Page 87 of This Marquess of Mine

“What do you mean, it was because of Keswick?” Olivia asked, her brows furrowed in confusion. “What does Griffin have to do with this?”

Aunt Augusta met her gaze. “It was right after you agreed to marry the duke,” she said. “Keswick rode all the way out here to speak with your father. To convince him not to make you go through with it.”

Olivia blinked, surprise parting her lips as a thousand questions streaked through her mind. “I don’t understand,” she said slowly. “Why would he do that? What did he say?”

Her aunt shook her head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I only heard of the visit from his mother.”

Olivia looked at Caroline. “Do you know?”

Her stepmother’s gaze fell to the booties in her lap, her lips pinched at the corners, signaling an internal debate.

“Please tell me, Caroline,” Olivia said softly and, finally, with a heavy sigh, Caroline caved.

“It was quite late in the afternoon when he arrived,” she said. “Your father and I were, of course, mystified by this unexpected visit, but we could hardly turn a marquess away without good reason, so we agreed to meet with him.”

She leaned back against the sofa cushion and draped her hands across the swell of her belly. “He was not at all as I remembered,” she continued. “He was quite windblown and sweaty, and he smelled of horse. Not at all the elegant marquess I had seen in the past.”

“He obviously rode his horse hard that day,” Aunt Augusta said. “He must have been in a great hurry to get here.”

Caroline nodded. “That was certainly the impression he gave.”

Olivia leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, not even bothering to hide her interest. “And? What did he say when you greeted him?”

“Well, your father said what a surprise it was to see him,” Caroline said. “Lord Keswick apologized for the intrusion and then he said ‘I’ve come to discuss your daughter with you.’ Well!” Caroline’s hands flew up. “You can imagine how surprised we were to hear those words. I thought he’d come to ask for your hand in marriage, especially after all those lovely things he said about you, but—”

“What lovely things?” Olivia asked, her tone too sharp, but she couldn’t seem to help it. She wanted to know everything, etiquette be damned.

“He said you were sweet and clever and beautiful”—Caroline’s head bobbed with every attribute—“and then he said you deserved a better father than the one you were given.”

Olivia’s mouth fell open. “He said that? To Father’s face?”

Caroline nodded. “He did.”

“And he was right.”

Lord Blakely’s voice drew everyone’s gaze to the door and Olivia watched in silence as her father walked into the room and claimed the chair beside Aunt Augusta’s.

“Of course, I didn’t want to hear it,” he continued, his smile wry beneath the fringe of his mustache. “Especially not from a man I barely knew. I was rather brusque with him, I’m afraid. But then, after he left, I couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said, and eventually I came to realize he was right.”

Olivia had no idea what to say. What on earth had possessed Griffin to do such a thing?

And why did he not want her to know he’d done it?

None of this made any sense.

“I owe him a great debt,” Lord Blakely said with a smile. “If it weren’t for his visit, my daughter would be married to a duke. And I still wouldn’t know what a remarkable young woman she is.”

Olivia returned his smile. “Thank you, Father.”

The conversation turned to other topics, but Olivia listened with only half an ear, her mind otherwise occupied.

Why had Griffin done it? What had compelled him to speak with her father? She was well aware of his less-than-complimentary opinion of Paxton, but marrying the duke would hardly have meant a life of abject misery. She would have been fine. She would have been more than fine. For pity’s sake, she would have been a duchess.

So why had he interfered?

He cared for her, she knew. She was one of his sister’s closest friends and he’d known her since she was a little girl. He probably would have done the same for Sophie, if she’d been in Olivia’s place.

Was that all it had been, then? The act of a concerned family friend?

Of course that’s all it was, she admonished. What else would it be?

His actions were honorable and admirable, but ultimately had been nothing more than a favor for a friend, which probably explained why he’d wanted to keep it from her. He was afraid she would make more of it than it was.

Drawing in a deep breath of air, she willed her racing heart to slow. It had been an act of kindness, nothing more, and she would do well to remind herself of that frequently before she saw him again.

And probably afterward, too.