The Fifth Kiss (28 page)

“If you please, Miles,” Olivia suggested quietly, “I think it would be better to wait until later to perform the introductions. The children and I would be more comfortable if we could have some time to change. Let me take them upstairs. I'll bring them down in time for tea—which can't be very far off—and you can make the introductions then.”

“Very well, if that is what you wish,” he said and turned to a strikingly beautiful young woman standing at his left. “Shall we go into the drawing room in the meantime? I, for one, would be grateful for a warm fire. Lead the way, if you please, Aunt Eugenia. Come along, Leonora. And let me take your arm too, Lady Gallard. Arthur, old man, will you instruct the footman to serve the port?” Smoothly, with a word for everyone, he guided his guests away from the stairs and toward the drawing room.

Olivia, deeply humiliated by her overenthusiastic behavior on hearing of Strickland's arrival and by having permitted the children to be seen by a houseful of guests in all their dirt, led the children up the stairs. Ignoring their questions about why they couldn't talk to Papa and where he could have hidden their presents, she turned them over to Tilda with strict instructions to dress them in their best and to have them ready by tea-time. Then she ran down the hall to her own room. One look in the mirror confirmed her worst fears—she looked a
sight
! Her hair had fallen over her forehead in shocking disarray, a streak of green paint had spread itself across the bridge of her nose and onto her cheek, and her dress—a shabby old thing to begin with—was speckled with orange and purple spots across the bosom and down the front. Even Tilda in her soiled apron had looked better. What must Strickland's guests have thought of her? What must
he
have thought?

She remembered that he had called her an “original.” What had he meant by that? If he intended to imply that she was an
eccentric
, her appearance had certainly supported him.

But she had no time for further reflection. She whipped off her dress, washed her face in the basin and pulled on a presentable gown. She brushed her hair vigorously, attempting to achieve a semblance of neatness, although she knew that strands of curls would spring free of the smoothly brushed waves as soon as she walked away from the mirror. Then she jumped up from her dressing table and went up to inspect the children.
Their
appearance, she knew, was more important than her own. The guests would wish to meet Lord Strickland's children, not his sister-in-law.

In all this time, she'd kept herself from dwelling on the guests. But questions concerning them kept niggling at her mind. Who
were
they? Why on earth had Strickland invited them? Didn't he realize how the need to entertain them would steal time away from that which he would ordinarily allot to the children? There was something strange about this state of affairs, and although she had no idea of the answers to her questions, she had a dismaying feeling that there was something
foreboding
about the presence of the guests. Something was going to happen, and she had a strong premonition that she would not like the happening at all.

chapter nineteen

Olivia thought the children looked perfectly splendid. Tilda had dressed Amy in a white dimity gown belted with a wide blue satin sash and tied in the back with an enormous bow. White pantaloons peeped out below her flounced hem and their ruffled bottoms revealed only the tips of her tiny laced half boots. Perry looked almost manly in his brown coat (very like his father's), velveret waistcoat of antique bronze and pale beige smalls with buckles at the knees. Even his boots were like his father's, the leather gleaming and little tassles swinging from the tops. “You are both
beautiful
!” she crowed, folding them into an embrace. “Why do you look so unhappy?”

“We want to see
Papa
… to see what he's brought us from London … and to
play
with him,” Perry pouted. “We don't
like
to talk to guests.”

Amy nodded agreement. “Don't like gueths,” she echoed.

“Nonsense!” Olivia said briskly. “They are your father's friends, and if
he
likes them, it is very likely you will too.”

“Will
you
like them, Aunt Livie?” Perry asked dubiously.

The question caught her up short, and she realized that she had already, without even having been introduced to them, taken them all in decided
dis
like. “Of
course
I will like them,” she said mendaciously, but she couldn't meet his eye.

Instead, she turned quickly to Tilda, complimenting the governess on her achievement in so quickly washing and changing the children and even managing to make
herself
presentable. “You are a
treasure
, Tilda,” she said affectionately as she hurried to the door. “Now, wait for five minutes—until his lordship will have had a chance to present me—and then bring the children downstairs.”

The guests had moved from the drawing room to the large downstairs sitting room where the tea things had been set out. Cousin Hattie was already seated behind the teapot dispensing the brew with unsmiling efficiency when Olivia entered. Strickland immediately came to his sister-in-law's side and took her to meet his guests. There were not so many of them as Olivia had at first supposed. Besides Sir Arthur, whom she already knew, there were only four: Lord and Lady Gallard, a middle-aged couple whose manners were disconcertingly formal; Miss Leonora Oglesby, Lady Gallard's sister, the breathtaking beauty whom Olivia had noticed before; and Mrs. Oglesby, the mother of Lady Gallard and Miss Oglesby, a dowager of imposing size and equally formidable manner. Of the entire group, only Sir Arthur gave Olivia a smile. The rest offered polite greetings, but their eyes seemed to view her as some sort of strange creature whom they would rather not know.

The children, however, were greeted with many smiles and a number of gushing compliments. “Oooh, the little
darlings
!” squealed Lady Gallard.

“Miles, they are
delicious
,” Leonora Oglesby said, her voice melodious with enthusiasm.

“I could eat them
up
!” her mother gurgled, opening her arms to them. “Come to my arms, you precious babies, and let me
squeeze
you!”

This last effusion was, for the uncomfortable children, the last straw. Eyeing Mrs. Oglesby with suspicious fear, they retreated to the safety of Olivia's skirts. Amy hid behind those skirts, peeping out at the assemblage with one frightened eye; Perry merely clutched at them with one hand while standing close beside his aunt, erect and brave so long as he could feel her close by. All the attempts of the guests to coax them away from their protector were unsuccessful. It was only when their father set chairs for them—at a sufficient distance from the strangers to encourage them to let Olivia go—that they finally emerged and accepted their cups of chocolate from their great-aunt Eugenia.

Strickland's face gave no clue to Olivia of any displeasure he may have felt at the shyness of his children, but it seemed to her that there was a feeling of relief all around when they were at last excused and returned to the schoolroom. However, Olivia knew that Strickland could not be pleased at their performance and that, sooner or later, he would take
her
to task for it. She wondered how long it would be before that
contretemps
would come to pass.

That evening she dressed for dinner with a perceptible cheerlessness. None of her dinner gowns seemed to be at all comparable even to the traveling dresses the newly arrived ladies had worn to the tea-table. She pulled out the jonquil-colored silk dress she'd worn to the Crawford's ball but soon decided it was not appropriate for a country dinner. Eventually, she settled without enthusiasm on a dark-blue Norwich crape with a high, round neck trimmed with a small lace ruffle, long sleeves puffed at the top and a pretty row of gold-embroidered
fleurs-de-lis
emphasizing the high waist. Next to the jonquil silk, this was the prettiest dress in her wardrobe, and she hoped (without much confidence) that, when compared to the elegant creations in which the visiting ladies would no doubt be draped, it would not appear to be too dreadfully dowdy.

Dolefully, she examined herself in her mirror. From the top of her short and unruly curls to the soles of her well-worn slippers, she looked the eccentric. Why couldn't she have had smooth blond tresses like the lovely Miss Oglesby, or wear stylish gowns like the mint-green Tiffany silk Lady Gallard had worn? Olivia's dress was too dark to be striking and too plain to be fashionable. She may not look quite a dowd, but she appeared to be just what she was—an eccentric bluestocking. Strickland may have termed her an “original,” but she knew what he meant.

She went down to the drawing room a bit early, hoping to find a private moment in which to discuss with Fincher the seating arrangements for the dinner. But, pausing on the threshold of the drawing-room doorway, she saw that Strickland had preceded her. He stood just opposite the door, on the other side of a long sofa, obviously going over with the butler a diagram of the seating arrangements. She was about to cross the room to join them when the sound of voices from the corner of the room at her left stayed her.

“Any fool can guess what he intends,” Eugenia was saying in what was meant to be a whisper. “Why else would he have invited her … and her family as well?”

“It's you who's the fool,” Hattie responded acidly. “There are a dozen reasons other than the one you've suggested which could account for a man's wishing to fill his house with guests.”

“Not in this case,” Eugenia said with authority. “He's brought not only the girl and her sister, but the
mother
as well. Why would he do that, unless he had serious intentions? It's plain as a pikestaff! Strickland plans to
marry
the Oglesby chit!”

The words struck Olivia with the force of a physical blow. Of
course
! Every question that had been nudging at her mind was suddenly answered. It all
fit
! Everything fell into place.
Strickland was going to marry Leonora Oglesby
. She drew in her breath in an audible gasp, her eyes flying to Strickland's face. He, too, had overheard his aunt's last words, and the sound of the gasp from the doorway drew his eyes at once to hers. For a long moment they stared at each other without moving. Her lips trembled and her knees felt suddenly weak.
Is it true
? her eyes asked, their message unmistakable. He felt the color drain from his cheeks and, painfully, he looked away.

That was all the answer she needed. For a moment, she feared she would drop to the floor in a swoon. She saw him take an involuntary step toward her, as if to try to catch her, but she took hold of herself and turned away. She had never behaved missishly before, and if she had any strength at all, she would not do so now.

Somehow she managed to get through dinner. People addressed remarks to her, and somehow she answered them. During the time at the table she tried to remain unnoticed, so that she could surrender to an enveloping cloud of depression and wallow in her misery, but Strickland seemed intent on bringing her to the attention of the others. He related to the guests that, while in London, he'd gone to visit Leigh Hunt in the Surrey gaol at Olivia's behest. “Don't you want to hear what happened, my dear?” he asked her from across the table.

She mumbled an incoherent response which he took for an assent, and he proceeded to tell the others how she'd imagined poor Mr. Hunt dying of ill health in some pestilential hole, imprisoned and kept from all contact with friends and relations, all for having written some foolish slurs against the person and character of the Prince. “But he is
not
hidden away in some slimy cell, Olivia,” he said, smiling at her mockingly. “He has a
room
! Yes, indeed, a quite comfortable room, with rose-covered paper on the wall, blue painting on the ceiling, and all his books around him. And his
piano
has been brought in, too! All true, I swear it. He is permitted to have visitors at any time of the day or night, and he receives a steady parade of them. You will be interested to know, Olivia, that the notorious Lord Byron came to see him just as I was leaving. Hunt is free to do his writing while incarcerated, and, more shocking still, he is permitted to edit the very newspaper in which his diatribe first appeared. Thus does our Prinny punish the man who defamed him. What do you think of
that
, eh, my little libertarian?”

Every eye turned to Olivia, waiting for her response. She tried desperately to snatch her mind back from its miserable wool-gathering to concentrate on the present moment. “I think, my lord,” she said with as much spirit as she could muster, “that if the Prince has seen fit to give Mr. Hunt so much of his freedom while
inside
the gaol, he might just as well have gone all the way and let him have it
outside.
”

Lord Gallard immediately defended the Prince by claiming that the Regent
had
to make an example of the Hunt brothers, while Arthur Tisswold surprisingly defended
Olivia's
position. A lively discussion ensued, during which neither Strickland nor Olivia took any part. Strickland merely leaned back against his chair and fixed his eyes on her with a small smile of approval lingering at the corners of his mouth. Olivia tried proudly to outstare him, but her eyes soon fluttered to her hands folded in her lap. She spent the rest of the time ignoring him—she kept her eyes lowered and her mouth closed and let her misery swallow her up. In that way, without adding another word to the conversation, she lived through the interminable dinner.

As soon as she could escape, she fled to her room. Her mind was awhirl with chaotic feelings which she couldn't understand, and she forced herself to sit down and think about what had happened with some degree of calm. It was quite plain that the thought of Strickland's possible remarriage had completely unsettled her. But why? Why should she
care
if Strickland was seeking to marry again?