Fool Me Twice (38 page)

“No.” All at once, she understood him completely. He was still blind, entirely. “The problem was not
you.
” A choked laugh escaped her. “Bertram was not worthy of my mother’s love, either. But she loved him all the same. Don’t you see? Love is not
earned.
And it’s not born of perfection. It—”

“You call that love?” he said sharply. “The cause of all her difficulties—and yours. That isn’t love; it’s
idiocy.
Selfish, thoughtless—”

She rose. “How
dare
you judge her?”

His jaw hardened. “Very easily,” he said as he stood. “You deserved better, Olivia. And she might have fought for you. Instead, she placed the interests of a scoundrel over her own child.”

She opened her mouth, quivering with rage—and what came out instead was a sob.

She clapped a hand over her lips, appalled. But oh, God, he had lanced her as expertly as an assassin. For within the space of a minute, he had shown why he would never trust his own feelings for her, and why she should not have trusted her mother’s.

She heard him curse. And then his arms were around her, and he was forcing her face into his shoulder, though she resisted him. His murmured apologies washed over her. She did not want them. She willed herself to be as hard as iron in his embrace, indifferent to him.

“You deserve to be put first,” he said into her hair.

He meant it as a comfort, no doubt. But it was the cruelest thing he’d ever said. “And who will do that?” she choked. “You?”

His arms tightened. But he did not reply. Of course he didn’t. For all his sins, she could never say he had lied.

She pulled away from him, roughly wiping her eyes. “I want to go to London. Now, at once.”

He stared at her, face haunted. “Olivia . . .”

“I want you to arrange a meeting with a lawyer, a very nasty one.”

“Let me handle it.” He reached out to touch her, but she stepped backward. His hand fell, curled into a fist. “Stay here,” he said. “This is your family. You ask who
will put you first? They will. They are so eager to know you—”

“They are strangers!” She hugged herself, hating him, though she could not say why. “No. I am going to London.” She took a ragged breath and lifted her chin. “I am putting
myself
first. And I want to look into his eyes when he finds out he’s ruined.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Beat you to it!”

Olivia stepped behind the shelter of a broad oak, her heart in her throat. Across the street, the door to a townhouse had just opened, discharging three footmen with luggage, and then a nanny and two boys, neither of them older than nine. The boys raced each other down the stairs into the waiting coach, jostling each other, their faces alight.

She had not allowed herself to think on them before. But in the law office, when the barrister had pulled down a volume of Debrett’s to contemplate the affected parties, she had stared at those three names printed so small beneath Bertram’s entry and felt something break inside her. In the wake of its shattering, her cold rage had deserted her. She had barely been able to speak.

She had not known how to explain what ailed her. She had asked Alastair to return her to the bachelor’s flat on Brook Street so she might rest. But instead, she had lain awake through the long slide of the morning, this
first morning of the new year, thinking of the names: Peter, James, Charlotte.

On the doorstep now appeared a nanny, who made her way sedately down the steps. Trailing her was a little girl of four or five, whose hair was as red as Olivia’s. The girl managed the first step, then wobbled around to face the doorway. “Mummy,
up
,” she cried.

Olivia dug her fingers into the bark. That little girl was her blood. Her half sister.

An elegant brunette stepped into the clouded afternoon. She was adjusting her hat, a confection of feathers and lace that perched atop her chestnut curls at a rakish tilt. She wore eighteen years of marriage very lightly. At the right angle, she would look no older than thirty.

Her hat settled to her satisfaction, she bent down, putting her face on a level with her daughter’s. Some private conference passed between them. The girl nodded, then hooked her arms around her mother’s neck and laughed as she was lifted.

Lady Bertram carried her daughter down the steps to the coach.

Olivia loosed a breath. Anger, frustration made a sick, toxic churn in her gut. She should have listened to Alastair; should not have set foot outside the flat without him. Had she listened, they would have paid a call together, this very afternoon, to this handsome brick house. No children would have greeted them. For the luggage being strapped to the roof of the coach suggested a long journey. Olivia would never have seen the faces of the half siblings who must pay now for their father’s crime.

The footmen, having strapped down the bags, sprang
off the coach to the ground, causing the vehicle to rock gently on its springs. She heard a muffled whoop from the interior, the glee of an excited boy ready for adventure.

Lady Bertram emerged from the coach, following the footmen back into the house.

Olivia made herself look away. The path she had walked through the trees curved out before her. It was only ten minutes’ walk back to the flat. She could return there, wait for Marwick. Never speak of this outing.

But how would she forget the little girl? That girl looked so much like her, they might have shared a mother as well as a father. And the boys, their eager innocence . . .

A frustrated syllable lodged in her throat, sharp and solid, choking.
No!
But she could neither voice it nor swallow it. She waited, staring again at the darkened doorway, as though an answer might appear there, one that would crush these doubts swarming through her.

She knew that little girl’s future. It was taking shape right now as the barristers drew up a suit, as they laid plans to expose an old injustice. In an office in Chancery Lane, a little redheaded girl was being turned into a bastard. And nobody knew better than Olivia how Charlotte’s future would look from now on. The sly remarks, the veiled leers, the snickered gossip of the self-righteous—how much worse would these be for a girl whose father was a cabinet member, the PM’s right-hand man? His disgrace would draw the attention of the nation. This little girl would not be able to escape infamy simply by boarding a train. It would follow her everywhere, documented in newspapers from Cornwall to Scotland.

That would be Bertram’s fault. Not Olivia’s! Her rage insisted that she place the blame where it belonged.

Yet she
would
be the instrument of this scandal. She
would be the actor who ensured that for the rest of their lives, these children would always see a dim flicker of recognition after introducing themselves to strangers.
She
would be the cause for the moment that followed, that sinking in their stomachs as they waited to learn whether they would be scorned, or pitied, or generously spared.

She had borne the indelible mark of bastardy without pain. But would they? Would that little girl know how to lift her chin, square her shoulders, and dismiss the weight of the world?

By keeping silent, she would care for them better than her father had ever cared for her. But then there would be no justice—and moreover, no
safety
.

She put her fist to her mouth, biting hard on her knuckle. How completely she’d forgotten her original aim! Alastair had distracted her. He had, quite unwittingly, filled her head with empty dreams. He offered her nothing permanent, only the brief, fleeting distractions of pleasure. But somehow she had built castles on air. She was still not safe. He would not be with her forever.

But it wasn’t necessary, she thought suddenly, to make a public matter of this secret. All she needed to safeguard herself was to ensure that Bertram knew he could never hurt her—not if he wished his marriage to her mother to remain unknown. The truth could remain locked in a lawyer’s vault. The moment something happened to her, it would be exposed—but only then. That was all Bertram needed to know.

The baroness emerged from the house, wearing the slightly harried air of a woman beset by last-minute errands. She was a woman who loved her children: that much was evident. She would certainly want to know if
their happiness depended on her husband’s good behavior. Her confident carriage, the arrogant tilt of her hat, made Olivia feel certain that she had the kind of poise and savvy required to
ensure
Bertram’s good behavior. As long as it protected her children, she would certainly keep him in line.

Olivia could put an end to all of this right now, safely, with the aid of the baroness.

She took a deep breath and started across the grass. “My lady,” she called as the baroness reached the coach. “I must speak with you.”

The woman startled, and then stared at her as one might a loathsome insect. “Must you?”

She thought Olivia a beggar, perhaps, for Olivia’s dress was much soiled from recent travel. “You don’t know who I am, but I assure you, I—”

“Oh, I know who you are.” The baroness rapped smartly on the door to the coach, which swung open. Into the interior, she directed her next words: “Mr. Moore,” she said. “Come handle this, please.”

*  *  *

Alastair threw open the door. “Where is she?”

Bertram, ensconced in an armchair before the fire, looked up in goggling astonishment. “What in the devil!”

Footsteps came thudding up. A footman grabbed Alastair’s elbow. “Your Lordship, he busted through—”

Bertram leapt to his feet. “Are you deranged? Coming in here like this!”

Deranged?
Alastair choked down a black laugh. For two hours he’d waited in that empty flat, time crawling past, the door standing shut, listening for her footsteps.
And perhaps, yes, in that slow crawl of time, he’d begun to lose pieces of himself, for sanity had supplied no solid reasons for her continued absence. She would not have run off; he’d given her no cause.

Or had he?

Since their conversation by the pond in Shepwich, she’d not seemed herself. Why had he not demanded, pressed her, for an explanation? Cowardice: he did not want to know what bothered her. He did not want to be forced to deny her the words she so clearly needed to hear. He could not love her. He could not keep her. In his old life, she would have had no place. In his new life . . . he had no faith in himself with which to make promises.

But in this new life, he waited with his heart inching up his throat, with anxiety edging into anger as the minutes dragged onward. What strange hell was this, in which a man could not keep a woman, but found her absence so profoundly terrifying that his overriding instinct was to kill someone to ensure her safety?

He withdrew his pistol from his jacket. “Deranged,” he said. “That’s a fine accusation from a man who would murder his daughter.”

“What in God’s—” Bertram sucked in a breath and stepped sideways. “Not in front of my children!”

Only then did Alastair notice the two young boys sitting cross-legged in the window seat, wide-eyed, a game of checkers forgotten between them.

Their pale, stricken faces checked his rage for a single moment. And then it flamed hotter yet. “Would that your concern encompassed
all
of your children. What have you done with her?”

Bertram looked over Alastair’s shoulder. “Take the boys away,” he said urgently to the footman.

For a single dark moment Alastair contemplated forbidding it. Using the safety of these children as a barter for Olivia’s. “Perhaps it would edify them to learn what you truly are.”

Bertram took a shaking breath. “Please.” He brought his hands together at his chest, clasping them into a prayerlike posture. “I have done nothing to her. Please, let them leave.”

One of the boys whimpered.

Alastair stepped aside to clear a path to the door. “Get them out.”

The older one sprang to his feet and flew out. But the younger remained, his jaw squaring, a stubborn look that reminded Alastair, with a painful stab, of Olivia: what she must have looked like, as a child. “I won’t leave you!” the boy said to his father, who did not deserve such loyalty.

Bertram knew that much, too. He made an angry sound. “Go now, I say!” He grabbed the boy, dragged him off the seat, and shoved him across the carpet toward the door.

“This is about that woman, isn’t it!” The boy craned to look back at Alastair, a brown cowlick flopping across his eye. “She ruined our trip!”

“What woman?” Alastair snapped.

Bertram shot him a warning look. “Do not involve him in this.”

He spoke grimly. “Ask him what he means.”

Bertram paused in the doorway, every line of his body suggesting furious reluctance. Finally, he put his body between Alastair’s and his son’s, and knelt to say, “What woman? When did you see her?”

The boy darted a glance between them. “Mummy
said it was her fault we couldn’t go to Houghton today. But Mr. Moore said he would take care of her.” In a whisper, he added, “Mummy said not to tell you.”