Afterward, she went back inside and made good on her promise to burn the tawdry red dress.
Serena watched her as she ripped the fabric and fed the pieces to the flames. “Olivia, there’s something I have to tell you.”
Olivia kept her eyes on the flames. “What is it?”
“We received a letter from Captain Langley a few days ago. He said Lord Fenwicke had employed a spy within our household to feed him information about your liaisons with Max.”
Olivia sucked in a breath. So that was how Fenwicke had known so much. He’d lied when he’d claimed Max had told him everything.
Serena continued, “Jonathan was furious. He questioned every single member of the household, from the scullery maids to the butler.”
“Did you discover who it was?” Olivia asked, pushing the words out through her tight chest. She tossed another wad of fabric into the fire and watched it burn.
“It was your maid, Liv. Smithson.”
Olivia closed her eyes against the well of betrayal. “Are you sure?” she choked out.
Serena sighed. “Yes. Cora, who shared a room with Smithson, saw her writing letters every day. Thinking the letters were romantic missives between Smithson and a suitor, she peeked at one of them. She was confused about why Smithson would be writing to a Lord F. about the goings-on at Stratford House, but she dismissed the matter from her mind and didn’t think of it again until we questioned her.”
“And Smithson?”
“As soon as we arrived in London yesterday, Jonathan
pressed her for the truth, and she admitted to all of it. She said Fenwicke paid her ten pounds to betray you. Jonathan dismissed her soundly. She’s never to show her face in London, or in Sussex, again.”
Olivia scrubbed away a tear threatening to fall. She gathered her composure. “Thank you, Serena. I mean… Meg.”
Serena slipped her arms around Olivia’s shoulders. “Forgive me, Liv. I can’t believe I hired a maid who would betray you so horribly. I feel terrible about it.”
“It’s not your fault.” Olivia sighed. “Ten pounds is a large sum. I’m sure anyone in Smithson’s position would be lured by that amount.”
Serena pulled back. Cupping Olivia’s cheeks in her hands, she asked, “Are you really all right, Olivia?”
“Yes.” She was better than she could ever have expected to be after such an ordeal, she thought. She felt absolutely calm.
“But you seem terribly…” Serena’s brows knitted, and she dropped her hands. “Sad,” she finished.
Olivia tossed the remnants of the dress into the fire, watched it catch, and then turned back to her sister. “I made a mistake, Serena.”
Serena’s frown deepened. “What do you mean?”
“With Max.” Blinking hard, she looked away. She would not cry over him. God forbid.
“How do you mean? He seemed so worried about you last night.”
“Yes. He did. But I found out…” She sighed. “Well, the truth is that when it came to Max, I didn’t heed your warnings. I didn’t protect my heart.”
“What happened?”
“Fenwicke gave me a few insights into Max’s character, and it’s not as solid as I’d thought.”
“For God’s sake, how could you trust the word of such a madman?”
Olivia bit her lip. “He showed me—in writing—a wager he’d made with Max. Max bet him a thousand guineas that he could seduce me.”
Serena gasped. “No.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t believe it. It must have been forged!”
“It wasn’t, Serena. I know his signature. And Max was there. The expression on his face confirmed that it was true. It also explains why Fenwicke paid Smithson to watch us. He wanted to make sure that Max was telling the truth when he came back to London claiming he’d succeeded in the seduction of the frigid Miss Olivia Donovan.” Her voice cracked on the last few words.
“Oh, Olivia,” Serena murmured. “I’m so sorry. This… this is devastating news.”
Olivia gave her a faltering smile. “I should have known better than to let my heart become involved. I’ve been a fool.”
“It’s not your fault. He’s been so…” Serena shook her head. “Well, I believed he was utterly taken with you. The way his eyes follow you across a room… Well, seeing the way he looks at you always gives me shivers.”
“Me too,” Olivia murmured.
Serena’s arms encircled Olivia in a tight hug, and in the comfort of her older sister’s embrace, Olivia released her anguish and allowed the tears to flow. Tears for all the fear and horror that she’d endured in Fenwicke’s house. Tears for the loss of Max… and the loss of the part of her that had believed she was in love with him.
Max came to see her late in the afternoon. Knowing she needed to see him, to explain that she must distance herself from him, Olivia asked her sister and brother-in-law to give them time alone together.
She’d been standing at the window, staring at the gray world, at the rain falling in sheets outside, when he was announced. She turned to greet him as he walked into the room. “Good afternoon, Your Grace.”
He smiled. “What do you think of my new title?”
“I think it suits you.”
“Do you? It still feels strange to me.”
“Maxwell Buchanan, the Duke of Wakefield,” she murmured. “Do you like it?”
“Being the Duke of Wakefield?”
“Yes.”
He met her eyes and held them a beat before answering. “No, I haven’t liked it very much at all. It has kept me away from you.”
Something in her chest tightened. She gestured to the sofa. “Let’s sit down, Max.”
He waited until she sat and then he lowered himself beside her, gathering her hand in his own. Olivia had thought she’d cried all her tears with Serena earlier, but she could feel them welling in her throat again now, and it took her several moments to gather her composure.
“There’s something we need to talk about.”
He nodded, keeping his gaze fixed on her.
She took a deep breath. “You and I—we are very different. We’re from different worlds, and we’re going different places.”
“No,” he said firmly. “We’re not from entirely different
worlds. You are an English lady as much as any lady born and bred in England. And as for us going different places—not if I have anything to say about it.”
“Please, Max. Please don’t make this more difficult for me than it already is.” She tried to keep her voice steady. “You’re not the man I thought you were.”
Max clenched his teeth. “Listen to me, Olivia. I once told you there was a part of me I never wished for you to see. That damned bet came from that part of me, and I regret it. It was a stupid, foolish thing for me to do.”
She sighed. “Why did you agree to it, then? Why did you sign it?”
He released her hand but he didn’t draw his gaze away from her. “Fenwicke and I have a long and complicated history. The man has always brought out the parts of me that are most like my father. That night I first saw you, Fenwicke was boasting about his ability to conquer women. He assumed that since you didn’t succumb to his advances, then you wouldn’t succumb to mine. I wanted to prove him wrong.” Finally, Max broke his gaze away from her. “I was angry. Angry at his arrogance, at his easy willingness to betray his wife. I
wanted
to beat him. Wanted to show him once and for all that he wasn’t better than me. I agreed to the bet, I signed the damned wager, and I planned to come to Sussex. But once I arrived at Stratford House I didn’t think of the bet once, except to consider what a foolish thing it had been for me to agree to it, and then to dismiss it once and for all.”
“Yet you came to Sussex with plans to seduce me,” she murmured. “Before you’d even met me.” She pressed her palm over her eye so the threatening tear wouldn’t fall.
Gripping the arms of his chair, he said, “There has
always been a competition between Fenwicke and me. Ever since we were schoolboys, he’s been trying to best me. There have been many times I’ve wanted to wipe that superior sneer from his face, so I’ve made many wagers with him, always thinking ‘this is the one that will put the ass in his place.’ And I always win, but he always keeps coming back for more. It’s a compulsion for him… the never-ending need to best me.”
“And your never-ending need to prove to him that he can’t,” Olivia said softly.
Max sighed and looked away from her, but he didn’t disagree with her. “When I saw you at Lord Hertford’s ball, I couldn’t take my eyes off you. He saw me watching you, and the competition began once more.”
Olivia’s heart felt fragmented, like delicate crystal in the instant before it shattered. “You gave in to his need for competition, because you have that same need—you want to best him. You enjoy proving, over and over, that you are superior. So in the end, it was all a game to you. A silly, childish competition to see which immature, insecure
boy
would win the race. At the expense of my virtue. At
my
expense.”
“God, no.” He leaned closer to her, and she had to fight to keep from drawing away from him. “I was intrigued by you that night at Hertford’s ball, but when I went to Stratford House and grew to know you better…” He shook his head. “I didn’t give a damn about the bet. I didn’t want to share anything of my experience with you with Fenwicke. I didn’t want to soil it like that. My need to best him seemed stupid and meaningless. I intended to pay him his one thousand guineas to make him go away.”
She stared at him, not knowing what to make of all of
this. If she didn’t believe him now, then that meant all their time together at Stratford House, and all the letters he’d sent since he’d left, were false. And that didn’t make any sense either. If he’d already had the proof that he’d compromised her, then why send her so many letters? Why invite her to the public venue of the opera once she arrived in London? And last but not least, why on earth had Lord Fenwicke made so many threats against them both?
Once it might have been farfetched to think that Lord Fenwicke was as crazy as a loon, but she’d seen the truth of that firsthand.
“Our dealings have been similar to my father and uncle’s dealings: based on bitterness and competition.” Looking away from her, Max pushed a harsh hand through his hair, making his dark curls fly. He closed his eyes. “But I don’t want to live like that. I never have. God knows I don’t want to be anything like my father, but there is a weakness in me—that damned darkness—and Fenwicke kept sucking me back in. I was a fool to let it go on for as long as it has.” He gazed at her, his green eyes pleading. “I want out. I don’t want the darkness anymore. I don’t want anything to do with Fenwicke. I’m done with it… with him.”
She stared at him for a long moment, then bent her head down and rested her face in her hands. “I don’t know what to think.”
“I do,” Max said firmly. “Forget about him. Forget about the wager. Believe me when I say I’m never going to be associating with that man, or anyone like him, ever again.”
She looked back up at him, feeling utterly hopeless. “I can’t forget, Max.”
His lips tightened. “Why?”
“Because… I don’t think I can come to terms with the
fact that our meetings didn’t begin innocently. I was little more to you than a desire to best a rival. That day you met me at the spring—that wasn’t by chance, was it? You knew I’d been going there. You engineered that meeting.”
Max blew out a harsh breath. “I wanted to meet you. I would have been there waiting for you even if the wager had never been made.”
“But you wouldn’t have been at Jonathan’s house, would you? My brother-in-law spoke of how you turned down his invitation at first—you laughed and said that you weren’t interested in hunting.”
He frowned. “Regardless of the wager, I was intrigued by you and I wanted to know you.” He leaned forward. “Listen, Olivia. Your intentions towards me have changed as well, and more than once. You went from wanting friendship, to wanting me in your bed, to… whatever it is you feel for me now. Does the fact that you wanted only friendship from me once make your current feelings for me any less real? Your feelings for me grew and changed, just like my feelings for you.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t think that makes me see this any differently. Yes, my feelings for you have grown, and I would like to believe that yours have, too. But I still feel as though I’ve been used. Like a pawn in a child’s game. The foundation of what we’ve built between us is unsteady.”
“That’s not true!”
“I can’t see it any other way.”
“I still want to be with you.”
“I can’t, Max. Not now. I need time… to work this out.”
She watched his entire face tighten, his expression harden. “Time?”
“Yes. Time away from you.” She rose on unsteady legs. “I need to reassess my priorities. I’ve been flying so high with you, but learning this has clipped my wings. I have to decide what I want, what’s right for me.”
“
I’m
right for you. Let me prove that to you.”
She couldn’t meet his gaze. She was so confused. One part of her was screaming that he’d used her simply to make a childish point; the other was shouting that she should—she
must—
give him a chance to prove himself. She had no idea which one to listen to.
“Please,” she murmured. “Give me time.”
“How much time?”
“I don’t know. I just need… space. Please.”
She heard him rising beside her, but she didn’t turn to face him. “Very well. I’ll give you time to think, Olivia. But understand—I’m not letting you go.”
He rested his hand on her shoulder. The possessive weight of his touch sent a clear signal that while he might be capitulating now, he had no intention of making their separation permanent. Without another word, he let go, turned, and left the drawing room, closing the door softly behind him.
She sank back onto the sofa and lowered her face into her hands. “You’re doing the right thing, Olivia,” she whispered to herself. “It’s safer this way.”
But she felt the damp of tears on her fingertips, and an enormous part of her wanted to rush after him and throw herself into his arms.
Max kept himself apprised of Lord Fenwicke’s condition as well as Olivia’s movements in Town. A few days after Olivia returned to the safety of her family, Lord and
Lady Stratford left London, but Olivia, surprisingly, had remained with the dowager.