The Fifth Kiss (19 page)

“Er … Miss Olivia … I wouldn't …” Mr. Clapham said, his voice frightened.

Olivia serenely smoothed her nephew's hair from his forehead. “There's not the slightest need to be concerned. I intend to speak to his lordship on the matter myself. This very day, in fact.”

“Do you indeed?” came a sardonic voice from the doorway.

“Papa!” little Amy chortled cheerfully, toddling to the door and taking his hand. “Aw we going to wide?”

Strickland, standing in the doorway and regarding his sister-in-law with glinting eyes and upraised brows, merely patted his daughter on the head. “Not today, little one. There's too much snow on the path. Besides, I gather that your Aunt Olivia wishes to have a chat with me.”

Olivia, startled, felt her heart begin to race. “Yes, I
do
wish to have a talk with you, my lord. But not just at this moment.”

“This is a
very good time
,” he said meaningfully, the glare in his eyes an unmistakable order.

Olivia had had quite enough frustration. Her head still ached, her tongue still burned, and her heart was hammering in her chest in fear—a fear that she wanted desperately to hide from Perry's alarmed scrutiny. She put up her chin bravely. “
Later
, sir, if you don't mind. The children and I have a great deal to talk about first.”

His lordship's lips tightened, and the muscle in his jaw worked angrily. “
Now
!” he barked.

Perry started, and his whole body twitched in fear. “Don't have a row, Aunt Livie,” he urged, his voice trembling. “I d-don't have to play Round Table. It's all right. I don't want P-Papa to be angry with you.”

Olivia pulled the boy into a protective embrace, glaring up accusingly at Strickland. “Your father is
not
angry with me. Are you, my lord?”

Before he could respond, Perry gave a choking sob. “Yes, he
is
! I can
t-tell
! He's going to send you away again!”

“I shall do no such thing,” Strickland exclaimed, stung. “What sort of monster do you think I am?”

Perry's face came up from Olivia's shoulder. He looked at his father, his face strained and suspicious. “I think I feel sick again,” he murmured.

“Here, love, lie down,” Olivia said soothingly, smoothing his pillows and easing him down on them. “Your father didn't mean to upset you. We aren't going to have a row, and he isn't going to send me away. Isn't that right, my lord?”

Lord Strickland looked from one to the other in disgust. “Of course that's right,” he muttered. Then he fixed a meaningful eye on Olivia's face. “Nevertheless, I would like to exchange a few words with you, ma'am.”

Perry sat up fearfully. “But not to have a row?” he pleaded, instantly alarmed again. “Do you promise?”

His lordship's brows drew together thoughtfully. “I don't have rows with everyone I speak to,” he said, coming up to the bed and frowning down at his son. “What makes you so afraid we'll have a row?”

Perry looked up at him, his mouth quivering. “Well … I know you don't l-like me to play R-Round Table … but Aunt Livie says it will be all right to play … so there's
bound
to be a r-row, isn't there?”

Olivia squeezed the boy's hand. “Only a difference of opinion, love. It needn't be a quarrel.”

“Quite right,” Strickland said curtly. “There is no necessity at all for quarreling.” He looked at Olivia with a marked diminution of hostility. “Very well, ma'am, finish your visit with the children if you wish. But we shall continue our … er … difference of opinion later. I shall expect you in the library before you change for dinner, if you please.”

The tone was cold, but Olivia realized that he'd made a concession. Had he been upset by the boy's obvious alarm? She looked up into his face but could find no answer in his impassive look. “As you wish, my lord,” she said, turning her eyes back to her nephew.

There was a moment of silence, and then Strickland left the room. When the sound of his footsteps had died away, Perry sighed deeply. “I suppose we won't be able to have the ceremony after all,” he said, his voice dull and hopeless.

“The one for Sir Budgidore?” Olivia asked. “Of
course
we will.”

“Really?” Perry looked up at her, scarcely able to permit himself to hope. “Won't Papa tell you not to permit it?”

Olivia's eyes glinted and her fingers clenched. “Your father,” she said with a missionary's zeal, “will do nothing of the sort.”

The firmness of her tone relieved him. He sat up with a grin and gave his aunt a quick hug. “Then let's do it now,” he urged eagerly. “Right now!”

“No, dearest. I don't think now's the time.”

“Why not?” His face clouded again. “You said—”

“Yes, but tonight will be better. Right now, you and Amy are going to dress in your warmest clothes, your mittens and your goloshoes, and we're going out to play in the snow.”

“Oh, how wovewy,” Amy gurgled happily. “Get out of bed, Pewwy, and wet's find Tiwda. We can ask hew to dwess us at once!”

After turning the children over to the housemaid who was temporarily caring for them in Miss Elspeth's absence, Olivia walked out of the room, having promised the children that their afternoon would be glorious, “all sparkling and brilliant and frosty … and we'll make great big footprints in the snow, and toss snowballs, and have all manner of fun.” She was followed out by Mr. Clapham. Once in the hallway, he approached her shyly. “I can't tell you how relieved I am to see you, Miss Matthews,” he told her.

“Yes, I know, Mr. Clapham. Thank you for the excellent care you've evidently given the children.”

He shrugged modestly. “Shall I get dressed and take them outside? Perhaps you'd rather go downstairs and see his lordship.”

“No, thank you. I'll play with the children myself. I intend to see his lordship now, while the children are dressing. Why don't you take a rest for the afternoon?”

“Very well, then, ma'am. If you're certain I won't be needed, I'll go ahead with my packing.”

“Packing?”

The tutor's smile faded. “Didn't Miss Elspeth tell you? I've been discharged.”

“Yes, she did. But you are not to pay any attention to that. Everything is going to be fine from now on. I shall see to it.”

He looked at her dubiously. “I … don't think so, Miss Matthews. His lordship was quite definite, you see, when he sacked me. You will have quite enough to … I mean, I wouldn't wish for you to … er … come to points with his lordship on
my
account.”

“It will not be on your account but on Perry's. And as for coming to points with him,” Olivia responded, her jaw firmly set, “it's about time
somebody
took him on. It's not a good thing for a man to have his own way about everything. It makes him a tyrant.”

She went quickly down the hall to the stairway, determined to face the tyrant before her courage deserted her. The tutor looked after her with admiration but nevertheless quite doubtful of her success. “A tyrant he is,” Mr. Clapham muttered to himself as he went down the hall to his room. “I wish her luck with him. She'll need it.”

chapter thirteen

She paused outside the library door to, as her brother Jamie would say, gird up her loins for battle. She felt ill-equipped for the encounter, for the lump on her head was distractingly painful, and the strain of the past three days was beginning to show itself in the tremor of her fingers and the nervous twitching of a muscle in her cheek. She struggled against an almost overpowering temptation to turn and flee, but she knew she could not. Too much depended on her success in this skirmish. So she tapped on the door and entered.

Strickland was sitting at the far side of the room before a window, reading a letter. The draperies had been opened just wide enough to provide him with a beam of light in which to see. The dimness of the rest of the room contrasted sharply with the bright arc of light in which he sat. He had to peer intently into the shadows to make out who had come in. “Oh, it's you,” he muttered, throwing the letter upon a chairside table and getting to his feet. “I didn't expect you quite so soon.”

“I'd like to come to an understanding as soon as possible, my lord,” she said with more assurance than she felt.

“Good,” Strickland said, striding across the room to confront her. “Therefore, I suggest that you listen to me carefully so that your understanding will be complete. You're my late wife's sister, and as such you're always welcome in this house. The children hold you in great affection—as evidently you do them—and I've no wish to suppress or subvert that relationship. However, I must remind you again that Perry is my son, and I will brook no interference in my management of him. It is
I
who will make the decisions relating to his nurturing, his education, his pastimes and whatever else concerns him.”

“Yes, of course,” Olivia interjected, taken aback by the cold objectivity of his tone, “but—”

“Don't interrupt, please. We've both given our words that we shall have no row. You need merely
listen
. I have only this to add. You, my dear, must accept my decisions without question and refrain from undermining those decisions in your conversations with the boy and with those I employ to care for him. I hope my meaning is quite clear and that I shall have no need to repeat this speech in the future.”

“But … may I not even
discuss
with you those decisions of yours which I believe to be in error?” she asked, aghast.

“I have nothing further to say.” He went back to his chair and resumed his reading of his letter.

Olivia gritted her teeth in rage. “You cannot
seriously
expect me to—” she began, following him across the room.

He didn't even look up from his page. “That is all I have to say to you, ma'am.”

“But on the matter of the Round Table game … and the tutor's discharge …” she insisted urgently, trying to contain her fury. “Surely we can
discuss
—”

“I'm afraid I've said all I intend to.” He stood up, crossed to the door and held it open for her. “Good afternoon, my dear. I hope you and the children enjoy your romp in the snow.”

Olivia was so infuriated she could barely breathe. She thought a blood vessel in her neck would burst. “
Ooooh
!” she exploded, stamping a foot in frustration. “You are
impossible
!”

“Yes, I suppose I am. You are, of course, free to discuss
my
shortcomings whenever you like. Although at the
moment
I'm quite busy.”

Speechless, seething, and completely at a loss, she stalked across the room and swept out past him, not even favoring him with so much as a glance. Her stormy exit had not the slightest effect on him, however. He merely closed the door quietly behind her.

She wheeled about and stared at the closed door. How
dared
he! He'd treated her as if she were a mere hireling—a maidservant in his his employ whom he could order about at will! The word “tyrant” was too good for him! She trembled in helpless impotence, wanting to scream, to kick the door, or, better still, to kick
him
!

The sound of clumsy but eager footsteps on the stairs caught her ear. The children clambered down the stairs, barely restrained by Tilda, dressed and impatient for the outdoors. With enormous effort, Olivia pulled herself together, put on a smile and went to meet them. She would have to postpone making a decision about what next she would do in regard to their father. Whatever her next step was to be, it was something that would have to wait.

Later, stumbling through the snow after the children, whose high-pitched laughter struck the cold air like tinkling bells (a sound that was as healing to her spirit as it was to theirs), Olivia found that her mind was unable to refrain from reviewing the latest confrontation with her dastardly brother-in-law. How was she to keep him from stubbornly and autocratically stripping from his son everything in the child's life that made him feel happy and secure? Certainly another confrontation would be useless with such a tyrant, she realized. In all their previous altercations, she'd come away decidedly the loser. What could she say or do to avoid losing again? Perhaps she had to find a more promising way to deal with him than confrontation.

But
every
encounter with Strickland seemed to become a confrontation. How could she make him listen to her without falling into disagreement? While she dodged snowballs, brushed snowflakes from the children's reddened cheeks and rescued Amy from snow drifts that proved to be too deep for her, Olivia's mind probed for an answer. She
had
to discover what it was in their relationship that made them antagonistic from the outset.

A soft ball of snow, well aimed by her nephew, splattered squarely in her face at the precise moment when a sudden insight struck her mind. While the boy cackled in mischievous glee to see his aunt gasp in surprise, topple back and sputteringly eject a mouthful of snow, she—even while blinking and choking—found herself mulling over this new idea.
Strickland saw her as an enemy
!

Olivia had always been aware that her brother-in-law didn't like her … that he thought of her as an eccentric and old-maidish bluestocking. She was also aware that he was infuriated at what he judged to be her interference in his family life. But it had not occurred to her before that her brother-in-law might very well look upon her as a foe—perhaps even a venomous and bitter one. The idea struck with the force of a revelation!

After all, she had accosted him on more than one occasion with accusations of very serious crimes: adultery for one, and the abuse of his son for another. It was perhaps not very surprising that he viewed her with belligerence whenever he saw her. He might very well have felt a need to
defend
himself against her attacks by attacking her in his turn.