The Ghost, page 11
A birthmark which, because of their own past intimacy, Olivia knew Spencer to have.
She gave a shake of her head. “You were quite right to describe these events as being difficult to believe.”
“I have not reached the most incredulous part of it yet,” Spencer assured her.
Olivia’s brows rose. “Were you also sold into slavery to serve aboard a French ship?”
He shook his head. “I have no memory of the weeks I must have spent in France after I was stabbed, probably because the wound had become infected. By the time I recovered my wits enough to be aware of my surroundings, the wound was partially healed, and I was locked in a dark and damp cellar well below ground of what I later came to realize was a house in the north of England.”
Olivia eyed him quizzically. “You traveled from France to England without having any knowledge of it?”
“Yes.”
“Then how can you be sure that the house you were a prisoner in was in England?”
“My jailer, the only person I saw during all the months I was kept incarcerated, had a strong Yorkshire accent.”
She swallowed. “Even so…”
“I also heard him muttering to himself one day, referring to himself as Jacob. ‘Do this, Jacob.’ Do that, Jacob.’ ‘Nag, nag, nag, all bloody day and all bloody night.’” Spencer shrugged when this time, Olivia made no comment. Her face was also becoming paler the longer he described his life for those months of his imprisonment. “When I finally managed to escape my prison, after what I later learned had been a period of fifteen months, I took refuge in the safety of the wildness of the forests as soon as I was able to do so. I walked and kept walking until I found a stream in which to wash myself and my clothes. The exertion of that proved too much, and I collapsed beside that stream. I was found what I believe to be the following day, but could have been longer, by a troop of gypsies. They informed me I was in the north of England and then agreed to take me to London with them.”
“Did you kill your jailer when you escaped?”
“No. Nor his wife. Although I believe they deserved it for the crime they committed against a man they did not even know,” he added darkly. “I waited for the opportune moment and hit the man on the back of the head with the bucket in my prison.” He saw how Olivia’s face became even paler as she realized which bucket he was referring to. “His wife, when I reached the top of the stairs from the cellar, was unconscious in front of the range in the kitchen. No doubt from over-imbibing from the jug of cheap wine that had been knocked over on the floor beside her. I was able to leave the house unmolested by either of them. Well…” Spencer grimaced. “I call it a house, but once I was outside, I could see it was almost a ruin, with half the walls having fallen down and the garden unrecognizable. Only the kitchen appeared to be intact above ground.”
“Have you managed to find this house again?”
He sighed. “We are hampered by the fact I do not recall the exact location of it. But Mr. Stanley and the half dozen men who accompanied him are in Yorkshire at this very moment going house to house in search of it and the man named Jacob who kept me a prisoner there.”
Olivia didn’t know what to say.
Or do.
Incredulous as it all sounded, she believed every word Spencer had just said. As well as the description of what had happened to prevent him coming home to her, as he had promised he would.
She felt nauseous at the realization that Spencer’s inability to return to her had resulted in her accepting Gerard’s offer of marriage. Rather than, as she had hoped, being able to share with Spencer, upon his return, the happy news she was expecting their child.
His conversation with Melborne a week ago regarding Gerard being involved in the plan to prevent Spencer from returning to her made sense to her now that it was put into context.
Melborne had immediately dismissed such a suggestion.
As Olivia now also dismissed it.
She had known Gerard to be a kind and caring man. He would never have thought of, let alone carried out, the diabolical subterfuge that had resulted in Spencer’s imprisonment for all those months.
She had absolutely no reason to doubt Spencer’s description of what had happened to prevent him returning to her the previous year.
The other Ruthless Dukes obviously believed him too; otherwise, they would not have been trying to determine who had tried to kill him.
Or what had become of their friend’s body when they discovered it was not Spencer lying in the Plymouth crypt.
Or now sent Mr. Stanley into Yorkshire to search for the ruined house in which a drunken sot named Jacob and his equally drunken wife resided.
A journey which would, no doubt, result in Mr. Stanley discovering exactly who was responsible for making Spencer disappear at the battle of Waterloo and all the cruelties heaped upon him afterward.
Unfortunately, Olivia knew of someone who would not have hesitated to arrange to carry out those things if they thought it would be beneficial to them.
The more Spencer had revealed about his incarceration, the more convinced Olivia became that Spencer’s imprisonment had come about because of his involvement with her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Olivia appeared pale and distracted, Spencer noted with a frown.
By something more than just the shocking events Spencer had just related to her?
Her face was now a sickly gray color. Her eyes were dark and haunted, her thoughts all seeming inward. Her cheeks were hollow. Her lips thinned. The sharpness of her jaw tense. Her lace-gloved hands were tightly clenched together in front of her.
Spencer suspected that they would be visibly trembling if not for that. “Olivia?” he prompted gently.
She seemed to pull herself back to the present with great difficulty. “I am so sorry to hear of someone having treated you so dreadfully.” Her gaze did not meet his. “It must have been a tremendous ordeal for you. I am sure your friends were greatly relieved to see you again after you had managed to escape and return to London.”
Your friends were greatly relieved to see you again.
Not Olivia, only his friends were pleased to see him.
Spencer had no idea what he had hoped would happen once he told Olivia the truth of what had prevented him from returning to her the previous year. But it was most assuredly not this polite and distant response.
Perhaps she really had loved Gerard de Fontbleau, and the love she had once claimed to feel for Spencer had only been the reaction of a young lady who had felt flattered by the attentions of the gentleman known in Society as having an aversion to falling in love? Certainly, Spencer had never offered any woman marriage before Olivia.
“What are your own feelings now that you know the reason why I did not return from Waterloo?” Spencer’s tone was harsher than he might have wished.
But his disappointment over Olivia’s less than delighted reaction to his explanation had hurt him deeply.
Perhaps he had been expecting too much from her. She was, despite now being a widow, still very young. The group of friends with whom she now surrounded herself were just as young and, in some cases, very silly.
The stark reality of what Spencer had just related to Olivia, of the deprivations he had endured for so many months, had no place in that world of gossipy afternoons, teas, and evenings of dancing.
The startled glance Olivia gave him seemed to confirm those thoughts. “Me?” She gave a shake of her head. “I am very sorry to hear how you suffered, of course. It is truly abominable that someone could have treated you so inhumanely. But I fail to see why you would think I should have any other feelings about it?”
Spencer reached out to grasp her shoulders and shake her a little. “We were in love with each other a year and a half ago. We made love together. I gave you my ring. I would have asked your father for your hand in marriage upon my return.”
“Would you really?” She gave a knowing smile. “Or were your declarations of love and promises of a future together merely a tested and proven way of persuading women—in this case, me—into engaging in sexual congress with you?”
“No!” he rasped in protest, his fingers tightening on her slender shoulders as he glared at her. “Absolutely not. I loved you, Olivia.” He loved her still, but the skepticism in her gaze as she looked at him held him back from saying those words. “You loved me in return,” he insisted harshly.
“Did I?” she taunted. “Or was I merely a young girl charmed and flattered by the attentions of the elusive and worldly Duke of Plymouth?”
It was so close to Spencer’s thoughts of a moment ago that he again cried out in protest. “I do not believe that! You are mine, Olivia. Mine!” His mouth crashed down onto hers.
For now, Olivia pushed any other thoughts from her mind except the one demanding she return Spencer’s kisses. Once he learned the truth, as he surely must, he would never wish to see her again, let alone kiss her.
Their kisses were just as heavenly as they had been a year and a half ago, just as demanding, and they quickly flared out of their control.
Olivia welcomed it when Spencer pushed up her gown, parting the slit in her drawers, before burying his face against the heated flesh to lick and taste her there.
This intimacy alone was enough to send Olivia’s body crashing into ecstasy.
She did so again and again, Spencer relentless in his need to claim and own every last bit of her pleasure.
“I want—need, to feel you inside me as I did once before,” she admitted huskily. “Please, Spencer!”
He didn’t speak as he stood before removing his jacket, waistcoat, and shirt. “It no longer hurts,” he assured gruffly when Olivia gasped at seeing the long and completely healed scar on his abdomen.
His gaze remained transfixed on her parted and glistening thighs as he unfastened his pantaloons and pushed them and his drawers down far enough to release the long length of his engorged and throbbing shaft.
There was only a little discomfort as that girth stretched and then filled her, the walls of her channel quick to accommodate the hard and familiar flesh.
Then there was only pleasure as Spencer began to thrust his cock inside her before withdrawing it almost to the tip and then thrusting in again as deep as it would go.
As if he were once again claiming that which had once been his.
Olivia ceased to think after that, reaching the pinnacle of pleasure twice before she felt that familiar faltering in Spencer’s thrusts and then joined him in that release as his cock pulsed hotly inside her.
“Why are you crying?”
Olivia stiffened, having no idea she was crying until Spencer mentioned it. Now, she could feel the tears cascading hotly down her cheeks.
Why was she crying?
Because her heart was breaking. For a second time. Over the same man.
Their lovemaking just now had been as magical and perfect as the night they made love together in Vauxhall Gardens.
Olivia was now crying because she knew this would never happen between them again once she had confirmed the truth of the past and then shared it with Spencer.
As she surely must.
Not to do so would, for his peace of mind as well as her own, do them both a great disservice.
The truth needed to be told.
Preferably before Mr. Stanley returned from Yorkshire, possibly also in possession of that truth.
A truth Olivia needed to confirm, sooner rather than later, before she dared talk to Spencer about it.
She carefully extricated herself from his arms, her resolve almost wavering once she was standing looking down at the broad expanse of his bare chest and the scar upon his abdomen from the wound that could have, but thankfully had not, killed him.
She blinked back more hot tears as they stung her eyes. “I am crying because we should not have done that.”
“Yes, we should!” Spencer protested as he sat up to pull up and refasten his drawers and pantaloons before standing. “Olivia, I must tell you how very much I still—”
“No.” She held up a silencing hand. “We will not make the same impulsive declarations as we did in the past. I am sure today happened because of…a feeling of nostalgia for that past,” she dismissed. “There was no love involved on either side. It was the same as the lingering memories I believe couples sometimes have from their failed relationship. Memories that stoke the fires of those physical embers to see if any feelings for each other remain. But once that fire has abated, they are invariably able to realize those feelings are not strong enough, on either side, to resume the relationship.”
A nerve pulsed in Spencer’s tightly clenched jaw. “You are saying we are such a couple?”
What Olivia really wanted to say was that she loved Spencer. That she had always loved him. That she had never stopped loving him. That she knew now she never would.
But she also believed there was now a secret between them that was too big, once revealed, to ever be forgiven.
Two secrets, because she had yet to confess to Spencer that Mariah was his daughter, not Gerard’s!
She looked down to fasten her gown and then straighten her skirts rather than look at Spencer, knowing his expression would be one of hurt and confusion. “If you will excuse me? I have an urgent errand to run before it becomes dark. The evenings drop in so early nowadays,” she dismissed distractedly.
Spencer could not believe that the coolly detached young lady now standing in front of him, discussing how early night fell, was the same one who had ignited into a woman of fiery passion only minutes ago as they kissed and caressed each other.
The same woman who, those same minutes ago, had taken him inside her and cried out as they reached the pinnacle of their pleasure together.
The woman Spencer now knew he loved with the same deep intensity and fidelity as he had a year and a half ago.
He wanted no other woman.
Only Olivia.
And she had just told him she did not, had never, had those same feelings for him.
He wanted to shout, to demand Olivia stop denying the love between them. To insist that he knew she loved him as much as he loved her. That she would not have given herself to him if she did not love him.
But the coolness of her gaze and her composed expression told him it would be the equivalent of hitting his head against a brick wall if he were to do so. In other words, painful but ineffectual and ultimately humiliating.
After his months of inhuman captivity, the latter was something Spencer refused to allow himself to ever feel again. Three times now, Olivia had told him she did not love or want him. He would not give her a fourth occasion in which to do so.
Which did not prevent Spencer’s chest from aching as he pulled on his shirt, waistcoat, and superfine. He was straightening the cuffs of his shirt beneath the latter when he spoke again. “I apologize. I believed the depths of our feelings for each other to be mutual, but obviously, they are not. I will not intrude upon your privacy again.” He gave a stiff bow before turning on his booted heel and striding from the room.
The duke’s departure was followed by the sound of the front door being unlocked and opened, and seconds later, carriage wheels rolled across the cobbled street until all was quiet outside as well as in.
Which was when Olivia at last felt free to give in to the pain of her heart shattering into pieces so small, she knew she would never be able to put it back together again.
She allowed herself only a few minutes to give in to those feelings of utter despair, in the knowledge that once the truth was revealed, she would have lost Spencer forever anyway.
Minutes after Mariah was once again fed and settled, Olivia was seated in her carriage on her way to confront the person she believed was responsible for all that Spencer especially had suffered, herself less so, this past year and a half.
Her expression was determined, her heart beating so fast and so loudly, it felt as if it might leap out of her chest.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Good God, man, what has occurred to make you look so grim and white-faced?” Grayson Vaughn, the Duke of Flint, prompted the moment Spencer entered their club and demanded a decanter of brandy and a glass be brought post-haste to the leather chair where he intended to sit beside the fireplace.
Spencer had balked at going home after leaving Olivia, hating the very idea of being so alone with his thoughts. Instead, he had chosen to come to the club he was once again frequenting after his long absence.
He had not expected to see any of the other Ruthless Dukes there. “Should you not be at home with your wife?” he mocked Flint.
“Chastity is with her seamstress, having some winter gowns made for when we retire to our country estate at the end of the month,” the other man dismissed.
Spencer would normally have traveled to one of his own estates at this time of year. But the thought of being alone with his heartache at any of his country homes no more appealed to him than returning to his house in London had earlier this afternoon.
“Chastity has told me that the next time I see you, I am to extend an invitation for you to join us in the country,” Flint drawled as he dropped into the wingback chair opposite.
Spencer chuckled at the manner in which his friend proffered the invitation. “I take it you would rather the two of you remained alone there together?”
Flint grinned. “There is certainly something to be said for being able to bed your wife, morning, noon, and night, without fear of offending or having to entertain a guest.”
Spencer nodded. “Please thank Chastity for me, but tell her I plan to spend Christmas at my estate in Gloucestershire.”
“And do you?” he prompted when Spencer added nothing more.
