Lessons After Dark (22 page)

“Mrs. Brightmore?”

Olivia looked up at Charlotte's voice, then immediately straightened. How long had she been slumped in the chair? What had she missed? What had gone wrong?

But Charlotte's face held neither alarm nor reproof, only concern. Concern was bad enough, but Olivia would take it. It had been that sort of day. “How's Elizabeth?” she asked.

“Just fine,” said Charlotte. “She's gone up to our room to read a bit before dinner. The boys are doing the same, I think.” She rubbed the back of her neck for a second, working up to whatever she had to say, and Olivia braced herself for some unpleasant statement. “I think you should come outside with me.”

“What? Why?”

Charlotte shrugged. “I can't explain in here.”

Olivia blinked. “It's raining,” she said.

“It's stopped.”

“The ground—”

Charlotte tossed her head impatiently. “I'll buy you a new pair of boots. We'll stay in sight of the house, if that's what you're worried about, and you can run away if it looks like I'm going to touch you. Though if you think I'm possessed, you should be trying to knock me down about now. Just come with me. This is important. Ma'am.”

Clearly it was important enough that Olivia wasn't going to get a minute's peace unless she complied. “Oh, very well,” she said and got up, a difficult maneuver, for the chair seemed to have its own gravity.

Fifteen minutes later, in coat and hat and carrying an umbrella just in case, Olivia followed Charlotte out Englefield's front door. The rain
had
stopped, and the wind had blown the clouds away. A field of stars stretched brilliant overhead, and a full moon was rising to the west. Something tight and uncomfortable inside her began to loosen its grip.

Charlotte led her out to the gardens. For a wonder, she didn't talk, and Olivia didn't complain. There was relief in the silence, just as there was in the stars overhead—more than she'd ever been able to see in the city—and in the feeling of cold air against her skin. She took a deep breath, and it felt like her first in days.

They stopped by an ornamental fountain, ghost white in the starlight. “Feeling tired?” Charlotte asked.

“I…no.” Olivia shook her head. As exhausted as she'd been inside, she was perfectly energetic now. She felt as though she could've gone on walking all the way to the village. “It must be the fresh air.”

“Some of it. Maybe,” Charlotte said. “Some of it isn't.”

“What do you mean?”

“There's something wrong in there.” Charlotte waved a gloved hand toward Englefield. “The animals feel it too. Things are…wound too tight. Today was just part of it. Elizabeth told me she's been having nightmares again. Bad ones.”

Olivia nodded. “Everyone's nervous about the demon,” she said. “Being shut inside together doesn't particularly help either. Everyone starts noticing everyone else's flaws. Your animals are probably picking up on that.” She put a hand against the fountain, bracing herself, and asked, “Or do you think it's something else?”

“I don't know,” said Charlotte. “I've been stuck in close quarters before, and it wasn't usually this bad. But then, it wasn't with a houseful of people who could kill me with a thought, and there wasn't a demon lurking around. So maybe it's just that.”

“I'll check all the wards again,” Olivia said. “Maybe Mr. Grenville's illness left something damaged.”

“Do that,” said Charlotte, “but take a walk around for a bit first. It's how I've kept from running mad.” She grinned. “Assuming I have. Well worth a pair of damp feet.”

“Are you coming with me?”

Charlotte shook her head. “Works better on your own, I find. Besides, I've got to make eyes at the cook. Maybe she'll give me some scraps to feed Star.”

With a wave, she turned and headed back to the house, becoming a dark shape against the stars. Olivia stood for a few moments and watched her draw near to the lighted windows, then found the nearest path and let it lead her onward.

Charlotte was right. As Olivia walked, she felt weight and constriction lift away, as if she'd just stepped out of an iron cage she'd been wearing for the last day or two. It was wonderful, and would have been better if it hadn't made her worry.

She looked over one shoulder at the house. Mr. Grenville's protections were sound ones, and Olivia had been reinforcing them, but would they hold against something as nebulous as mental influence? None of the students or servants had gone to town for two days without her, Joan, or Gareth accompanying them, and she'd watched visitors carefully. But had someone slipped past?

There was only one way of knowing, and that discovery would take a while. Best to start in the morning, when she'd have a little more time, even if that meant another uneasy night.

The path turned around the house, leading toward the back to the stretch of land overlooking the dormitory and the forest. Olivia followed it, and her thoughts turned as well, to the discussions she and Mr. Grenville had been having about the forest's guardianship. She'd seen enough of city life for a while, and staying in one place sounded quite nice. She wouldn't have minded taking up the responsibility, but she wasn't sure she'd have the skill for it, or the sense of the land and living things. Charlotte might have done better, but she clearly had no desire for the post.

The next time Olivia had an opportunity to enter the forest, she would talk to Brother Jonathan about it, though heaven only knew when that would be. Certainly the current state of affairs—

A figure stood nearby, motionless and leaning against one of the trees.

Olivia's breath caught in her throat. She froze and looked again.

The figure was a man, or at least man-shaped, though the darkness prevented any clearer impression. He stood with his head turned away from her. He hadn't moved, so he probably hadn't seen her yet.

Olivia ducked behind a nearby rowan tree and picked up a fallen branch. Rowan wood was some protection against magic. She could amplify its power a little, and if nothing else, the branch was a stout one. Thus armed, she took a few steps closer, trying to be silent, but she had never learned much stealth. The figure looked up before she got very close, and Olivia caught her breath for another reason entirely: the light of the full moon bathing Gareth's face.

Olivia was exactly who Gareth had been hoping to see, and precisely who he'd been dreading would appear. Wrapped in black clothing, with the moon lighting her pale face and the wind tugging at her hair, she looked more aethereal than human for a moment. She might have been an apparition his troubled mind had placed before him.

She also clearly had no real idea how to hold a weapon. Gareth's experience of such things was only secondhand, but even to him her grip on the branch she carried was clumsy and uncertain. Either a spirit or a hallucination would have made a better job of it. Either one would probably have had better weapons—or none.

So he recovered enough to manage speech, though his first words were only: “Good evening.”

“Good evening,” Olivia said with a rather dubious glance up at the sky. “Finally.” She spoke a little too quickly. Nervous. Of him, or of the unknown figure that had prompted her to arm herself, however inexpertly?

He would have had to admit her courage, but he'd stopped trying to deny it some time ago.

“I didn't think anyone would be out here,” he said and then realized he'd spoken as if in complaint. “You have every right to be.” This had all been much easier when he'd been
trying
to cast barbs in her direction.

“Yes, but I can understand how you'd think otherwise,” Olivia said before Gareth could think of any other way to soften his words. She sounded calm and amiable enough, if a little weary. “Charlotte suggested a walk would do me good.”

“Miss Woodwell's a bright girl.”

Olivia looked up at him. In the moonlight, her eyes were very dark. “You've felt it too?” she asked with far more hesitation than Gareth was used to hearing in her voice.

“Yes,” Gareth said and considered what to say next, while the wind picked up and died down fitfully around them. “Tension. Irritability. Weariness. It happens sometimes. We're not good at facing threats that don't show themselves.”

The rest of his feelings had been, in his experience, far less common.

He didn't dream of Olivia. When he did dream, there were mostly nightmares, and sometimes he didn't dream at all, simply woke out of habit. When he did, his first thought was to seek her out.

Gareth's second thought over the last two days had been to reject the notion. Most simply, he'd thought she had her duties the next day, and they would be somewhat more arduous with Simon absent. Waking her would not have been the act of a gentleman, even such a flawed one as he managed to be most times. If not for their conversation and for the train of his thoughts coming back from the Talbots', he might still have done it.

But he still didn't know, concretely, what he felt. He wouldn't have been at all certain how to express it if he had. Midnight was not an hour that lent itself to either.

Still, his good resolutions were frail compared with his memory of Olivia's passion. The longer he stayed outside, he'd reasoned, the more soundly he'd sleep, and the less he'd think of her.

Now she was here.

Gareth looked away from her, out across to the dormitories and the forest beyond them: oak and pine, ash and beech, dark, ancient shapes under the moon and the stars, more ancient still, and all holding secrets whose smallest portion he hadn't comprehended until he'd reached Englefield. Not too long ago, Gareth knew he would have shied from that concept, from the awareness of all he didn't understand. Now it sat more easily on his mind.

The woman beside him, another dark shape, was part of the reason, but that wasn't all. Not all of the reason, or all of her.

She hadn't spoken yet.

Gareth turned toward her. “I can't be around you without wanting you,” he said, his voice rough and clipped. “I have tried. God knows. Perhaps with a few dozen years of mental discipline—but I can't.”

The air between them seemed to heat, to thicken. Olivia's face was grave when she replied, but there was an edge of irony in her voice. “I would imagine either of us would have stopped if we could,” she said. “Quite a while ago, I'd think.”

Gareth searched for something to say without insulting her. She knew what his feelings had been on their first meeting. He didn't think she could help thinking of them now, but he didn't want to speak of them, all the same. Perhaps regret
was
futile, perhaps his behavior
had
been justified, but he still wished he hadn't hurt her. “The struggle is a bit distracting.”

“Yes,” Olivia said quietly. She folded her arms under her breasts and fell silent. Between them, the heat faded a little. In its place came stillness and waiting. Any words now would be weighty things, nothing to be forgotten or discounted the morning after. Lead and steel, not fairy gold.

Off in the distance, an owl cried, seeking its prey.

Olivia took a long breath and squared her shoulders. She started to step toward Gareth, and then, clearly thinking better of it, stopped.

“I can leave,” she said.

Lead and steel indeed. Gareth felt like he'd been hit in the side of the head with a bludgeon. Numb and almost dizzy, he stood and watched as Olivia continued.

“Not right away. Not completely. I—” She stopped whatever she was going to say, swallowed. “I care about your happiness, but not, I'm afraid, enough to forsake everything I've found here. Before, when I was tricking people…it was never the right thing to do, even if it worked out well in the end. This, with the Grenvilles, is. But I don't have to do it here.”

Gareth stared at her. “The
school
is here,” he pointed out, because of all the objections he wanted to make, it was the simplest.

“I'm sure there are other duties I could perform. Finding students, perhaps, or teaching those whose parents won't let them stay here. Research. And there are other teachers. Miss Grenville will be coming home, eventually. When she does, or when Mr. Grenville finds another likely candidate, I can ask him for more remote tasks.”

“My God, Olivia—”

She lifted her chin. “Let us be practical, please,” she said, but there was a softness in her eyes that looked anything but pragmatic. “We…desire each other. Immoderately. In other situations, perhaps there would be other solutions. But my life was as it was, and I made what choices I did, and you cannot approve of them, or of me. I will not ask you to.”

Gareth never thought for a moment of doubting her sincerity.

The determination in Olivia's voice, the angle of her head as she looked at him, the quiet patience in her dark eyes. Gareth couldn't have named one single thing that affected him. All of them hit him with the same force, and the thoughts that had been diffuse and chaotic suddenly lined up.

He stepped forward and reached out. Olivia's shoulders were rigid under his hands, her body stiff with surprise, and the branch she still held in one hand made their position more awkward than Gareth would have liked. He thought of asking her to put it down then realized he had more important things to say. She hadn't stepped away from him and she hadn't tried to twist out of his grasp and these were encouraging signs.

“You're half-right,” he said, looking down into her eyes, watching her conviction turn to confusion. “But only half. I can't rejoice in your past or think it was good, even if…even
though
you and I and Englefield might have profited from the results. You wouldn't believe me if I pretended otherwise. But…” Gareth brought his hand up to cup the side of her face, stroking his gloved thumb down her cheek. “What you did to survive wasn't what you were. And it's certainly not what you are now.”

Her eyes widened, filling his gaze. “And,” she said, struggling to keep her voice light and not quite succeeding, “what am I, then?”

“Brave. Dedicated. Brilliant. Lovely.” Gareth bent his head and brushed his lips against hers, a caress briefer and gentler than anything that had passed between them before. “Loved.”

Olivia stopped breathing at that point. Only for a few seconds, but Gareth thought shocking her back into normal respiration was clearly his medical duty. He pulled her to him and kissed her again, lingering this time, until she dropped the stupid branch and her arms came up around his neck.

As Gareth was beginning to entertain serious thoughts of taking her on the ground, despite the hour and the cold, she slid her hands down against his shoulders and pushed away, gasping. “Are you sure?” she asked. “The things I'll be teaching—”

“Are useful. If I think they're not, I'll object
then
.”

“You might not be the only one who recognizes…who I was, you know. It could be embarrassing for you to be seen too publicly with me.”

“God save me from ever becoming that sort of man,” Gareth said. He tilted her face up with one hand. “If this is your way of rejecting me, you're doing a damned poor job of it.”

“No,” she said and shook her head. “No, I love you. I just want you to know what could happen.”

“And nothing that happens will be the end of the world.” Gareth laughed. “Hopefully.” He felt free, almost weightless, as he hadn't felt since he'd left England years ago. He felt as intoxicated as he had in the grip of magical power. “All we can do is go forward.”

Olivia relaxed into his arms again. “Or back, in this case,” she said.

“Hmm?”

“If we want to sleep indoors tonight,” she said and glanced over his shoulder toward the house.

Her body stiffened even as Gareth heard the footsteps. In an instant, he'd released her and turned, putting himself between Olivia and the dark figure moving toward them. “Who's there?” he demanded and hoped to be neither shot nor dismembered for his pains.

The figure froze, becoming, as Gareth's eyes focused, tall and lanky and unsure. It was still under a tree, the shadows obscuring its face, but the voice was unmistakable. “Sir?” Waite asked.

Some of the tension left Gareth. Not all of it. There were still many questions to be asked.

Olivia stepped up beside him, the tree branch in her hands again. She wasn't holding it threateningly, not now, but nothing in her posture suggested a joyous welcome either. “Really, Arthur,” she said, “this is
outside
of enough.”