often he played the undisciplined bounder.
“I already know how to do that, brother. I know all about the Mappertons, you see, and who they are to Olivia.”
“But you don’t care a fig for gossip.”
“I’ve made an exception, given the circumstances.”
“What do you need me for, then?”
Montaigne smiled. He could tell, from the way Leith asked the question, it was rhetorical. However, there was nothing illusory or unfinished about his plan. He had already spoken with his younger brother, Percy, about his scheme. When the boy had said yesterday morning he had made the acquaintance of the most beautiful girl he had ever seen at the Royal Theater, it had been a rather inconsequential detail. His brother fell in love several times a week. But what had been a piece of superfluity was now a golden opportunity.
And he did, indeed, have something very specific to ask of Leith.
It would take every ounce of credit that their years-long friendship had accrued to him to extract this favor. But he would do it.
Because he knew how he would get back in Olivia Watson’s good graces. And nothing could keep him from doing so.