Candice Hern (55 page)

"Of course," Olivia said, "you are correct. I just wish I understood."

"Mrs. Bannister," Lord Bradleigh said, "you are welcome to share our carriage with us when we depart Pemworth—which I presume will be much earlier than we had planned. Tomorrow?" he asked his wife. She nodded. "We are traveling to Derbyshire, and in easy stages, I am afraid. I refuse to allow Emily to be jostled more than is necessary. But we would be happy to take you wherever you would like to go."

"Thank you, my lord," Olivia said. "Let me consider what I must do. Then I may well accept your kind offer."

The earl and countess continued their way, very slowly, up the stairs. Olivia appreciated the earl's offer more than she could say. But where would she have him take her? To Bath, she supposed. Most of her belongings were still at Mary's Queen's Square town house. She would have to retrieve them and look for new work, which, of course, she had planned to do in any case. Mary would have had no further need of a companion after her marriage. But now, with the wedding canceled, she was not sure if Mary would eventually want her back.

Good heavens, but her head was spinning over this new predicament. She needed fresh air. She turned back into the Great Hall to head out the front door when the marchioness entered from the opposite end. Olivia stopped to acknowledge her and watched as the woman ambled slowly across the tiled floor, her shoulders sagging, her head bent. When she reached Olivia, she looked up, and Olivia was stunned by the open despair in her eyes. She looked older, somehow.

"Mrs. Bannister," she said as she laid her hand on Olivia's arm, "do you understand this business at all? Mary's leaving, I mean."

"No, my lady. I am at a loss to understand it."

"She told me about herself, you know," the marchioness said. "About her father, her elopement... everything."

"Oh." Olivia was surprised to hear this information. Mary was normally very circumspect about her past. Olivia, more than anyone, knew how painful a subject it was for her.

"And because of what I know," the marchioness continued, "I am especially worried about her. I am convinced something happened to upset her... to reopen, somehow, those old wounds. I don't know." She shook her head in confusion. "But I'm afraid it must have something to do with Jack."

"You think he might have .. . said something to ... to hurt her?"

"I do not know. But I can assure you he was as stunned as the rest of us. If he did say, or do, something, he was certainly unaware of it. This has hurt him badly, Mrs. Bannister. You cannot imagine. I am worried for him. For what he will do."

Olivia simply nodded, not knowing what to say. The raw sorrow on the other woman's face was agonizing to watch.

"I cannot stay and watch his self-destruction. Not again. I cannot bear it. If you will excuse me ..." The marchioness turned away and walked toward the great staircase. Olivia watched as she dragged herself up the first few steps.

Good Lord. What had Mary done? Did she realize how many people she'd hurt with her abrupt departure?

She
must
have known. It was unlike Mary to be so thoughtless of other people's feelings. Her behavior toward Olivia yesterday was wildly out of character. The only answer had to be that Mary herself was hurting so badly she did not care. But hurting over what?

Olivia pushed open the heavy oak doors and hurried outside. She stopped on the entry steps and took a deep breath to calm her nerves. The breeze came from the south, and the air was pungent with salt. Without thought, her steps took her toward the rear of the house, toward the sea.

As she followed the path along the east wing, her thoughts were all of Lord Pemerton and his mother, and the different ways Mary's departure had affected them, when she noticed something blue among the lavender bushes against the Hall. She stopped to idly investigate and was astonished to find a blue parasol, which she immediately recognized as Mary's. It was not among the newer items of her trousseau, but an old favorite brought from Bath. It lay half buried among the bushes near a set of French doors. Olivia peered cautiously through the doors and recognized the library. How odd, she thought. What on earth was Mary's parasol doing outside the library?

Ah, well, she thought, squinting into the bright morning sun. She could use a parasol just now. She held it out and shook it vigorously to remove the dirt, opened it, and perched it above her shoulder as she briskly wound her way through the various gardens stretching toward the sea. She found herself at last on the headlands path above the steep red cliffs and decided to visit the beautiful little pavilion at the highest point along the path. Mary had mentioned that it had been built by Jack's grandfather in imitation of some Greek temple or other. Perched precariously on the jutting edge of a rocky cliff, the small, round building was built of the same pink stone as the Hall. Simple fluted columns supported a domed roof topped by a glass lantern. Olivia paused a moment on the path to admire the graceful lines and simple beauty of the tiny building before proceeding.

She climbed the steps up to the open structure and walked inside where she found two curved stone benches, facing back to back in the center of the room to form a broken circle. She tossed the parasol and her bonnet on one of the benches and walked to the cliffside edge of the pavilion and leaned against one of the columns. She closed her eyes and threw back her head, letting the blustery wind sting her face, relishing the smell and taste of the salty sea air, which never failed to remind her of Martin. They had shared a small house near Plymouth during the ten years of her marriage, not far to the west along this same coastline.

Oh, Martin. What am I going to do?

"May I intrude?"

Olivia turned with a start to find Edward Maitland on the steps of the pavilion, smiling roguishly at her. Feeling the ubiquitous blush that always seemed to accompany his presence, Olivia looked down and made a great business of straightening her skirts, which had become ruffled by the wind. She felt somehow naked without her bonnet. "Of course," she said, not daring to look at him. "Please come in."

"You are a difficult woman to track down, Olivia."

Her head jerked up at the unexpected familiarity.

"You don't mind if I call you Olivia, do you?" He had entered the pavilion and now eased himself onto one of the benches, his arms stretched out negligently along the back rail. "In private, at least. After all, my dear, we are not such young pups that we need be overly concerned with the proprieties. Please, call me Edward." He patted the space on the bench beside him.

Olivia glared at him momentarily, instinctively retreating behind her stern paid-companion mask. But at the moment, she was no one's paid companion, and she was no match for that smile and those twinkling blue eyes. She soon abandoned her mask, smiled in return, and sat down next to him. "Edward," she said.

"Ah. We make progress." He chuckled and Olivia found herself watching him closely. Though he was a notorious libertine, his face did not show the marks of dissipation one would expect. His skin was not mottled like a drunkard's, nor were his features pinched like an habitual gambler's. Oh, his face was lined, to be sure, for he was not a young man. But the lines were most prominent when he smiled, which was often. He really was very attractive.

"Actually," he said, "I have come to apologize. For Jack, that is. His behavior toward you was shameful." His face sobered and his voice softened. "But I wish you would not hold it against him, Olivia. I regret his lack of control, but he was hurting and lashing out."

"I understand," she replied. She relaxed against the back rail, thinking how easy it was to talk with Edward. "It is just that I was in no condition to withstand his anger at that moment. I was hurting, too."

"She abandoned you as much as Jack, didn't she?"

"It is not quite the same, of course," she said, "but I have been feeling rather at loose ends. I still have not yet decided what I should do now."

"Will you follow her?"

"I have no idea where she has gone. If she is truly running away, I cannot imagine she would return to Bath. That is the first place one would look. But where else she might have gone, I simply do not know. Actually, I am quite worried about her."

"She is more vulnerable than she lets on, is she not?" Edward asked.

Olivia turned toward him abruptly. "Yes, she is. How did you guess?"

"It was not so very difficult," he said. "I was listening, remember, when Lady Bradleigh railed at Jack this morning. She mentioned Lady Mary's fragile sensibilities. But then, I knew she had Assheton for a father. Any daughter of his would necessarily be fragile. She hid it well, though. She never appeared anything less than witty, vibrant, happy." A puzzled frown crossed his face, and he shook his head slowly back and forth.

"I have no idea what happened," Olivia said in response to his unasked question, "but to have left like that, without a word ... well, it must have been serious, that is all. Poor Mary."

"And poor Olivia, stranded in the wilds of Devon."

Olivia laughed. "I am not precisely stranded. Lord Bradleigh has offered me a place in his carriage when he and the countess leave tomorrow. And besides, if I were stranded, I cannot think of a more beautiful place to be so." She turned her gaze to the sea and lifted her face again to the breeze. "I love the sea."

"Do you?" Edward cocked a brow when Olivia turned back to face him. "I... um, I have a small home by the sea, as it happens."

"Oh?"

"Yes. A bit more rugged setting than this." He made a sweeping gesture toward the cliffside. "Due north of here, along the Somerset coast on Bridgewater Bay. My small estate, Colfax Ghyll, is bordered by craggy cliffs on one side and wild, barren moors on the other. Rather gothic, I suppose. I am afraid I have not spent much time there. Tend to make London my home, most of the year. Though... well, I have been thinking, lately, that I should spend more time in the country. I have always enjoyed Pemworth, but this visit, in particular," he said, brushing his knuckles ever so lightly along Olivia's jaw, "has made me long to return to Colfax Ghyll."

His brief touch sent a tingle all the way down her spine, and she was very much afraid another blush had crept up her throat and cheeks. She tried, with little success, to keep her voice level. "I have never seen any of the more northern coasts," she said, keeping her eyes on the sea beyond. "I am only familiar with the southern shores. I lived in Plymouth for some years and have more recently traveled with Mary to Brighton and to Bognor Regis."

"And do you sail?"

"I used to," she said, turning to him with a smile. "My ... my husband was in the navy, you see."

"Ah." Edward gazed out toward the sea. "And when did ... that is, how long have you been widowed?"

"Martin was lost at Trafalgar."

Edward did not respond, but continued to stare ahead. Olivia did the same, wondering what had become of the comfortable ease between them. There was a kind of tension in the air that she could not quite describe, but which almost unnerved her.

"And you have been earning your living as a companion," Edward said at last, "all these years since your husband's death?"

"Yes."

"And is that what you intend to do now? Find another post, I mean?"

"Yes," she said, feeling suddenly shy and awkward, "assuming Mary has no further need of me. I have no other source of income, you see. I must work. I have no other choice."

"Yes, you do." With a movement so sudden that Olivia gave a squeal of alarm, Edward captured her in his arms. His face inches from hers, he did not move for a long moment. Finally, his head lowered so that only the space of a breath separated his lips from hers. "Yes, you do," he whispered before setting his mouth to hers and kissing her soundly.

When he raised his head and smiled at her, Olivia could do nothing but stare. She had not been kissed in almost ten years, and only ever by Martin. She had forgotten how pleasant it could be and found herself shamelessly hoping Edward would kiss her again.

"You do have choices, my dear," he said, still holding her, though not so tightly. "You can come with me to Colfax Ghyll."

Olivia pulled herself away from him, stood up, and walked stiffly toward the edge of the pavilion. Good Lord in heaven. The man actually had the nerve to offer her
carte blanche
. Her! Olivia Bannister! Who would have ever imagined that Olivia Bannister would ever be the object of such an offer? And at her age! She kept her back to Edward as a smile stole across her face. When she really thought about it, it was quite flattering, after all. To think that as a forty-five-year-old matron she still held some appeal to a gentleman so ... worldly ... as Edward Maitland, to think that he might find her desirable in that way ... well, it really was most gratifying.

Most gratifying, indeed.

She heard Edward move toward her. She bit back her smile with some difficulty and turned toward him. "I am sorry, Edward, but I cannot accept your offer. You know I cannot."

Edward's face fell, and Olivia felt a stab of guilt at refusing him. Did it really matter that much to him, then? Was it more than simply a frivolous spur-of-the-moment offer? No matter. She had to refuse him. She could not allow herself to feel guilty for refusing such an offer. But still...

She smiled warmly at him. "I very much appreciate your asking, though. It is very flattering, especially at my age, to receive such an offer, however improper."

"Improper!" Edward's eyes widened as a stunned expression crossed his face. Suddenly, his eyes twinkled with comprehension, and he threw back his head and laughed.

Olivia eyed him quizzically. Having no experience in these matters, she had no idea what she might have said or done wrong. She glared at him, uncertain how to react.

Still chuckling, Edward put his hands on her shoulders and drew her close. "My dear Olivia," he said, his blue eyes boring into hers. "I had no idea a marriage proposal was considered improper. But then I've never made one before, so I could be wrong."