My Only Love (12 page)

Miles
put out his cigar in the water then stepped from the tub, waiting as Sally
wrapped a towel around his waist. The room was cold, the windows frosty. Sally
hurried to grab up his dressing gown, a silk magenta wrap that tied at the
waist with a wide sash, and helped him slide his arms into the loose, flowing
sleeves. Then she handed him a silver chalice of warm wine.

"Will
there be aught else?" she asked, drying her hands on her apron.

He
smiled and regarded her eyes, acknowledging the spark of interest there.
Another time he might have obliged her.

"No,"
he replied, "thank you."

She
shrugged and quit the room.

Miles
stared at the door and considered calling her back. But something stopped him.

He
drank the warm liquid and moved across the room, to the foot of his tester bed.
Months had passed since he'd last entertained at Braithwaite, and then his
guests had been nothing more than a dozen acquaintances with their pockets full
of currency and their sleeves full of aces. By the time they'd returned to
London he'd been glad to get shut of them, even relished the quiet and
solitude.

But
last night had been hell.

He
drank again.

For
some odd reason, the moment Olivia Devonshire had closed Braithwaite's door
behind her, emptiness had roared up like a gale from every dark hallway,
stairwell, and threshold. And while Bertrice had snored in his bed, he'd tossed
and turned in another room, doing his best to forget how good Olivia had felt
in his arms.

Must
be getting desperate, old man, he thought. No doubt he'd imagined and
exaggerated her responsiveness. Then again, with a woman with so disreputable
a past, why should he be surprised?

Frowning
and again thinking of Olivia's son, Miles quaffed the remainder of his wine and
plunked the cup on a table strewn with playing cards. Too bad about the boy.
Had Olivia been a plain-as-a-mouse little spinster who was desperate to marry
simply so she would not wither away like some flower on a vine, then he might
have considered marriage, with the understanding that their union would be
strictly for convenience; they would each be free to live their lives independent
of the other, each free to take their lovers as they so desired.

But
the lad was a monstrous responsibility . .. and an unnerving reminder of his
mother's sordid past.

Not
that the lad should, in any way, be held accountable for his mother's poor
judgment... as Miles himself had been.

He
dressed for tea. Always did. Habits were hard to break, and besides, there was
nothing else to do. He thought of riding over to Damien's, give his brother's
guests something fresh to gossip about, but the tumble into the sinkhole had
left him stiff and sore.

Adjourning
to his study, Miles paced the room with no very clear purpose, tossed the arm
from a seventeenth-century French fauteuil in the fire and watched sparks
scatter up the chimney, then taking his chair behind the desk, he sifted
through the stacks of correspondence, most of which he hadn't bothered to open
since they'd arrived weeks, perhaps months, before. There were several from
Gunnerside complaining of the mining conditions; nothing new there, the same
old threats of striking, demands for pay increases, and complaints about
factors that made working the pits dangerous if not lethal.

There
was also a letter from Josiah Lubinsky, which he tossed in the waste bin
without so much as opening the envelope. Miles was uninterested in selling the
mines. Not yet. Not until he was positive beyond all doubt that the damn pits
were played out.

Tugging
loose his cravat, Miles flipped through the dozen or so letters containing
demand notices from creditors that had lain forgotten for weeks, was about to
send them the way of Lubinsky's when the simple and discreet return address on
an envelope buried among others caught his eye.

"J.
P. Mathews & Assoc. London, England."

Miles
closed his eyes briefly. How long had the letter lain there unnoticed? He broke
the seal and flipped open the envelope, doing his best to regulate his
breathing and regretting that he had thrown that chair leg into the fire.

The
air in the room felt unbearably hot.

"Dear
Mr. Warwick: As you recall from previous correspondence, there has been a
problem of monies owed ..."

Miles
rubbed his eyes and stared at the ceiling a long while before forcing his
attention back to the missive.

"Therefore,
it is with deepest regret that we must terminate the association..."

Damn.
Oh, damn.

"Unless
this office hears from you by 1 November in the matter of monies owed, you may
expect my colleagues, and their charge, to arrive at Braithwaite by 75
November at the latest. With deepest and most sincere apologies for whatever
inconvenience this may cause you..."

Olivia
fell asleep with her glasses on. She hadn't meant to doze, but the strain of
the afternoon had left her limp.

Drifting
in and out of sleep, she tried her best to forget the previous hours,
especially the moment, at the top of the stairs, when she had looked down into
the foyer to find Miles and Emily standing toe to toe and conversing in heated
whispers.

"Olivia?
Olivia, wake up!"

Olivia
opened her eyes with effort. But for one burning oil lamp on a distant table,
the room was dark.

Her
eyeglasses had slid off her nose and lay lopsided-ly on her cheek. Righting the
spectacles, she did her best to make out the silhouette looming over her in the
shadows.

"Emily?"
Coming up on her elbows, Olivia searched her sister's distraught features,
experiencing a sense of panic. "Oh, God, it's Bryan, isn't it? Something's
happened—"

"He's
come back, Oli."

"Who?"

"Miles.
He's been holed up in Papa's office for the past two hours."

Olivia
tried to push aside her sleepish confusion. "What does he want?"

Her
fists clenched, her blue eyes round, Emily cried, "What do you think he
wants, you idiot? You!"

Shocked
at first, then agitated, Olivia threw back the counterpane and swung her feet
from the bed. "Don't be absurd, Emily."

"Absurd,
am I? Then why are he and Papa carrying on together in that room, laughing and
drinking like comrades-in-arms? And why," she added, thrusting her face at
Olivia's, "did Papa just send me word that I was to get you up, dressed in
your prettiest frock, and down to the office in the next ten minutes?"

Olivia
didn't so much as blink; it might have, in some way, revealed the upheaval of
anxiety inside her.

Anxiety?
she wondered. Or excitement?

Please,
God, don't let it be hope. She had given up on that a very long time ago.

Her
mind still groggy with sleep, she stumbled to the lantern and turned up the
light, then hurried about the room, lighting the globe fixtures atop
claw-footed tables until the room shimmered from the fire-yellow illumination.
The ashes in the fireplace had dulled to a glowing pewter-gray. Olivia shifted
them around with a poker until the flames gasped for life, then she tossed in a
shovel of coal, adding a portion of peat for good measure.

"You
can't be serious," Emily said. "You're not really going down
there?"

"I
don't normally defy Father. And why should I?" Throwing open the wardrobe
door, Olivia studied her meager selection of gowns, or attempted to. Her
thoughts were scattering in a thousand directions, but always coming back to
the one vibrating question: What if?

Choosing
a white blouse and brown skirt, Olivia dressed as Emily proceeded to pace
around the room.

"How
dare he?" Emily whined. "And today of all days, just hours after Lord
Willowby asked for my hand in marriage."

Grabbing
up a brush, Olivia dragged it through her hair, frowning as it sprang wildly
around her face and over her shoulders, fumbling in her attempt to style the
heavy mane into a chignon.

Emily
flopped into a chair and covered her face with her hands. "What will Lord
Willowby think if you marry that dreadful man? Oh God, he's bound to find out
about Miles!"

"You're
jumping to conclusions, Em. For all we know Father invited Warwick over to show
his appreciation for Miles's fishing Bryan out of that pit this morning."

"Well,
it would have been better for everyone if he had simply let the boy remain
there!"

Olivia
flew across the room, and before Emily could so much as form an O of surprise
with her lips, grabbed her arms tightly and shook her hard. When her sister
cried out in pain, Olivia froze. Emily stared up at her, too stunned at first
to even cry.

Olivia,
too, was stunned at herself. Mortified. For years she had been her sister's
biggest supporter. Hiding her mistakes from her father, and especially Emily's
highly regarded social world, indulging all of her sister's selfish whims,
because somehow Olivia had ignorantly believed that by doing so she would
endear herself to her father.

But
Emily's wishing Bryan dead—even if it had been said in the heat of the moment.
. . dear God, it was simply too much to bear ...

Emily
burst into tears, and leaping from the chair, ran from the room. Olivia stared
after her, her heart breaking ... whether for Emily, or herself, or for Bryan
.. . she couldn't tell.

Olivia
stood before her father's desk feeling as if she were some child caught
stealing apples from an orchard. His face looked very stern, yet there- was a
certain sadness in his eyes; when he smiled, the gesture did nothing to soften
his visage.

"Marriage?"
Olivia repeated, feeling her knees grow as wobbly as clotted cream. She refused
to look at Miles Warwick, who had planted himself near the fireplace, one elbow
casually perched upon the mantel, his observation of her unwavering.

"Yes,"
her father replied. "Marriage. Warwick has returned to Devonswick to ask
my permission to take you as wife. I've of course given him my blessings. You
must make the final decision."

'To
marry Miles Warwick."

Her
father nodded.

At
last, she forced her gaze to Warwick's. How could he stand there proposing
marriage with no more emotion than if he had offered for a cow? "I beg
your pardon," she managed, "I'm just a little taken aback. Just
yesterday—"

"Understandably,"
Warwick said, then turned his attention back to her father. "Perhaps if I
could speak with Olivia alone."

"Certainly!
Of course." Her father left his chair and quit the room, easing the door
closed behind him. Silence then stretched out between her and Warwick. For
eternal moments she waited for him to speak, to break the uncompanionable
quiet. Yet, he only stood there, dressed in a dark gray suit so smartly
tailored that it accentuated his broad shoulders, slender waist, and narrow
hips. His eyes looked very dark and perfectly matched his vest of forest-green
Chinese silk, embroidered with butterflies in gold thread.

"Well,"
she finally said in a voice that sounded too obviously nervous. "Dare I
ask if you've dipped a little too deeply into your whisky again? Or perhaps my
father simply upped the ante, proffering you an offer only a man as wealthy as
Prince Edward would turn down."

"No,"
he replied simply.

"Oh?
Surely you don't expect me to believe that you've come here on some pretense of
fondness—" "No."

She
looked away. "Well, you didn't exaggerate your honesty."

"I'm
sorry if I injured your feelings."

"My
feelings are not easily injured, sir."

From
the corner of her eye, she saw him move. He walked to the window behind her
father's desk and looked out. His dark hair curled thick and rich over his back
collar, and the light reflected in red-gold swatches amid the luxurious
strands. Oh .. . she could not breathe! She was forced to press her fingers to
the desktop to steady herself.

"Your
father speaks highly of your business sense," he said without turning.
"You manage this house admirably." He slowly pivoted to face her and
all she could think of was how the whiteness of his expertly tied cravat
accentuated the bronze tone of his skin. Miles Warwick loved the sun—she knew
that much. Years ago she'd watched him ride wildly across the moor on the
Arabians he so loved. She also knew that he had been forced to sell most of the
remaining stable in order to meet his debts. "You need a husband," he
said, and added almost wearily, "and I need a wife."

"You
need a dowry, sir."

"I
can hardly deny that."

"Surely
there are younger and prettier women whose fathers would be equally as
generous—" "I doubt it."

Her
eyes met his in surprise.

"Their
fathers would never approve of me as a son-in-law."

She
nudged her eyeglasses, just enough so they lay more comfortably on the bridge
of her nose.