“What you don’t know about men would fill a library,” he said. “Promise me you won’t marry him. If I hear of such an atrocity in the works—”
“I trust I won’t have to resort to Lord Mends, though I make no promises,” she said. “At this point, it would be amazing if he still wanted me.”
“It wouldn’t be amazing at all.”
Not that Ripley would ever let it happen. She would never have to resort to Mends or anybody else.
“If you say so. But first things first. Since you are too honorable, I shall make Ashmont marry me. In my letter, I did say he might consider himself released from our engagement but—”
“He won’t.” Curse him.
“I believe you’re right,” she said. “I was about to say that I believe he’s too possessive and obstinate to give up. However, if it turns out he’s entertaining doubts, I believe I can bring him round. Now that you’ve given me so much useful information about men, I have specific ideas as to how to go about it.”
Yes, indeed. Ripley had given her heaps of ideas, curse him, too.
“He won’t entertain doubts,” he said tightly. “You don’t understand at all. The night before the wedding? Ashmont could talk about nothing but you and getting married. Nobody else could get a word in edgeways. I’ve never seen him like that before, about a woman.”
Her eyes, grey now, filled. She blinked hard. “Then it puzzles me,” she said, her voice choked, “why he’d get so drunk on his wedding day.”
Not to mention the night before.
“Maybe he was nervous,” Ripley said. “Maybe you weren’t the only one. But he wasn’t the one who bolted, was he?”
She looked for a moment as though he’d struck her. He wished she’d strike him, preferably with one of the massive tomes near at hand.
Then her eyes sparked. She lifted her chin and said, “What had he to lose? When a woman weds, she becomes her husband’s property. She’s under his control. He has all the power. If he makes her wretched, what recourse has she? But Ashmont? You? Blackwood? A different story altogether. You three can go on doing what you did before you were wed, and no one will turn a hair. Marriage makes virtually no difference to men. For women, it can be the end of the world.”
Power and control. Ripley knew what it was like to be the one who had neither. He knew what it was like to be at the mercy of an unpredictable man. For women, it was worse by far.
But Ashmont wasn’t remotely like the late, mad, sixth Duke of Ripley.
“You’ll be a duchess,” Ripley said. “Dammit, Olympia, you can manage Ashmont. If you can make me forget my loyalties, do you imagine you can’t do as you like with him?”
“But I don’t—” She broke off, her brow knitting. Then she adjusted her spectacles. “You have a point.”
“I should hope so.”
“If you can lose control so easily, he can, too,” she said. “More easily, I suspect, since all I’ve observed tells me he’s quick to anger and fight, and the smallest thing will set him off. The quantity of alcohol he consumes may have something to do with that. Well, we’ll see. I shall look for ways to channel his energies in more positive directions.” She nodded. “Yes, that’s promising. I knew there was a bright side. There always is.” She beamed at him. “Thank you, Ripley.”
He realized he was clutching the handles of the mechanical chair so tightly that the wheels were fighting the rod locking them. He loosened his grip.
“My pleasure,” he said. “So glad I could be of service. I’ll leave you to your books. I believe I’ll take a roll through the garden.”
Olympia kept up the smile while she moved to the door to open it for him. She kept smiling while he maneuvered the chair out of the library and onto the graveled walkway. She closed the door.
Then and only then did her smile fade. Then and only then did her throat close up and her mouth tremble and her eyes fill. This time she let the tears fall. Not for long, though.
“Don’t be maudlin,” she told herself. She found her handkerchief and dried her eyes.
Self-pity was out of the question. She had no illusions when it came to men. She’d always known—after the first few Seasons, at any rate—that her marriage, if she could somehow get one, would not be a romantic one.
Even while knowing the odds were against her, she’d tried a moment ago for something more than a practical business arrangement. At least she’d tried.
But Ripley was right: Men cuckolded other men all the time, and Society shrugged, usually laughing at the cuckold.
Stealing one’s best friend’s affianced bride, though, was another kettle of fish. Dishonorable. At least as bad as cheating at cards.
Furthermore, she didn’t want to be the one who destroyed a lifelong friendship, one of the two true friendships Ashmont had. She didn’t wish him ill. She didn’t want to hurt him.
But he wasn’t the one who bolted, was he?
She winced. She had run away. She’d acted unkindly. She was ashamed.
All the same, she couldn’t make herself stop hoping for a different ending to her story.
“You ought to know better,” she muttered. “You know what this is: You’ve become infatuated with a rake.” The way thousands of other women did. Even clever ones. People wrote books and plays about it. They’d done so for centuries. She didn’t doubt explorers would find hieroglyphs in Egypt telling the same story.
Very well. She’d succumbed. She’d simply have to un-succumb. She had one tried-and-true way to cope with life’s setbacks.
She squared her shoulders and moved to the heap of books. She began to sort. History here. Philosophy here. Ah, and here was the dramatic poetry, Congreve and Dekker and Middleton and Schiller and Sheridan. And Shakespeare, of course, who had written of what she felt, as he’d written of the infinite variety of human feelings and behavior.
She took up a volume. Romeo and Juliet. Perfect example. Had she not found the story troublesome? Two very young persons, who could hardly know their own minds, believed they’d found the love of a lifetime. As a consequence they killed themselves in the most stupid manner.
True, Olympia was nearly six and twenty, not fourteen, but her experience of men, in a nonbrotherly way, was approximately that of a fourteen-year-old.
She set down the Shakespeare and took up another. Don Quixote. Several editions of that fine example of living in a delusion. At the top of another pile lay The Castle of Otranto. Ripley’s cup of tea, she didn’t doubt. Gigantic helmets falling from the sky and killing people, various nonsupernatural parties trying to kill one another, damsels in distress . . .
She quickly set down the book and let her gaze roam over the collection.
That was when she saw it. Three large volumes, vellum. For a moment, all she could do was stare.
“Here,” she whispered. “Recueil des Romans des Chevaliers de la Table Ronde. Here. At Camberley Place, of all places.”
Reverently she turned pages. She’d read about this. It must be the set from the Duke of Devonshire’s library sale, nearly fifteen years ago. Lord Mends had tried and failed to get it.
Beautiful. Hundreds of illustrations, in gold and color, of the Tales of the Knights of the Round Table.
Ripley’s words intruded.
Didn’t you tell me you were a damsel in distress? I’m your knight in shining armor.
She shut the book, but she couldn’t shut out Ripley’s voice or what she felt when he was near her, when he touched her.
She walked to the window.
Though the garden on the east front was rather a wilderness, she saw Ripley clearly. He’d stopped halfway down one of the paths, and he was looking away from the house. While she watched, Cato ran up to him, sniffed about, and tried to lick his foot. Ripley gestured at him. The dog backed off a pace and sat down beside the invalid chair, as good as gold, or pretending to be. A moment later, Lady Charles followed Cato to her nephew’s side.
Olympia turned away from the window. Kn
ights in shining armor belonged to the world of romances, a fairy-tale world. Lady Olympia Hightower had to live in the here and now. If she must remember voices, she’d do better to remember the voice of wisdom: Don’t underestimate Ashmont . . . when he wins your respect and love, you’ll be happy you married him.
That was the voice of experience, reality, practicality. That was the voice a sensible and practical girl ought to heed.
“I will,” Olympia said under her breath. “I will.” She returned to Lord Charles’s unrecorded books.
Ripley could still hear Olympia’s laughter in his head. He still felt the curves and warmth of her body. He heard her say, In that case, maybe you ought to be the one to marry me.
Well, he couldn’t, and it was pointless to suppose otherwise. She was Ashmont’s. Any other man might try to lure her away. But not Ripley, because he was the bloody best friend. Because it was too late.
He was sinking into black gloom when he heard “Woof!” and Cato bounded at him.
“Down!” Ripley said, before the dog could jump on him. But the dog only trotted round him, sniffing. He spent a good deal of time sniffing about Ripley’s lap . . . where Olympia had been. Then the dog tried to lick the injured foot. Ripley snapped his fingers. “Get off, you ridiculous beast.”
The dog sat, eyeing the foot.
“He wants to play,” came Ripley’s aunt’s voice from behind him. “But you’ve had your playing for the morning, it would seem.”
“Have I?”
She clasped her hands behind her back and walked a few paces away, then came back. “You had better not be taking advantage of that young lady under my roof.”
She’d seen or a servant had told tales. Ripley said nothing.
“I heard a commotion in the library,” she said. “I trust to your honor that the fooling about came to nothing.”
He didn’t wince. The fooling about had come, more or less, to nothing, and that was for the best.
“For God’s sake, Hugh, tell me whether I need to take the girl away.”
He wanted Olympia gone. No, that wasn’t true. He needed her gone.
The trouble was, she needed time away from everybody else—the family she was trying to rescue, yes, but Ashmont especially. She needed time to think and decide what was best and what was wise and what was right, not simply for her family but for her. No small challenge, trying to make things fit that didn’t want to fit.
Ripley knew this. He knew, too, that one could find no better place, when one needed to come to terms with life’s difficulties, than Camberley Place.
“It’s complicated,” he said.
“Life is complicated.”
“Yes.”
“I saw it wasn’t simple, and it’s become clearer to me how not simple it is,” she said. “You—the three of you—” She broke off. “But never mind the other two. You’re the one here and you’re the one who needs to face matters. Some problems can’t be bought off, nephew. Some need to be dealt with.”
“Do they, really?” he said. “And what are you dealing with, hiding away here?”
She went still for a moment. Then she gave a short laugh. “Well done. Your sister tried it, but you’re sharper.”
“Than a serpent’s tooth?”
“You’ve never been ungrateful,” she said. “And you’ve never shied away from dueling with me. It’s been rather a while, and I think my wits grow dull from the lack of worthy opponents. Not so dull, though, that I can’t tell when I’m being deflected.”
“Your wits are never dull,” he said. “I wish I’d been a fly on the wall when Ashmont and Blackwood came.”
She shook her head. “Still deflecting. Very well. My girls are grown, managing their husbands and children. I’m not a girl anymore. I’m not a wife anymore. I’m not sure what I am. I have no direction, no purpose.”
“That’s why you’re still here?” he said. “You need a bloody purpose?”
“Do you propose I be like you, with no aim, no purpose in life other than amusing myself?”
“If it’s any comfort, Aunt, I’m not amused at the moment.”
“And you can’t run away.” She smiled. “What a pity.”
“And you’ve run away for three years.” He smiled. “What a pity.”
“No, dear, the pity is your losing the chance of a lifetime,” she said.
“This isn’t my chance,” he said.
“Because Ashmont got there first? Because he’s your friend?”
Ripley didn’t answer. His aunt had seen a great deal too much. She always did.
“I wonder how you’ll feel in a year’s time,” she said. “Or in five years’ time, seeing a happiness that could have been yours. I wonder how much comfort your honor will be to you then.”
Something in her tone made him think of his mother, and something she’d said about Aunt Julia, something surprising. A disappointment in love. His mind was in too much turmoil, though, and the vague memory roiled among other, more recent memories, and too many damn feelings. He was struggling to fish out the recollection—thinking about her was easier than thinking about himself, and he hated thinking anyway—when she turned her head toward the house, toward a sound she must have heard, which he hadn’t.
Ripley turned his chair to face that way, expecting Olympia.
But it was only one of the footmen, hurrying to his mistress.
Her ladyship was wanted at the house, he said. Lord Frederick Beckingham had come.
His lordship had been quickly ushered into the drawing room and Lady Olympia summoned to join them.
The greetings had been cordial enough, though postures were tense.
While Ripley could understand Olympia’s stiffness in the presence of her betrothed’s uncle, and while Ripley himself wasn’t entirely at ease, thanks to a decrepit conscience that decided now was the time to grow lively, the odd manner of the other two baffled him.
“I apologize for arriving without notice,” Lord Frederick was saying, “and worse, coming to you in all my travel dust. But my nephew was in so great a state of agitation that I thought it best to waste no time. He is, in fact, so greatly agitated that I advised him to write instead of bursting upon you again, and to let me be his emissary.”
In short, Uncle Fred had advised Ashmont to stay out of it and let his lordship do the talking. This was by no means a bad plan. Uncle Fred was a skilled courtier who somehow contrived to make himself equally welcome in both the King’s company and that of the King’s archenemy, his sister-in-law the Duchess of Kent. The mother of the Princess Victoria, present heir to the throne, loathed His Majesty. The feeling was mutual.
“Agitated?” said Aunt Julia. “Is that what you call it? What I saw yesterday was that Lucius had been drinking beyond what is good for him, as has seemed to be the case for some time now. He’d been in a fight—another pernicious habit—which I’ve little doubt he started, because he always does. And it is a laugh, I admit, your speaking of the dust of travel, knowing you’ve scarcely a speck upon you . . .”
She paused to give Lord Frederick a quick survey, and his blue eyes lit—but with anger or amusement or another emotion, Ripley couldn’t tell.
“Naturally you had your valet with you,” his aunt continued. “And you made sure to pause for a freshening up before driving the last mile or two.” She took a seat, on the hardest chair in the room, and invited her guest to sit. Lord Frederick only moved to the fireplace, and stood with his back to it, as though this were the dead of winter and he needed his backside warmed.
Lady Olympia remained standing, too, near a window farthest from the others. Ripley wondered whether she’d try to escape by that method again.
“I wish I could say the same for your nephew,” Aunt Julia went on. “Regrettably, he arrived in a state beyond disgusting, and which must be an insult to any lady, and most especially his affianced bride.”
“Yes, well, that’s one of the reasons I advised him to stay in London,” Lord Frederick
said, his usual imperturbable self but for the odd light in his eye. “Lucius truly was agitated, though, greatly so. The word I left out, I believe, was disgusting.”
The footman Joseph entered, bearing the tray of refreshments Aunt Julia had ordered while returning to the house.
Nobody said anything until the footman had gone out.
Olympia sipped and set her glass down on the table nearby.
Lord Frederick took a surprisingly long swallow. But then, he’d been traveling for several hours, the day was warm, and he was bound to be thirsty.
Aunt Julia, too, took more than her usual sip.
The thing Ripley had been trying to remember niggled in his mind, but it hung out of reach.
“Very nice,” Lord Frederick said, nodding at his glass. “You always did keep a good cellar at Camberley Place as well as in London. But you have not been much in London of late.”
“I haven’t been to Town at all,” Aunt Julia said. “I’m thinking of changing my ways, however.”
A muscle in Uncle Fred’s jaw twitched. He set his glass on the nearest table and said. “As fine a beverage as it is, Lady Charles, I must remember my mission. The urgent business that brings me here demands I keep my wits about me. I am charged with giving Lady Olympia a letter from my nephew.”
From the interior of his far-from-travel-stained coat, Lord Frederick withdrew a surprisingly thick letter. Surprising in that, having come from Ashmont, it contained more than a single sheet of paper.
“With your permission, Lady Charles?” said Uncle Fred. “Or did you wish to read it first?”
“Certainly not. I am not Lady Olympia’s mother. In any event, she is of age, and the letter is from her betrothed.”
Lord Frederick nodded. He crossed to Lady Olympia. “I am to give this to you with the deepest apologies. Ashmont would have come himself had I not advised against it. He regrets making an exceedingly poor impression upon Lady Charles.” He bowed in Aunt Julia’s direction. “He did agree with me, eventually, that the best way to overcome the unfortunate impression was to resolve to respect a lady’s sensibilities and not show himself until he’s fit to be seen. In the meantime, he wishes to leave you in no doubt whatsoever about his feelings.”