WidowsWickedWish (21 page)

The summons she’d dreaded since rising from her bed after a
mostly sleepless night arrived just after ten o’clock the next morning.

Surprisingly it was written by Henry rather than their
mother.

My lady,

You’ve done it now. You’d best come around right quickly,
quicker than your friend did last night. All hell is about to break lose.

Hastings.

She tried to find a speck of humor at Henry’s ribald words,
a modicum of relief in the warning within them. If all hell was about to break
lose, did that mean there was still some way to forestall it?

Clinging to that tiny crumb of possibility, Olivia dressed
in a modest gown of pale-blue muslin trimmed with yellow ribbon around the
square bodice and half-sleeves. Tucking her curls beneath a wide-brimmed
bonnet, she looked in the mirror, schooled her features to calm and pasted a
serene smile upon her quivering lips.

Perhaps gossip had not reached Henry’s ears and it was her
butler who had shared her disgrace with Henry, warned him of imminent scandal.
Surely Johnston or Henry had spoken to the footman who had seen her kneeling
between Jack’s legs with his cock in her hand, and threatened him with
dismissal if he were unwise enough to spread the tale about.

Together she and Henry would come up with a plan. They could
send the servants to the country where any gossip might be lessened with
distance. Olivia could retreat to Idyllwild once more until the threat had
passed. If they only put their heads together they would come up with
something, some way to stave off her ruination.

Holding fast to that thought, Olivia waved away the offer of
a carriage and, with Celeste following close behind her, walked the four blocks
to Hastings House.

Any hope of avoiding scandal disappeared as soon as she
entered the wide front foyer.

Henry’s butler avoided her eyes as he opened the massive
door for her, his gaze lifted to some spot over her head. Without a word he
held out his hand for her bonnet before hurrying down the hall and
disappearing, leaving her standing alone in the deserted space.

“She is your father’s daughter.”

Olivia followed her mother’s strident voice to the front
parlor and silently pushed open the door.

“Mother, calm yourself,” Henry ordered before spying her
hovering at the threshold.

Lady Hastings spun about, her angry gaze landing on Olivia
as she stepped into the room and pushed the door closed behind her.

“You stupid, selfish girl,” her mother screeched.

“Mother,” Olivia began.

“My lady’s maid brought me news of your wanton behavior with
my tea and toast this morning,” her mother continued as she advanced across the
room, her hands curling at her sides. “Soon all of London will be laughing and
snickering behind their hands.”

Olivia couldn’t even begin to guess how the story had spread
to her mother’s household so quickly, nor could she form a single coherent word
when her mother stopped before her.

“Kneeling between that man’s legs like a common trollop,”
she hissed.

Olivia’s eyes darted from her mother’s to Henry’s, where she
found regret shining in the blue depths.

“I saved you from him once,” her mother snarled.

“What are you talking about?” Olivia asked in confusion,
focusing once more on her mother’s pale face, upon her thin lips twisted into a
scowl.

“I saw the way you followed him around when he was just a
boy, watched as you fawned over him, lusted after him as he grew into the
rough, dirty man he is,” her mother replied in a voice that shook. “Everyone
saw it. He saw it, saw his opportunity to rise in your pathetic gaze.”

Olivia sucked in a shocked breath as her mother’s meaning
became clear. Her mother had known, she’d known how her daughter had worshiped
Jack Bentley all those years ago.

“I am hardly that girl any longer,” she said. “And Mr.
Bentley is neither rough nor dirty. He is the finest gentleman­­—”

“Gentleman?” her mother interrupted with a harsh laugh. “He
is the son of a miner and a shepherdess, a man with dirt beneath his
fingernails and a desire to rise above his humble origins. He is a stupid man,
too foolish to realize that he could never rise to your station, that he would
only pull you down to his.”

“Enough,” Henry bellowed, raking one hand through his hair.
“That is enough, Mother.”

“Do not pretend you are not as horrified, as disgusted by
her behavior as I am,” their mother replied, turning to face her son.

Olivia took advantage of her mother’s inattention and
stepped back and around her, crossing the room toward Henry who held out a hand
to her.

“Do not touch her!” Lady Hastings screamed. “Do not allow
her to sully you, Hastings!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Henry growled.

“She is tainted! You must toss her from your house, turn
your back on her, lest her perversion rub off on you!”

Henry barked out a dark, gravelly laugh.

Olivia had nearly reached her brother, nearly reached the
safety and support he offered, when her mother flew across the room, her skirts
whipping around her legs. She gripped her daughter’s wrist and spun her about.

“You whore! You will not pull us all down into your pit of
perversion!”

Olivia barely registered her mother’s words as her wrist was
gripped and twisted painfully. Without warning, one hand rose and she felt the
sting of her mother’s palm across her cheek, the bite of her nails leaving a
hot trail in their wake. Her head whipped around, her gaze spinning across the
room as she lost her balance. And then she was falling, felt her arm wrenched
painfully before her mother released her and allowed her to tumble to a heap at
her feet.

“Olivia!” Henry bounded over to her and dropped to his
knees.

Olivia blinked up at him, one shaking hand raised to her
burning cheek.

“I went to a great deal of trouble to save you, only to have
you disobey me and marry that lecher,” her mother grated out between clenched
teeth. “I won’t save you again. You deserve to spend the rest of your life
pinned beneath his hulking body, his dirty hands defiling you, his member
ripping you…”

Her words ended in a long hiss and Olivia looked up to see
her mother stumble back, one bony hand coming up to clutch at her chest. All
color drained from her face and her eyes grew wide.

Then Henry was on his feet, running toward their mother with
his arms outstretched.

Olivia watched in shock as her mother fell against him, her head
lolling back on her neck. Henry wrapped his arms around her and lifted her,
cradling her. He looked around a bit wildly as if unsure what to do next.

“Take her to her room,” Olivia whispered as she struggled to
her feet, her skirts tangled about her legs.

“Billings! Fetch Dr. Nelson.”

Two hours later Olivia sat at her mother’s bedside in the
room in which the countess had slept alone for two decades, the room that
connected to the earl’s chamber through a door that had rarely been opened,
that had likely been locked at all times after the heir had been born.

Dr. Nelson had come and gone, diagnosing a mild seizure of
the heart and prescribing bed rest.

Guilt and shame mingled in Olivia’s heart as she silently
watched the steady rise and fall of her mother’s chest. She looked so pail, so
frail in the big bed, her tiny hands crossed atop the blue coverlet. She knew
without a doubt that had her mother been awake she would have banished her from
the room, banished her from the house, banished her from her thoughts.

Mother had long ago banished her from her heart, if there
had ever been a time when she’d dwelt there. In truth she couldn’t remember a
time when her mother had shown her even the slightest bit of affection, the
smallest scrap of love. Always Olivia had been a disappointment to her, a
daughter when she’d wanted a son, an awkward skinny girl when she’d wanted a
pretty little miniature to dress up and show off to her friends, a shy debutant
when she’d wanted a vivacious lady to snare the Marquis of Belmont.

When she’d married the Earl of Palmerton and the
ton
applauded her choice, Olivia had hoped she’d finally pleased her mother, that
they might form a loving bond as so many of her friends shared with their
mothers. And perhaps they would have, had Olivia conceived an heir in a timely
fashion. Instead she’d struggled for years, a disappointment to both her mother
and her husband, before she’d been rewarded with a son.

By then it was too late. Olivia no longer craved her
mother’s acceptance, no longer wished for her approval. She’d wished only to be
allowed a bit of peace, a smidgeon of freedom to enjoy her children, to form a
maternal bond with them, one that would never be stretched beyond the breaking
point, one that would hold them close to her and assure that they always knew
they were loved.

And now her mother lay as still as death after her seizure,
a seizure brought on by Olivia’s wanton behavior with Jack.

The door behind her opened with a soft creak and Olivia
looked up to see Henry poke his head around the thick wood.

“Beatrice and Alice are downstairs,” he whispered.

Without a word, Olivia rose to her feet and left the quiet
chamber, slowly following Henry through the hall and down the stairs. She found
her sister and cousin sitting on a low settee in the mauve and gray parlor
where not long ago she’d discovered, much to her shame, that her mother did in
fact loathe her as she’d cried in Jack’s arms.

“What on earth is going on around here?” Alice demanded as
soon as Olivia entered the room. “Henry said Aunt Hastings had a fit after some
sort of argument between you.”

Olivia peered up at Henry beside her.

“It’s for you to share what you will,” he told her before
turning from the room and pulling the door closed behind him.

“What happened?” Beatrice asked from her perch on the velvet
settee.

“You haven’t heard then?” Olivia took the seat across from
the two ladies, her hands nervously smoothing over her skirts.

“Heard what?” Alice leaned forward expectantly.

Olivia drew in a stuttering breath. “Jack and I were found
in a compromising position last night.”

“At my ball?”

“In my carriage.”

“By whom?” Beatrice asked, her eyes wide.

“By Johnston,” Olivia answered, heat racing across her
cheeks at the memory. “And a footman, Freemont, I think.”

“You think?” Alice replied with an arch of her brow.

“It all happened so fast,” Olivia hurriedly explained. “As
soon as the door opened Jack leaned over me and I couldn’t really see who was
outside the carriage.”

“Leaned over you to hide your disarray?” Alice asked.

“I wasn’t in disarray. He was, but I was fully covered.”

“Oh my God! You took him in your mouth in the carriage? And
your butler…”

“He opened the door.”

“And you were still…”

“No, I’d…that is…Jack had already…but I was still on my
knees and his…” Olivia waved one hand in the air, lost for words.

“His manhood was still on display.” Alice finished for her.

Beatrice leaned back against the settee, her hands coming up
to cradle her belly, her eyes drifting shut.

“And mother somehow found out—”

“It’s the twins,” Alice interrupted. “Those two twin parlor
maids. You should never have split them apart, sending one to your mother’s
house and keeping the other in yours. Separated twins are the devil.”

“You think one told the other?”

“Of course.”

“It’ll be all over Town soon,” Olivia whispered.

“No, it will not.” Alice rose to her feet. “I will put a
stop to this, mark my words. I will put the fear of God into your servants and
your lady mother’s. We will keep this fiasco contained.”

“Do you truly think that is possible?” Beatrice asked
without opening her eyes.

“And you,” Alice pinned Olivia with her glittering gaze.
“You must learn to keep your amorous adventures private. Bad enough you took
him up to the tower and returned with the evidence plastered upon your derriere.
But to pleasure him with your mouth without the safely of a locked door between
you and the world. What were you thinking?”

“She wasn’t thinking.” Beatrice’s eyes slowly opened and
Olivia saw moisture gathering in their corners. “I’m sorry I encouraged you to
be daring. You are not cut out for it.”

“That isn’t true.” Olivia rose to her feet, her hands
fisting in her skirts. “It was an accident. It could have happened to anyone.”

“But it happened to you,” Alice replied, her face softening.
“And I too am sorry to have encouraged you, to have taught you that trick.”

“What trick?” Beatrice asked.

“Stop it, both of you,” Olivia ordered. “I am not some silly
girl led astray by my wanton sister and cousin. I am a grown woman and if I
chose to be daring, if I chose to take a lover and please him in my carriage, I
did so of my own free will, not because you encouraged me or taught me tricks.”

Beatrice and Alice only looked at her as if she’d suddenly
sprouted a third eye on her forehead.

“I wished to be daring,” she continued as she paced away
from them. “No, I wished to be wicked. The wicked widow. And I do not regret my
affair with Jack, not for one moment, even if I do regret having been caught in
so humiliating a situation. Alice, I hope you are correct and we can somehow
forestall disaster, but if not I will live with the consequences of my
actions.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

At Henry’s words Olivia whipped around to face him where he
stood in the open doorway.

“Because the consequences have come calling.”

Jack looked haggard and a bit wild when he followed Henry
into the parlor.

His hair was tousled, one dark lock falling over his
forehead. His cravat was wilted, his black jacket open over a white shirt and
no waistcoat. His buff trousers and tall boots were mud spattered.

On his not-quite handsome face he wore a worried scowl that
pulled his full lips down at the corners and his raven brows low over hooded
eyes.

His gaze unerringly found Olivia across the room where she
stood between two tall windows, her hands clasped before her roiling stomach.
He took her in from the top of her head to her slippers, his gaze lingering on
her cheek where four shallow scratches gave testament to her mother’s fury. A
muscle ticced in his jaw.

“Mr. Bentley,” Alice greeted as she crossed to him. “I wish
you luck.”

If Jack thought her words odd, he did not show it, merely
bowed over the hand she offered before turning to Beatrice who had risen from
her perch on the settee.

“Jack, I’m terribly sorry it has come to this,” Beatrice
said, her gaze darting between the silent man and her sister who had yet to
greet him.

He remained quiet in the face of her sympathy and Olivia
wondered what he imagined his sorry fate to be. Likely he thought he must save
her, make another offer of marriage when the word had not so much as passed his
lips in the weeks she’d been in Town.

When Henry made no move to follow the ladies from the
parlor, Jack turned to glare at him.

“I’ll stay,” Henry said in answer to the unspoken order.

“I believe I can handle it from here,” Jack replied, his
voice as dark as thunder.

“Even so.” Henry ambled farther into the room to take up a
place before the empty hearth. He leaned elegantly against the mantel, one arm
stretched across the dark wood, his fingers gently tapping.

Jack spun around to face Olivia once more, his eyes pinning
her in place. “Good morning, Lady Palmerton.”

“Mr. Bentley,” she whispered as dread settled like a rock in
her belly.

He looked so angry. She didn’t know what she’d expected when
she saw him again but it certainly hadn’t been the deep, seething rage she saw
on his face, in his rigid stance, in the eyes that bored into hers.

“Hastings and I have settled things,” he said in a voice
only marginally less fierce.

“Settled what things?”

“I’ve a special license in my pocket, signed by the
archbishop himself.”

“No,” she breathed.

“Oh, yes. Make no mistake, my lady. You will be my wife.”

Olivia looked away from the fury radiating off him to meet
her brother’s gaze. “Henry?”

“There is no other choice,” he said, his voice soft yet
implacable. “I have spoken with the servants, threatened them with dismissal
should they gossip, but who knows how far the rumors may have already spread?
We can only hope to contain them so much.”

“Please,” Olivia whispered.

“You must think of Frances and Charles,” he replied, his
face hardening. “If you cannot think of yourself, of the damage to your
reputation, then think of your children and Miss Justine. If scandal erupts it
will surely follow them for years if not forever.”

Olivia sucked in a fractured breath, unable to deny the
truth in his words. And still, how could she condemn herself and the man who
stood silently seething in the middle of the room to a marriage that would
provide neither of them what they most desired.

“Please don’t do this,” she whispered. “It will kill me.”

“Kill you?” Jack roared and Olivia turned to face him, shock
vibrating through her limbs. “It will kill Lady Palmerton to give up her title?
To marry so far beneath her? To bear a miner’s sons and daughters?”

“I will not—” she began, her hands fluttering at her sides.

“You will,” he answered in a low rumble.

Fury roared over Olivia, battered against her temples,
slammed into her chest, her heartbeat faltering. “How dare you? Who do you
think you are to come into this house bellowing like a madman and shouting
orders at me? You act as if this is all my fault, as if I somehow trapped you
in this quagmire. I don’t remember you protesting when I fell to my knees
before you, when I took your—”

“Olivia!” Henry shouted.

“If you don’t want to hear what I have to say, be gone.” She
darted one quick angry glance at her brother before returning her burning eyes
to Jack. “What are you so angry about? Only a few months ago you asked me to marry
you. No, no that isn’t right, is it? You told me I was to marry you. To bed me
is to wed me, remember?”

Jack blinked in obvious surprise. “I am not angry at being
forced to marry you.”

“Forced?” she repeatedly with as much scathing disdain as
she could muster.

“Poor choice of words, that,” Henry muttered.

“Oh, that’s it,” Olivia seethed through trembling lips.

“Livy.” Jack stepped toward her, one hand out before him, a
look of anguish pinching his features.

She spun and fled through the open window at her back,
undone by the soft plea and the torment in his eyes. She crossed the stone
balcony and stumbled down the steps to the tight garden beyond.

“What to do?” she whispered around a moan, her hands pressed
to her belly. “Oh God, what to do?”

She could not marry Jack. She could not damn them both to a
cold marriage. And it would be cold once he realized she would never bear him
the son he so desperately wanted. It would be Palmerton all over again, only
worse. Infinitely worse. She hadn’t loved her husband, hadn’t missed him when
he’d abandoned her to find his pleasure elsewhere.

She loved Jack Bentley, had loved him since she was a girl
of six and he’d first arrived at Hastings Hall with Simon. She’d been a fool to
think that love had disappeared when he’d married Elizabeth, when she’d pledged
herself to Palmerton. It had always been there, through all the years when he’d
been little more than a ghost in her life, lingering on the fringes of society,
silently watching her but never approaching.

When he inevitably turned from her she would be crushed,
broken where before she’d only been battered. She’d been a fool to invite him
to her bed, a fool to continue the affair in Town, a fool to believe she might
dare to reach for passion and come away unscathed.

And now she held his fate and that of his daughter and her
children in her hands. If they did not marry and the story of her wanton
behavior made the rounds Jack would be as ruined as she. Everyone would assume
he had not offered her the protection of his name. The gossips would label him
a cad, a man without honor. Those doors open to him would be summarily slammed
shut and he would be left to somehow shield Justine from the worst of it.

Olivia stopped in the middle of the garden, her mind
whirling as she attempted to sort out the havoc she’d wreaked upon them all in
one short night.

She’d only wished for a bit of wickedness.

How had it come to this?

She stared off into the distance not really seeing anything
around her.

It was the jangle of carriage wheels in the mews beyond the
garden that finally woke her from her daze. She watched as a groom led a small
curricle through the narrow alley, likely coming from one of their neighbor’s
stables en route to the front step to pick up a passenger. As the carriage passed
behind Henry’s stables, her gaze landed on the low whitewashed structure, the
doors open to the summer breeze.

Without thought she walked to the open doors and peered
inside. All was dim within and quiet but for the occasional snorting of the
horses in the stalls. She stood there, half inside the dark interior, half
outside in the sunlight, hesitant to enter, unable to turn away.

“This is where it all began.”

At the whispered words Olivia turned to find Jack standing
not ten feet away staring beyond her into the stables.

“Or ended, as the case may be,” he continued as he stepped
nearer. “Do you remember that day?”

“I didn’t think you’d seen me,” she answered him as heat
rushed over her.

“I didn’t. It had gotten so that I didn’t need to see you to
know that you were near,” he said with a shake of his head. “I could feel your
eyes on me.”

She cringed in embarrassment. How she must have plagued him,
constantly following him about, begging him for his attention. “I’m sorry.”

“I’ve waited a long time to hear you say those words.”

Olivia couldn’t think what to say in reply to his softly
spoken words.

“Why?” Jack stepped around her and into the stables, turning
in a slow circle before facing her. He stood in a narrow beam of sunlight that
streamed through the open doors and glinted off his hair, turning the lock
across his forehead a deep blue.

“Oh Jack,” she murmured, unsure what he wanted her to say,
how she might explain. “I fancied myself in love with you.”

“Yes,” he agreed after a pause, his gaze intent upon her.

“I knew nothing would ever come of it,” she continued. “I
truly am sorry if my adoration embarrassed you.”

Jack slashed the air with one hand, impatience evident in
the gesture. “Why did you do it, Olivia?”

“Do what?” she asked. “Follow you about? I told you—”

“I understand that you were jealous, angry,” he interrupted
on a huff of breath. “But to force me to marry Elizabeth?”

“Force you? You loved Elizabeth. I saw you take her into
your arms right there.” She walked into the stables and pointed to the corner
where bales of hay were stacked to the ceiling.

“And for that one transgression I was saddled with a wife I
never wanted and a child who was not my own,” he growled.

Olivia stepped back at the quiet fury in his words, her gaze
flying to his face to find him staring at her with a frown pulling at his lips
and his brows lowered.

“Justine is not your daughter?” she whispered in shock. “But
who is her father?”

“My wife would never tell me but she was three months along
when I married her.” Jack paced away before turning to glare at her. “And
contrary to what Lady Hastings thinks she saw that day, I’d gotten no more than
a few kisses and a quick grope of her breasts.”

“My mother found you and Elizabeth here,” Olivia whispered
as the pieces of the puzzle slipped into place in her mind. “She sent up a cry
and you did the honorable thing.”

“Honorable?” he barked out a grating laugh. “After you went
running to your mother, she and her friends stormed in here screaming about
injuring a poor innocent girl. It was no accident they found us together. What
choice did I have? Refuse and see us both ruined or marry the scheming bitch
and hold my head up with some measure of pride, some measure of my honor
intact.”

I saved you from him once. I saw the way you followed him
around when he was just a boy, watched as you fawned over him, lusted after him
as he grew into the rough dirty man he is.

Her mother’s words came back to her and she knew, she knew
deep in her bones that Jack was right. It had been no accident that her mother
had come upon Jack and Elizabeth in the stables that long-ago day. Her mother
had engineered the entire episode, from start to finish. She’d saddled Jack
with a woman whom he did not love and another man’s child. And she’d done it to
remove him from her daughter’s sphere, to forestall disaster.

“Why did you do it, Olivia?” his ragged words tore through
her.

“Oh my God,” Olivia murmured as the full impact of his words
registered. He thought she’d run to her mother, that she’d sent her to find
them together, that she had single-handedly ruined his life. “You blame me.”

Jack ran a hand through his hair, his eyes briefly closing
before opening once more. “Not entirely. I should have turned around the moment
I saw Elizabeth lurking in the shadows. But Christ, she was known to spread her
charms about and I was as horny as a goat.”

“All these years I though you and Elizabeth were in love…”
Her voice trailed away as the enormity of her mother’s crime hit her.

“We barely knew one another,” he replied heatedly. “I would
have tried to make the best of our situation but she would have none of it.
None of me. That day in the stables was the only time in five long hellish
years that I ever kissed her, ever touched her. She spread her legs for any man
with a prick except her husband.”

“I see,” she responded as this new knowledge jolted through
her, shed their time together in an entirely new light. “When you came to
Idyllwild, did you know I was there?”

Jack glared at her and for a moment she thought he would not
answer her.

“No,” he finally grated out, “but make no mistake, I
intended to find you in London.”

“To make me pay for my sins?” she asked as pain pierced her,
nearly doubling her over. She wrapped her arms around her waist and stepped
back until she was pressed against the rough, wooden wall.

“To make you my wife,” he answered swiftly.

“Why would you want to marry me if you believed I had
engineered your descent into five hellish years of marriage?”

“Because you owe me!” he shouted as he advanced on her. “You
took my dreams from me, dashed them to the ground in a fit of jealousy. Do you
think I wanted this life? To be married to a conniving slut? To be a widower
with a motherless daughter not of my blood and no children of my own? I had
plans for my life. I wanted a proper lady for my wife, from a good family, one
whose connections coupled with my wealth might raise us high. A house full of
children who would grow into ladies and gentlemen celebrated in Society rather
than merely tolerated. A son to carry on the Bentley name, to inherit the
fortune we’ve labored to wrestle from the earth.”

Jack towered over her, his harsh breath billowing over her
upturned face, his eyes mere slits beneath slashing brows.