Volume the Second
Olivia—
After your last missive, I was sure that you would not meet me in the gardens. I only went myself because I hoped against hope that you would somehow appear after all. Now, I feel that I have never previously appreciated caramels. They were never a particular favorite before, I must confess, but now I seem to have acquired a taste for the sweet—and I do believe that they will forever remind me of you.
Would you indulge with me further by meeting me tomorrow evening at the Star and Sickle Tavern? I promise to have a bag of caramels and an ale waiting for you at midnight.
Augustus
*
Augustus—
I should refuse outright, as you well know. If I am caught out of bed after hours, Mrs. Phelps would turn me away without a second thought, I am sure.
But after yesterday, I suppose my refusals seem rather hollow. I should have not let you kiss me either, but how could I resist a man who tasted of caramel? It was hardly fair of you to tempt in such a fashion.
I will meet you at the tavern.
Olivia
*
Olivia—
Fear not—I will ensure that Mrs. Phelps does not discover your absence. She has an awful weakness for brandy and I know where to get some not often found on English shores. She and Mr. Phelps are to have a bottle, a roast pheasant, and a French gateau in their quarters tomorrow evening. They will have no reason to stray from their feast.
In terms of the kiss, I can scarcely write about it. Please know that I do not presume the event will be repeated. Your company is all I desire. I cannot hope to be so lucky as to receivetwokisses from you inonelifetime.
Augustus
*
Perhaps, he hadcalled too early.
It was the morning after a ball and no one ever planned to rise early after such an occasion. Montaigne had forced himself to wait through the conventional breakfast hour—but he hadn’t been able to restrain himself any longer. He needed to speak with Olivia, and she had given him permission to call on her. While last evening had not gone exactly as planned, he had won what he needed: an audience with her.
And she had let him kiss her. After that kiss, the rest of the ball had been a blur, and he had only been able to glimpse her in snatches from across the room. He could still feel his body humming with the nearness of hers, the sweetness of her lips and tongue teasing him relentlessly in the subsequent hours, as he spoke to acquaintances and tried to act jovial with his friends. He consoled himself, somewhat, by discussing with Catherine the advances that he had made towards a closer understanding with Olivia, and his friend had congratulated him warmly. But when he put his head on his pillow last night, it swam with her. Then, he would have given anything for just a few more moments with her on that balcony.
So, now, at half before noon, the Earl of Montaigne sat alone in a fashionable Bloomsbury drawing room, waiting for Miss Olivia Watson to show herself. He had been waiting for nearly ten minutes and he was beginning to grow agitated. The tasteful pastel pink that formed the theme of the room, along with the furniture, so new he could smell the wood varnish, seemed to taunt him. This drawing room was a space for young, unbroken swains to call on their beautiful sweethearts. It wasn’t a space designed for him, a notorious rake with a blackened reputation, to try and convince a superior woman that he was worth a second chance.
It seemed that that lady wasn’t sure he was worthy of second chance, or even the possibility of a second chance, because she had yet to come downstairs.
Yes, the butler had told him that he wasn’t sure if the lady had risen, and he supposed she still may need to dress—but he couldn’t lie to himself. Each minute of waiting meant that she very well may have changed her mind about allowing him to speak with her. Which meant that she had changed her mind about hearing him explain his side of the scandal sheets, because she must know that that was what he came to do. And she must suspect that he wanted, that he intended when calling on her, to ask if—
The door opened on a well-oiled snick and Olivia came through it. When he saw her in the fresh morning light, he struggled for a moment, as he usually did, to breathe. She was wearing a day dress of butter yellow. It made her eyes appear like pure, unadulterated honey, a golden brown so deep that it threatened to pull him under.
He stood as she entered, and she gave him a slight curtsey before taking a seat on the sofa across from his chair. He sat again and, for a moment, as they had last night, they just looked at one another.
The fullness of her figure, the creamy temptation of the skin at her collar, provoked his senses afresh.
He realized that he was probably looking at her the way a wild animal might ogle its prey. Their eyes met. He needed to keep his wits.
“Olivia,” he began, “I owe you an explanation. When I tried to speak to you without one, after the opera, I wasn’t thinking.”
Her brow furrowed. “Indeed, you were not. If you thought I wouldn’t see myself in the line of servants that you seduced—that they say you have seduced,” she corrected, when he raised his hand to object, “then you mistake me entirely. But you have enough power to influence the scandal sheets. Perhaps, you would not be able to shut them up completely, but if the narratives there were not true, you could bully them into a kind of submission. I cannot be the only person who took your lack of objection as tacit admission—and maybe even boasting.”
“Doubtlessly, you are not,” he said, wincing at how sordid it all must sound from her vantage. “But would you let me explain?”
“I am listening,” she nodded. Her eyes did hold an eagerness. It gave him strength to continue, even though he wasn’t quite sure how he would manage explaining it all.
“Thirteen years ago, after you left—” he began, but then broke eye contact with her and found himself unable to go on. He tried to stifle the blush he knew must be rising over his fair complexion. She must know by now how heartbroken he was when she departed and there seemed no use in belaboring the point. He had offended her with his lack of serious intentions and he must not appear to whine over the punishment he had received. He caught his breath. “The scandal sheets caught wind of what had happened between us. I believe it was probably one of my mother’s staff, who realized that they could make a quick few pounds selling the story. And it was only a small item that appeared, intimating that I had had an affair with a maid in my employ. Conversation, I remember is the term they used.”
He had winced at it, then. How they had dirtied what he had had with Olivia, reducing it to a few inches of tawdry newsprint, when their relationship—to him at least—had been so sincere, so sweet. Literally, in fact. Reading that little item, you would have never guessed that they had shared a bag of caramels, as chaste as children, sitting in the gardens of his townhouse. And that, when he had first kissed her, she had tasted of the browned sugar and something ineffably her, innocent and hardy all at once, delicate and resilient.
“I remember the piece,” Olivia nodded. “I wondered if you felt humiliated.”
“No, of course not,” he said, shaking his head. “But it did cause a stir. Viscount Brightley was wrong last night about many things, but I do have to give credence to his description of my family’s situation. We are related to half of the aristocracy. And I was young, no one knew much about me yet. It attracted notice—and, as I soon learned, not just among the ton.”
“What do you mean?” That crease had returned between her brows.
He laughed. He had to laugh at the memory of this. How ridiculous, truly, it had been. And it was a story he had never been able to properly tell to anyone before, given everything that had since come to pass.
“Every spring, I visit my cousin’s estate in Norfolk. For the hunt. Not long after you left, I went for my annual trip. When I arrived in my rooms, after a long journey, late at night, they were not empty.”
He had her attention now. Her eyes had widened, and her mouth was parted just slightly.
“Who was there?”
“A maid. A scullery maid, in fact. And she was nude—in my bed. She announced to me that she knew I liked a bit of downstairs and that she was willing to be my next conquest.” He smiled, still remembering the girl’s strong Yorkshire accent. “To say I was shocked would be an understatement. I told the girl that I could not bed her. It did not seem right. She was comely enough, I assured her, but she was a servant in the house.”
“I was a servant in your house.”
“I know,” he said, wincing at how hypocritical he must seem to her, “And I see now how that was not fair to you. But with you, it was always so different. I wasn’t able to see you that way—as a maid. You were always just Olivia to me.”
He thought her eyes softened a bit at this description, but he couldn’t be sure.
“And this girl? She was just a maid?”
“She was a maid I did not know. A dependent in the household of my cousin. As I said, it did not seem right. When I refused, however, she nearly begged. I didn’t understand. The girl had never seen me before that moment. While I admit that I have been called handsome at turns, women generally don’t beg me to bed them.”
Olivia laughed. The sound lit something in him—it was the first time he had heard her laugh in thirteen years. He had forgotten how he loved her laugh, how genuine it was when she graced you with it, and how sparing she was with the sound. You always knew when Olivia laughed that she meant it. She didn’t bother with faking.
“You must have been perplexed.”
“I was. But, after some cajoling, she told me the truth. I don’t know if you remember, but, in that scandal sheet item, it said—bollocks, of course—that the maid, you, were dismissed with a generous parting gift.”
He looked up and saw that Olivia’s smile had faltered. She must know that that detail, about the generous parting gift, had been made up by the newspapermen to make the whole affair sound more dissipated. Still, it shamed him. It revealed how blind he had been to the power he had had over her, how he had made her vulnerable.
For a moment, confusion flitted across her face. But then it was gone. Instead, she nodded.
“Of course.”
“There was no amount even named—but the scullery maid had latched onto it. Apparently, her brother was trying to start his own sheep farm back in Yorkshire. He only needed a few guineas to do it. Once he had his farm, she could leave the south of England and go back home. When she heard that I was coming to my cousin’s estate, she thought she might make in one night what it would take her years to earn otherwise.”
“No!” Olivia said, her eyebrows raised. “Really?”
It felt good to tell someone the story, the real story, after all these years of keeping it to himself. He had told an amended version to his friends, a version in which he bedded the girl, but somehow it had not been nearly as comic as the truth.
“Well, I was unsure what to do,” he continued, “I still felt it was wrong to bed the maid—whose name was Tabitha, by the way. Yet I was moved by her and her brother and their sheep farm. And she had gone to so much trouble already. Taken off her clothes and presented herself to me. It was bold, to be sure.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, I struck her a compromise. I told her that I would not tup her, but that I would give her ten guineas for her trouble. And I advised her that she could probably sell the story to the scandal sheets for at least another. Really, they should call me the Eleven Guinea Earl. But, of course, it might be less or more that they get from the papers. I do not know the going rate for such stories myself.”
He had been dreading reaching this part in his tale and he knew he was rambling in the hopes that she had forgotten or would, at least, let this part pass without comment. He and Olivia had once had a joke, the silly type of thing that young lovers say to one another, that he should pay her ten guineas for every time he pleasured her with his mouth. That was how much he loved it. When he had first done it, she had been shy. She had said that she felt like he was serving her. That she felt selfish. He had been so young and eager for it, for knowing how to please her and for being that close to her, that he had blurted out that he should pay her for the pleasure. It had become a joke between them—after he would finish pleasuring her, after bringing her to the kind of intense orgasm that aroused him so deeply, she would joke, “Where is my ten guineas?” That had always made him laugh so much.
Then she had disappeared. He hadn’t understood why. He had begun to imagine his life with her, how it would look. When she had left, he had been young—and angry. He thought that, maybe, she would read the scandal sheets and see the detail about the ten guineas and feel jealous and come back. It was the only time he had affiliated the scandal sheets and Olivia, the maids and Olivia. It had been juvenile and foolish. He did not feel secure enough with her to address it now. To recall such an intimate moment. And one that she might not even remember. She seemed, all things considered, to have largely forgotten about him over the years. Olivia was hardly nursing the flaming tendre that, to his humiliation, he had been unable to subdue.
“You did not bed her?” Olivia asked, blessedly ignoring the bit about the ten guineas.
“I did not. Although she stayed in my room until morning. She insisted that no one would believe her otherwise, although I do think the enticement of a large, comfortable bed for someone used to scullery work formed part of her conviction on that score.”
“Surely,” Olivia said, dryly. “But what of the others?”
He fought off yet another blush. “Servants talk, as you know. And once I struck this bargain with this one maid, when I would visit the houses of my friends and relatives, more maids began to appear in my bedchamber. I’ve never been able to refuse one. With the stories they tell. Of course, I have no idea if they are true. Still, I find I can’t turn them away. Not even the girl who merely wanted a pair of ruby buckles for her dancing slippers.”
“Ruby buckles?”
“She wanted to impress the butcher’s son.” Montaigne smiled at the memory of that maid, a gap-toothed brunette with a strawberry birthmark on her face. He hoped she had gotten what she wanted.
“But your reputation. You shredded it so that you could give maids guineas?”
“I didn’t care for my reputation, then.” He searched for a way to explain it that would not come off as too pathetic. He did not want to reveal that, for years, after she had gone, he had been hopeless about his future. His reputation hadn’t mattered to him at all. Nothing had. “I didn’t want to marry. My friends and I didn’t have sterling reputations anyway. We were known for being wild. And…”
He trailed off. He wasn’t sure how honest he should be.
“What?”
He sighed. It might help her understand.
“Well, there was something—comforting about it, after a while. They were always such nice girls. And the type I would never have gotten the chance to speak with otherwise. They were charming. I never had women friends outside of my sisters. I enjoy talking to them. I like hearing about their lives. Sometimes, we’ll play backgammon or chess. Often, I will order a meal from the kitchens. Many of them are underfed. They love eating dainties that they help prepare but are seldom allowed.”
He looked up at Olivia. She was looking at him in a daze of confusion. She blinked rapidly a few times.
“You don’t bed them?” she repeated. “You play backgammon and talk about sheep farms in Yorkshire and eat dainties from the kitchen?”
He shrugged.
“Their tendency to disappear after such liaisons does give the whole thing a slightly sinister cast, I will concede. Recently, when I was at the Dalrymple rout, a lady’s maid named Alice pulled me into an alcove. That happens sometimes. She left her post a few days later. Lord and Lady Dalrymple blame me, apparently. They think I ravished her into fleeing their home. Easier to blame me, then acknowledge that they underpay their staff. Alice was making less than a scullery maid at my house.”
“I—I don’t know what to say.”
“It doesn’t matter what you say,” he said, exhaling. He was so relieved to have explained it to her—and that she didn’t seem angry, merely a bit perplexed. “I just wanted you to know. The truth. No one else knows it.”
“And now you want—you want to bed me again. That’s why you are telling me all of this?”
Bed her again? He wanted so much more than that. But it seemed very difficult to say that now. He had already revealed so much.
“Bed you—and spend time with you,” he qualified, lamely.
“But it doesn’t change anything. Not really.” She said the words, softly, and his heart sunk.
He had intended to propose marriage. It was the only proposition that seemed to capture his feelings for her. But such a heavy declaration felt like it would overwhelm them right now. She already seemed so shocked.
Montaigne thought of what Catherine might advise in this circumstance. He had wanted to drag Olivia into a room and make her hear him at his ball—but Catherine had shown him why such an action was rash. He needed to start on a smaller scale. He had done that with Olivia once. Sending her ribbons and sweets. Back then, he hadn’t known to think large. And it had won her the first time.
Once she could trust him again, they could speak of marriage. Now, he just needed her to see that he didn’t intend to hurt her.
“I understand that I hurt you in the past, Olivia. That I disappointed you. I just want to make up for it.”
“How will you do that?” The words came out in a near whisper. Her eyes met his and he felt hot all over.
Montaigne swallowed. He needed to think. He couldn’t get distracted.
“By courting you,” he said, the words coming to his lips as he thought them. “I want to court you. Formally.”