Fool Me Twice

  “A bit.” Olivia’s mind began to wander. Find a new position, he’d said. Was that code for I will ravish you if you stay? And why did the thought make her stomach flutter? She should be horrified.

  “Look at the clouds,” Polly said.

  Olivia glanced up. Overhead was no typical London display: the sky was clear and bright, the clouds fat puffs of blinding white.

  “We could be in the tropics,” she said. But only if one did not note the crispness in the air—or look around the park, so English with its severely tamed trees.

  Polly reclined on one elbow. After a moment, feeling very daring, Olivia mimicked her. She was practically lying down in public.

  The slight chill was refreshing, the sun a pleasant balm on their faces. “I’m going to freckle,” Olivia muttered as she readjusted the netting on her hat.

  Polly shaded her eyes to deliver a wry look. “Ma’am, that milk was spilt long ago.”

  Startled, Olivia laughed. “True enough.”

  The silence between them began to feel easier. Polly gazed up, lost in the show the heavens were putting on. Olivia shut her eyes. How long since she had allowed herself to loll about, doing nothing? She could remember such afternoons in Elizabeth’s employ, but they seemed distant, part of a long-ago dream.

  He had kissed her. She had liked it. How could she feel so relaxed?

  “Can I ask you something?”

  Tensing, she opened her eyes. “Of course.”

  Polly inched closer, so their shoulders brushed. “You got some special knowledge of His Grace? Before today, I mean?”

  “Of course not! Why should you think so?”

  Polly shrugged. “He’s different since you came. I thought maybe that was the reason he listened to you.”

  “You’re wrong,” Olivia said. “I never—” She must be red as a cherry. “He is simply on the mend,” she said sharply. “And a bit—disordered in his thinking, which explains what you saw. But that has never happened before.” Emphatically she added, “And it won’t happen again.”

  Polly pulled a face. “Does he know that?”

  Olivia sat up. She could not remain at such close range to that searching look. “Of course he does.”

  Find a new employer . . . or, if I am so lucky, don’t.

  She swallowed. His intentions were immaterial. Now he’d left his rooms, it was only a matter of days—perhaps even hours—until she found what she needed, and fled without notice.

  Polly was watching her. “You don’t fancy him, do you?”

  She hissed out a breath. God in heaven, what an idiot it would make her if she fancied Marwick. Yes, there was a certain vain pleasure in feeling oneself instrumental to the rehabilitation of a once-great man. But that was where her interest ended. She had one task here. She could not afford to be distracted by mooncalf sentiments.

  And he was the last thing from a proper suitor anyway. A duke and a lunatic—recovering, thanks to her, but no matter. And not any duke or lunatic, but the Kingmaker: a man who burned with such rage that his heart rightfully should already have turned to ash. A man who stroked pistols during his sulks.

  “Fancying him would make me the greatest fool alive,” she said. “And I assure you, I’m not a fool.”

  Polly sighed and sat up. “You know how many girls have fancied their masters? Not all of them fools. But I don’t need to tell you where they are now.”

  Olivia frowned. “Where?”

  “The street corner.”

  “Oh.” She flushed. “Of course.”

  More gently, Polly said, “It never goes nowhere but ruin.”

  Was this girl trying to counsel her? Against her will, she felt rather moved. “Of course. But what you saw, Polly . . . you mustn’t misunderstand. And I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention it to anyone—”

  “Oh, they’re already talking.”

  Olivia gaped at her. “Are you joking?” The staff thought her a seductress?

  Polly shrugged. “You’re always going up to his rooms.”

  How bizarre! Olivia battled a very inappropriate urge to laugh. She had always been far too gawky, far too tall, and (she would admit it) rather too prickly to be mistaken as a temptress. “I am his housekeeper.”

  Polly snorted. “Mrs. Wright did her best to stay away from him.”

  “Then that was very wrong of her. I simply . . .” She hesitated. What possible excuse could she make for her harassment of Marwick? For obviously the truth would not serve: I need to pry him out of his rooms so I might pry through them.

  But perhaps she need not lie at all. For a sudden realization dawned on her. “I simply like him.” To her amazement, it was true—and idiotic enough in its own right.

  She could not blame Polly for bursting into laughter. “Like him!”

  That laugh was raucous enough to draw several passing stares. Olivia waited, crimson. “He’s not so bad.” Twisted and melancholy, yes; but he was also wonderfully erudite, with a very dry sense of humor. Before his wife’s death and the revelation of her betrayals, he must have been magnificent.

  Gasping, Polly knuckled at her eyes. “Oh, aye, to be sure. What bunkum. Fancy him, fine; he’s not hard on the eyes. Fear him, why not? But like the man? He’s made of ice.”

  Feeling stubborn, Olivia scowled. “I suppose I like an underdog.”

  “Underdog! The duke? What, does he require another coach-and-four, another house in the country, before you rank him on top?”

  Olivia shook her head and made herself recline again. So, too, did Polly.

  In the pause that followed, she imagined that the topic had been laid to rest, and was grateful for it. She felt a little shaky, as though she had brushed up against something that might kill her. A close escape, indeed. Fancy him. What a disaster that would be.

  Her mother had fancied a man far above her status, once. Mama had loved Bertram; had given him everything. And look what it had gotten her. Oh, Olivia would not fault Mama for loving a man outside wedlock. The villagers of Allen’s End had made that their main pastime. Olivia had no interest in their brand of morality, which produced only unkindness and spite. But if one was to fall in love, better to do so with a man capable of returning it in kind.

  “I’m waiting,” Polly remarked. “Very keen, I am, to hear how a duke should be an underdog.”

  Olivia felt a wisp of annoyance. Class snobbery ran along both sides of the divide. “One doesn’t require poverty to be wretched. Why, my former employer—”

  “The viscountess?”

  “No, El—” She bit her lip, shaken by how close she had come to slipping up and speaking Elizabeth’s name.

  Perhaps reclining was a poor idea. She sat up again, brushing stray bits of grass from her sleeve. “Yes,” she said. “Viscountess Ripton.”

  Polly, unmoving, watched her curiously. “Plenty of nobs got your sympathy, eh?”

  Olivia sighed. Amanda also had been something of an underdog before her marriage, though Polly was not owed those details. “A person’s wealth has little to do with their spiritual state. Anyone who feels alone in the world, and put upon, and friendless—I call that person worthy of fellow-feeling.”

  Polly grunted. “That’s mighty kind of you. Very Christian. Only you’ll note that some of these lost souls deserve where they’re at.”

  “You think the duke deserves his unhappiness?”

  “I ain’t got any complaints against him. He’s never done wrong by me. But seems he mourns awful hard for a woman who was as chilly as ice in January.”

  “What was she like?” Olivia asked slowly. “The duchess, I mean?”

  Polly pulled a face. “No, that’s a road I won’t help you walk down.”

  Olivia felt an oncoming blush. “I don’t ask for that reason.”

  Polly looked away, the full curve of her cheek showing her youth. “You’ve a soft heart,” she muttered. “Mush, I think. Better save your concern for yourself.”

  Olivia realized then how
foolish she must look, worrying over great folk who had never known a simple care—where to get their daily bread, or whether the rent could be paid this month.

  “I’m not weeping for him,” she said. “You’re right, his troubles aren’t matters of life and death.” Not . . . technically anyway. But she remembered how he had stroked that pistol. “It’s only that . . . well, he’s human, isn’t he? And even if his suffering isn’t on the same plane, it also can’t feel so different from anybody else’s.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for it that he suffers at all,” Polly muttered.

  Was she truly the only person in England to understand that Marwick, too, had a heart?

  Good heavens. Had she survived so long, safely above the fray, only to succumb now to feminine foolishness? And for Marwick, of all people?

  “I don’t fancy him,” she said flatly.

  “I won’t say otherwise.” Polly hesitated. “But in return, I’d like a favor. Ma’am.”

  Olivia snorted. “Of course you do.”

  * * *

  The duke’s journey downstairs occasioned great excitement among the staff. Over the next two days, Marwick roamed the halls quite freely—going so far as to open new correspondence and post replies (this according to the porter, who had no notion of discretion). What next? The servant’s quarters buzzed. Would he leave the house?

  Olivia was less sanguine. From a safe distance, well out of Marwick’s eyesight, she monitored his schedule. There was, alas, no predictability to it. He would shut himself in his study for ten minutes or twenty, and then return to his quarters. Or he would leave his apartment only to pace the corridor outside. Where was the opportunity to slip into his bedroom without risking exposure?

  On the third day, she steeled herself and accompanied the maids to his quarters for their daily rounds. The girls’ moods were very grumpy, for at breakfast Jones had cautioned them not to expect holiday celebrations this year, His Grace still being on the mend. Vickers had further soured the atmosphere with bitter muttering over Polly’s gentleman visitor, whom Olivia had invited inside for tea last evening, claiming him to be a distant cousin. Such, alas, was the price of Polly’s silence.

  Upstairs, Marwick was nowhere in evidence, but with the maids industriously bustling about, Olivia could do no more than glance again through the papers on his bookcase, none of which were of use to her. Worse, Doris noticed her interest in them. “He won’t let us put those away, ma’am.”

  She snatched back her hand. “Oh? Well, no bother then.”

  “I did try to put them away.” Doris sounded both proud and amazed by her own efforts. “I carried them to his trunk, where he was putting all the others.” She nodded to the chest at the foot of the bed. “But he said to leave them where they was, and never touch them.”

  Her pulse escalating, Olivia surveyed the chest. It bore a padlock that looked far sturdier than the one on the desk in the study. “I see,” she said. “Well, we must respect his wishes.”

  That night she sat up until the clock chimed three. Getting into that chest would require breaking the lock—which, in turn, would require more than a few minutes’ solitude in his bedroom. Afterward, she would need to leave directly, for there would be no way to hide what she had done.

  On the fourth day, she woke up sick with nerves, for she was determined on her course. Marwick withdrew to his study at a quarter past ten. When the door remained closed on her third pass, she grew bold. Or desperate. Some inspired mix. She made her way quickly up the main staircase, into the upstairs hall.

  In the corridor she hesitated one last moment, realizing by how hard her heart was drumming how ill suited she was to these shenanigans—and how very little she wished to betray him.

  She touched her lips, picturing how he had looked at her before he’d kissed her. You do yourself credit, he’d said. You have cause to be proud.

  She made a fist and forced herself to think of the little cottage. Ivy along the walls, a lamp burning in the window. A place to settle. A sense of rootedness, and a garden in the spring. Safety.

  Even if she dealt honestly with Marwick, he would never offer her those things. At most, all he offered was the road to ruin.

  She opened the door to the duke’s sitting room.

  “Mrs. Johnson.” The duke was sitting by the window in the full flood of the afternoon light, his attention fixed on a picked-over chessboard. “Did you want something?”

  She grabbed the door frame for balance. A hysterical laugh bubbled in her throat. I want you to stay downstairs until I’m done stealing from you. “I knocked,” she said. “I heard no response, so I thought . . .” She cleared her throat and straightened. “I have come to say that I agree with you: I must look for a new position. But I will stay here until you’ve found my replacement.” That would take a little time—which was all she needed, surely, now that she’d found the courage to do this.

  He glanced from the chessboard to the newspaper folded in his hand. “What a shame,” he said absently, in a tone that suggested he could not care less.

  Her vanity pricked. How idiotic of her. He had probably forgotten all about that kiss. She started to pull shut the door.

  “Wait.” He did not look up. “The match in Hamburg between Blackburne and Mackenzie—have you read of it? This new move, Blackburne’s Gambit—I’m trying to understand it. But I’m missing something.”

  He was sitting here working out a chess game? Surely he could have done that in his study. “No,” she said tartly. “I’ve not read of it. I see I’m interrupting—”

  “Scampering off to hide again?”

  She flushed, a very irritating sensation. “I can’t imagine what you mean.”

  He laid down the newspaper, giving her a slight, maddening smile. Vickers must have attended to him this morning, for his jaw was smooth-shaven. His hair lay in a close, even crop across his well-formed skull, the severe cut complementing the sharp bones of his cheeks and jawline. “Of course you can’t,” he said. “What a pity; we are back to formalities.” And then, tilting his head: “You mentioned that you’ve played chess. Have you any talent at it? Perhaps you can help.”

  First he kissed her, and then he accused her of hiding from him, and now he wanted her help with a silly game? “I was not very good,” she said coldly.

  He looked at her for a moment, obviously puzzled. “You’re a terrible liar, Mrs. Johnson. You do know that, I hope?”

  And he was a terrible judge of liars. He caught all the small deceits, and none of the large ones. “Perhaps I was rather good,” she allowed.

  “Then come here,” he said, “and help me understand this gambit.”

  Wariness gripped her. “I have decided,” she said again, “to look for a new position.”

  His smile was all innocence. “Yes, I heard you the first time. You enunciate very clearly, Mrs. Johnson. It must have been all those tutors. Now come and show me what else they taught you.”

  On a sudden temper, she stepped inside. “Very well.” If he wished to be shown up, she would not deny him. In fact, she planned to enjoy it.

  * * *

  Forty-five minutes later, they were still hunched over the chessboard, having disentangled Blackburne’s peculiar piece of genius and then moved on, by the duke’s insistence, into a proper game of their own.

  Olivia studied the board with rising surprise. Marwick’s opening moves had suggested a great deal of rust on his brain. She had grown careless, certain of an easy victory—until he’d suddenly recovered the way of it. Now she had begun to play in earnest again, but it was dawning on her that he might win anyway.

  That rankled. She was not accustomed to being outwitted, particularly by a louche idler. She moved her knight. “Check,” she said.

  It was an empty threat; he had several routes of escape. But two of those routes would lead him into a very bad position, four or five moves from now.

  He chose another one entirely. She bit the inside of her cheek—a
nd then regretted it when she realized how closely he was watching her.

  Her effort to straighten her face made him smile. “You would do very poorly at cards, Mrs. Johnson. Your face tells all.”

  She lifted her brow. “A good thing I would never gamble, Your Grace. Money is to be saved, not wasted.”

  He sat back, studying her. In his dark suit and crisply knotted tie, one might have mistaken him for civilized. Only the impish quirk to his mouth gave him away. “A Puritan, are you?”

  “A woman of foresight, in fact.” She foresaw his defeat in five moves, if he only shifted that bishop his hand was currently overshadowing.

  “A sound philosophy on gambling,” he said. “I agree with you: it’s terrible entertainment. I never understood it.” He abandoned his bishop to castle, puzzling her greatly. “Of course, the basic principles do come in useful elsewhere. Politics, for instance: what is success in that field but knowing when to calculate the odds, how to gauge one’s opponents, when to hedge one’s bets, and when to cast everything on a single wager?”

  Squinting, she sat back to get a better view of the board. Provided he was not declining into mediocrity again, there must be some possibility she had not yet glimpsed for him. “How very reassuring,” she said absently, “to hear that national affairs are best handled like a poker game.”

  “At best,” he said wryly. “At worst, like a shoot-out in the American West.”

  “I suppose one might wish you gambled, then. Or dueled.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because England needs you.” She moved her pawn forward to menace his knight.

  “Let’s not go back there,” he said evenly. “I’ve only just put away my pistol.”

  She glanced up at him, surprised that he could speak of that incident so lightly. He offered her a rueful smile—which slipped from his lips as he leaned toward her. “How remarkable,” he said. “You realize you tip your spectacles down when you wish to have a look at something? Or someone.”

  She directed her frown down to the chessboard. Bertram had once said that one could tell a great deal about a man by the way he played chess. While she hated to ascribe him any wisdom, he had a point: Marwick played with caution, taking time to survey all his options. But once his mind was made up, he moved without hesitation. And when it was his opponent’s turn . . .