A Season of Hope (Danby #2)(13)

She’d retired to bed shortly after supper, but sleep had eluded her. Giving up on sleep, she’d made her way down to the kitchens for a glass of wine and some tipsy cake.

“Marcus,” she said when she trusted herself to speak.

He looked over his shoulder and eyed the door as though contemplating escape.

“Don’t go,” she blurted.

Marcus turned back around.

Olivia wet her lips. “I-uh-that is, please don’t leave on my account.” And because she used to know him so very well, cut a large slice of cake and set it on her now empty plate. “Would you like a slice?”

He hesitated so long she thought he was going to ignore her offering.

Wordlessly, he strode over and claimed the seat opposite her.

She shoved the dish closer to him.

Marcus picked up the fork, and then speared a piece of the almond confection.

They sat there. The silence between them not the stilted, awkwardness Olivia had come to expect but rather the ease they’d once known in each other’s company.

She trailed the tip of her nail along the wood surface of the table in a slow, meticulous circle.

“Thank you,” he said.

Her finger ceased its distracted movement. Olivia picked up her gaze from his partially eaten cake and looked at him.

Marcus pushed the plate toward her. “Would you like another bite?” He held out the fork in his hands.

Olivia stared down at the scars that marred the tops of his hand. Oh, what he’d endured. She shoved back the traces of regret and pity. Marcus was a proud man. He didn’t want her pity, nor did he need it. None of the scars he now bore detracted from his vitality and absolute strength. When she looked up at him, there was an emptiness in his expression. She reached for the fork and their fingers brushed.

The touch of his hand transported her back to that simpler time and place when the most complicated thing between them had been who would get the last cherry tart.

Tears filled her eyes and she dropped her gaze again lest he see and erroneously assume that it was pity that made her cry. She broke off a piece of the cake with the fork and nibbled at it. There was something terribly intimate about sharing the utensil. Moments ago, lips had closed over it and oh, how she longed for him to take her mouth beneath his, once again.

“You’re far more serious than I remember you,” Marcus’ quiet murmur filled the void of silence.

Olivia shrugged. “I’ve changed.”

“Because of me.”

She looked him in the eye. “Because of me. I’m not the same innocent young lady you left behind.”

A gleam of sadness filled his solitary eye.

“Don’t pity me, Marcus,” she ordered. He didn’t want such paltry sentiments from her and she most certainly didn’t want them from him.

“You never fell in love.”

Again—the word hung in the air between them, unspoken.

She gave her head a sad little shake. “You must have taken me as fickle as the empty-headed debutantes who clamored for your notice.”

He snorted. “As a viscount’s second son, I was hardly the catch of the Season.”

If it were any other gentlemen, she’d believe he was scouring for compliments. Not this new, hardened, self-deprecating stranger.

Marcus had possessed the kind of masculine beauty that artist’s put to canvas. She imagined how very hard it was for him to accept the changes the war had wrought.

“Hardly the kind of face that’s going to attract any ladies, now,” he said, as if interpreting the direction her thoughts had wandered.

“You’re beautiful,” she said. A wave of heat flooded her cheeks and she prayed the dark of the night hid the twin signs of embarrassment.

Marcus reached for the fork. He took it from her fingers and helped himself to another bite of cake. “You always called me beautiful.”

“Well, you were.” You are.

Olivia drew in a slow breath. “You know, I never cared what you looked like, Marcus. I loved you.” She needed him to know that. Needed him to know, so that in nine days, when her carriage departed and returned her to Father and Mother, where she would be wed to the Earl of Ellsworth…that she would have danced through the flames of hell just to be with him.

She waited for him to make similar claims…but the words did not come because to Marcus, what he’d felt for her represented something of a different time, she imagined. A moment in history that he would never retrieve and so he didn’t bother trying.

“I don’t want to fight, Marcus.”

“Have we been?”

“There was the snow,” she said, with a small smile.

He inclined his head. “Ahh, yes. The snow fight.”

Olivia shoved aside all manner of joke. “I won’t be here much longer. I’ll return to London where I’ll be…” Her words trailed off. It was one thing to think the hideous thought, but quite another to say it aloud.

“Where you’ll…?” he prodded.

“Married. Where I’ll be married,” she forced the words out past brittle lips. “My grandfather has asked me for a wonderful Christmastide season and I want to give him that, Marcus.” Their gazes caught and held. “I want to give him that. Would you help me?”

Marcus folded his hands and studied her. Then slowly, nodded. “I will.”