A Season of Hope (Danby #2)(19)

She spun around to face the duke. The wrinkles at the corner of his eyes indicted his displeasure.

“I…I know, Grandfather.” She tugged on her white gloves. “I need to leave.” If she didn’t, if she remained here with Marcus’s indifference, his rejection of her affections, it would destroy her in a way that even his five-year-long absence hadn’t managed to.

“Never took you for a coward, Olivia.”

Olivia bit back a stinging retort and drew in a deep breath. Grandfather loved her. He wanted what was best for her. At the same time, he didn’t know how she’d humbled herself before Marcus last evening. He didn’t know Marcus had rejected her. “We are two different people, Grandfather. We’ve both…changed, and we can never be the people we were.”

The remembrances she had of Marcus Wheatley from this near fortnight, would have to be enough. When she was the lonely wife of a doddering lord, when all her hair had turned gray, she would think back to this Christmastide and remember the snowball fight, decorating the Gold Parlor, and waltzing to the orchestra’s Christmas carols.

A squeak escaped her when Grandfather folded her in his arms. He patted her on the back. “Thank you, Olivia. You’ve made this a wonderful last Christmas.”

She pulled back and gave him a tap on the arm. “This is not your last Christmas.”

He grinned. “No. I suspect you’re correct and this old man has a good number of years left in him.”

The smile disappeared and back in its place was a scowling mask. “You know you’re welcome to stay as long as you like, girl. I’d like nothing better than to thwart your father’s plans to wed you off.”

Yes, Grandfather had always seemed to take an unholy delight in tormenting her father. A person could almost feel bad for the Marquess of Tewkesbury. Almost.

“I’m three and twenty,” she pointed out. “It’s time I wed.”

She couldn’t live forever under her father’s house. Young ladies had very few options outside of marriage. It mattered not that Ellsworth was old enough to be her father; she could have been betrothed to a man half his age with a head full of perfect hair and a beauty to rival Adonis—it wouldn’t matter. Her foolish heart would forever belong to Marcus.

The duke didn’t argue the point with her and for that she was grateful.

The front door opened, and her toes curled inside the serviceable boots she’d donned for the long carriage ride back to London.

“Is my lady ready?”

No!

“Yes,” she said.

Olivia reached up and placed a final kiss on the duke’s cheek. “I will write,” she promised.

“See that you do,” he growled.

She peered around the empty foyer, searching, searching, and finding no one. He hadn’t even come to say good-bye. Olivia swallowed down a ball of pain that had lodged in her throat and threatened to choke her.

That was fine. It was easier this way.

Except she knew it wasn’t. Pain coursed through her.

Olivia pulled her red velvet hood atop her head, and left.

***

“You can come out of the shadows now, boy. She’s gone.”

Marcus hesitated a moment and then moved out from the corner of the marble foyer. He’d told himself to stay away, to be content with the final memories he’d made with her in the Gold Parlor. Olivia, however, had always been like a tonic he needed to survive.

So Marcus had made his way to the foyer to watch her leave his life—once and for all.

He’d lived without her for almost five years and had convinced himself her departure wouldn’t be painful. It wasn’t supposed to feel like he’d been gutted with a blunt knife and yet, it did.

“You happy about this?”

Marcus stared at the solid black door, his gaze riveted to bough neatly arranged above the frame, dotted with red holly that matched the cloak she’d worn. His eye slid closed.

All the pain he’d endured; the lash of a whip, the bayonet as it slid into his skin, the solitary time he’d spent in a French prison were nothing compared to this all-consuming agony. He wanted to throw his head back and roar but that would accomplish nothing.

She was gone to him.

He waited for Danby to hurl words of shame upon him: coward, fool, bastard.

The other man’s insults would have been better than this silence, which only fed Marcus’ regret.

The duke left and Marcus was, as he had been for many years—alone.

She’d told him she loved him, that she wanted to be with him—as his wife.

And he’d let her go.

Marcus buried his head in his hands. In the short span of time they’d spent together, Marcus had managed to forget about the wounds that covered his body. He’d laughed when he thought he’d never feel happy again—and it had all been because of her.

Olivia had the courage to do what he hadn’t. She had asked for a new beginning with him.

Why don’t you? A silent voice teased. She is anything and everything you’ve ever wanted. If you let her leave, she will return to London, wed that letch Ellsworth, and then she will be forever beyond your reach.

Marcus dropped his hands, his jaw hardened. He might not deserve Olivia, but that fool nearly three times her age, most certainly wasn’t deserving of her.