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She turned on her heel and ran. Up the stairs and along the corridor to the bedroom, where the door stood half open. Rory was in there, throwing his belongings out of the press, disturbing William the Pug, who had been sleeping on his bed. Olivia watched her husband packing, longing for him to look at her, and when he didn’t she moved forward a step, and then another.
“So I am to be abandoned?” she said.
Rory laughed wildly. “Isn’t that what you want?”
Olivia could feel such passion thrumming between the two of them that anything was possible.
“I don’t know what I want,” she answered him, her voice trembling so badly it was barely audible. “No, that’s not true. I do know. I want to go back to a week ago, when my father told me the truth, and I want to pretend it never happened. But I can’t, Rory.”
He had turned to watch her and now he came closer, and closer again. “We could pretend,” he said, eyes full of a mixture of hope and torment. “Why not? Let’s pretend it never happened and we are still happy.”
Somehow they were closer still, and then abruptly he pulled her into his arms. Rory was kissing her as desperately as Olivia was kissing him.
“Don’t
leave,” she said, drawing back for breath. “I couldn’t bear it if you left.”
He went still. He was looking down at her and she felt the full weight of his regard. “Then come with me,” he said at last. “Come home with me to Invermar Castle.”
Olivia had spent days listening to her father, and then Margaret, and more recently Monkstead. She was tired of being told what she should or should not do. For the first time she listened to her own heart, and after all it wasn’t so difficult to make her decision.
“I will come with you,” she said. “We’ll both go home to Invermar Castle.”
He looked shocked, and then his handsome face broke into a smile that warmed her heart even more. He bent to take her lips in a kiss that started out sweet but soon turned wildly passionate.
And Olivia, clinging to him, found it was easy to put aside questions of their future. All her misgivings were swept away in the white hot emotion of the moment.
Chapter Five
Summer 1816, Mockingbird Square
Mayfair
Margaret had followed her cousin upstairs, thinking her support might be needed. After all, she had set Olivia on this path of reconciliation. Although, to be fair, maybe she had merely prodded her in a direction she would have taken anyway.
It only took one glance to show her that Olivia didn’t need saving. William the Pug was barking, so she called him out of the bedroom, while at the same time a strong masculine hand reached past her as the Earl of Monkstead shut the door on the embracing couple.
Margaret turned to him, momentarily stunned into silence.
“Come, Miss Willoughby,” he said. “We should leave them to their own devices. I find it is never a good idea to interfere at moments like this.”
“You have interfered!” Margaret said sharply. She turned to the stairs and he followed her down, the pug trotting after them.
“I have, but I am an expert.”
An expert! Margaret knew the stories, that Monkstead had had an unhappy marriage in his younger days and had never recovered from it. He was known as a match maker, a repairer of broken hearts, and Olivia had laughed with amusement when she first told her cousin of it, never realising it would be her heart he might be trying to mend.
“Despite their reconciliation, this may not end happily,” Margaret told him.
He smiled in what she considered an extremely conceited manner. “You’re right,” he agreed. “It may not end happily. But at least your cousin will have attempted to mend matters, and she can console herself with that. It is the things left unsaid and undone that cause us the most pain, Miss Willoughby.”
Margaret said nothing in response. With every pronouncement he made her irritation grew. What right had he to make such decisions on behalf of other people?
“I believe you have been walking in the garden, chaperoning my niece, Miss Beales, and Simon Linholm.”
Margaret wondered how he knew—she did not think Christina Beales would have told him of her assignations with Simon Linholm. Was he about to castigate her when he was responsible for so much more?
Outrage brought her gaze back to his. “I have,” she admitted, lowering her voice when she noticed the servant at the door, waiting to show him out. “Are you going to criticise me for that, my Lord?”
