A Season of Hope (3 page)

Not that she could see his lips. But she was beyond certain he was scowling.

Danby’s steward emanated a hardness. He apparently didn’t give a fig for the Christmastide season—goodwill, harmony, and all that.

“I’ve invi
ted you both here for a reason. I want you to decorate the castle for Christmastide.”

She blinked, certain she’d heard him wrong. “Your Grace?”

A mottled flush stained the duke’s aging cheeks. “You heard me, girl. This place is rather gloomy for the Christmas season.”

Olivia glanced around the duke’s massive office. Yes, it certainly was
, but then, Danby Castle was gloomy on a bright summer’s day. It didn’t have to do with the lack of ornamentation. It had to do with the cheerlessness of the duke’s home.

“You want me to decorate,” she said, a touch of hesitancy underlying her words.

There had to be more here than she could see. What was it about? What was it about?
“No, girl!” he barked. “I want you both to decorate.”

“No!”

She spun back around to face the forgotten steward.

A growl punctured the quiet of the room. Danby’s man of business was an angry, snapping beast.
“I handle your business, Your Grace. I don’t decorate.”

A laugh bubbled up from her throat, and spilled past her lips. She raised a gloved finger to her lips and stifled the sound.
Grandfather’s steward sounded as angry as if he’d been instructed to pluck all the hairs off his head.

The beast advanced toward her. “Is this funny to you, my lady?”

Olivia tossed her chin back, refusing to be intimidated by the faceless stranger. “Your reaction is. I’ve never known anyone to hate the Christmastide season.”

He stepped into the light and she gasped.

She took a step back and stumbled over her skirts as she gazed at the steward. A series of intersecting scars bisected a face that she could tell had once been beautiful: the hard-square of his jaw, the chiseled plains of his cheeks showed him to be a man of power and strength. Her gaze wandered to the black velvet patch that covered his eye. With his thick, dark locks pulled back in a neat queue, he put her in mind of a pirate.

She looked away.

“Have you had a good look, my lady?” He snarled. “Your granddaughter is rude, Your Grace.”

Olivia’s head snapped up at the derisive statement.
Oh, how dare he!
The unmitigated gall of him. She strode over to him until a mere handbreadth separated them. She planted her hands on her hips and glared back up at him. “Oh, I’m rude? I’m hardly the one snapping and growling like a…like a…wounded bear, Mr.…Mr.…”

The steward leaned down and his hard lips flattened into an unforgiving smile. “Wheatley. My name is Marcus Wheatley.”

Olivia’s body jerked, as if she’d been plunged into Danby’s icy lake. She pressed her hand to her rapid beating heart, but the whoosh and flow of blood in her ears made it difficult to hear anything but his pronouncement over and over.

Marcus Wheatley.

Marcus Wheatley.

“No,” she breathed.
“It can’t be. You died.” And for the first time in her life, Olivia swooned.

Marcus cursed and caught Olivia to him before her lean, lithe frame hit the duke’s floor. He swept her against his chest, besieged by the hauntingly familiar scent of lilacs. The scent wafted over him, transported him back to a different place, a different time, before he’d gone off to fight Boney’s forces, before he’d been transformed into a bloody monster.

“Well done,” the duke drawled. “A bit dramatic for you, no?”

“I don’t know what you mean?” Marcus continued to cradle Olivia in his arms, even as he desperately searched for a place to deposit her. The longer he held her, the stronger the yearning grew for this woman he’d not returned to.

He recalled the flash of horror in her cerulean blue eyes. He’d thought himself immune to pain, but still an ache ripped at his heart, an organ he’d thought long dead. The very expression he’d seen in her face
had been what had driven him into hiding. He’d rather be dead to her, nothing more than a happy memory, than a man she looked on with such fear and loathing.

“Come, boy,” the duke barked
. His words brought Marcus back to the moment. “All that frowning and bellowing.”

“I wasn’t bellowing.”

The duke waved his hand. “She coming to yet?”

Marcus raised a hand to stroke her cheek and thought better of what he was doing. He tapped a finger against her jawline.

Olivia’s golden lashes fluttered. He steeled himself for the rush of reality to hit her precious face.

She blinked. Once. Twice. And then her gaze widened. “Marcus?” she whispered.

He set her down on her feet and made to take a step back.

S
he swayed.

For the love of God
. Marcus caught her. “You were never faint-hearted.”

“And you never before returned from the grave.”

Well, she had him there.

He guided her over to the red
-velvet sofa and all but shoved her down. “Here, sit.”

Olivia’s wide-eyed gaze rotated between him
the Duke of Danby. “What is going on?” she whispered.

The duke stood and folded his arms behind his back. “You two are going to decorate this miserable castle for the season.”

Olivia pressed a hand to her forehead, shaking her head. “Grandfather…”

“Enough,” the duke barked. “You two are going to talk. When you’re done, Wheatley, come find me in my library. I’ve business to discuss with you.”

“You really needn’t…” Olivia pleaded, all but jumping out of her chair and hurrying toward the duke.

The duke ignored her and sailed from the room, closing the door with a firm click.

Just like that, after four years, one hundred sixty-seven days, and a handful of hours, Marcus and Olivia were alone at last.

Olivia turned to face him.

The popping embers of the hearth filled the void of silence.

His scarred lips twisted into a sneer.
“Afraid to be alone with me? That wasn’t always the case, was it, Olivia?”

She drew in a steadying breath.
“I waited for you, Marcus. Where have you been all these years?”

Marcus frowned. There was a cool frost to her words; a tone that had never been there before. Olivia had always exuded an inner
light and radiance free of society’s hard exterior. Where had that woman gone? “How have you been, Olivia?”

She laughed, the sound brittle as ice. “Oh, I’ve been just wonderful
, and you Marcus? Oh, I’m sorry. Should I ring for tea?”

He raised a brow quizzically.

“Are you daft,” she said. “You act as though this is a social visit? I waited for you! I waited for you for five years,” her voice rose. Olivia took a steadying breath. “I believed you were dead and yet, where were you all these years? At my grandfather’s.” She shook her head.

Marcus curled his fin
gers into tight balls at his side to keep from going to her and pulling her into his arms. Too much had passed.

“Do you have nothing to say?” she cried.

He hesitated. “Hello?”

Bright splotches of color stained Olivia’s porcelain
-pale cheeks. If she had a weapon upon her person, he didn’t doubt in that moment that she’d gladly use it on him.

And he’d deserve it. The fact that he’d caused her pain tore at his insides. How odd, he’d thought himself dead to emotion. Only to now learn that he still cared, cared very deeply.

For this woman.

Olivia shook her head
, and even though she only stood at four inches past five feet, managed to look down the length of her pert little nose at him. The look she gave said she’d found him wonting.

Good. This is how he wanted it. So why did he want to reach out to her and remind her that at one time, when he’d not looked like a hideous monster, she’d loved him.

“I have nothing to say to you, Marcus.” She stormed by him.

Marcus reached out and gently wrapped his fingers around the delicate flesh of her upper arm, effectively halting her retreat.

***

Olivia gasped.

Even hating Marcus Wheatley for his indifference and cold disregard, the feel of his touch still managed to heat her skin.

“Release me,” she said, pleased with the even way in which she managed to deliver those words.

He hesitated and she thought he might refuse, but then he did as instructed.

Her eyes ran a path over this stranger’s face.
The puckered skin of his once bronzed cheek, tightened. Her throat moved up and down.

My god, what had happened to him?

In her sweetest dreams, she’d imagined him returning to her. She’d not believed him dead. Her heart would have known. The organ would have cracked and died if he’d been killed at war. As time had passed, she’d been forced to confront the grim reality—he was not returning. Seeing him as he was now, she realized there were many kinds of death a man could die.

“Where were you, Marcus?”

The long pause made her think he might not respond. “Away.” The single word, hoarsely uttered, broke past her fury over his seeming indifference. “Did you miss me, Olivia?”

There was a mocking derision to his question, so foreign to the man Marcus Wheatley used to be.
The affable grin, the proclivity to tease, the gentleness in his eyes— all were gone. Dead. All that was left was a shell of the person he had been.

Olivia swallowed.
“I waited for you,” she said.

The corner of Marcus’
s lips quirked in a humorless expression. “You waited for a dead man.”

Her gaze narrowed on him. Damn him for his indifference. He’d left and taken her heart with him. Through the agony of his loss, she’d remained, and done everything within her power to drive off suitor after suitor. And for what? For a man who’d never had intentions of seeing her again.
Olivia grasped his hands and held them up. “This isn’t a dead man, Marcus! This is a man who promised to return for me. A man who asked me to wait for him. And I waited. And for what? You were never coming back.”

“Oh, come, Olivi
a. I see the way you look at me. You’d have looked at me with the same revulsion and horror and then moved on to your next suitor.”

A gasp escaped her. “How dare you, Marcus
?” she hissed. She closed the space between them until they were toe to toe. “Is that how you remember me? A shallow miss, so easily swayed by a beautiful face?”

His silence hit her like a kick to the stomach. How could her remembrances of him been steeped in such integrity and honor and yet, his opinion of her was so very weak?

To give her fingers something to do, she smoothed the front of her burgundy skirts. “You clearly had no intention of ever seeing me again, Marcus, so I’ll not stand here and humble myself. I’ll not argue with the unsavory opinion you seem to have developed for me over the years. I’ve only come at Grandfather’s request to provide a festive Christmastide season. I’ll do that and when I’m done, I’ll leave. And you’ll never have to see me again.”

Tossing her chin a notch, she snatched her skirts away from him and stormed out of the room.

Only when the wood panel of the door separated her from his piercing, solitary emerald green eye, did she borrow support from the wall outside Grandfather’s office. A shuddery sob wracked her frame. She curled her fingers into tight balls until her nails formed crescents on her palms.

How was she to work alongside him this Christmas season?

Marcus stared down at the reports in front of him. He set aside the leather folio and rubbed the empty spot under the black velvet patch where his eye once had been. He’d never have imagined the socket-less organ would grate as it did. His entire body ached from having worked in the same position for uninterrupted hours.
The sore muscles and ravaged ligaments were just another treasure he’d carried back from the war.

He looked out the window at the gray sky. Thick clouds filled the horizon, blotted all sunlight, and portended another bout of snow.

With a sigh, Marcus gave up on work for the afternoon. He’d gotten very little done, and it had little to do with physical discomfort and everything to do with…her.

Marcus
stood and crossed over to the window. He linked his hands behind his back and studied scenery. Thick banks of undisturbed snow covered the estate. There was something so pure in the winter season. It had always been his favorite time of the year. In fact, during the hellish months he’d spent in a French prison, he’d fought against the grating screams and the chirp of rats by imagining the still silence of a snowy, winter day.

And her. He’d gotten through those darkest days by thinking of her.

As if his unspoken thoughts conjured her, she appeared below. Marcus should return to work. He should pull the curtains and reclaim his seat.

Instead, he leaned his brow against the cool windowpane and studied her.

Olivia pulled her thick, red-velvet cloak close, but then shoved down her hood. She tossed back her head and inhaled. Her breath mingled with the cold to create tiny puffs of white air.

Time had passed but it hadn’t aged her in the least. Instead, it had leant a maturity to her
form. Her heart-shaped face, the cerulean blue of her eyes, the locks of golden hair haphazardly knotted atop her head, were exactly as he remembered, but gone was the body of a young woman. Even with her lean, litheness she was curved in all the places a woman should be curved: full-breasts, rounded hips, pouty lips. No, Olivia was no longer a child.

Marcus leaned ever closer and unbidden foolish yearnings entered his thoughts. He wished he’d never gone to war. He wished he’d returned a whole man she could be proud of.

How different his life would be. At this very moment, he would be outside with her. He’d bend his head and claim her mouth. She would kiss him back and…

“What are you doing over there, boy?”

Marcus spun around. “Your Grace.”

Danby stomped into the room. His displeasure
punctuated by the staccato rhythm of his cane striking the hard floor.

“I gave you a job.”

With reluctance, Marcus shifted his attention from the sight below to the desk littered with paperwork. “I was taking a short break from the ledgers and—"

Danby snorted. “Not the ledgers. I told you to help my granddaughter. You’re to convert this miserable castle into a festive place.”

Marcus had to bite his tongue to keep from saying that it would take a vast deal more than decorations at Christmastide to drive out the demons that rested in the duke’s home.

“Livvie’s going to find a tree.”

Marcus blinked. “I beg your pardon.”

“As you should. Sending that girl out there to do a job you should be helping with. Now go.”

Marcus glanced out the window yet again. Now, two young servants stood in conversation with Olivia. She said something that made both young men turn red like holly sprigs. A knot of envy fisted in his belly until Marcus wanted to snap like an injured pup at those insolent servants. How dare they? How dare they turn her perfect bow-shaped lips up in a smile?

He hated them for making her smile. He hated her for smiling. And he hated himself for wanting desperately to be the one responsible for that smile.

“Very well, Your Grace.”

The Duke of Danby gave a curt nod. “Don’t mess this up
any more than you have, my boy.”

Marcus paused at the door. “I beg your pardon?”

Danby waved him off. “Go. Go.”

As Marcus went for his cloak and made his wa
y outside Danby’s halls, he told himself he was merely following his employer’s orders. He owed the duke a debt of gratitude for not only having him rescued from that French hell, but for giving him some purpose in work. That was the sole reason he would see to this silly order from the duke.

Marcus accepted his cloak and hat from a servant. He jammed the
beaver hat on his head, and then tugged on his brown gloves.

Liar.

He’d quit his work for the day for only one reason.

I want to see her.

It was the height of foolishness for him to spend any time in her presence. That didn’t stop him from stomping his way through the snow and following the path he’d seen her and the two servants take.

A tinkling laugh, clear as bells
, echoed through the winter sky.

God help him.

He was lost.

***

“What are you laughing at?”

Olivia shrieked and spun around. Her heart danced a funny little
rhythm within her chest at the sight of Marcus. Her eyes achingly caressed this stranger of a man. Always taller than most gentlemen, Marcus appeared to have grown another four inches past six feet. Gone was the lean youth. In his stead was this lion of a man with broad shoulders, oaken thighs, and a hardness she didn’t recognize.

Even glowering, angry, and dire,
the sight of his living, breathing form, filled her with joy.

She’d not seen him in two days; since their unpleasant exchange in the Duke of Danby’s office. His hurtful accusations, his low opinion would always hurt, but none of that mattered when faced with the miraculous truth—he was alive.

He would never be hers again. Marcus Wheatley was gone to her as if he’d died at war. Soon she’d be wed to the Earl of Ellsworth. But it was enough knowing that at least Marcus lived.

“I…we were thi
nking of cutting down that tree.”

Marcus’
s black stare followed to where she pointed.

He frowned. “I’m sure that is hardly what Queen Charlotte had in mind when she established this silly
custom.”

Olivia’s lips turned down
. She’d not give him the satisfaction of debating the wonderful tradition of the yew tree, established years back by the Queen. She returned her attention to the three-foot, slender sapling. Snow weighed down its thin branches. “What is wrong with it?” she charged.

Marcus stomped over and gestured
at it. “What isn’t wrong with it? This wouldn’t fill a counter in Cook’s kitchen, let alone fill the duke’s Gold Parlor.”

Her brow furrowed as she studied it with different eyes. Yes, he had h
er there. “It just doesn’t seem fair not to give the poor thing an opportunity to fulfill its Christmastide destiny.”

“
Humph.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

The servants shuffled back and forth on their feet, their gazes averted from the unfolding scene.

“I’d imagine the tree would much rather prefer to continue living out here than to be cut down for your pleasure
.”

“It’s not my pleasure
.”

Marcus ignored her. “
Pick one.”

Her eyes widened. The
…the…dastard! He thought to come out here and interrupt her otherwise pleasant interlude, ordering her about?

Olivia bent down and collected a fist of snow.

“What are you…?”

Olivia launched the ball of snow at his right cheek. It landed with a solid thump and
exploded upon his person, smattering his black patch and cheek.
Oh, dear.

Marcus’
s entire body went erect. He swiped the flakes off his cheek, his face an expressionless mask.

Damn his indifference.

Olivia scooped up another snowball and launched it at his chest.

Marcus’ lips tightened. “My lady…”

She threw another. Damn him for calling her
my lady
.

Damn him for believing she was no better than the empty-headed Society misses. And launched another.

“That will be all,” Marcus said.

It took a moment to realize that he spoke to the servants. Of course, as
steward, the entire staff answered to Marcus Wheatley. She imagined a man, possessed of Marcus’s pride, would not take kindly to being made a public display.

The servants hesitated, but then Olivia
hurled another snowball at Marcus, and the two young men hurried off.

“Have I wounded your ego, Marcus? Did I
—"

She gasped as a ball of snow hit her lips. A residue of wet cold streaked down her cheek. Olivia swiped the back of her gloved hand across her cheek. “Did you
—?"

Another snowball followed suit, in response to her unfinished question. This landed at the metal clasp of her velvet cloak.

Olivia sprinted behind the small sapling she’d championed and darted and dodged from the sides of it. Yes, it could use just a bit more height and lushness, she conceded when Marcus’s snowball sailed through the branches and hit her in the shoulder.

She knelt down and hurriedly created a small arsenal of snowballs.

Then, in quick order, she proceeded to throw them one at a time.

Marcus danced out of the way and the snowballs landed ineffectually at his feet.

“Are you happy?” she called. “You’ve ruined my day.”

Her ire heated at his deliberate silence. She rushed out from behind the tree and raced at him with a final snowball.

Marcus held up a hand. “It’s untoward for you to be running about as you are, my lady.”

Olivia skidded to a stop in front of him. She craned her neck back and studied him. Smug man.

She pressed the snow in her hand against his cheek. “You boor. And you should remember, I’m not the naïve child you left behind five years ago, Marcus. I’m now a woman. Firmly on the shelf. A spinster. I’m afforded certain luxuries.”

Marcus reached
up a hand and dusted off powdery white flakes from her cheek. “I believed the duke mentioned you were to be married.”

Olivia’s heart hung, suspended. A ball of pain worked its way up her throat and threatened to choke her on a wave of regret. Yes, yes, how could she have forgotten?

Being out from under her father’s thumb and in the protection of the Duke of Danby, she’d managed to shove her future to the side.

“Who is he?” Marcus’ gruff question punctured her melancholy.

“The Earl of Ellsworth,” she replied automatically. In this moment, he wasn’t the new Marcus Wheatley. He was simply Marcus, and Olivia was so very, very lonely.

She had been for almost five years.

“He’s old,” she said at last.

“Oh?”

Olivia nodded.

A lone flake swirled from above. Then another. And another. She reached up and tried to catch one between her fingers.

“He is one of my father’s friends.”

“Christ,” Marcus muttered.

At that one utterance, warmth flooded Olivia’s being. If he’d ceased to care for her entirely, then it would hardly matter if she married the Archbishop of Canterbury himself. His concern shouldn’t matter, and yet it did—very much.

“I waited for you,” she blurted. In spite of the cold winter air, her cheeks warmed with humiliation at the admission.

Marcus glanced over her shoulder. His one eye fixed in the distance. “Did you?”
“I did as I promised and scared off suitors.”

The hint of a smile played at
his scarred lips, but then the familiar black scowl more suited to this new Marcus, settled back in place, so that Olivia thought mayhap she’d imagined it.

“Did you?”

She nodded until she remembered he wasn’t looking at her. “I did. I must admit I was rather inventive.”

His lips opened
and closed, and she knew by the way his jaw tightened, that it was all he could do to keep from asking.

Olivia waggled her brows. “Yes, I was very clever.”

That appeared the only enticement Marcus needed.

“Oh?”

She ticked off on her fingers. “I told Lord Ashburn of my fondness for gaming and spirits.”

Marcus inclined his head.
“Did you acquire a taste for spirits in my absence?”

Olivia wrinkled her nose. “Oh no, I abhor the stuff. Would you like to hear more?”

“More than anything.”

She ignored the hint of mockery that underlined his statement. He might pretend to be indifferent, but the fact that he continued this discussion indicated he did care.

“I told Lord Dewitt’s mother that I’d never tolerate her living with us, should we wed.”