Barely a Lady (24 page)

They didn’t make love: not in a room of strange men. But they touched. They comforted. They settled into old sleeping patterns, tucked up together like spoons in a drawer.

And every second of that time was colored by the memory of the moment they’d slipped out of Lady Kate’s house. Catching Olivia by the arm, the duchess had leaned close and whispered, “Remember. This is your chance.”

It took five days to reach Bruges, lazy days spent working side by side with the real bargemen as fields of grain slipped by and church bells tolled the hour from village spires.

“I didn’t know you could cook,” Jack praised her when he finished their first dinner.

Laughing, she shook her head. “We really didn’t know each other at all, did we?”

He frowned, and Olivia thought he looked even more handsome as a peasant, his skin sunburned and his hair tousled by wind. “What do you mean?”

Her smile was dry. “If you remember my father, he was the most cheese-paring man in North Riding. And my mother could never get along with cooks. So I did most of the cooking.”

Which had saved her more than once in the years that followed. She had been a welcome addition to inns and bakeries, even with a babe in her belly.

Leaning back on the deck where the two of them had been watching the waning moon reflect on the water, Jack shook his head. “That’s right. You had such a way with peach tarts. Every kind of sweet, come to think of it. It’s too bad Cook won’t allow you in his domain at the Abbey.”

Two days earlier, she would have had to bite back a sharp retort. Somehow the barge eased her. The more time she spent with Jack away from the tension of that house, from the reality that awaited them in London, the more she found herself settling into a too-comfortable pattern.

They worked together in harmony, be it cooking or cleaning or leading the great golden Belgian horses that drew the barge along the canals. They began to laugh at the same jokes again, to reach for each other to share the silence of sunrise or the soaring architecture of Ghent’s famous three towers. Unforgivably, she began to expect the harmony to continue. Worse, she began to anticipate it.

Then, like a harsh wind, Kit Braxton appeared. The barge was slipping through early-morning Bruges, the sun barely kissing the top of the medieval Belfry that soared over the city. Taking a moment after serving breakfast, Olivia had been seated at the front of the barge watching the morning light creep down the curious stair-step chimneys of the tidy houses that lined the water. She was wishing she’d had more of a chance to enjoy the whimsical Belgian architecture.

She felt Jack step up behind her. “Trouble,” he muttered.

She saw Kit immediately. He was waiting ahead on a restive chestnut, two other mounts in tow. He hadn’t spoken a word, and yet Olivia felt the first rush of fear.

“Braxton,” Jack greeted him with admirable calm. “You’re a surprise.”

The young dragoon flashed a grin. “No hope for it. Your destination’s being watched. How do you feel about a bit of a ride ventre à terre?”

Olivia’s first instinct was to protest. Jack wasn’t ready for such exertion. He could hurt himself again.

She looked over to see Jack grinning like a boy. “Can’t think of a better way to shake off the doldrums.” Turning to her, he held out a hand. “Liv?”

There was no way she could admit she hadn’t sat a horse in five years. At least she had once been proficient. Something else besides weaponry to thank her father for, she supposed.

“Certainly,” she said, surreptitiously wiping her hands on her skirts, “especially since you didn’t force me onto a sidesaddle.”

Kit looked a bit abashed. “It would be expected, you see. They’re looking for a man and a woman. Can you manage?”

It was Jack who laughed. “Livvie successfully avoided sidesaddles until her fifteenth birthday.”

She frowned, trying hard to keep up the banter. “Can’t hunt properly from a sidesaddle. You’re left behind with the sluggards. Do you wish me to don breeches?”

He did. Ten minutes later, clad in a smaller version of Jack’s attire, she bid farewell to the bargemen and let Kit give her a leg up onto her gray.

“I assume you know the route,” Jack said, settling onto his big bay gelding.

“Just came from there,” Kit said. “I hope you like fishing smacks.”

Olivia settled into her saddle and gathered her reins. She hadn’t been allowed to ride in men’s attire in years. It might be the only benefit of this mad dash to the coast. “Please tell me we’re not expected to work the next boat too,” she begged, a strange sense of exhilaration sweeping through her. “I detest the smell of fish on my hands.”

Nudging his horse across the low canal bridge, Kit looked back at her. “Never fear. You are honored guests. Ready?”

The ride was harrowing. Olivia expected ambush at every turn and the sound of gunshots at her back. Her legs began to cramp and her thighs chafe. But she kept her silence. She wasn’t sure that the men would understand that she was having the time of her life. She wasn’t sure
she
understood it.

In the end, there were no further alarms. They found their way to a deserted stretch of beach, where they were met by a rascally-looking Belgian with a johnboat. The fishing smack waited out in the water.

“I’ll be along a day or two behind you,” Kit promised. “Need to finish laying a false trail first.”

He gave Olivia a kiss on the hand and turned back for Bruges. Jack helped Olivia onto the boat, and they were rowed out to a suspiciously unfishy fishing vessel.

In the end, the trip seemed more adventure than flight, a thrilling escapade rather than a desperate escape. And Olivia shared that feeling of adventure with Jack, eyes meeting, hands touching, bodies instinctively seeking each other for balance and comfort and rest.

And each touch, each met glance, each shared breath and inadvertent embrace served only to intensify their barely banked hunger.

She tried so desperately to shore up her defenses against him. She wanted to hate him as surely as she had in the spring. That hate had kept her alive for five years. It had given her purpose and pride and direction.

He had wronged her. He had discarded her without a thought, this husband who should have loved her. He might have been exiled, but he hadn’t been abandoned without a penny to his name and a babe in his belly.

No
, she thought as she watched the cliffs of England rise over the horizon from the bobbing deck of the little boat. That box with Jamie stayed locked. She couldn’t bear to think about him. Not when she could barely deal with Jack.

But that box, like all the others, was damaged, and she knew that soon—too soon—she would have to face what she’d hidden away inside.

Maybe she could have held on to her hate better if the trip hadn’t ended like a Sunday afternoon lark, with the two of them stepping hand in hand off the boat in Wapping as if they’d been on a Greenwich cruise. Maybe if they hadn’t been met by a thin stick of a young man who was so precise and dour that he provoked laughter. Maybe if Lady Kate and Grace had been waiting for them when they arrived.

But Lady Kate wasn’t there. It was Finney who met them, and the housekeeper who begged they treat the house as their own home.

Maybe if none of those things had happened, it would have been different.

But Olivia didn’t think so.

* * *

She had to admit that she was surprised by Kate’s house. Whereas the one in Brussels had been an explosion of ornamentation, this house on unexciting Curzon Street was almost painfully plain, five stories of redbrick without so much as a pediment to enhance the fanlighted doorway. The windows, although there were many, were long, plain rectangles with white casements, relieved only by wrought-iron balconies on the first and second floors. All in all, an exercise in tasteful restraint one wouldn’t associate with the Dowager Duchess of Murther.

The housekeeper, a thin sparrow of a woman named Mrs. Willett, with bristly gray hair and a surprisingly substantial bust, made it a point to personally greet them at the kitchen door and usher them into the upstairs side of the house.

“We’ve had word from Her Grace,” she confided in them. “They are spending a few days in Bruges before continuing on to Antwerp and home.”

Such innocuous words to incite giddiness.

Alone. She and Jack would be alone for at least three days before anybody interfered.

It wasn’t sensible. It wasn’t sane. Olivia knew that she would only suffer for what she was about to do. But suddenly, it seemed inevitable.

Maybe Kate was right. Maybe it could turn out differently this time. She didn’t know. All she knew was that she could barely hear the housekeeper for the blood rushing through her ears.

As the housekeeper explained household policy, Olivia looked past her to see that Jack was already watching her. Already at the decision she hadn’t even realized she’d made. She and Jack were alone, and whatever else happened, they would make love.

“Well, we’ve prepared the room Lady Kate reserved for you,” Mrs. Willett was saying as she led them across to the sleekly banistered stairs that swept up from the back of the house. “Baths have been prepared, and a tea tray with all of Her Grace’s favorite cakes. Dinner will be at eight.”

Jack surreptitiously reached over and curled his hand around Olivia’s and stole her breath. It still felt unreal, as if nothing that happened here counted, as if they were being given a small window of opportunity to find each other again. The thought fluttered in her chest like a trapped bird.

Mrs. Willett climbed to the second floor and turned left down a short hall to open a set of double doors. “The sitting room. The bedrooms connect through it, of course. I’ll leave you here, just as Lady Kate suggested.”

And before they could question her, she curtsied and trotted back down the hall.

“Lady Kate is very suggestive,” Jack said, ushering Olivia through the door. “I wonder what she can be about.”

Olivia pulled her hand free and walked around the elegant eggshell sitting room. “For a notorious woman, she seems to enjoy matchmaking.”

Jack stepped up behind her. “A hobby I highly approve of.”

He kissed the nape of her neck. Olivia closed her eyes against the wash of weakness that gesture provoked.

She shouldn’t be here. She should beg for a different room. She should barricade herself in a distant tower Jack wouldn’t be able to find.

She leaned back against his touch. “You are wicked.”

“Aye, wicked,” he murmured in her ear. “That’s me.”

Then he turned her around, and suddenly this was her Jack, just back from the fields, his smile relieved and hungry, his laugh as light as wind.

“Oh, Livvie,” he greeted her, sweeping her into a close embrace. “I’ve missed you.”

She found herself laughing and breathless as she wrapped her arms around him. “You’ve been right next to me.”

He growled into her hair. “I want to be
in
you.” His voice was strained, his muscles taut. Olivia could feel every thought he had before he had it. “We shouldn’t, Liv. We should wait until we have all our answers. But, God, I just can’t. I feel as if it’s been forever.”

She closed her eyes and savored the feel of him, the scent of him, the perfect fit of him around her. God forgive her, she wanted nothing more at that moment than to stay exactly where she was.

She
wanted
to hope.

“Say yes, Liv,” he whispered against her ear in that wonderful raspy voice that betrayed his arousal. “Sweet God, say yes.”

Suddenly, briefly, madly, she wanted to try. Not just to reclaim the magic of lovemaking. She wanted to see if Jack might love her again, really love her. And this, she knew, would be the first step.

She chuckled, the sound breathy and afraid. It had been so long. And yet, her body was already reacting, flames licking along her belly as if he’d touched her with a slow match. She met his gaze to see how hot that beautiful sea-green could be. She felt his hands at the back of her dress and nestled closer. She arched her neck so he could nibble at it. “Yes, Jack,” she whispered. “Yes.”

He groaned against her skin and raised goose bumps all the way to her toes. “Oh, Livvie…”

He was dropping kisses down her neck when he suddenly straightened. “I remember something.”

She went still, his words all but dousing her excitement. “What?”

He never loosened his hold on her. “I remember sitting at a gambling house somewhere playing deep basset and thinking how few places there could have been for you to gamble. How
did
you lose your pearls, Liv?”

She battled a hot wave of hope. “They were taken from my jewelry box. I never knew they were missing until Gervaise appeared with them and said he’d recovered them from the pawnbrokers.”

Absently stroking her cheek with his thumb, he nodded. “You never did gamble, did you?”

Olivia fought the burn of tears. “No, Jack. I didn’t.”

Holding her even more tightly, he dropped a slow kiss on her forehead. “I think I’ve known that. I think my sisters might have been conspiring to separate us. I’m so sorry, Liv. I should have trusted you.”