Fool Me Twice

  And therein Olivia saw a solution.

  “My God.” Bertram took a step back, clutching the hat to his chest now like a shield. “You speak of destroying three innocent children—”

  “I will never say a word,” Olivia cut in—causing him to halt, jaw agape.

  “Olivia.” This from Alastair, disbelieving. She lifted a hand to signal him to wait.

  “Your wife goes to America,” she said to Bertram. “And you go with her—after resigning your office.” That would be justice for Alastair, too. “And nobody will ever know that you were married to my mother.”

  Bertram’s mouth worked around an objection. “I . . . I cannot simply leave! And resign? I am a member of the cabinet—”

  “I saw her face this afternoon,” Olivia said. “I believe she knew what her man meant to do. And if I did not believe she loved her children—if I did not believe she had grown criminal only to protect them—I would have stayed at Moore’s flat to tell the police everything. But as it stands, I will say nothing—if you go abroad. And whether or not she loves your children, I think a woman inclined to dispatch assassins is no woman whom you wish to raise your children unsupervised—so you should gladly go. It is your chance to be the kind of father you never were to me.”

  He stared at her for a long moment. “You have much of your mother in you,” he said faintly. “You imagine she was the victim—but I promise you, she never let me go unscathed.”

  “Am I meant to feel sorry for you?” She wanted to throw a pillow at him. No, something much heavier. A bottle. She looked hopefully to Alastair.

  His face was thunderous. He would be angry with her for this, no doubt. But his focus now was on Bertram. “You’ve heard her offer,” he said darkly. “It’s far more generous than what I’d planned for you. But it will do. Now get out, and let the next thing I hear be the news of your resignation from Salisbury’s cabinet.”

  Bertram shook his head, then returned his hat to his head, where it sat crumpled. “I cannot accept this,” he said grimly. “This is not over.” He turned and walked out.

  Silence filled the room. Alastair stood looking at her. She took a long breath. “So much for nobility,” she said. “I did not wish to punish his children. Or to rob you of your revenge. But it seems you’ll have it anyway. What a fool he is!”

  “Indeed. We knew that.” He sounded strangely distracted. “Olivia, you would have given up your chance at legitimacy.”

  She blinked. “What of it?”

  “He has money. Not much. Most of it is his wife’s. But you stand to inherit what remains. You do realize you would have lost that?”

  Amazement was not enough to prevent her yawn. “Do you really imagine it matters?” She covered her mouth, jaw cracking. “Even now, Alastair. I don’t care for the money so much. I know how to make do. I’m a . . . very fine secretary.”

  His smile was fleeting; when it faded, he looked very serious, indeed. He came to the bed and sat beside her, brushing her hair from her eyes. “I should have someone run to a proper shop. Fetch you something better to wear than a hotel robe.”

  His touch was soothing. Her eyes fluttered closed. “You’re spoiled,” she murmured. “This robe is far too grand for secretaries . . . or housekeepers.”

  His hand stilled, cupping her cheek. “And for a duchess?”

  She opened her eyes. He was looking at her gravely, with an expression almost of trepidation. This was not the look of a man who had just said the remark her ears had heard. She’d slipped into a dream, maybe. “I’m falling asleep,” she said. “Will you go home? Or will you stay here?”

  He took a long, audible breath. “Olivia, you deserve better.”

  She blinked and sat up a little. Surely she hadn’t heard him right, before. But what could he mean? From fatigue to painful alertness in one moment; her heart was suddenly drumming in her mouth. How sick with heartbreak she would be in a moment. “I don’t understand,” she said carefully. “Better than what?”

  His hand flexed on her cheek. And then it slipped down to tangle with her own hand, his grip firming. “Better than to be someone’s lackey,” he said. “Someone’s secretary. Someone’s servant.”

  She frowned. “You’re a terrible snob.”

  “Better than to be looked at the way men look at servants,” he said. “Better than to be looked through. Better than to be looked down upon.”

  Disappointment began to leach through her. This was no romantic speech he was making. “It isn’t so bad,” she said. And then she shook herself and lifted her chin as best she could, propped up on all these pillows. “My skills are more than respectable. I am very good at what I do. Not everyone can do it! You recall, I am not a housekeeper by training. I can speak four languages; I know shorthand—”

  He stopped her mouth with his. Confused, she let him kiss her; and then, after a moment, his kiss distracted her from confusion, so all she could think of were his lips, light, thorough, gentle, the beginning strains of something more . . .

  He pulled back. “Olivia,” he said, “I am making an argument for you to marry me. It’s very awkward, but I do not require a wife who speaks foreign languages or knows shorthand. I do intend to hire a secretary separately.”

  She gaped up at him.

  “I see I asked badly.” A rueful smile quirked his mouth. “Perhaps I do require a wife with secretarial skills. And Italian, and . . . what other languages do you speak anyway?”

  “French,” she whispered. “German.”

  “French, then. And German. I cannot have a wife who doesn’t speak German,” he said solemnly. “Does that strengthen my case?”

  “No.” For suddenly her heart had sunk. She pushed him off her and sat up as he began to frown. “You’re repeating your mistakes.” She ran a hand up her aching face, pressing her eyes until she saw stars. Just say yes, you fool.

  But she couldn’t. Now he had asked the question, she could admit it, with fear: she loved him. She loved him enough to say yes.

  But because she loved him—and because she liked him, too; liked him more than was wise, and more than he deserved—she could not say yes.

  “Alastair,” she said, “you loved the idea of marrying Margaret. But you never loved her. You’re doing it again—you love the idea of . . . of what? Of saving me from sly looks? Of playing the hero? But you don’t love—”

  He laid a finger over her lips. “Don’t,” he said quietly.

  They sat together for a moment, frozen, staring at each other.

  She took another ragged breath. It felt ice cold. She was ice cold, suddenly. “I want a place,” she said softly. “And though you think you offer one to me now, it isn’t the kind of place I want. Don’t you see? You’re a great man. You were before, and you will be again. And once you resume that life—”

  “I will never.” His jaw squared. “Can it be that you still don’t understand?” He let out a wild laugh and rose off the bed, dragging his fingers through his hair. He pivoted back to her. “I am done with it!”

  “So you think.” She was so tired. She fought her eyes, which wanted to close; but even the panic of missing this moment, this crucial moment, could not stall her cracking yawn. “I’m not . . .” She pinched her arm hard to rouse herself. “I’m not a fool,” she said. “There is no place for me in the PM’s life.”

  He shook his head very slowly. “You have no idea what you’re saying.”

  Her eyes closed over her tears. “But I do,” she whispered. “I . . .”

  * * *

  She woke very gradually, her consciousness seeming to filter up through layers of light. As the world brightened behind her lids, she became increasingly aware of the aches and twinges in her body. Lady Bertram. Thomas Moore, dead. Bertram refusing her offer.

  Alastair, proposing marriage . . .

  Her eyes flew open. She stared at the strapwork ceiling, rigid with horror. She had refused him. Oh, God, she had refused him!

  She sat up—and froze
. He was sitting at a chair drawn up to the foot of the bed. Beyond him lay a breakfast tray, a scrap of eggs remaining on the plate.

  “Good afternoon,” he said evenly.

  She clutched the covers to her throat—and then winced and regretted it. Gingerly she felt her neck.

  “It looks even worse than it feels, I’ll wager.” He sounded strangely cheerful, but his eyes never once moved from her face. “But you must feel rested. You slept sixteen hours.”

  “Sixteen . . .” She looked to the broad windows that overlooked the Strand. The curtains were thrown back, showing a cloudless blue sky over the tall buildings across the lane. “Goodness.” She cleared her throat and cautiously glanced back toward him. Had she dreamed the proposal? Or better yet, had the proposal happened, but she had only dreamed the rejection?

  For now, alert, refreshed, she was feeling far less virtuous. She remembered all the objections she had lodged last night. She knew them still to be true. But she no longer cared. Let him regret the marriage one day. But until then, let him be hers. “Alastair,” she began nervously, “I . . .”

  He tossed a newspaper onto the bed. “Look at the headlines.”

  Hesitantly she picked it up. The headlines showed nothing of particular interest. A minor train accident in York. A new steam engine that promised a quicker trip to Egypt. “What of them?”

  “Enjoy them,” he said. “Tedious, mundane, and utterly benign. They will not look so within a week.”

  The newspaper crumpled in her grasp. “What have you done?”

  He rose. In the bright light, he glowed like burnished gold, his handsome face gilded, his eyes a deep, piercing blue. “I have circulated the letters,” he said.

  She stared at him. “You . . . what?”

  “I had them copied. Michael is carrying them about. The club was his first stop, so the news”—he glanced toward the grandfather clock in the corner—“should be halfway to Scotland by now, I would think.”

  She groped for words. “But . . . why?”

  He shrugged. “If you think on it, it’s a very neat revenge. None of Margaret’s lovers will escape unscathed. Public opinion will ruin them. Nelson is bankrupt; he’s been angling to marry an heiress, with the promise that he’s soon to be ennobled. That engagement will be broken, I imagine, within a day. Fellowes also loses his chance at marrying well. Barclay will find his political power much diminished, for it would behoove nobody’s career to ally with a man who made his political successes through underhanded conniving with someone else’s wife. And as for Bertram . . .” He smiled slightly. “I believe he will prove far more willing to take your offer, should you still feel willing to extend it. He’ll certainly be tossed out of the cabinet. I would not be surprised if he’s bound for America within the fortnight.”

  She gaped at him. His cool delivery suggested that he had rehearsed this speech beforehand. But she could see no sign in his face of what it must have cost him to take this measure. “But you, Alastair . . .”

  “It had to be done.” He shrugged. “One could never be sure there weren’t more letters out there, waiting to emerge. Better to release the others now, when I was prepared for it. The scandal will die down eventually.”

  She wished suddenly he would come toward her. That he would touch her. But last night’s conversation sat between them like a solid presence, obscuring her understanding of his expression, his manner. And—why, these two matters could not be unconnected, could they?

  She slipped to her feet. If he would not come to her, then she would take the risk and go to him. She padded barefoot across the carpet, wobbling slightly but steadying herself as she advanced. He watched her approach, making no move to meet her. But when she reached him, he let her take his hand, draw it to her chest. How dear his touch was. She breathed deeply. Their eyes met, clung. “Why did you do this now?” she whispered.

  “You said you did not believe my intentions.” He spoke very low. “But I have demonstrated them. I do not intend to go back to that old life, Olivia.”

  She swallowed hard. This was not what she’d hoped to hear. “But your talents . . .”

  “I may go back into politics one day.” He paused. “With Bertram gone, there will be an absence.”

  She hesitated. “Then I don’t understand . . .”

  “I will never be the man I once was.” Very gently he smoothed her hair from her brow. “I am a new man. A better one, I think. No wiser, though. The difference is, I once thought I knew right from wrong. That I saw with perfect clarity. Only now, I know I don’t. I know I must depend on someone else for that clarity. And you, Miss Holladay, are clear-eyed.” He smiled ruefully. “And the opposite of shameless: you are too virtuous for your own good. You have offered to sacrifice your inheritance, your rightful name, to protect children who will never know you. Perhaps you might be willing to guide me. A politician requires such guidance.”

  Wonder prickled over her. “I . . . think you underestimate yourself. Your Grace.”

  He dragged in a breath. “Oh, God,” he said very softly, and it sounded to her ears like a prayer. He bowed his head for a moment. And when he lifted it, his face was stark, his anxiety so plain that it shocked her. She had never seen him look so afraid. “Can you love me, then, Olivia? Not that man, but this one. The one I am, not the one I was.”

  If this was a dream, she prayed to never wake. “That man never knew me,” she whispered. “Only you know me. Of course it is you whom I love.”

  He took her face between his hands and kissed her. She swayed on her feet; had it not been for the firmness of his grasp, she would have fallen. But his grasp could be depended upon. She put her own hands over his and kissed him back.

  After a minute, when they parted for air, she said, “But you have not said the same. And I might point out that we met when you threw a bottle at my head, and then punched a wall—so forgive me if I require assurance.”

  He laughed, a giddy sound. “I will remind you,” he shot back, “that you were a housekeeper, who obeyed no order I ever gave. My frustration was somewhat justified.”

  She kissed his knuckles. “It’s a very rocky foundation for love. You must agree.”

  “Au contraire,” he said. “You were never afraid.”

  “I knew you would never hurt me.”

  “I was a perfect villain.”

  “Never, not really.”

  His head tilted as he studied her. “I wanted your courage,” he said quietly.

  “And I, your brilliance.” She thought of all those speeches, half written, pearls that history would treasure. “Your insight.” She hesitated. “The way you look at me, Alastair. You see me.”

  “I do,” he murmured. “Olivia, I know exactly who you are. I don’t love the idea of what you might be. It is you I love. That, I know.”

  She smiled, a foolish smile that seemed to stretch wider than her cheeks. “So may we go home now? Your staff will recover from the shock eventually, I think.”

  He laughed. “If they don’t, you may sack the lot of them.”

  “Never,” she said, and then thought better of it. “Only, perhaps, Vickers.”

  * * *

  They were married a week later, in a private ceremony attended only by Lord Michael and Lady Elizabeth de Grey. For one cowardly moment, on hearing Alastair’s plan to invite them, Olivia had been tempted to oppose it. Most would account this a very curious “peace offering,” as Alastair called it: to invite a woman to the wedding of her former employee, who had stolen from her, and would now be her sister. “And outrank her to boot,” Alastair had added impishly.

  But Elizabeth had always been very bohemian. On the morning of the wedding, she announced her arrival by bursting into Olivia’s sitting room with Hanson, her lady’s maid, in tow. Hanson, looking beleaguered as ever, laid a glimmering gown across the sofa, which Elizabeth gestured to dramatically. “Your wedding gown, you cheeky sneak. You must dress properly, you know, for with any luck, you’ll only be marr
ied once.”

  Olivia rose, hoping her own discomposure was not as apparent as Polly’s and Muriel’s. Their jaws hung nearly to the floor, and no wonder. Elizabeth was a renowned beauty, dark and voluptuous, but she made an even more magnificent sight than usual, for the pose she struck put on display her belly, which looked far too round for a woman only three months married. “Am I to congratulate you . . . ?”

  “Indeed,” said Elizabeth, patting her much-expanded waist with a smile. “Now send out your maids. You know Hanson’s a hand with hair. And you have a great deal of explaining to do.”

  Stunned, Olivia retook her seat. Hanson set about heating the curling iron while Elizabeth prowled like a cat on the hunt. “Start at the beginning,” she ordered Olivia.

  Olivia took a deep breath. “That would be an apology. I—”

  “No!” Elizabeth waved this away. “Skip that bit; begin with the most interesting parts. How on earth did you end up in Marwick’s house?” She looked around, wide-eyed. “A very fine house, no doubt—but Marwick’s? Now, I’ve had some of it from Michael, of course, but secondhand news grows so patchy. Tell me everything, and mind you, honesty is part of your atonement.”

  And so, as Hanson dressed her, then pinned and trussed her hair, Olivia recounted the whole tale—or most of it. But she avoided all reference to bottles and books and pistols and libraries, and by the end, Elizabeth had fixed a very skeptical eye on her in the mirror.

  “Give me that,” Elizabeth said to her maid, and shooed the woman out so she might fix the wreath of orange blossoms atop Olivia’s head herself. Once it was firmly settled and pinned—only a couple of stray stabs to mar her makeshift performance as a maid—she lowered herself to a nearby stool. “Now I suppose you can give me the real story? Starting with why you stole the letters from me? Michael had the news of Bertram’s bigamy from Alastair—but why on earth did you run away without saying a word?”

  Olivia slowly turned—not only because she had dreaded this moment, but because this gown, a cream silk brocade, was far heavier than any she was accustomed to wearing. “I’m so sorry,” she said, hushed. “I . . .” She felt herself turning scarlet. “I was mad with panic, and I don’t expect you to forgive me, but—”