Barely a Lady

Book 1: Drake's Rakes

by Eileen Dreyer

Genres: Historical Romance

Synopsis

Olivia Grace has secrets that could destroy her. One of the greatest of these is the Earl of Gracechurch, who married and divorced her five years earlier. Abandoned and disgraced, Grace has survived those years at the edge of respectability. Then she stumbles over Jack on the battlefield of Waterloo, and he becomes an even more dangerous secret. For not only is he unconscious, he is clad in an enemy uniform. But worse, when Jack finally wakes in Olivia's care, he can't remember how he came to be on a battlefield in Belgium. In fact, he can remember nothing of the last five years. He thinks he and Olivia are still blissfully together. To keep him from being hanged for a traitor, Olivia must pretend she and Jack are still married. To unearth the real traitors, Olivia and Jack must unravel the truth hidden within his faulty memory. To save themselves and the friends who have given them sanctuary, they must stand against their enemies, even as they both keep their secrets. In the end, can they risk everything to help Jack recover his lost memories, even though the truth may destroy them both?

Release date: June 16, 2010

Publisher: Forever

Print pages: 422

Sample

Brussels

11:00 p.m., Thursday, June 15, 1815

All prey understands the need for concealment. Sitting at the edge of a crowded ballroom, Olivia Grace knew this better than most and kept her attention on the room like a gazelle sidling up to a watering hole.

Olivia couldn’t help smiling. Watering holes. She’d been reading too many naturalists’ journals. Not that there weren’t predators here, of course. It would have been impossible to miss them, with their bright plumage, sharp claws, and aggressive posturing. And those were just the mamas.

Olivia was safely tucked away from their notice, though. Camouflaged in serviceable gray bombazine, she occupied a chair along the trellis-papered wall, just another anonymous paid chaperone watching on as her charges danced.

The ballroom, a converted carriage house at the side of the Duke of Richmond’s rented home, was full to bursting. Scarlet-clad soldiers whirled by with laughing girls in white. Sharp-eyed dowagers in puce and aubergine committed wholesale slaughter of each others’ reputations. Civilian gentlemen in evening black clustered at the edge of the dance floor to argue about the coming battle. Olivia had even had the privilege of seeing the Duke of Wellington himself sweep into the room, his braying laugh lifting over the swell of the orchestra.

It seemed all of London had moved to Brussels these last months. Certainly the well-born military men had come in response to Napoleon’s renewed threat. Olivia had already had the Lennox boys, the Duke of Richmond’s sons, pointed out to her, and handsome young Lord Hay in his scarlet Guards jacket. Sturdy William Ponsonby was in dragoon green, and the exquisite Diccan Hilliard wore diplomat’s black.

With all those eligible young men afoot, it would have been absurd to think that families would have kept their hopeful daughters at home.

Tonight Olivia’s employer had insisted on shepherding her own chicks, which left Olivia with nothing to do but watch. And watch she did, storing up every bit of color and pageantry to record for her dear Georgie back in England.

“Oh, there’s that devil Uxbridge,” the lady next to her whispered in salacious tones. “How he can show his face after eloping with Wellington’s sister-in-law…”

Olivia had heard that Uxbridge had been recalled from exile to lead the cavalry in the upcoming fight. She’d also heard he was brilliant and charismatic. Catching sight of him as he sauntered across the room in his flashy hussar’s blue and silver, his fur-lined pelisse thrown over his shoulder, she thought that the reports had been woefully inadequate. He was breathtaking.

She was so intent on the sight of him, in fact, that she failed her primary duty. She forgot to watch for danger. She’d just leaned a bit to see whose hand Uxbridge was bending over, when her view was suddenly blocked by a field of gold.

“You don’t mind if I sit here, do you?” someone asked.

Olivia looked up to find one of the most beautiful women she’d ever seen standing before her. Even sitting against the wall, Olivia fought the urge to look over her shoulder to see who else the newcomer could be addressing. Women like this never sought her out.

For a second, she flirted with old panic. She’d spent so many years trying to evade exposure that the instinct died hard. But this woman didn’t look outraged. In fact, she was smiling.

“It’s quite all right,” the beauty said with a conspiratorial grin. “Contrary to popular opinion, I rarely bite. In fact, in some circles I’m considered fairly charming.”

“I do bite,” Olivia found herself answering. “But only when provoked.”

She should bite her tongue. She knew better.

The woman didn’t seem to notice, though, as with a hush of silk, she eased onto the chair to Olivia’s left. “Well, let’s see who we can get to provoke you, then,” she said. “I think what this ball needs is some excitement—more than Jane Lennox making cow-eyes at Wellington over dinner, at any rate.”

Olivia actually laughed. “I think you might get some argument from all those men in red.”

Her companion took a moment to observe the room through a grotesquely bejeweled lorgnette. “It never occurred to me. This is the perfect place to watch absolutely everything, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely.”

“I wish I’d been sitting here when those magnificent Highlanders did their reels. I don’t suppose you caught a glimpse of what they wore under those kilts.”

“Sadly, no. Not for lack of trying, though.”

Olivia wondered why this peacock would choose to sit among the house wrens—especially since several of the wrens in question had taken umbrage. One or two sidled away. Olivia even heard the whisper of “harlot.” Again she fought the old urge to hide, but the attention was definitely on the newcomer.

As for that petite beauty, she appeared to take no notice. A Pocket Venus, she looked to be no older than Olivia’s four and twenty years. As fine-skinned as a porcelain doll, she had thick, curly mahogany hair woven through with diamonds and a heart-shaped face that might have looked innocent but for her slyly amused cat-green eyes. Her dress had been crafted by an artist. Draped in layers of filmy gold tissue, it seemed to flow like water from a barely respectable bodice that exposed quite an expanse of diamond-wrapped throat and high, white breasts.

“I noticed the way you watch everyone,” the beauty now said, lazily waving an intricately painted chicken-skin fan under her nose. “And I’ve been dying to hear what you’re thinking.”

“Thinking?” Olivia said instinctively. “But I think nothing. Companions aren’t paid enough to think.”

The lady gave a delighted laugh. “If you only did what you were paid for, my dear, I sincerely doubt you’d ever move farther afield than your front parlor.”

“The back parlor, actually. Closer to the servants’ stairs.”

Olivia knew perfectly well she was being reckless. Exposure was still possible, after all, and one gasp of recognition would destroy her. But it felt so good to smile.

Her new acquaintance laughed. “I knew I’d like you. Who is it who benefits from your companionship, might I ask?”

“Mrs. Bottomly and her three daughters.” Olivia gestured toward a group on the dance floor. “They felt that passing the season in Brussels might be… advantageous.”

The beauty turned to observe the short, knife-lean matron in pea green and peacock feathers smacking a rigid Mr. Hilliard on the arm with her fan as three younger copies of her looked on.

“You mean that flock of underfed crows pecking at my poor Diccan? Good Lord, how did she ever manage to acquire an invitation?”

“Ah, well,” Olivia said, “that would involve a well-timed walk along the Allee Verde, an even better-timed ankle twist that obliged the Duchess of Richmond to take Mrs. Bottomly up in her carriage, and Mrs. Bottomly’s tenacious confusion as to the nature of the invitations to tonight’s event.”

Her new acquaintance shook her head in awe. “Why ever has the creature wasted her time with a mere ball? Let’s introduce her to Nosey, and she can help him rout Napoleon.”

Olivia wryly considered her employer. “Not unless he has three eligible officers who might be offered in compensation.”

Just then, Mrs. Bottomly let off a shrill titter that should have shattered Mr. Hilliard’s eardrums. Olivia’s companion flinched. “Not something I’d want on my conscience. I’m afraid Wellington will simply have to rely on his own wits.”

“Indeed.”

“But what of you?” the beauty demanded of Olivia. “Surely you deserve better than service to an overweening mushroom.”

Olivia smiled. “I’ve found that life rarely takes what we deserve into consideration.”

For just a moment, her companion’s expression grew oddly reflective. Then, abruptly, she brightened. “Well, there are small mercies,” she said with a tap of her fan on Olivia’s arm. “If that dreadful woman had decamped from Brussels like everyone else who anticipated battle, I never would have met you.”

“Indeed you would not. For it is certain we couldn’t have met in London. Not even Mrs. Bottomly would dare to aspire so high.”

The woman turned her bright eyes on Olivia. “And how do you know that?”

Olivia’s smile was placid. “Your gems are real.”

Her friend gave a surprisingly full-throated laugh that turned heads. Olivia saw the attention and instinctively ducked.

Her companion suddenly straightened. “Grace!” she called with a wave of her fan. “Over here!”

Olivia looked up to see a tall, almost colorless redhead turn and smile. She was in the same serviceable gray as Olivia, although the cloth was better. A sarcenet, possibly, that did nothing but wash out whatever color the young woman had in her plain features.

Then she began walking toward them, and Olivia realized that she limped badly. Must have danced with the wrong clod, Olivia thought, and moved to offer her seat.

Her companion quietly held her in place. “Grace, my love,” she caroled, her hand still on Olivia’s arm. “What have you heard?”

The tall redhead lurched to a halt right in front of them and dipped a very fine curtsy. “Word has come, Your Grace. Fighting has commenced in Quatre Bras, south of us.”

Your Grace? Oh, sweet God, Olivia thought, feeling the blood drain from her face. What had she done?

Unobtrusively, she searched the room for Mrs. Bottomly and her daughters, but suddenly it seemed the entire crowd was in her way. Many of the officers now milled about uncertainly. Young girls wrung their hands and chattered in high, anxious tones. Wellington himself was speaking to the Duke of Richmond, and both looked worried.

It had begun, then. The great battle they had all been expecting for weeks was upon them. Awfully, Olivia felt a measure of relief. She would be invisible again.

“Ah well, then,” the duchess said, climbing to her feet. “It seems our time for frivolity is over. Noblesse oblige and all that. Before we go, Grace, come meet my new friend.”

Olivia stood and was surprised to see that the duchess came only to her shoulder. And Olivia was only of medium height.

“I’m sorry we didn’t have time to share more observations,” the petite beauty said to her with a gamine smile. “I think we could have thoroughly skewered this lot.”

Olivia dipped a curtsy. “It has been a pleasure, Your Grace.”

The duchess lifted a wickedly amused eyebrow. “Of course it has. Although by morning you will be notorious for speaking with me. ‘Oh, my dear,’ they’ll all whisper in outrage, ‘did you hear about that nice companion, Miss…’ ”

The little duchess suddenly looked almost ludicrously surprised. “Good God. I can’t introduce you after all.”

Olivia froze. Had she finally recognized her?

“We never exchanged names,” the duchess said, laughing. “I shall begin. I, for my sins, am Dolores Catherine Anne Hilliard Seaton, Dowager Duchess of Murther.” She wafted a lofty hand. “You may respond with proper gravity.”

Olivia found herself wondering at such a young dowager as she dipped a curtsy of impeccable depth. “Mrs. Olivia Grace, Your Grace.”

“Good Lord,” the duchess said, her eyes wide. “I’m a grace, you’re a grace, and, of course, Grace is a grace. A real grace, mind you, in all ways.” She patted the tall girl halfway up her arm. “Introduce yourself and make the irony complete, my love.”

With a smile that softened her long face, the redhead dipped a bow. “Miss Grace Fairchild, ma’am.”

“Grace is the daughter of that grossly bemedaled Guards general over there with the magnificent white mustache,” the duchess said. “General Sir Hillary Fairchild. Grace is one of those indomitable females who has spent her life following the drum. She knows more about foraging for food and creating a billet from a cow byre than I know about Debrett’s.”

Olivia exchanged curtsies. She liked this plain young woman, who had the kindest gray eyes she’d ever seen. “A pleasure, Miss Fairchild.”

“Please,” the young woman said. “Call me Grace.”

“And I am Kate,” the young duchess said. “Lady Kate, if the familiarity sticks in your craw. But never duchess or my lady or Your Grace”—she shot a glare at Grace Fairchild—“for how would we tell each other apart? Which would be unconscionable among friends. And we are friends, are we not?”

Olivia knew better than to agree. “It would please me immensely,” she said anyway. “Please call me Olivia.”

“Shall we see you later at Madame de Rebaucour’s, Olivia?” Grace Fairchild asked. “She is organizing the ladies of the city to help prepare for the anticipated wounded.”

“Never let it be said that I am completely without useful skills,” Lady Kate boasted. “I’ve become absolutely mad for rolling lint.”

“If my employer gives me leave, you can expect me there,” Olivia said, casting an eye out for that lady among the crowd.

Lady Kate gave her a wicked smile. “Oh, I can assure you she will. Simply tell her you accompany a duchess.” Flinging her zephyr shawl around her shoulders, she made to go. “We shall all help, like the heroines we are.”

“And sully those exquisite white hands?” a man’s voice demanded from behind Olivia.

Olivia froze. Shock skittered across her skin like sleet.

“Since these are the only pair of hands I own,” Lady Kate was saying lightly, “I imagine they will just have to adapt.”

Olivia couldn’t move. Sound suddenly echoed oddly, and movement seemed to slow. Lady Kate was looking just past her to where the man who had addressed her obviously stood, and Olivia knew she should turn.

It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be. She had escaped him. She’d hidden herself so thoroughly that she’d closed even the memory of him away.

“A generation of young exquisites would go into mourning if you suffered so much as a scratch,” he was telling the duchess in his charmingly boyish voice.

Still behind her, out of sight. Still possibly someone who only sounded terrifyingly familiar. Olivia desperately wanted to close her eyes, as if it could keep him at bay. If I don’t see him, he won’t be there.

She knew better. Even if she refused the truth, her body recognized him. Her heart sped up. Her hands went clammy. She couldn’t seem to get enough air.

And there was no escape. So she did what cornered animals do. She turned to face the threat.

And there he was, one of the most beautiful men God had ever created. A true aristocrat with his butter-blond hair, clear blue eyes, and hawkish Armiston nose, he stood a slim inch below six feet. His corbeau coat and oyster silk smalls were only a bit dandified, with a silver marcella waistcoat, half a dozen fobs, and a ruby glinting from his finger. He was bestowing an impish smile on the duchess, who seemed delighted by it.

Olivia had once thought that his handsome looks reflected a kind soul. She would never make that mistake again.

“Dear Gervaise.” Lady Kate was laughing up at him. “How thoughtful to persist in your delusion that I am a fragile flower.”

His grin was disarming, his laugh like music. “Been thoroughly put in my place, haven’t I? Daresay you’ll ignore my heartfelt wish to safeguard your looks, and then where will you be when they’re gone?”

Lady Kate laughed again and held out her hand to him. “Doing it up much too brown, Gervaise. You know full well that I’m content simply being outrageous. I’ll leave you to hold the torch for natural perfection.”

Gervaise bent over Lady Kate’s hand, but suddenly he wasn’t looking at her. He had just caught sight of Olivia.

She was probably the only one who caught the quickly shuttered surprise in his eyes. The glint of triumph. She wanted to laugh. Here she’d been hiding herself from judgmental mamas, when there had been a viper in the room all along.

“It seems I arrived just in time,” he said, straightening with a delighted smile as he shot his cuffs. “As quickly as this place is emptying, I might have missed you all. I know Miss Fairchild, of course, Kate, but who is this?”

“Make your bows to Mrs. Olivia Grace, Gervaise,” Lady Kate said. “Olivia, this is Mr. Gervaise Armiston. He is about to take me over to the door so I can see off our brave soldiers. I have no brave soldiers of my own. Only Gervaise.”

Gervaise chuckled good-naturedly and extended an arm. “I also live to serve, Kate,” he protested. “It’s just that I only serve you.” Giving Olivia a quick bow, he nodded. “Mrs. Grace.”

Olivia swallowed against rising bile. “Mr. Armiston.”

Lady Kate rested a slim white hand on his midnight sleeve. “Excellent. Come, Gervaise. Let us now go and remind our soldiers what they fight for. Grace, Olivia… tomorrow.”

The duchess had barely turned away before Olivia’s legs gave out from under her, and she sat down hard.

“Olivia?” Grace Fairchild asked, her face creased in concern. “Are you all right?”

Olivia looked up, trying desperately to quell her nausea. Suddenly, from the streets below, military drums shattered the night. Trumpets blared, and the Duchess of Richmond rushed about the ballroom, urging the men not to leave until after dinner had been served.

“Just another hour!” she pleaded.

Officers lined up at the doors to get a farewell kiss from the lovely Duchess of Murther. Some girls wept, while others swept off to dinner with the remaining men. And in the corner where the chaperones sat, Olivia’s world collapsed.

Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She had to warn Georgie. She had to warn them all.

She couldn’t. Any contact with them would lead Gervaise right back to them, and that would prove fatal.

Just as it had before.

Oh, Jamie.

Grace touched her shoulder. “Olivia?”

Olivia jumped. “Oh…,” she said, trying so hard to smile as she climbed to still unsteady legs. “I’m fine. I suppose it’s time to go.”

“You’re sure you’re all right? You’re pale.”

“Just the news.” Gathering her shawl, she avoided Grace’s sharp gaze. Pasting on a false smile, she turned. “I wish I were more like Lady Kate. Look how she’s making all the men laugh.”

Grace looked to where the duchess was lifting on her toes to kiss a hotly blushing boy in rifleman green. “Lady Kate is amazing, isn’t she?”

“She’s a disgrace,” one of the nearby women hissed.

Several other heads nodded enthusiastically.

“Glass houses,” snapped a regal older woman at the end of the row.

Everyone looked over at her, but the woman ignored them. Reticule and shawl in hand, she rose imperiously to her feet. She was a tall woman, with exceptional posture and a proud face beneath thick, snowy hair. She’d taken only two steps, though, before she caught her toe and pitched forward, almost landing on her nose. Olivia jumped to help, but Grace was already there.

“Dear Lady Bea,” she said, steadying the elegant woman. “Do have a care.”

The older woman patted her cheek. “Ah, for the last Samaritan, my child. For the last Samaritan.”

“That’s good, Lady Bea.”

“Indeed it is,” the older woman agreed. Grace smiled as if she knew what the woman meant and ushered her on her way.

“Lady Kate’s companion,” Grace confided as they passed.

“Mrs. Grace!” Mrs. Bottomly screeched. She was bearing down on them like a particularly skinny elephant with her calves in tow. “We are leaving.”

Peacock feathers bobbing, Mrs. Bottomly herded her hopefuls toward the door. Olivia had no choice but to follow. Lady Kate waved as Olivia passed and then hugged a burly dragoon. Olivia saw that Gervaise wasn’t with the duchess anymore and instinctively knew where he would be. She almost turned back for the safety of the ballroom.

He was waiting for her, of course. Olivia had made it only a few steps into the hot night when he stepped out of the crowd.

“I’ve missed you, Livvie,” he said, reaching out a hand. “You’ll see me, won’t you?”

Not a request. An order wrapped in etiquette. Olivia couldn’t prevent the sick cold or trembling that beset her.

She could hold her ground, though. She could face him eye-to-eye. The days of downcast eyes and prayed-for escape were long over. “Why, no, Gervaise,” she said just as amiably. “I won’t.”

And before he could respond, she swept down the steps and into the chaotic night.

Saturday June 17, 1815

They had gone.

Olivia stood in the foyer of her little pension and stared at the battered portmanteau on the floor in front of her. She’d just run from the Namur Gate, where she’d spent the day caring for the wounded who had begun to flood into town the night before. She felt stupid with exhaustion, standing there in her stained, wet dress and trying to understand what that poor, solitary bag meant.

She’d gone to the medical tents that morning with Mrs. Bottomly’s blessing, just as she had the day before. “No, no, my dear,” the little woman had said, her mouth full of muffin. “You must help those poor men. We shall make do here until we can arrange transport home. Although I fear it might already be too late to leave.”

It was indeed too late, but evidently only for Olivia. Thunder cracked overhead, and rain beat on the windows. The skies had opened not twenty minutes ago, forcing everyone inside. Olivia had run for the shelter of her lodgings.

No, not her lodgings. Not anymore. Madame La Suire, the landlady, had just made that point clear when she’d briskly informed Olivia that the English madame and her so-stupid daughters had decamped not an hour after Olivia had left that morning. If Olivia chose to stay, she would need to pay the tariff herself.

Gone. While she’d been kneeling on the cobbles giving sips of water to wounded men, her employer had snuck away without her. It made no sense.

“Did Mrs. Bottomly leave anything for me, madame?” Olivia asked as the stout woman set down a pitifully small bandbox next to the portmanteau. “A letter? A small reticule?”

The reticule she’d left behind with Mrs. Bottomly, where it would be safe. Where she couldn’t lose it among the crowds of injured and dying who overran the streets, the civilians who clattered about, swinging from excitement to blind panic. She had every ha’penny she’d earned in the last six months in that reticule, ready to send home to Georgie.

“She said nothing, that one,” Madame said. “She gave nothing. I packed what you see here, and there is no reticule. She leaves with the oh-so-handsome English lord.” Casting a severe eye at her former border, she lifted a blunt finger. “And do not try to accuse me. I thieve of no one.”

Olivia couldn’t seem to think. She still had blood on her hands from the young dragoon who had spilled his life out on the road not twenty feet from the gates. She’d reached him only moments before he died, gasping and pleading and so very young, just one among hundreds stumbling back from Quatre Bras.

She’d held him in her arms as his lifeblood drained onto the cobbles, and she’d watched his eyes fade and still. She’d closed those eyes—Brown. Hadn’t they been brown? She had laid him down as gently as she could and run from the rain. And now she had nowhere to go, and it was all she could seem to think of.

Madame had turned away to leave Olivia in the foyer when she stopped. “The handsome English lord, he had a message, him.”

Olivia started. She managed to focus on the sour-faced woman. Lightning lit the room in a blinding blue, briefly stealing her vision.

“An English lord?” she echoed. The awful portent of those three words began to break through her confusion. “What English lord?”

Thunder cracked overhead. Olivia stood dripping all over Madame’s tiled floor and waited for the inevitable.

The woman actually smiled like a girl. “But, yes, the nice man, him, who arranged for the Bottomlys. He says you wait right here, and back he comes for you.”

There was only one handsome Englishman still in Brussels who knew Olivia.

Suddenly everything made perfect sense. Ignoring the departing Madame La Suire, Olivia spun around and grabbed her portmanteau and bandbox. She straightened to see that rain poured in sheets against the windows. Thunder pounded and growled, and the trees whipped in a frenzy. Lightning shuddered across the lowering sky.

She couldn’t go out in that. She’d be drenched in a second.

Yet she didn’t have a choice. Madame had already disappeared back into the kitchen, and there was no one else she could turn to for help. Besides, the men she’d been caring for were still outside, lying helpless in that deluge. She had to get back to help them.

She had just balanced her things on one arm and reached for the door when it blew open. Before Olivia could react, Gervaise strolled in.

He was dripping wet, his umbrella turned inside out from the wind. Even so, he looked perfectly put together, the rain only making his hair glisten. And he was smiling.

Olivia detested that smile, for it seemed she was the only one who saw past it.

“Excellent,” he said happily as he closed the door behind him and set his umbrella against the wall. “You waited for me.”

Olivia fought the sheer terror those words incited. “I did no such thing. I was just on my way back to the medical tents.”

Gervaise took a considered look out the window. “In this? I think not.”

“In the last fires of Armageddon if I have to. Get out of my way, Gervaise.”

He stepped closer instead, so close Olivia could smell the tobacco he used, the vetiver cologne he preferred. The mingled scents turned her stomach.

She should have known. The minute she’d recognized him, she should have anticipated this very moment. She should have run.

He let his gaze drift to the neck of her dress. “Are you still wearing it, Livvie?”

It was all she could do to keep from reaching up and laying a protective hand against her chest, where her locket lay hidden beneath her dress.

He smiled. “Does it really help?”

Panic hit, a hot, sweat-producing urge to flee. Please God, don’t let him know.

“It’s the least I can do,” she whispered.

He nodded. “He was a beautiful boy. It’s so sad you couldn’t protect him.”

Another well-dressed threat. A reference to what he had done. What he would do again if necessary.

“It’s just one more thing I love about you, Livvie,” he said as if he meant it. “Your strong protective instincts. I could have helped, you know. Don’t you think I can now?”

She thought he’d destroy her, just as he had before.

Reaching up, he stroked a finger down her cheek. “You’re so brave, Livvie,” he said, his voice gentle and confiding. “I have to admit, I’m impressed. Going to the lengths of becoming a companion for one of the most odious cits I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet.” He flashed a mischievous smile. “She was aux anges when I happened on her in the Parc Royale. When I offered to help her flee the city, she was so grateful it never occurred to her to wonder why I wasn’t able to include you.”

Olivia was trembling, and it made her furious. She deliberately stepped back. “Do you have my reticule?”

“Only because I felt that if you had any money, you might be tempted to make an unfortunate decision. I’m the only choice you have, Livvie. This won’t be like those other times you lost your position because you were exposed. This time you’re hundreds of miles from home with no way back. And you know that even if you could get there, you’d find no one to help you. Certainly not your family. As for your friends here, they won’t last once they learn who you really are.”

She knew he expected her to weep. To plead. She held still.

“You know I love you, Livvie,” he said, stepping closer again. “Isn’t it better sometimes just to give in?”

Her heart was pounding; he had to hear it. “Not to you. Never to you. Now get out of my way before I knock you down.”

“And then what, my dear? Shall you get another position? Shall you throw yourself on the mercy of one of the other crow-faced women I saw you sitting with last night? They’d be more likely to chase you into the streets themselves. You, my love, are a notoriously ruined woman.” Horribly, his expression grew sad. He looked so damned sincere. “I offer you so much more. I always have.”

“And I have always refused. I haven’t changed my mind.”

“No, Liv,” he said. “Not always.”

She had to swallow to force the bile back down her throat.

Then he sighed. Sighed. “Oh, Livvie. When are you going to learn that I never give up?”

She saw how benign he looked and knew that even as he expres. . .