Page 45 of Waiting for Love

He laughed. “You will have to finish later. We are going to eat luncheon with the Taverstons.”

“No.”

“Come along, deary. Let’s get you tidied,” Miss Jamison said.

Hannah wailed a string of petulant nos.

“Olly is waiting for you,” she said calmly. “Don’t you want to see Olly?”

“No” turned to an equally petulant “yes.”

“Then you must let me wipe your hands and face. You are a mess.” Ms. Jamison tried taking hold of her grubby hands.

“Olly likes mess!” Hannah insisted.

“Yes, but not at the table.”

Benjamin marveled at Ms. Jamison’s reasonable tone. Hannah quieted and held out her hands. She squirmed but allowed the nanny to wipe flour from her face. Then Miss Jamison hoisted her to her feet.

“Oh no.” Her face fell. “I think we had better change that dress, deary.”

Clumps of dough mottled her frock. But Benjamin remembered young “Olly” coming to the table at the Binnings cottage with muddy hems and reeking of horse. “She’ll do.” He brushed off the clumps.

He straightened his neckcloth and smoothed his jacket taut. Miss Jamison took off her apron and hung it by the stove. Then she took Hannah by the hand. They went to join the Taverstons.

Everyone was in the dining hall but for Vanessa and Georgiana.

Standing somewhat apart from the others, before taking their seats, Jasper told Benjamin the two were having lunch in Georgiana’s sitting room. He smirked. “It’s rather sickeningly heartwarming, isn’t it?”

“Did everything go well then this morning?” Benjamin asked awkwardly.

“Yes. I think it did.” He sounded relieved. Tired and relieved.

Looking at the table, Benjamin saw he was assigned a seat between Olivia and Alice. Olivia wore a lavender day dress he hadn’t seen before. It had long form-fitting sleeves and a dip in the neckline showing just a hint of bosom. Just a gaze-entrapping hint. Olivia gave him a bright smile as he lowered himself into his chair. His heart thumped ridiculously. He tried to smile back. There was no doubt. No doubt at all. If he didn’t leave Chaumbers soon, he would jeopardize everything.

*

She hadn’t been imagining things. Olivia didn’t want to make too much of Vanessa explicitly asking Georgiana if they might have lunch in her sitting room. Alone. She understood there were confidences that married women could share that unmarried girls could not be privy to. But there had been a chill in Vanessa’s manner that truly had seemed directed only at her. Olivia could not imagine what she had done to offend her.

After luncheon, a difficult meal where Benjamin, too, had acted oddly, Olivia wanted solitude. Being the cheerful one, all the time, even when being shunned by her sisters-in-law, was wearing.

There was one place at Chaumbers where no one would look for her: the third floor reading room. It wasn’t a library. It had only a few shelves and a very few old books. As she understood from family lore, it was where her grandmother used to hide when she wanted peace and quiet. On the rare instances when she felt the need to shut out the world, Olivia would come sit in her grandmother’s musty old armchair. It wasn’t exactly comforting. Truth be told, her clearest memory of the setting was one of terror.

The room was located just above Papa’s—Jasper’s—study. The study was where Papa used to bring the boys if they’d earned a reprimand. One day, playing, she’d serendipitously discovered that words spoken in the study floated up through the chimney. Since she was always interested in what they had done wrong, whenever she suspected Jasper or Crispin—it was never Reg—might be taken to task, she would hurry to the reading room, to lie down beside the cold fireplace and put her ear to the floor.

Peters had caught her. He said if she ever eavesdropped on the earl again, he would report her. Lud, how that had frightened her! She knew, from listening, that Papa sometimes used his belt. It didn’t cure her of the vice entirely, but she never again spied on her father.

She curled up in her grandmother’s chair, turning pages in an illustrated Bible, without paying attention to anything but the fragility of the pages. Until noise wafted up through the grate. Jasper’s voice. But he was never in his study this time of day! A moment later, she heard Vanessa. No actual words, just their affectionate tones. Then silence. Then strange sounds that might possibly be kissing.

Olivia laid the Bible quietly on the floor and stood to leave. There was more talking that was too low to hear. But Jasper’s voice suddenly rose. “We don’t have to go.”

“Of course, we do.” They were arguing. That, she could hear. “How will it look—”

“I don’t care.”

“You have to care. For Olivia’s sake, if not for mine. How can you ignore—”

“I ignore nothing! But you’ve just miscarried!”