Olivia frowned faintly at the address written on the front of the letter.

She slit it rapidly and read the few lines.

She lay it down on her plate and stared at it, one hand over her mouth, eyes wide.

"Oh. Oh my goodness. Oh my. Oh my. Oh my. Oh my."

Her mother dropped her knife with a clatter. "Olivia, good heavens, tell me nothing has-"

She laid a hand immediately on her mother's wrist. "Everything is fine, Mama. Everything is more than fine. Everything is wonderful."

Her mother had survived losing a baby, sending sons off to wars and to the gallows, and children off to matrimony with aplomb and extraordinary strength, grace, and humor. But Olivia remained a grave concern, and her mother tried not to show how much of a concern. Olivia knew she'd in part gotten her own stoicism from her mother.

"No, Mama, something splendid has just occurred. I've been invited to visit Mrs. Hannah More in Plymouth. And Mr. William Wilberforce will be there, too. For a fortnight! At a small gathering in a house in Plymouth!"

This was met with blankly bright expressions from her mother and Colin.

"Hannah More."

"Oh yes, yes. Hannah More. You may have mentioned her a time or two," her mother said carefully.

"Or fifty," Colin amended.

Hannah More. The poet and playwright and crusader for the rights of the poor and the abolition of slavery. She was a remarkable woman. She was one of Olivia's heroines.

"She will be a guest in the house of a fine family in Plymouth along with William Wilberforce. Oh my goodness. And they've heard of my work on behalf of the poor. It says so right here." She tapped the letter. "I spoke with her very briefly once after a lecture and she must have never forgotten." She sighed happily.

"A fortnight, Olivia! Now? You're going to be married in May! In just a few weeks."

"Oh, May is it? I best make a note of that," Olivia said.

Colin laughed and her mother swatted him. "Don't encourage her!"

"Mama, my trousseau is complete and it is beautiful beyond my wild imaginings. I'm so blessed in family and friends and I can't imagine wanting for clothes until I'm in my dotage. Unless you need my help in preparing the house for guests . . ."

"We've servants enough for that, but you'll need to see to setting up your own household."

"I've a lifetime to do that. And please understand, Mama-this is the opportunity of a lifetime. She's elderly now, Mrs. More, and I may never have an opportunity to meet someone I admire so greatly. Believe me, nothing but this kind of invitation would persuade me to leave now. But it's that important to me. And I'm not a little girl."

"I suppose," her mother said, after a moment. "And you may be too busy with babies to go soon."

"Er . . . That may well be true," Olivia allowed carefully, startled.

Her mother looked pleadingly at Colin, seeking an ally.

Olivia took a deep breath. "Mama . . . It's just that everywhere I turn I see . . . or hear . . . something about me. The songs, the betting books . . ."

She was flushing now.

Her mother's eyes widened and she instantly took her hands in hers and squeezed.

"Oh, my poor sweetheart. You never say anything. You never let it show how much it troubles you. It's all right, you know, to not be so very, very stoic."

It wasn't all right. Olivia wouldn't quite know where to begin if she decided to fall apart. "Stoic" was what helped her survive to this point in her life.

And she'd only ever felt free to fall apart in front of Lyon.

But her mama's tenderness was balm.

"It's ridiculous," Olivia said firmly. "The songs are ridiculous. That's all. Please do not worry about how much it troubles me. And yet I'd like to go away to a quiet place, and marry without those songs in my head. I don't see how that's unreasonable."

"She should go." Colin said firmly. In utter seriousness. He'd seen Olivia's face in Ackermann's.

And this was one brother who knew a little something about being haunted by a song.

"But who will accompany you?" her mother said finally, swayed.

"I know just who I should like to invite as a companion. She has an interest in Mrs. More's work, too. A very solid young woman with a practical head on her shoulders. You've met her, Mama-Mademoiselle Lilette."

"Oh yes, the pragmatic seamstress. I did like her. And surely absence will merely make Landsdowne's heart grow fonder," her mother said.

"It's only a fortnight, Mama. And Landsdowne will be so occupied with the arrival of his mother and sisters that he'll be more than delighted to see me when I return, believe me."

"YOU WANT TO go . . . away? Now?"

Landsdowne went motionless. They occupied the same settee in the Eversea town house sitting room, but a foot or more of tufted velvet remained between them.

He settled his teacup down carefully on the table and eyed her warily.

"Just for a fortnight, John, and just to Plymouth. It's scarcely even 'away.' As benign a place as ever graced a map. No betting books in Plymouth, at least that I've heard of."

She handed the letter over to him. His eyebrows went up. "Ah, Hannah More is indeed an impressive woman. I suppose it takes one to recognize another."

She could tell he was struggling with diplomacy, and she smiled at him, grateful and relieved.

"Flatterer."

"I don't suppose anyone can get up to any mischief in Plymouth," he teased.

"I'm not p.r.o.ne to getting up to mischief at all. It's mischief that dogs me."

"August personages, all of them, to be certain." He tapped the letter. "I can't pretend they hold any particular fascination for me, my dear, but I would love nothing better than to accompany you. It's just that my mother and sisters have arrived, along with . . ."

"Lady Emily and her family?"

It was a fortunate guess.

"They were childhood friends." He quirked the corner of his mouth. "And now I am at pains to make all of them comfortable and welcome in my house before we all proceed on to Suss.e.x."

Olivia had met his mother once before. A solid woman possessed of little intelligence but a good deal of warmth. She was primarily harmless and seemed happy enough to welcome Olivia into the family.

"It's just . . . I would like to start our life together without . . . a song ringing in my ears. And I think the company of wise, kind, elderly people who neither know nor care anything about me apart from my interest in abolitionism will be soothing. I feel so terribly crowded in London, and by all the speculation. Believe me, nothing but this kind of invitation would persuade me to leave. It just seemed like serendipity. And then I'll return, and you will be wed to a woman who is happy and peaceful and will excite no comment or gossip for the rest of her life."

He was watching her thoughtfully.

"You do understand?" she asked, almost desperately.

"I suppose I do. I shall miss you, even if it's only a fortnight. You're the only one who can commiserate with me over the wedding madness."

She smiled faintly. And then she reached out and cupped his cheek tenderly in her hand, because she wasn't terribly certain she would miss him, and she wished that she would.

He covered her hand with his and turned his head to press a hard, hot kiss against her palm, startling her. It was a fierce kiss. As if intended as a brand. He didn't meet her eyes.

It made her realize how hungry he'd been for a gesture from her.

Another man would have simply reached for her before now, propriety be d.a.m.ned. After all, they were going to be sharing a bed for the rest of their lives.

He was perhaps too careful with her.

He had kissed her pa.s.sionately when he proposed. And not since then. Since then, they had walked about like a pair of horses in harness, clearly heading in the same direction with the same objective, but seldom really touching one another.

She knew she hardly encouraged the touching.

Still, he ought to have attempted more of a seduction, she thought traitorously. Uncertain whether she was glad or not that he hadn't.

"It won't be madness for much longer, John."

Five years ago, while Lyon was in London . . .

"PERHAPS A DOSE OF castor oil, Olivia?" her mother suggested gently, looking up from her embroidery.

"Perhaps a dose of whisky?" suggested Colin, looking up from the chessboard, as his father, his opponent, snorted.

"Perhaps a simple?" Genevieve said wickedly. "I think a simple would help." Because their cook's simples were noxious and her mother believed in them fervently.

"Why does everyone want to dose me?" Olivia said blackly, dropping her book in her lap, covering it surrept.i.tiously with her hands. It was about Spain. She didn't need to field a dozen questions about why she would want to read about Spain.

The evening was chilly and they were all gathered in the drawing room.

"You've the look of someone needing purging," diagnosed her brother Chase, who had his aching leg up on the stool in front of the fire.

"I'm merely thinking about the Duffys. The baby has been very fussy lately and I think she has taken ill and it's quite worrisome."

The eyes of nearly every member of her family were upon her, deciding whether they thought this was true or not. Colin finally shrugged, because what else could it be?

And Mr. Duffy had been drinking nearly all of what he earned, which was scant to begin with, and Mrs. Duffy had the haunted look of a woman who would sooner fling herself off a bridge than spend another day in that house. And for a short hour of the week Olivia tried to be a rudder of sanity amid their chaos. She was so grateful to escape when she did. And yet she could not resist going through that door every Tuesday any more than a sailor can resist the sea.

She hadn't realized how much talking with Lyon about them had helped.

Olivia had thought she was happy before Lyon. Certainly she had naught to complain about. And then when he became a part of her life, it was like a secret pa.s.sageway had slipped open in a mansion, revealing an infinite number of beautiful new rooms just waiting to be explored.

For about a week after he'd left she'd been practically incandescent with hurt and righteous, wounded pride. This had somehow inured her to his absence.

But he'd been gone three weeks now.

And now the entire landscape of her life seemed barren and stripped. The light had gone out of her days, and she was learning to navigate this newly dim, newly cramped world, and apparently not doing it gracefully, if everyone thought she needed to be purged. Perhaps she did. For if love made her sick, then heartbreak was an entirely different kind of sick.

It was just that she'd never been stormy or delicate. That nonsense was for other people. Her emotions ran fierce and deep as did her suffering, when she suffered, but she'd always had all of that firmly in hand. They'd never before buffeted her, or seeped blackly through her very soul so that every part of her felt so leaden she could scarcely raise the corners of her mouth. She'd never been obvious. Until now. She loathed melodrama, and irony of ironies, she was the heroine of one and couldn't seem to stop it.

The worst part was the guilt: Lyon had bought her a beautiful gift, and when she'd shoved it back at him . . . Olivia would have gladly ordered a horsewhipping for anyone else who had put that shocked, stricken expression on his face.

It was intolerable to know that she was the one who had done it.

And what if he never returned? She would have nothing to remember him by.

And what if he was set upon by cutthroats or his horse tossed him into a ditch?

Her parents had commissioned miniatures of all their children a year ago, and Olivia kept her own on her night table. She decided to carry it with her from now on. If she ever saw him again, this was what she would give to him, if he would accept it after she'd behaved so horribly.

By the third week of his absence, the solid, leaden misery had shifted enough to allow the pendulum of her emotions to swing between two poles: that she'd acted like a fool and a child; and that she was in the right, and had every right to savor her hurt and indignation.

None of this, of course, changed the fact that he simply was gone.

"I'll have a little of that whisky," she said to Colin.

"No you won't," everyone said at once, and she almost, but not quite, laughed.

Because he would be gone for at least another week.

The possibility remained that he would never return.

And he might be someone else's fiance if he did.

And to add insult to injury, her mother made her drink a simple.

LYON HAD SLEPT beneath the roof the London Redmond family town house hundreds of times throughout his life, but it was the first time he'd become so intimately acquainted with the ceiling.

And the first time he'd resented it so thoroughly and irrationally.

His head ached abominably. The night before he'd departed for London with his father, he'd shoved those beautiful white kid gloves into his coat pocket, and had gone to the Pig & Thistle and gotten uncharacteristically drunk.

And outside, on the way home from the pub, he gave the gloves to that schoolteacher in exchange for a kiss in the dark outside the pub.

And it was a sweet kiss, but it tasted of betrayal.

And now he had self-loathing to contend with, yet another emotion in the buffet of emotions he'd been presented with since he'd first laid eyes on Olivia Eversea in that ballroom.

His soul felt flayed.