WidowsWickedWish (17 page)

Where is the freedom I was promised?

Her wailing words echoed around in his mind and Jack latched
on to the clue they provided. The Countess of Palmerton quite clearly believed
she was owed some measure of freedom in return for the years she’d spent
imprisoned in a loveless, passionless marriage.

Jack knew all about holding fast to the promise of repayment
of a debt owed. He’d waited more than a decade to seize the life that should
have been his. He’d endured his own hellish marriage. There had been times
during his years with Elizabeth when it had seemed that the only thing that
kept him sane was the fantasy of one day, somehow, some way, seeing that debt
paid in full, of claiming what was owed him.

If Olivia needed more time and a bit of freedom before she
settled into marriage once more, Jack would give her that. And in giving her
that which she desired, he would be that much closer to achieving his own just
reward.

The too-soft bed jostled and Jack opened his eyes to see his
future bride leaning over him on one elbow, a smile upon her lips and a twinkle
in her eyes.

“What was that you did to me?” she asked, her voice smoky.

“Liked my mouth on your clit, did you?” Jack asked.

“I quite liked your mouth on my clit, and your tongue buried
in my cunny, Mr. Bentley,” she purred.

Jack rolled her onto her back and leered down at her. “What
do you say we see just where else you might like my tongue?”

With a toss of her head that sent sunlight shimmering
through her sable curls, Olivia wound her arms around his neck and pulled his
mouth down to hers.

Live a little, Lady Palmerton
.

Jack’s words whispered through her mind in the days that
followed.

“You’re in a pensive mood today.”

Olivia looked away from the view of the flourishing garden
beyond the low wall of a gray stone balustrade. She turned to find her sister
watching her with a soft smile, her brown eyes warm, the wind teasing her long,
golden tresses against her neck and shoulders.

“Do you think that I worry overmuch what others think of
me?” Olivia asked curiously.

“Honestly?” Beatrice Carlisle, Viscountess Easton asked.

“No, I’d prefer you lie to me,” Olivia replied with a grin.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever met a woman who worries more
about other people’s opinions,” Beatrice said. “Well, perhaps your mother.”

“Is it foolish of me to care what others think?”

“Foolish? No, of course not,” Beatrice answered. “But when
you deny yourself in order to please others, when you allow yourself to be
controlled by other people’s expectations, it is the height of foolishness.”

“Other people’s expectations,” Olivia repeated softly.
“You’ve a way of hitting the head on the nail.”

“I think you mean hitting the nail on the head.”

Olivia waved away the correction, accustomed to mangling the
simplest of expressions.

“I have allowed myself to be controlled by other peoples’
expectations,” she admitted. “Boxed in by the fear that I might lose their good
opinion. My mother, my husband, my neighbors and friends. I even worry about
what strangers think of me.”

“Is there such a thing as strangers in London?” Beatrice
asked. “Doesn’t everyone know everyone, if not by acquaintance then by
reputation?”

“Precisely,” Olivia agreed. “The woman I passed this morning
on my way to visit you…”

“Passed? You walked here?”

“I miss my morning walks at Idyllwild.”

“Yes, but you walked here. You who once took a carriage from
your house to your cousin’s four doors down,” Beatrice replied with a laugh. “Goodness,
we’re a good mile from Palmerton House.”

“Hadn’t you heard? I am a respectable widow now,” Olivia
said. “With a widow’s …”

“Freedom,” Beatrice finished for her. “You’ve been saying
that twice daily since your return to Town and I’ve yet to fully grasp what the
words mean to you.”

“I can walk down the street all by myself if I choose to. I
can wear bold gowns in jeweled tones. I can learn to play the violin,” Olivia
replied.

Beatrice only looked at her, one brow raised.

“I can take a lover,” Olivia added in a whisper.

Beatrice tossed her head back and laughter tripped from her
lips, the merry sound carrying up into the cloudless sky.

“Beatrice…” Olivia began as her cheeks heated.

“Oh my God!” Beatrice jumped to her feet. “You’ve taken a
lover! Who is he? Good gracious, you’ve taken a lover!”

“Beatrice!” Olivia rose to her feet, her head swiveling
about.

“No one can hear us,” Beatrice assured her as she rounded
the small table that sat between them on the balcony overlooking the gardens.
She pulled her sister to her feet and into her arms. “Who is he? Tell me
everything.”

Olivia allowed herself to be whisked across the balcony in
an exuberant reel, their slippered feet tapping against the stones, their day
dresses swirling around them. They danced from one end of the open expanse to
the other before returning to the table and the remnants of the breakfast
they’d shared.

Beatrice fell into her chair, her eyes watering and a wide
grin gracing her beautiful face.

Olivia gingerly lowered herself into her own chair, her
muscles and tender flesh protesting. She’d enjoyed Jack’s attentions twice last
night and again in the quiet just before dawn. In truth, she’d walked the mile
to Beatrice and Simon’s house in hopes of walking the stiffness from her thighs
and to save her poor swollen cunny from the torture of bouncing about in a
poorly sprung carriage.

“He’s insatiable,” she muttered beneath her breath.

“Insatiable?” Beatrice repeated, her eyes wide.

Olivia bent her head.

“How insatiable?” Beatrice asked. “Every night insatiable?
Every night and every morning? Morning, noon and night?”

Olivia nodded, peering up at her sister through her lashes.

“Morning, noon and night?” Bea breathed in wonder.

“Twice,” Olivia replied, unable to keep a smile from her
lips.

“Twice what? Twice each night? Twice every morning?”

Again Olivia nodded.

Beatrice blinked at her. “And noon?”

“Only once,” Olivia replied. “Usually.”

“How on earth do you manage it?” Bea asked.

“Sometimes it is a bit much,” Olivia admitted. “But he…well,
he just can’t seem to get enough of me. And I cannot refuse him. He is…the
things he does to me…the things we do together. I never knew two people could
share…it’s simply delicious.”

Beatrice waved one hand in the air as if swatting the words
away. “Do not remind me. Simon seems to think I am made of the most fragile
glass these days. I’m lucky if he gives me a quick kiss most nights. But that’s
not what I meant.”

Olivia tilted her head in question.

“How do you manage all this trysting, how is it no one
knows?”

“Oh, well, we…that is…Jack comes for tea most days and
simply lingers throughout the afternoon after I’ve put the children down to
nap.”

“Lingers all day and throughout the night?”

“No, of course not.” Olivia laughed at the absurd, though
pleasant, notion. “He goes home after, well, after—”

“After once. Usually,” Bea interjected with a giggle.

“Yes, well. He will find me at the end of the night at
whatever entertainment I’m attending.”

“Do you plan ahead? Tell him where you’ll be and when?”

“No,” Olivia replied after a pause in which she wondered how
exactly Jack had managed to find her at the theater, at Lady Winston’s ball, at
Bertie’s musicale. “I don’t know how he knows, but somehow he does. I suppose
if one knows which events are planned of a night it’s not difficult to guess
where I’ll be.”

“So he finds you and what? Pulls you into empty rooms, dark
alcoves?”

“Not yet, more’s the pity. I had thought he would, but thus
far he has restrained himself to long, winding carriage rides and soft fluffy
beds. Oh, and walls. Jack seems to have a real thing about walls.”

“Walls certainly hold appeal,” Beatrice replied with a
secretive little smile, before her eyes widened and she sucked in a startled
breath. “Jack? As in Jack Bentley? The boy you once loved?”

“He’s hardly a boy any longer,” Olivia answered.

“But it is him? Jack Bentley?”

“Yes.”

The sister’s smiled across the table at one another.

“So he bundles you into his carriage, has his wicked way
with you and sneaks you up to his chamber?”

“Mostly,” Olivia agreed. “Last night I sneaked him up to
mine. Through the servants’ entrance. He was nearly caught by Celeste leaving
this morning.”

“Celeste won’t spread tales,” Beatrice assured her.

“No, but she had a difficult time meeting my eyes this
morning when she helped me to dress,” Olivia replied. “Every time she did, she
erupted into giggles.”

“She’s likely happy for you,” Beatrice said. “She was with
you through the worst of your years with Palmerton.”

“Yes.”

“My goodness,” Beatrice breathed after a pause in which
Olivia attempted to push the memories from her mind. “You’ve taken a lover. And
not just any lover.”

“What do you mean?” Olivia asked in confusion.

“You’ve taken the man you’ve always loved as your lover,”
Beatrice explained.

“I don’t love Jack!” Olivia exclaimed in surprise as she
leapt to her feet. “Good Lord Bea, what on earth would make you think that?”

“Well, you loved him when you were a girl…” her sister
began.

“Kitty love,” Olivia protested, her heart racing.

“Puppy love,” Beatrice corrected.

Olivia waved her hand in agitation. “I never had a puppy. It
was always cats for me. And Jack was like a sleek black cat, a graceful
panther.”

“And you loved him,” Beatrice said.

“I was a child,” Olivia argued. “He fell in love with
Elizabeth and married her and I put away any fanciful notions of love. I put
them right from my mind.”

“And your heart?” Bea asked softly. “Did you put them from
your heart?”

Olivia paced away from the table, from her sister’s
perceptive gaze. She stood staring out over the gardens that Beatrice had
turned into a verdant, wild jungle, a smaller version of the gardens at
Idyllwild.

“I intended to love Palmerton,” she said to the garden.

“I know you did.” Beatrice came up beside her, her hands
holding the burgeoning swell of her belly. “But some people make loving them
impossible.”

“He never wanted me to love him,” Olivia replied, her gaze
still on the garden where a fountain bubbled cheerfully. “He never thought to
love me, to know me. I was a gently bred lady, the daughter of the Earl of
Hastings, the Diamond of the Season, the pick of the crop. The ideal bride, one
who would grace his arm when the occasion demanded, welcome him to her bed when
an heir was required, run his household and host lavish balls to impress his
peers and sit quietly across the breakfast table while he read the
Times
and muttered over his coffee.”

“I’m glad he’s dead.”

Olivia spun to face her sister, shock vibrating along her
spine. And with it, a whisper of agreement that she valiantly battled down.

“I am,” Beatrice insisted. “He was a horrible excuse for a
man, flaunting his mistresses in your face, belittling your opinions, treating
you as little more than his broodmare, stealing from you.”

“He hardly stole from me,” Olivia protested.

“He blew through your dowry like it was water, he stole your
future, your innocence, your spirit, your belief in yourself. He was nothing
but a lowly cur, debauching and thieving his way through life.”

“My goodness,” Olivia breathed in awe. “You’ve a way with
words, Bea.”

“And he stank,” Beatrice finished with a nod.

Olivia burst out laughing.

“He did,” Beatrice asserted with an answering giggle. “His
breath was like the foulest sewage. And his general body odor, good Lord, one
could smell him coming from the next room. How his mistresses tolerated that
odiferous cloud that followed him about, I’ll never know.”

“Jack smells divine,” Olivia replied with smile. “Spicy and
exotic, bergamot and thyme and something else I can’t quite place.”

“He likely bathes regularly.”

“Oh, he does,” Olivia assured her. “He quite enjoys bathing,
in fact.”

“Twice?” Beatrice asked, straight-faced.

“Hush, you hussy.” Olivia swatted her sister playfully on
the arm.

“Will the clean, divinely scented, insatiable man remain in
London for the remainder of the Season?” Beatrice asked as they wandered back
toward the table.

“At least until he finds a wife,” Olivia answered, ignoring
the lump that formed in her throat.

“A wife?” Beatrice repeated. “He is searching for a wife?
While he dallies with you? Why won’t he marry you? He’d be lucky to have you
for a wife. You are…”

“Do not say it,” Olivia interrupted heatedly. “If one more
person reminds me that I am the Countess of Palmerton, London’s Darling, I will
scream!”

“A beautiful, sweet, intelligent woman who apparently
manages twice, not once but twice, and sometimes thrice daily.” Beatrice
finished as she fell into her chair. “Why won’t he marry you?”

“He would,” Olivia assured her. “He proposed…”

“When? When did he propose?” Beatrice demanded, clapping her
hands in glee.

“At Idyllwild, after our first night together…”

“You invited him to your bed at Idyllwild?” her sister
cried. “Mama must have loved that! Did she know?”

“She knew,” Olivia admitted.

“I don’t understand. If he proposed why is he still
searching for a wife?”

“I refused him, of course.”

“But why?”

“Beatrice, he wants children,” Olivia explained as calmly as
possible, ignoring the pain that lanced through her chest. “He wants an heir to
carry on the mining business he and his father run, to carry on his name. He
wants a son of his own.”

Beatrice wilted against the chair back, her eyes clouding,
her hands going to her belly to rub the small bump beneath her pale-yellow
dress. They sat together in silence, both lost in their thoughts of what might
have been.

With a shake of her blonde tresses, Beatrice leaned forward,
her eyes pinning Olivia.

“London’s Darling?” she asked with an arch of her brow. “I
know your company is much sought-after, but really London’s Darling?”

“The moniker was hung around my neck during my first
Season,” Olivia answered with a rueful sigh, happy to follow her sister’s jump
into another topic. “It seems someone has revived it this Season. Jack has even
heard it, and he hardly moves in the highest circles.”

“No wonder you worry you won’t live up to Society’s
expectation,” Beatrice grumbled. “Good Lord, no lady could. No lady with any
sense would even try. Why, if I’d been shackled with such a God-awful name, I
would have immediately set about altering everyone’s expectations.”

“What?” Olivia asked. “What did you say?”

“That it’s a God-awful title to have looped about your
neck,” Beatrice replied.

“One that you would have tossed off and ground beneath your
heels,” Olivia added.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” her sister protested. “No, I would
simply have set about changing the expectations that came with it, subtly
altering them until I could happily live with them.”

“I could do that,” Olivia breathed in dawning wonder. “I
could subtly lower everyone’s expectations.”