Lady John (16 page)

Her smile widened to almost a genuine grin. “Kit, one can
only do so much, even to preserve a public face!”

“That’s the dandy,” he approved. “If you’re going to cause a
scene, the best thing to do is ignore it afterward, Livvy.” He cut off her
immediate protest. “If you didn’t cause the scene, you certainly did nothing to
prevent it. Do you really wish to know how the story comes out?”

“No,” Olivia sighed with resignation. “I suppose I had best
stay here. And in any case, I shall hear the ending from Mr. Haikestill,
will-I-nil-I. Menwin will not drive me out.”

“I suspect that was not his intention,” Lord Kit muttered,.

The play done, Olivia and Mrs. Martingale were left in Queen
Anne’s Street by the Temperers, who had somehow contrived to take Mr.
Haikestill off with them. Mrs. Martingale, freed of the necessity of
maintaining a proper mien, took her child most severely to task. After a short
peroration on the folly of young women who assumed that widowhood would excuse everything
in the eyes of the
ton,
she moved on to a
treatise on young women who seemed bent upon throwing their best chance of
happiness into the four winds. This subject served to whip her to hysterical
eloquence, with the consequence that Olivia found herself ministering to her
mother with a cool cloth to the forehead, and a glass of Madeira.

“But if you are speaking of Mr. Haikestill, Mamma, I beg you
not to think of him for me. If
that
is my
best chance of happiness I shall be quite content with misery.” Pleased with
this illogical but highly satisfying statement, Olivia mixed hartshorn and
water and watched as her mother drank that tonic down.

“I was
not
speaking of
Mr. Haikestill,” Mrs. Martingale sputtered over the rim of the glass. “Livvy,
dearest, listen do. I realize that you feel yourself ill used by Lord Menwin,
and indeed—”

Olivia gaped at this gross understatement.

“Indeed, dear, I believe you have been somewhat. But you are
not in full possession of all the facts. I should dislike to see you judge Lord
Menwin before he has had a chance to explain his position to you.”

Holding on to the tattered shreds of her temper, Olivia
forced herself to speak evenly, almost calmly to her mother. “Mamma, I realize
that I am tired, and you must forgive me if I act it. In the main, I am
extremely tired of being reasonable all the time. Particularly where Lord
Menwin is concerned. The—Oh, the Devil with him, and Miss Casserley, and I hope
they may be miserable the rest of their lives. I, for one, do not intend to let
yet another of Matthew Polry’s idiotish explanations keep me from my bed or my
rest.” Lady John, having delivered herself of this oration, stalked
theatrically out of her mother’s dressing room.

o0o

The light of day did something toward mitigating her
feelings. Olivia did not sleep well, and much of her thoughts turned, not
unnaturally, upon the subject of Menwin, Miss Casserley, and her own unhappy
heart. As dawn broke, sleep was finally beginning to win the battle. Olivia’s
last thought was that perhaps her mother was right after all. There might be
some reason why Menwin had made her so unhappy. Perhaps he had not meant to do
so. At least he had not sounded particularly triumphant at the theater. She
recalled his look of misery with a weary, heavy heart. And now, perhaps he was so
incensed with
her
for her behavior that he
would not deign to talk to her again.

“Drat,” she muttered, punched her pillow savagely three or
four times, and was overcome by a deep and unrestful sleep.

o0o

By that afternoon her mother’s conversation and her own
second thoughts had disposed her mood more tractably. When Lord Menwin’s card
was brought in to her Olivia picked it up, a stab of renegade joy piercing her
as she considered what to do. Something was written on the reverse of the card;
when she turned it over she beheld her own words, scrawled in Menwin’s fist: “I
dislike to lose the friends I had in Brussels.”

No, I shall not cry, she assured herself, and desired
Puddlesey to admit the gentleman.

“Shall I tell madam that his lordship has called, my lady?”
Puddlesey asked, mildly intrigued by his mistress’s obvious confusion.

“What? O, yes, I suppose so.” Olivia thought. “No, wait,
Puddlesey. I think my mother is still in her room. If Melber tells you so, I
would not have her disturbed.”

Torn between concern for his mistress’s reputation and
respect for his mistress’s filial concern, Puddlesey bowed himself out to admit
the caller.

“My lady.” Menwin bowed and waited gracelessly in the
doorway.

“My lord.” Olivia nodded. If she had thought the interview
at Whelke House had been awkward, she now dismissed it as nothing. Awkwardness
was sitting alone with a gentleman while both of you tried to think of a way to
begin what promised to be a painful conversation.

Finally Olivia took her pride and her courage in both hands
and began. “I think I owe you an apology, my lord. I was abominably rude to you
last evening when you were so obliging as to stop by our box.” She hung her
head. “My only excuse is that I was somewhat—” she stopped. Something in her
revolted at pleading fatigue or the headache, but one could not simply say to a
man, “I was completely furious to find you engaged to another woman when you
had been fixing your interest with me the night before!” Menwin broke in and
saved her that mortification.

“You had every right to think badly of me, but I beg you
will listen to what I have to say before you condemn me entirely.” He shifted
uncomfortably from one leg to another.

“Sit down, please; I had no thought to keep you standing.”
Now that he was here, speaking with her, Olivia found it impossible to hate
him, whatever the evidence was. In some strange way she was almost amused, in a
distant way, at the miserable spectacle of the two of them, unhappy and
awkward: she, sitting on the edge of her chair and twisting her kerchief round
and round in her hands, and Menwin, determinedly studying his heels like a
nervous school-boy about to be sent down for the term for playing a prank.

“You must think me a complete loose-screw, worse than you
ever did before,” Menwin began again after a moment. “I beg you to believe that
I did not deliberately deceive you when we—when we spoke at Lady Whelke’s
party. For fact, I had lost sight of where I was and why, in particular, I had
come to be there. Our conversation seemed of considerably more importance.”

Unable to completely conquer her disbelief, Olivia permitted
herself to sniff.

“You don’t believe me; I suppose there is no reason that you
should. The engagement that exists between Miss Casserley and myself was not of
my contriving, and while I am conscious that she is an extremely worthy female—”
he broke off, stood again and said, with considerable violence, “Good God,
Olivia, please believe that I know what it is that I want. And it is not Jane
Casserley.” He turned, black-faced, and paced to the end of the room to stand,
one hand clutching his gloves behind his back, staring out of the window.

“What do you want?” Olivia asked in a very moderate voice.

“Don’t you know?” He continued to stare out the window. “I
wish I knew of some way to make Miss Casserley cry off so that I might
honorably do what I have wanted to do since I made your acquaintance in
Brussels.” He turned to her, the black look fading, giving way to frustration
and longing. “Why are we—or, I, since I may presume a great deal—why am I
thwarted at every turn? I meet you and let that idiot Temperer trick me away
from you. I see you again and blame you for his duplicity, and can do nothing
better than to agree to a
mariage de convenance
of
my grandmother’s contriving, purely from pique—”

“Is that what happened?”

“Precisely, love.” He seemed unaware of the endearment, but
Olivia was not. “The moment I saw you at Catenhaugh, believing all the stupid
things I believed, I wanted only to prove that I could make an idiotish
marriage too. Who I thought I was hurting beside myself I cannot say. And so
now you are free and I am chained to Miss Casserley, who, I make no doubt, is
as uninspired by me as I am by her.”

“I think you do yourself an injustice, my lord,” Olivia began.

“Do I, Livvy?” Very deliberately Menwin walked to her,
pulled her up to stand before him, and asked, low, “Do I really?”

Whatever he had read in her face must have given him his
answer: his arms wrapped around her to pull her closer and, after three years
of wanting, they kissed.

When they parted some minutes later, Olivia to seat herself
as decorously as a lady much disarranged can do, and Menwin to put some
distance between her and himself for fear of continuing this agreeable but
hazardous pastime, Olivia murmured, “O, yes, definitely, Matthew, you do
yourself an injustice!” She was smiling.

“You are an incorrigible wench,” he smiled back. “I made
sure you would either call me the greatest scoundrel in the world or burst into
tears!”

“Do I seem such a poor-minded soul to you? No wonder you
preferred Miss Casserley,” Olivia teased. Menwin shot her a mingled look of
reproach and dismay that she laughed away. “I don’t burst into tears when
someone kisses me in such a fashion as to make me lose my breath! And as for
thinking you a scoundrel… well, perhaps I do, but then I must have a partiality
for scoundrels. No—” she motioned him away when he would have joined her on the
sofa. “You are still a betrothed man in the eyes of the
ton
and of the
Gazette,
and I will have no more kisses until you explain to me—without high
dramatics, please—how you came to be in this interesting predicament, and how
you intend to extricate yourself.”

“You are a hard woman, my lady.”

“You are particularly observant, my lord.”

For the second time in as many days, the Viscount found
himself explaining how his engagement had come about. He found his audience no
less sympathetic today than her mother had been the day before; Olivia did call
him a gudgeon once or twice, and was considerably more forthright than her
mother had been in characterizing his family as a bunch of meddlers. “But
should you find a way to make Miss Casserley cry off, would the Earl and Lady
Mardries find me an acceptable substitute?” she asked when he had done.

“They would be charmed,” he informed her lightly. “And if
not, what matters it? Would you mind living in reduced circumstances for a few
years, love?” She shook her head. “There, but I doubt it will come to that.
Even my grandmother is beginning to think Miss Casserley a bit of a prig.”

“So, it remains only to find some obliging soul who will
sweep Miss Casserley off her feet and convince her that you and she will not
suit.”

“A difficult task, since I am so completely agreeable in
every way,” Menwin began.

Olivia released her feelings by tossing the sofa cushion at
him.

There was a scurry of noise in the hallway. “I apprehend
that your mamma is about to join us, or send her maid in to rescue you from
that bad-mannered Menwin chap. But Livvy, sweetheart,” he came close enough to
take her hand again. “I have not said it, have I? I have been in love with you
since we met, three years ago. And should I ever manage to get myself free of
this odious entanglement I am in, I would be more than honored if you would
condescend to wed me.”

She smiled up at him a little damply. “That must be the most
original proposal ever entertained by a female, and I must be the maddest woman
in history to accept it, but I do.”

“Very nice, children,” Mrs. Martingale approved from the
doorway. “But my lord, do you not think it wiser to wait until we have found a
new husband for Miss Casserley before you go affiancing yourself to my
daughter?”

“I full intend to, ma’am. I was just making certain of her,
you see. I should hate to loose Miss Casserley only to find that your daughter
had eluded me again.”

Mrs. Martingale looked from Menwin to her daughter and back
again, and said, sighing, “My lord, I doubt you shall lose Livvy whatever you
do. I know the look that she is wearing. Olivia, you wore it the time you
climbed that impossible tree in your best petticoat and fell and broke your
arm.”

Menwin regarded his love in the light of this revelation and
seemed nothing dismayed.

“Well, more to the point, my dears, I have been thinking of
solutions to this idiotic coil you’re in. It seems to me that nothing will suit
our purpose so well as to admit her Grace of Tylmath to your secrets.” Mrs.
Martingale settled herself firmly beside her wayward daughter.

“Mamma, not the Duchess! After
all, John was her son, and—”

“I did not say that we needed to inform her Grace of John’s
regrettable lack of honesty in the matter of your engagement, Livvy. But she
will know better than anyone who might be convinced to make an offer to Miss
Casserley. And since she has been plotting with me to marry you to one of the
Eligibles in Town, she will doubtless be delighted that you have settled on
someone, no matter how ineligible he may temporarily be. And what is more to
the point, I think she will like your conspiracy excessively.”

The looks with which both Menwin and Lady John favored Mrs.
Martingale were respectful, tinged with awe. Mrs. Martingale beamed upon them
like a rosy, self-satisfied little robin.

“Mamma, I think you may be right!” Olivia breathed at last.

“Of course, dear. And you have always suspicioned that I was
not a downy one. The Duchess and I will get to work and see that you are
decently wed. I hope,” she added under her breath. “Lord Menwin, will you take
a nuncheon with us? I misdoubt that her Grace will be receiving before three,
and unless you dislike the company here—”

“I will strive to overcome my revulsion, ma’am,” Menwin
assured her.