My Only Love (6 page)

Bertrice
gazed at her blankly.

There
was a well-worn chair pushed against a nearby wall. Olivia, gently taking
Bertrice by her shoulders, moved her to the chair and sat her in it. "Stay
here," she ordered her quietly but firmly. "Don't leave this chair
for an instant. Will you promise me? I shan't be long. In the meantime, perhaps
this young woman will fetch you a cup of hot tea—"

"We
ain't got no tea!" the servant snapped.

Doing
her best to hide her exasperation, and nervousness, Olivia turned away and
surveyed the cavernous gallery stretching off into the darkness.

So
this was Braithwaite. The grand oF dame of the moor. Once it had been the
shining jewel of all Yorkshire. Its heritage alone put the smaller houses, such
as her father's, to shame.

Oh,
how she had dreamt of visiting this place—always on Miles's arm, of course.
Together they might have lent each other enough dignity so they might have been
able to hold their heads high with a semblance of self-respect as they
confronted Society's resistance.

Dear
heaven, it was just as beautiful as she had always imagined. The vast corridor
stretched high, and in the dim shadows above her head she could make out the
magnificent plaster ceilings, so intricately made and ornate they had been
registered in the history logs as some of the most beautiful and inspired works
in England. Gazing up at the pale, oval faces of dancing cherubs, she felt as
if she were glimpsing a little bit of heaven.

And
the staircase, a sweeping Jacobean masterpiece garlanded with patterns of vines
and animals that wound up to two more levels of rooms that had once housed
kings and queens during their visits to Yorkshire. These very walls had been
constructed from the stones of Middleham Casde, where knights in shining armor
had wooed the damsels of their choice.

Braithwaite.

It
was everything she had imagined, and more. Yet, as her childhood's imagination
and fantasies subsided, and reality reared its bleak head, the images took
sharper focus about her. She looked around in surprise. Upon these expansive
and impressive wainscoted walls one might have expected to find priceless works
of art, at the least a family portrait or two. There was nothing but emptiness
and shadows that shivered as a draft whipped in from some open doorway and
flirted with the only illumination in the foyer, that being a pair of branched
candlesticks that were dripping wax on the table where they rested.

"Do
ya make a habit of trespassin' in other people's homes?" the servant's low
voice said behind her.

"Not
normally," Olivia replied absently, her eyes still searching out each
detail of the house. "Where is he?"

"Ya
act as if ya got some right to be here ..."

A
thin thread of dim light shone beneath a door down the hall. Olivia moved
toward it, ignoring the servant's ever-increasing agitation.

She
nudged the door open, just a little, enough to allow her eyes to scan the room
in a swift glance. A nice fire roared in the fireplace. A high-backed chair sat
before it. Near the hearth, and to one side of the chair, had been placed a
heap of wood. On closer inspection, she realized that the scraps were the legs
and arms from a table and chair. The upholstered seat and back had been
discarded near the door.

A
movement from behind the chair startled her; his arm came down then and he grasped
the smoothly finished and delicately scrolled chair leg and tossed it into the
fire, sending a flurry of crackling sparks up the chimney.

She
moved cautiously into the room, her gaze fixed on the back of the chair, her
step hesitating as the top of his head came into view at last, then his
shoulders. With his elbows on his knees and his head down, he loosely held a
whisky bottle in one hand. His clothes were sodden and muddied. The once fine
linen shirt he wore clung almost transparently against his skin.

He
looked up.

Her
heart quit.

He
showed no sign of surprise over her unannounced entry. His face appeared more
haggard and sunken than it had that afternoon. Those wonderful eyes of
changeable hazel that had earlier seemed so terrifying now seemed confused.

"Are
you ill?" she asked. "Or just foxed?"

He
looked back at the fire, and let go a groan. Without a moment's thought or
hesitation, Olivia grabbed a chipped and cracked vase from the mantel and held
it beneath his chin.

A
moment later, she turned back to the round-eyed servant hovering near the door.
"I suggest that you bring your master a blanket—he's obviously chilled—
and some dry clothes as well, I suppose. Have you any bread?"

'That's
about all we got," came the surly reply. "Good. Bring Mr. Warwick a
cup of boiling water and a plate of bread. Promptly, if you please," she
stressed. Still, the servant dallied at the threshold a long minute before
complying.

When
the woman had departed, Olivia plucked the whisky bottle from Warwick's hand.
She placed it and the vase on a table some distance away, where she remained as
Warwick continued to hold his head in his hands.

Minutes
trudged by. She began to wonder if he had forgotten her presence, or perhaps
fallen asleep with his eyes open. He neither spoke nor moved, just continued to
stare down at the floor between his booted feet while the room seemed to grow
colder and the silence more strained.

Where
was that bloody maid?

At
last, his dark head came up and he regarded her once again. He studied her hard
and dispassionately; she felt her face warm.

He
appeared to be on the verge of speaking when the servant reentered the room,
her arms loaded with rumpled clothes and a blanket. Bertrice trailed behind
her, carrying the tray of bread and water.

The
woman flung her bundle on the floor near Warwick's feet, turned on her heels,
and quit the room. Bertrice, looking somewhat bewildered over what she should
do with her burden, regarded Olivia with a sense of despair. Olivia hurried to
take the tray and gently ordered the woman to return to her chair in the hah
and not leave again for any purpose. Complying, Bertrice ambled toward the
door, only to pause and say, "I ain't too addled to know he's
cockeyed." Then drawing herself up, she wandered out.

Olivia
turned to discover Miles regarding her again. She tried to smile. "She has
a tendency to become somewhat confused," she found herself explaining.

"Kitty!"
Bertrice's voice called out in the hallway. "Here, kitty!"

"You'
11 feel a great deal better once you have something to eat," Olivia said,
feeling ridiculous as she attempted to drown out Bertrice who, obviously, was
not prepared to sit quietly in the hallway.

"Here
now!" Warwick's housemaid cried. "Ya can't go in there!"

Placing
the tray on a table near his chair, Olivia did her best to ignore the fact that
her face was flaming. She longed to remove her woolen cloak, then again, she
had no plans to remain here any longer than necessary, especially since
Warwick's scrutiny of her person had become fright-eningly penetrating.

'The
bread will absorb any whisky left in your stomach," she explained, and
poured the hot water into a cup. "The hot water will help to dilute the
liquor, as well as warm you." Meeting his intense gaze, she offered him
the cup and saucer, thankful her hand didn't shake, causing them to clatter.

He
ignored the cup and saucer.

Calmly,
carefully, she replaced them on the tray and stood before him, hands clasped as
casually as possible in the folds of her cloak, feeling as if a lightning bolt
had replaced her backbone. Every nerve ending throughout her body felt
electrified. Finally he spoke.

"Who
the hell are you?" he demanded in a husky, slurred voice.

She
had anticipated a great many ways in which he might have castigated her for her
presence. This, obviously, was not one of them.

"I
beg your pardon?" she replied uncertainly.

"I
said, who the hell are you? And what are you doing in my house?"

"Olivia
Devonshire. We met this—"

"You
are not Olivia Devonshire," he interrupted. "I met Miss Devonshire
earlier, and . .." Frowning, his face growing paler, he glanced
uncomfortably toward the vase and took a slow, steady breath. The moment
passed, and he appeared to relax. Only then did his dark eyes look back at her.
A wariness settled over his face. "You were much prettier this
afternoon," he said matter-of-factly.

Feeling
her spine turn hard as stone, she raised her chin slightly and struggled for
composure. "And you were sober," she responded dryly.

Saying
nothing, he sat back in the chair, long legs thrown wide and stretched out
before him. His boots had dripped mud onto the once splendid carpet of
intricate Turkish designs. Still, he had a presence about him, making her
uncomfortable. "It's the glasses," he finally said. "Very unflattering,
Miss Devonshire. They don't suit you at all."

Her
first instinct was to grab the glasses from her nose. She kept her hands at her
sides.

His
face, in profile to the blazing fire in the hearth, remained immobile in its
contemplation of her person. Was he intentionally prodding her to anger as he
had that afternoon?

"If
you've come here to plead your case—" he began.

She
stared at him, speechless, as his meaning sank in.

"I
don't wish to seem coldhearted, but I won't marry you. Now you can hurry home
to your father and tell him—"

"Is
that what you think, sir? That I came here to try and convince you to marry me?
Oh, of course you would; your arrogance would have it no other way, I
imagine." She laughed as lightheartedly as her immense hidden anger would
allow. "I only came here to apologize for my father's behavior. Had I any
inkling that he harbored the idea of our marrying, I would have disabused him
of it immediately. The idea is ludicrous, of course. I'm quite content with my
life. Beg you to marry me, sir? When it is / who live in a home that is warm
and dry? When at my home there is bountiful food at hand? Not to mention
servants who are clean, respectful, and helpful. Tell me why I would give all
that up to marry some penniless drunk whom the entirety of England calls a
moral degenerate and a debauched and unscrupulous villain?"

He
shrugged. "To save face, I suppose. Why do women do anything that they
do?"

His
gaze drifted toward the fire, and for a long while Olivia watched the reflected
flames dance in his eyes. She felt somewhat mesmerized, and oddly drained.
There had been a thread of truth to his words. Her reasons for risking the
journey to Braithwaite might have been masked as apologizing for her father, or
even anger over Warwick's so blithely turning up his nose to her father's
offer. In reality, she had hoped he would change his mind. Even if she then
chose to spurn him.

"Well,"
she said with a sense of finality, "I've said what I came here to say.
I'll leave you to your solitude."

"But
why, Miss Devonshire? You've only just arrived." His handsome mouth smiled
though his eyes did not. "I suspect that the last thing you want is to
venture out into the weather again. Perhaps you'd care to join me in a drink
before you go?"

Without
giving her a chance to respond, he left the chair, his lithe, quick actions
showing little evidence of his earlier weakness. He was once again the
devil-may-care scoundrel.

Flinging
the water from the teacup toward the fire, Miles filled the china piece with
whisky and handed it to her.

Dare
she?

"Why
not?" he asked, as if reading her thoughts. "Your reputation could
hardly suffer any more than it already has."

Reluctantly,
she reached for the cup. Almost teasingly, he moved it away.

"One
condition," he said. "Remove your cloak."

She
shook her head. "I can't stay—"

"Briefly.
Then you can have your drink and go."

"Very
well." She removed the cloak. He took it from her and tossed it over the
back of the overstuffed settee. She felt exposed suddenly. And vulnerable. She
ran her hands self-consciously over her dark, severe hair and wondered if he
were comparing her to Emily, whose hair was blond and full of sunshine. Of
course he was. They all did. Men like Miles Warwick always preferred their
women delicate and fair. Like Emily. Like her mother.

He
made no comment as he stood before her, balancing the fragile cup in the palm
of one big hand. His eyes, however, spoke volumes as they traveled in a
leisurely fashion from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes. The
silence lengthened and expanded, then filled ever so gradually with small
sounds; the snapping of the flames in the hearth, the ticking of a clock, and
the steady hiss of sleet scraping at the window.

At
last, he offered her the drink. Perhaps a bit too eagerly, she accepted it.

"A
toast," he said, raising the bottle between them. "To two misfits
caught in a storm."