Wallflower Gone Wild (19 page)

Olivia’s lips parted as the pieces started to come together. He’d been taking Rogan’s advice all along. Rogan’s terrible, horrible advice. But
why
?

“They’ve worked for me,” Rogan challenged, which only seemed to enrage Phinn more. In a more conciliatory tone, he added, “And anyway, I was only trying to help you out.”

“I don’t want any more of your help. I can’t believe what you have done,” Phinn said. And then, growling, “And that you are
here.
”

“Look, I just thought that if things didn’t go well—” Rogan said, suddenly sound uneasy.

“What?” Phinn spat the word. “What did you think?”

“That you’d want some company,” Rogan said softly. Olivia ached for them both. He’d only been trying to help. But why did he think Phinn needed it so badly? Probably because she had reacted so horribly to all his previous efforts to gain her affections. She touched her lips. He’d only been trying to woo her with advice from his well-meaning but daft friend, and she’d made it impossible.

“Some confidence you have in your friend,” Phinn muttered grimly. Her heart broke a little then. “Just . . . get out.”

“But—”

“It is my wedding night. I do not want to spend it with you.”

The door to the suite slammed shut so firmly the door rattled on the hinges. Olivia softly closed her own bedroom door. She had answers to questions she hadn’t thought to ask.

Had she ruined everything from the moment she applied a little too much lip paint? And still, he’d returned. He’d never hollered at her the way he had at his friend. He’d never lifted a hand to her.

Olivia sank to her knees by her door.

But at the same time . . . that temper of his. It took her breath away to remember the flash of rage in his eyes and the barely contained fury as he paced about the room. As if to prove her point, the door slammed again. Had he left? She rushed to the window and peered out. After a moment she saw Phinn’s brisk determined strides down Brook Street.

She knew her marriage would be a disaster.

She just hadn’t expected the urge to fix it.

L
ater that night, Olivia was sitting on the settee, waiting for Phinn. Far too many questions about him and their disastrous courtship kept her from sleeping. She had tried to distract herself with a perusal of the wicked books that had escaped his notice, but they only raised more questions. Common sense kept her from venturing out into the streets of London to search for him.

Thus, she anxiously waited up for her husband on their wedding night. Was he with another woman? She somehow doubted that. Was he at his club? Or wandering the streets?

It was long past midnight when he finally returned.

“You’re still up,” Phinn said when he saw her.

“It’s our wedding night,” Olivia said softly.

“Aye, a wedding night that you didn’t want,” he said. There was no point in protesting. But now that they were here, she saw things differently.

“I was scared,” she explained. “And I didn’t realize . . .”

“Olivia, it’s late,” Phinn said, exhaustion in his voice. “We’re both out of sorts. This isn’t how it should be.”

This night wasn’t the perfect, romantic, or lovely wedding night anyone would have hoped for. She had been so fixated upon wanting the perfect courtship that she’d ruined what might have been a good one. Understanding as much allowed her to comprehend that perhaps Phinn had his own ideas of romance that she continued to thwart. She had pushed him away; thus she had to bring him closer if she wanted the loving marriage she still dreamt of.

Chapter 15

“Make your own rules.”

—
O
LIVIA’S
M
YSTERIOUS
M
IDNIGHT
R
ESCUER

A few days later

A
t eleven o’clock in the morning Olivia found herself rummaging through her belongings in search of her embroidery basket. Even though she hated embroidery. But that was what she did at eleven o’clock in the mornings. She and her mother sat together, stitching and planning their visits for the day.

Olivia found her embroidery basket, sat down with it and started to sew.

It was soothing.

No, it was boring.

She looked around the drawing room. She was alone. Phinn had left at first light and gone off somewhere—to build the engine, she presumed. He returned late in the evening. This had been their routine for the past few days. He left, and she stuck to the schedule she’d been raised with because she didn’t know what else to do. She couldn’t exactly go out with this bruise upon her cheek either. She’d given the gossips enough fodder already.

But today she just couldn’t muster enthusiasm for embroidery or staying in. Nor did she think she had to.

Phinn wouldn’t know if she didn’t do her embroidery. He probably wouldn’t care. For if he cared about her, he probably wouldn’t have essentially disappeared.

Her mother wouldn’t know if she deviated from the schedule they had followed their entire life. Nevertheless, Olivia looked around furtively before taking the lot of her sewing and stuffing it under the settee.

Make your own rules,
her Mysterious Midnight Rescuer had said. Following the rules hadn’t worked. Breaking the rules hadn’t worked. Perhaps there was merit to what he’d told her.

Perhaps she could go search for him.

She glanced at the clock. It was five after eleven. She was alone. Very much alone.

Thinking of the possibilities that afforded, a giggle escaped her. Why, she could board a ship and sail off to America if she wished it! She certainly didn’t have to spend an hour on her watercolors, and there was no pianoforte to practice on even if she wanted to.

Given the scandalous circumstances before her wedding, the fact that she had actually married the Mad Baron, and her residence at a hotel, she did not expect many callers. And if they were to arrive, she would just declare herself not at home. Perhaps she’d say she was indisposed.

The point was, Olivia thought as she reclined on the settee, she could do whatever she wanted with this day. Phinn obviously wasn’t concerned with how she passed the time, for if he cared he might have spent it with her. Or at least made inquiries. She avoided dwelling upon the strange sensation akin to sadness that she experienced at this thought. Almost as if she wished he were here to spend the day with her. There were so many questions she wished to ask him. What had happened to his hands? Why had he followed Rogan’s advice? What exactly were those people doing in those books?

Why did he not wish to spend the day with her?

Why couldn’t they talk, or try another picnic, or one of the wicked things from that book . . .

She had wanted Phinn to leave her—
before
they married when she might be able to find another match. It was more than a little vexing to have been left
after
the wedding. Why did he fight so hard to wed her if he were only going to ignore her?

Olivia decided she might enlist Emma and Prudence for a trip to the modiste rather than lounge around her hotel suite for another day.

She did just that. They traveled together in Emma’s carriage to Madame Auteuil’s on Bond Street.

“We thought you might have taken more of a honeymoon,” Emma said immediately, dispelling Olivia’s hopes that it wouldn’t come up. “With your new husband.”

“Dare we even ask how things are faring?” Prudence asked nervously.

“What she really means is, tell us about the wedding night,” Emma said with a mischievous grin that ordinarily would have made her laugh. Except their wedding night had been yet another disaster.

Olivia hesitated, recalling what she’d overheard during Phinn’s conversation with Rogan. And by conversation she meant argumentative interchange of sentences delivered at top volume. Oddly, it felt like a betrayal to reveal what she had heard—she wasn’t supposed to know the lengths he’d gone to court her. Even now she felt ashamed of her behavior and the desire to make it up to him.

“Well?” Prudence was impatient.

“Has it left you speechless? That’s quite a good sign,” Emma said.

“Nothing happened,” Olivia said. She couldn’t quite explain that the only
something
that happened was a fight she had eavesdropped on. What she had learned made her heartsick.

“Nothing?” Emma echoed.

“We toured our suite of rooms at the hotel. Then he went out,” Olivia answered.

“Did you at some point walk into a doorway?” Prudence inquired.

Perplexed, Olivia replied, “No, why?”

“There is a bruise on your cheek,” she said.

“Oh, that,” Olivia said, lightly touching the faint bruise, which had faded considerably. She smiled at how she’d come about it. “We bumped our heads together.”

Both Emma and Prudence were obviously and immensely skeptical. After all, she was married to the notoriously dangerous Mad Baron. But it had been a silly accident during a ridiculous encounter.

“Is everything all right, Olivia?” Emma asked, leveling her with a stern, inquisitive look.

“It’s fine. I suppose,” Olivia said, sighing. Thank goodness the carriage had rolled to a stop outside of Madame Auteuil’s shop at that moment. “Now let’s see about procuring me a new wardrobe.”

Now that she was married—if only on paper and not in truth—she would no longer wear the white, ivory, and eggshell that made her seem like a washed-out angel or a virginal ghost. She selected the gowns she’d always wanted.

Emma and Prudence were excellent companions. They seriously debated the merits between a navy silk and a cerulean blue satin. Together, they earnestly considered whether a shade of ripe melon suited Olivia’s completion when anyone could see it did not.

“Perhaps you might need some underthings, Olivia,” Emma said discreetly.

“Why?” Olivia asked, but her mind wandered to those images she had seen. The women, if they wore anything at all, wore delicate lacy things, the likes of which she had never actually seen.

“Because I’m sure the ones in your trousseau are . . . not quite right,” Emma said, dropping her voice. “Mine weren’t.”

“She means plain, virginal, and not the sort of tawdry scraps of fabric that awaken a man’s wanton side,” Prudence explained, which begged the question of how she knew such things. Then again, Olivia suspected that no one led quite the sheltered life that she had.

“Do men have wanton sides?” she asked. “Or is that just women?”

“Are you avoiding the question, Olivia?”

“What question?”

Emma excused the seamstresses, and the three women found themselves ensconced in the small changing room. Prudence pulled the velvet drapes firmly shut.

“Have you—” Emma began.

“Become acquainted with your husband in the biblical sense?” Prudence finished.

“Made love to him?” Emma asked.

“Done the Act?” Prudence added.

“Had marital relations?” Emma inquired, with a lift of her brow.

“No, all right!” Olivia cried. She had not done the Biblical Act of Making Love or a variation. She’d spent her wedding night alone—not that she was quite ready to do otherwise. But given what she’d heard, it only drove home how, in her attempt to find love, she might have driven away her only chance for it. “He fought with Rogan, who apparently had been giving Phinn bad advice for wooing me. And then Phinn went for a walk. He’s been getting up at first light and going off to build the Defense Engine—”

“Difference Engine,” Emma corrected.

“It makes no difference to me,” Olivia said dismissively. “The point is that he prefers machines to me.”

“Is this the part where we point out she hasn’t even been married a week?” Prudence asked.

Emma shook her head no and, a mischievous grin on her lips, asked, “Or is this the part where we tell her to seduce him?”

“After trying to run him out of town?” Prudence asked skeptically. Then, with a sigh, she added, “What will we do?”

We.
That made Olivia smile. Phinn
had
ensured they could stay in London for a while. She was tremendously appreciative. How had he known, if he weren’t sensitive to her? How much had she overlooked in her determination to cause a scandal?

“Well, what
are
we going to do?” Olivia asked. She wanted the same thing she’d always wanted: a chance at love. It seemed Phinn was her only chance now. Given what she had recently learned, perhaps he might not be as awful as she’d feared.

After all, it wasn’t like she could find her Mysterious Midnight Rescuer man and convince him to live a life of sin with her. Marital vows were not rules she considered breaking.

Emma was the one to answer. “
We
are not going to allow opportunities for romance to pass us by when they are presented.”

By
we,
she clearly meant Olivia.

Chapter 16

A touch, a pressure of the hands, are the only external signs a woman can give of entertaining a particular regard for certain individuals.

—
T
HE
M
IRROR OF
G
RACES

P
hinn couldn’t avoid his wife forever. Actually, he could if he tried hard enough. Why, he could leave her at Mivart’s Hotel and ensure the bills were paid, while he returned to Yorkshire. It was possible. Absurd, cowardly, and ridiculous—yes. But it was possible.

However, he didn’t
want
to leave Olivia. He just didn’t know how to face her after their disastrous wedding night.

He’d lost his temper in front of her and had to leave because he couldn’t stand to see the fear inevitably in her eyes. She had seen his bruised and swollen hands. She knew how dangerous he could be. What a bloody fool.

Every night when he returned—late—he considered knocking on her door. The bruises on his fists, which had only begun to fade, stopped him. He couldn’t touch such lovely innocence with such violence on his hands. Every morning he considered lingering to see her. Instead he left at first light, fearing all the questions she wanted to ask him.

He lost himself in work instead, vaguely aware that this was just like his first marriage. But he’d married the opposite of Nadia—hadn’t he? Even though Olivia caused scandals and had outbursts, there was a still a loveliness about her that he craved and that Nadia had never possessed. It didn’t take a genius to determine that he was the common denominator in his disastrous marriages.

So when Ashbrooke asked, “How fares married life?” Phinn grumbled something noncommittal and instead broached the subject of the machine parts that still needed to be constructed. The duke fell for the distraction, debating different parts and strategies with Phinn for at least half an hour.

“So it’s decided, than,” Phinn concluded.

The duke nodded. “Also, the duchess and I would be obliged if you and your bride would join us at the opera this evening.”

Ashbrooke said this in the sort of commanding ducal manner that left no room for disagreement. When Phinn broached the subject with Olivia later that day, he took care to avoid precisely that tone.

“Ashbrooke has invited us to attend the opera with him and Lady Emma this evening,” he told her. “Would you like to go?”

“Did he, now?” Olivia replied, her lips quirking into a smile. Made his heartbeat quicken, that.

“Aye,” he said, holding his breath as he asked, “would you like to go?”

“Yes. Very much,” she said softly, surprising him. She couldn’t possibly have forgiven him for the series of disasters that occurred on their wedding night. What had happened that she should soften toward him?

At the opera

Somewhere between the dimming of the lights and the raising of the curtains, everything changed. It started with a simple brush of Phinn’s hand against hers. Olivia’s instinct was to jerk her hand away, but she overrode it and willed her hand back to linger near his.

Seize opportunities for romance.

And this, an affectionate caress in the dark, seemed to be a vastly preferable way of saying she was sorry and wished to try anew. She couldn’t fathom saying the words to him, but she could manage this gentle affection.

They were just touching hands. In the opera house. They had gloves on. It was nothing. But it didn’t feel like nothing.

There was the pleasure of it, to be sure. But it was tempered by the bittersweet knowledge that she had made it impossible to happen sooner. Her heart was still a tangled mess of rebellious longing for that man in the garden and slow dawning interest in her husband, who was turning out to be not the man she had originally thought.

His efforts to woo her had been misguided but genuine. With a flare of shame, she acknowledged that she hadn’t made it easy for him. And yet . . . he was still here. Tenderly and tentatively caressing her hand. She wasn’t sure which took her breath away—his dedication or his touch.

His hand brushed against hers again, a caress that she suspected was deliberate. So light, so fleeting, so delicate. Olivia slowly exhaled. It was nothing to be a ninny about. Hands. Just hands.

And it was then just fingers possibly interlocking then hesitantly letting go. The impermanence of the gesture was maddening, but not as much as the strange pleasure afforded from his touch and from the anticipation.

Will he hold her hand? Or will he not?

What did she want, anyway?

Olivia discovered that he would
not
hold her hand. Instead, she sat breathless as Phinn traced delicate circles around her palm. Softly, so softly, did he trace along her fingertips, venturing higher to her wrist, higher still to the madly sensitive skin of her inner elbow.

This . . . whatever this was . . . went on and on and on. Olivia’s breath became short and shallow and she wondered whether
exquisite
or
agony
were a better term for what he was doing to her and how it made her feel.

It was nothing, nothing, nothing. They were in public—not that anyone could see what they did. The lights were dark. The audience’s attention was focused on the opera singer. She and Phinn were discreet. But there was something slightly wicked about having these feelings—these smoldering, sparking, heated feelings—in public.

And yet, they were merely holding hands. Besides, she had gloves on. Had they done this prior to the wedding it would not have been grounds for marriage.

The gloves—those had to go. Phinn began to flip open the buttons of her gloves, one by one, with a masterful single-handed maneuver. How did he know to do that? Was he more of a rogue than she had thought? She’d never thought that he was an innocent, but she hadn’t truly considered what he knew or what he could make her feel.

Next he tugged firmly at each fingertip, making his intentions clear. He wanted her bare skin. Olivia dared a glance at him and saw his gaze fixed ahead. No one would know. This was their secret.

Her glove fell silently to floor, followed swiftly by his.

The exquisite agony commenced anew, this time with bare skin upon bare skin. She had never truly experienced a man’s bare skin against her own. This was new, and something she shared with Phinn alone.

Again, he slowly and softly teased the soft skin of her palm with slow, deliberate circles of his fingertips. Because his touch was so light, she strained to be more aware of herself. Her every nerve was attuned to the light, fleeting connection of his skin upon hers.

Again, her breathing was affected. Again, he traced along her fingertips, his touch so light she held her breath to feel it fully.

And then he dared to trace his fingertips all along the sensitive and exposed skin along the inside of her arm from her wrist to the short tulle sleeves.

It was an arm. A hand. A simple touch. It was nothing that would lead to a special license, for instance. These were lies Olivia told herself. But each stroke sent shivers up and down her spine. She found herself forcing her legs tight together. Because of the heat, and the
desire.

Her gaze was fixed upon the stage; she didn’t see a thing. Her new corset was laced too tightly. That had to be why she was nearly overwhelmed with the urge to rip the stays. It was too hot in the box.

Phinn treated her to another long slow caress. She allowed another slow exhale, as if she might control her racing pulse. In an instant it became a sharp gasp.

If he could make her feel this just by holding hands, how would she survive anything more? She had seen the pictures. She had seen their expressions of ecstasy. She knew there was more than this. Truly, she feared it and craved it in equal measures.

Olivia tilted her head, curls brushing against her bare shoulders. She stole a glance at the man beside her. Husband. Stranger. He
was
handsome.

Phinn turned and caught her looking at him. Gazes locked. The song faded away. He offered a hesitant smile. Her heartbeat quickened. Olivia made the corners of her mouth turn up and discovered it didn’t take much effort at all, really, to smile at her husband. Whom she knew almost nothing about. Except that with just his fingertips he could take her breath away. And if he was so tender and seductive, could he really be so violent?

She did not know this man. But now she wanted to.