Barely a Lady (8 page)

Finney patiently collected the ladies’ pelisses, his ham hands making the attire look like doll’s clothes. “We all tried to make the lady rest,” he whispered to Lady Kate in a scratchy rumble. “Wouldn’t budge.”

“Miss Olivia is nothing if not perseverant,” Lady Kate assured him with a pat to his massive arm. “I’m sure she wouldn’t refuse a bit of tea, though, would you, Olivia?”

And without waiting for an answer, Lady Kate sailed into the Lavender Salon, the only public room free of wounded.

Taking up the dispatch bag, Olivia followed.

“Is there anything I can do?” Grace asked, looking as if she meant to put her arm around Olivia’s shoulder.

Olivia knew her smile was stiff. “I don’t know,” she said, carefully stepping away. She hoped Grace understood. Like Grace, she had moments when comfort would shatter her tenuous defenses.

She was hanging on to her composure by a thread, still overwhelmed by the urge to laugh like a lunatic. What in all that was holy was she to do? Where did she start? And how did she survive the inevitable when she and Jack were exposed?

Seating herself on one of the lilac Louis Quinze chairs that bracketed the overcarved marble fireplace, she found herself staring at her hands, as if it would help her understand their treachery. She swore she could still smell Jack on them.

How could they? How could
she
? She’d made a mockery of the terrible sacrifices she’d suffered the last five years. He’d opened his eyes and called her name, and the discipline she’d struggled so hard to gain had simply vanished.

Just the thought sent frissons of need slithering through her. She literally ached with the urge to jump up and run back to him, to gather him close and breathe in his scent. To sweep her hands over every dip and ridge of that body she’d held in her sleep so many nights.

Briefly closing her eyes, she curled her fingers into her palms, as if it would help protect her from herself.

“Just for clarification,” Lady Kate said, startling Olivia back to the present. “What is that unhygienic article you’ve brought into my house?”

Olivia looked down at the dispatch bag she held before her like a rat. “Part of my explanation.”

She had searched the dispatch bag after all. It had made things immeasurably worse.

“First things first,” Lady Kate said as Lady Bea settled next to her on the plum brocade settee. “I have waited all day for tea.”

Olivia nodded, beset by an even greater sense of dislocation. She realized that this was one of the first times she’d seen these women awake since the night of the battle, and they were all perched on fragile seats in a salon decorated in a dozen shades of purple, as if nothing but tea awaited them.

She wasn’t sure if they had slept any more than she had. They all looked pulled, although Lady Kate maintained her style, dressed in a lovely cream jaconet walking dress that was trimmed in the same hunter-green ribbon she’d threaded through her mahogany curls. Lady Bea wore silver moiré and lace, with a tidy cap on her neat white hair. Grace was again in serviceable gray, her own dull strawberry hair scraped back into a bun that should have given her a headache.

Olivia wondered briefly whether Grace always wore gray. A practical choice for a woman who spent her life one bullet away from mourning, she imagined, then felt guilty for the thought.

“The patients are all well?” Grace asked, startling Olivia.

“Oh, yes. In fact, the gentleman upstairs has woken.”

Lady Kate’s head snapped up. “Indeed.”

Olivia almost flinched from that perceptive gaze. “Yes. It’s what I needed to speak to you about.”

Before she could continue, though, the door opened and the tea cart was rolled in by an impossibly young maid who sported a noticeable bulge beneath her apron.

“Ah, thank you, Lizzie,” Lady Kate said as the blushing girl stopped before her. “You may close the door on the way out.”

“Yes, mum,” the girl whispered with a lopsided curtsy.

“Would you care to pour, Bea?” Lady Kate asked when they were left alone. “That will leave me free to speak to Olivia.”

Olivia’s heart faltered. “Thank you.”

Suddenly she felt hollow. Her vision dimmed. She had held her secret to herself for so long. Even after practicing her speech for the last three days, she still wasn’t sure she’d have the words to explain it.

“I know who the man upstairs is,” she said before she could falter. “I should have told you before, but… well, that is part of my problem. He is John Wyndham, Earl of Gracechurch.”

“Is he?” Lady Kate asked evenly as she accepted her tea.

Olivia nodded, her hands clenched. “I assume you’ve heard of the Countess of Gracechurch.”

Lady Kate smiled. “Oh, my dear, who hasn’t?”

Olivia swallowed. She wished she could close her eyes, but that would make her even more craven than she was. “
I
am the Countess of Gracechurch. I go by Olivia Grace in order to secure employment.”

She braced herself for sneers. Outrage. Lady Kate laughed, and she felt upended.

“Well, thank heavens,” the little duchess said with a pat to Lady Bea’s hand. “We were hoping you’d admit it yourself.”

Olivia stared, stricken. “You knew?”

Lady Kate nodded. “I recognized Jack, of course. He’s a friend of my cousin Diccan. But it was Lady Bea who sussed
you
out.”

Olivia gaped. “Lady Bea?”

“Oh, yes,” Lady Kate said. “Didn’t you hear her? She called Jack
Odysseus
. A man in exile. And then she called you Penelope—well, that was later. The long-suffering wife, of course.”

She stopped, as if that was explanation enough. Olivia felt more disoriented than ever.

It was Grace who interceded, her face softening to a smile as she helped Lady Bea hand around cups. “I don’t believe Olivia quite understands yet.”

“Oh, dear.” Lady Kate chuckled. “Of course. You’re having trouble understanding my lovely Bea.”

Olivia blushed furiously. “I, well…”

Lady Kate waved away her discomfort. “It’s quite all right. Bea doesn’t mind speaking of it. A few years ago, she lost the ability to communicate normally.”

“Untangling yarn,” Bea said with a nod.

Olivia couldn’t help glancing at Lady Bea, but the old woman never looked up from pouring tea. “An apoplexy?”

Lady Kate shook her head. “Heroism.” She turned suspiciously bright eyes on her friend. “Bea suffered an injury trying to protect a helpless friend, and her speech was affected by it. She is just as sharp and thoughtful as before, but because of the injury, she can’t speak literally. She speaks in, oh, metaphors. Symbols. ‘Untangling yarn.’ She’s telling you that sometimes you have to unravel her thoughts from her speech. You see?”

Olivia slowly nodded. “Indeed, I do. I just hope Ihaven’t insulted you in any way by not knowing, LadyBea.”

Lady Bea looked up and smiled. “Impossible,” she said in her clipped way. “Eat.” And she handed Olivia her cup.

Olivia couldn’t help but smile as she accepted.

“Well, then, Olivia,” Kate said, sipping from her paper-thin Sevres cup. “What are we to do with you?”

Olivia carefully set her own cup on the satinwood table beside her chair. Her reprieve was over, then. “I will leave, of course.”

“Before I can toss you out onto the cobbles in full daylight so all may know your shame?”

Olivia shrugged. “It’s happened before.”

She thought she heard Grace suck in a startled breath. As for Lady Kate, oddly enough, she bristled. “Well, I’ve been insulted before,” the little duchess snapped, “but I have never once been called
proper.
Next you’ll say I remind you of an Almack’s patroness.” She said this in the same way she might have said
vermin
. “And I don’t abandon a friend just because she threatens to be more notorious than I.” She gave a quick grin. “Although I do admit to some jealousy. You were quite the scandal for an entire season.”

Olivia struggled to stay calm. “Actually, it was two.”

“We’ve all read and heard the official version of what happened, of course,” Lady Kate said, snatching a biscuit from the tray. “But I think no one has heard your side of the story. Surely Bea and Grace and I have the right to be the first.”

Lady Bea gave a definite nod. “Family.”

Feeling more than slightly overwhelmed, Olivia recovered her tea and sipped, as if that could give her inspiration.

“Grace,” Lady Kate said, never looking away fromOlivia. “Do you know who the Countess of Gracechurch is?”

“I’m afraid I must confess my ignorance,” Grace admitted. “But, then, I’ve spent most of the last twenty years out of the country. Is it very bad?”

“
Very
bad.” Lady Kate grinned. “At least according to Jack’s cousin Gervaise, it is.”

Olivia couldn’t help flinching at Gervaise’s name.

“Doesn’t Gervaise have the right story?” the duchess asked.

“I’m sure Gervaise has a perfectly delicious story,” Olivia said. Finally giving up on her tea, she set her cup back on the table to keep it safe. “Gervaise loves nothing more than a good story.”

Lady Kate tilted her head a bit. “Except this time the story was perhaps a bit biased?”

The only response Olivia could give was a stiff shrug. “I’d hoped I could be gone before anyone could connect you with the notorious Olivia Wyndham.”

“Notorious?” Grace asked, sitting very still.

“Scarlet,” Lady Bea said.

Lady Kate leaned close to Grace. “Divorced,” she whispered. “One of the most salacious crim.con. cases of the decade.”

Grace’s eyes widened. “Ah.”

“What Olivia doesn’t understand, though,” Kate said with a sip of her tea, “is that hosting her would serve my purposes perfectly. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than set up the backs of the Wyndhams. Except for Jack, I bear a particular aversion to a family whose favorite sport is giving me the cut direct. I am too… outré, don’t you know.”

Olivia gave a little hiccuping chuckle. “My dear Lady Kate, Queen Charlotte is too outré for them. You can imagine how the daughter of a vicar fared against them.”

“You ran away to marry?”

“Heavens, no. My family was thrilled beyond bearing. My father married us himself, right in the parish church.”

“Without a member of his family to represent Jack?”

“Gervaise was his best man.”

It was Kate’s turn to look surprised. “Ah.”

Grace was looking back and forth between them. “I hope you don’t think me dense…”

“Try and keep up, dear,” Lady Kate said with a pat to her hand. “What our Olivia is telling us is that she, a vicar’s daughter, fell madly in love with our mystery man upstairs, Jack Wyndham, heir to
her
father’s patron, the Marquess of Dourne. The family, one of the oldest titles in the kingdom, predictably did not favor the match and… what, attempted for an annulment?”

Olivia nodded. “It was their first strategy, certainly.”

“Round two must have been the rumors that began to circulate about a certain countess’s gambling habits.”

Olivia remembered Jack’s outrage and fought to hold on to her dignity. “Much more effective.”

Kate nodded. “Not effective enough, evidently, for in short order came news of Olivia’s long-standing affair with her first cousin Tristram Gordon. This was evidently too much for our impulsive young Jack, because within a matter of weeks, he had initiated divorce proceedings and killed poor Tristram in a duel.”

Gervaise’s tour de force,
Olivia almost said. But even with the support Lady Kate had already offered, Olivia simply didn’t know the duchess well enough to know what she really thought of the beautiful, laughing Gervaise. “Yes,” she said baldly.

“Petulant brat,” Lady Bea snapped.

“Heavens,” Grace murmured.

Lady Kate nodded. “Straight out of a Minerva Press novel, isn’t it? Although they lost me when they tried to make Tristram the scapegoat. Of all the absurdities.”

Olivia went still. “You knew Tris?”

Lady Kate faced Olivia squarely. “I know his real lover.”

Olivia had made it through five years of hell without weeping. Lady Kate’s words almost broke her. Then Lady Bea reached over to pat her hand, and she lost her breath entirely.

“I met Tristram, too, of course,” the little duchess continued, her eyes softening. “I was very sorry when he died.”

Olivia swallowed the hard lump in her throat. “As was I.”

Dearest Tris, who had been her shadow as a child, her best friend as a girl, her confidante as an adult. Offered up on the altar of expediency and mourned by none but her. And, evidently, this self-possessed little duchess who adopted pregnant maids.

“Because of the duel, Jack was forced to flee the country,” Lady Kate continued. “Oh, what, Olivia, four years ago now?”

“Five. Jack discovered Tris and me in what he thought was a compromising position, challenged Tris, and threw me off the property all in a single day.”

“How very efficient of him. You returned to your parents?”