Lady John (13 page)

“Thank you, no sir. It is not, I think, the best punch I
have ever tasted; one cup should serve me very well for now.”

Silence dropped heavily between Menwin and Olivia.

Although his words and manner were civil, his voice retained
a shadow of its sharp, bitter tone, mixed with a strain which Olivia could not
understand. He stood looking down at her for some minutes, his expression
absolutely unreadable to her. As Olivia became more and more conscious of his
observation, and less and less aware of the party around them, and as she
compared his manner now with his treatment of her when they had shared acquaintance
in Brussels, she was baffled and depressed.

“Lord Menwin,” she began haltingly. “Do you ever think of
the time when you were posted in Brussels?”

Looking down at her from his formidable height, Menwin’s
look became perfectly readable: dislike, distaste, and disdain were all three
commingled. “Not when I can avoid it, my lady,” he said succinctly, and walked
away from her.

Olivia stared after him, speechless. Of all the rude,
obnoxious, odious, ill-bred—
he
had come up
to talk to her;
she
had spoken in a
perfectly civil fashion, and now
he
was
cutting her as if she had been—Impossible! Without giving thought to what she
did Olivia rose and made her way somewhat circuitously after Menwin.

“My lord.” She touched lightly at his sleeve.

He turned at her touch. He looked abashed, as if he were
ashamed of his manner toward her. But after a moment his mouth hardened again
into one firm, cold line, and one brow rose infuriatingly to quiz her. “Yes, madam?”

Having accosted him in this fashion, Olivia was uncertain
what to do. What she wished to say she could not say here, with a dozen ears to
hear them. If she waited until another time her courage would certainly desert
her. So she took her heart, her courage, and her reputation in her hands and
asked: “Will you meet with me in one of the small withdrawing rooms in five
minutes’ time? I need to speak with you most urgently.”

The eyebrow was hoisted higher, but he said only, “It will
be my pleasure, of course, madam.”

Appalled at her own boldness, Olivia gave herself no time to
think, but made for the small rooms she had espied earlier. The very last of
them, a small chamber hung in gold brocade, was empty. She ducked inside and
pulled the door nearly to, hoping to dissuade all but Menwin from entering.
Then she sat down to wait.

Would he come? Having had the monumental and extraordinary
presumption to make an assignation with him—for so would the world call it,
regardless that they were more likely to kill each other than kiss—she was
faced with the small matter of what to say to the man when he appeared. If he
did appear. Her natural inclination was to scold him for his bad manners, which
would be satisfying but would not answer the questions she had. In fact, she
decided at last, the only thing to do was to ask those questions quite baldly.

“Well, Lady John?” Menwin was in the doorway, then closing
the door lightly behind him. “You had something to say to me? Or are you in the
habit of inviting men to closet themselves with you?”

Ignoring the impulse to leap at him and box his ears, Olivia
stood stock-still. Unclasped her hands. Clasped them again. Stared
uncomfortably at her sandals. And at last began.

“I wish there were another way to ask this, sir,” she
managed stiffly. “It appears there is not. Since we have met in this country
you have been deliberately insulting and brutish to me. Rude and insulting and
deliberately provocative, treating me, half the time, as though I were a
pickpocket or a straw-damsel
.”
She flushed.
“You are, of course, entitled to your opinion of me. But I have racked and
racked my brains for a cause for your treatment, and I honestly can find none.
If there is one, I wish you will let me know it so that I may accept my
punishment, as it seems to be, with some grace. I haven’t the taste for abuse,
and I take it rather badly. If I were certain of my sins I might even be moved
to apologize for them. But I do not think it particularly gentlemanly to cast
your rocks at a target who cannot defend herself, sir. And you were, at least
when I knew you better, a gentleman.”

By the time this extraordinary speech was over Olivia was
flushing a bright crimson which ill accorded with her hair. Menwin, for the
first time since he had turned laughingly to encounter her gaze in the drawing
room at Catenhaugh, permitted himself to feel something in Olivia’s presence
other than cold anger fueled by outrage. Lady John Temperer, standing small and
brave before him in this gold-hung room, looked like a child daring something
at a fiercely imagined risk. She met his gaze with her own unwavering one.

“It cost you something, I think, to say this to me.”

“It did,” she agreed. A very small smile touched her lips. “I
dislike to lose the friends I had in Brussels. And I dislike being sneered at.
Can you wonder at it, sir?”

The hint of kindness in Menwin’s eyes vanished. “You had a
husband.”

“I did. Is this some quarrel you two had? I thought you were
friends, sir.”

“We were such friends that I left Brussels on his account,
ma’am. At the time I considered that a singular act of friendship.” His look
implied that she would understand to what he was adverting, but Olivia was
baffled.

“For John’s sake? He never said anything to me—even when I
asked him why you had been called away so suddenly that you could not bid my
mother farewell—or me. I was a little
surprised
.”

“Were you, ma’am?” Menwin’s voice was hard as steel. “Gratifying.
But I did not judge it wise to give you further chance to play your game with
me.”

“My
what?”
Olivia stared
at Menwin, lost. “My lord, I think we are talking at cross-purposes. There is
much I do not understand. The only game I can recall having played with you was
Speculation. And for his part, John told me only that you were under pressing
orders. He never mentioned a commission undertaken on his behalf.”

“I said on his account, Lady John, not his behalf. I felt it
unwise to remain in Brussels and continue to hang upon the sleeve of Temperer’s
fiancée.” Menwin spat the last word out. “So I went to Vienna. When I returned
in June you were married.”

Olivia shook her head dumbly, trying to understand what
confused her. “But that isn’t possible,” she said at last, and sat, rather
heavily on the edge of a brocaded chair. “You left
because
I was engaged to John?”

“How plain do you wish me to make it? This is still a
slightly painful subject for me, madam, although why it should pain you I do
not know. I do not know what was in your mind at the time, my lady.” The title
was an insult. “I was very near to being deep in love with you, and I did not
care to stay in Brussels to watch you and John Temperer bill-and-coo. Is that
plain-spoke enough for you? Temperer told me of your engagement when he saw I
was thinking too much of you—that last evening we met, for fact.” The contempt
in Menwin’s voice spurred Olivia from confusion to anger.

“He lied, then!” she said
flatly. “As you wish for plain speaking, Lord Menwin, I shall oblige you with
some: John Temperer made his first and
only
proposal
to me nearly a month
after
you left
Brussels. What reason could I have had for keeping my engagement a secret, had
I been engaged? If you have been quarreling with me all this time on that
account you are altogether out, and a very pretty notion you have cherished of
me, too! In any case, why it should have mattered to you, when John told
me
that you were promised to someone here in
England, a lady known and favored by your family, is beyond me. And after that
I thought it didn’t much matter who—” Olivia broke off, anger damped by a
single thought. “Is it possible? Were we both cozened? Lord Menwin, did you
have an attachment to a woman in England at that time?”

For a full minute they stared at each other.

“Damme, ma’am, if I could get my hands upon your late
husband for just a moment,” Menwin murmured at last.

“You would have to wait your turn, sir,” Olivia assured him
sweetly. She began, rustily, to chuckle. “That wretch. That dunderheaded,
selfish, odious, impossible wretch. Of the three of us he was the only one who
knew what he wanted and took it, simple as that. And all it took—O Lord!”

Menwin eyed her curiously. “You find it so funny, ma’am?”

“I
must,
don’t you see?
What good would it do to hate John now? Especially as the pair of us bought his
tales whole, like the loobies we were. You left Brussels at John’s hint, and I
married him because I—” here she stumbled. “Because I thought you had no
partiality for me, and that I should never see you again, and had as well marry
John as anyone. It was easy enough to believe that a soldier might just be
amusing himself with an agreeable flirtation, and you never really indicated—well,
in any case. And you—”

“I assumed you were a heartless little flirt who led me on.
In fact, I thought much the same things of you as you did of me. I wonder, did
Temperer never fear that we should meet again?”

“O, but had John lived we should never have had this
conversation, so his secret was bound to be safe.” Olivia grinned up at him. “We
should have continued to think badly of each other, and been excessively polite
to one another for
his
sake.” She stretched
a hand to Menwin. “Can we be friends, do you think?”

He stared down at the hand she offered; she had, he thought,
very beautiful hands. In fact, looking at Olivia now without the veil of anger,
he realized anew how beautiful she was, sitting on the gold-brocade chair in
the green dress, her dark eyes and deep red hair bright. Like a jewel in a rich
setting, he thought, and chided himself for making bad poetry. He returned her
smile and bowed over her hand.

“Can you forgive me for being an ill-mannered, bad-tempered
boor for the past three months? And for the misapprehensions under which I have
labored?”

“As the information with which you worked was faulty, I
suppose I must. I wish you would have given me a little credit, though. Do I
strike you as such a hopeless flirt?”

“Do I strike you as a loose-screw, ma’am?” Menwin replied
rather stiffly.

“Lord Menwin, having regained myself in your good graces
after all this time I refuse to pick a quarrel with you,” Olivia informed him
crisply. “And in any case, a young man is not likely to ruin his reputation by
amusing himself with a young lady, be he never so engaged; whereas the greatest
number of people would delight in condemning
anything
done by a young woman without the protection of noble connections or a
great fortune.”

“I collect I am lucky if you do not hold me in complete abhorrence,”
he said dryly. His smile made Olivia’s heart beat in a distracting fashion. “It
seems we have both been extraordinarily gullible. If Temperer were alive—”

“I will not hear a word against John,” his widow said
firmly. “He was not a very good man, but he loved me in his fashion, and I owe
him the respect of letting his memory lie intact.”

“You are the soul of honor,” Menwin said lightly. “Shall we
try to set the clock back two years and see if we cannot find our way back to
friendship?”

“I should like that very much. Not that you deserve it, of
course, for a more odious, ill-tempered rudesby I have never met. I shall
simply have to overlook your less amiable characteristics.” She raised one
eyebrow quizzingly in mockery of him, but offered her hand again.

“I think,” he returned, smiling, “that I may love you better
this time than the last.” Without giving her time to respond to this very
extraordinary statement, Menwin bowed again and suggested that it was time they
returned to the party. “Perhaps you should go out first. I will follow after in
a very few minutes.”

Olivia agreed, but privately she felt herself so much
changed in the past half hour that someone must remark upon the difference. She
sketched a tiny curtsey, smiled at him with downcast eyes and a demure
expression that mocked newly regained friendship, and left the room.

It was not difficult to locate Lady Susannah, who had lost
summarily at whist and was restoring her spirits with champagne punch and
violent flirtation. The paunchy beau with whom she had been exchanging
pleasantries bowed to Olivia and offered her his seat.

“Sister Livvy, where have you been?” the older woman asked
lazily. “Were there dancing I should have supposed you to have been so engaged,
so rosy are your cheeks.”

Olivia made a reply about the extraordinary heat in the
room.

“Is it warm? I had not noticed. I have dreadfully outrun the
constable, child, and frankly, I don’t care to stay much longer. What good is a
card party when one cannot play cards?”

The gentleman, who had been introduced as a Mr. Flaxham,
protested that a vowel from Lady Susannah Reeve would always be accepted.

“It would,” Susannah agreed. “And Reeve would lock me in a
closet did he find out, until I had repented me of it.” She shook her head
regretfully at Flaxham. “Do you wish to stay much longer, Livvy?” Her tone was
so heavy with disappointment and fatigue that Olivia had not the heart to press
to stay.

“We shall leave when you are ready, of course, Sue,” she
assured her.

“You are a very comfortable sister, Olivia,” Lady Susannah
sighed.

Menwin had reentered the drawing room, only to be approached
by Lady Whelke, with a party of several others, one of whom, at least, was
familiar to Olivia. “Sue, who is that?” she prodded.

Susannah looked up from her champagne punch and peered
across the room.

“With Menwin? Lady Whelke, of
course. And Whelke, of course—”