The Viscount's Runaway Wife

Shaking herself from her self-imposed mental slump, Lucy rose and exited Mary’s rooms. Today she’d been planning on preparing the accounts for the next governor’s meeting in four weeks’ time. It wasn’t too time-consuming or difficult as she was the one who kept all the Foundation’s day-to-day accounts. This biannual meeting took a little preparation, but nothing too arduous.

Making her way back to the office, Lucy felt her heart sink as she saw the empty chair where Oliver had been sitting. His papers were neatly stacked on the desk, telling her he hadn’t grown bored and returned home. Instead he was somewhere loose in the Foundation.

Frantically she dashed from the office, racing down the stairs and into the courtyard. If she thought logically, there were only a few places Oliver could be. Most of the upper levels of the sprawling building were made up of small living quarters for the women and children needing shelter. It was only the rooms on the ground floor that were communal. Still, he could be in the dining room, one of the two classrooms, the laundry, the workrooms...

Hearing a soft peal of laughter, Lucy paused and listened for a few seconds before turning in the direction of the dining room. The large room was set out with two long tables for the residents to take a communal lunch together, but presently at eleven in the morning it was deserted, save for two figures hunched over one of the tables.

‘B-o-a-t,’ the young boy sitting squinting at the paper in front of him read.

‘And what does that spell?’ Oliver asked softly.

‘Boat.’

‘Good. How about this one?’

Lucy shifted and the noise was enough to make Oliver and Freddy, the young boy he was sitting with, look up.

‘Miss Caroline,’ Freddy shouted, throwing himself from his seat and rushing towards Lucy. ‘Billy said you’d been kidnapped.’

Rumours were always quick to spread in the Foundation. No doubt it would take much longer for the truth to circulate. It was nowhere near as sensational.

‘No, Freddy, not kidnapped.’

‘Mr Oliver is helping me with my spelling,’ Freddy said.

Lucy regarded her husband through narrowed eyes. She had no idea what he was playing at, wandering around the Foundation and talking to the inhabitants, but surely it wasn’t anything as innocent as just helping Freddy with his spelling.

‘That’s kind of him,’ Lucy said eventually.

‘Freddy tells me he wants to be a Bow Street Runner when he grows up.’

Coming from a family of mainly unsuccessful petty criminals, Lucy wasn’t sure how realistic this ambition was, but she always encouraged the children to have aspirations.

‘I need to be able to read so I can look at clues.’

‘Can I borrow Mr Oliver for a moment?’ Lucy asked.

Freddy turned back to his spelling and Oliver rose quickly, following her back into the courtyard.

When she was sure they couldn’t be overheard, she whispered, ‘What are you doing?’

Her husband frowned. He gestured back to the dining room where he’d left the young boy still puzzling over his spelling.

‘What are you really doing?’

Oliver regarded her for thirty seconds before speaking and when he did his tone was cool.

‘You seem to have a poor opinion of me, Lucy, when I have not given you cause to doubt me. All I want is for my wife to return home and once again be my wife. I’m not a monster, I’m not asking anything any reasonable man wouldn’t and I have been nothing but patient with you these last twenty-four hours.’ He paused, standing completely straight and looking like the army officer he’d been for many years. ‘You, on the other hand, have tried to run away, refused to divulge much about your life and now look at me like a monster for helping one of your young charges with his spelling.’

She felt the heat rise in her cheeks. He was right, although she was loath to admit it. She was struggling with their reunion, but not because of how he’d behaved. Perhaps it would have been easier if he’d shouted and thrown things, behaved like the man she had once pictured him to be to ease her conscience.

Opening her mouth, she tried to apologise, but found the words wouldn’t come. It was rude and cowardly of her, but she wondered if maybe by not apologising she’d push him away, make him leave her here to the life she’d built.

‘What are you so afraid of?’ he asked, for the first time a hint of softness in his voice.

It wasn’t a question she had the answer to. He looked at her with a mixture of pity and resignation, before turning on his heel and returning to the boy in the dining room. It seemed he wouldn’t abandon a promise, even one as small as helping a child with his schoolwork.

Chapter Five

‘Blue is certainly your colour,’ the dressmaker’s assistant twittered as she held a swathe of material up to Lucy’s cheek.

‘I’m not sure. I don’t want anything too ostentatious,’ Lucy said.

Out of the corner of his eye Oliver observed the proceedings. Before today he’d never witnessed what happened when a woman wanted to order a new dress. He’d had vague ideas about a quick perusal of material, perhaps picking a style out of a book, and thought that was probably all there was to it. How wrong he’d been.

So far the dressmaker and her assistant had been occupying their drawing room for the past half an hour and they were still discussing colours. It was going to be a long afternoon. Still, he reasoned, at least he’d had the sense to make an appointment for the dressmaker to visit the house rather than finding himself trapped for hours on end in a stuffy shop on Bond Street. He’d done it so they would have less chance of bumping into some gossiping acquaintance, but now he could see the merit of home appointments for so many other reasons.

‘What do you think?’ Lucy asked, breaking into his thoughts.

He blinked a couple of times, surprised to be addressed by his wife. Despite her thawing to him these last couple of days, she still seemed determined to keep her life and his as separate as possible.

‘That colour,’ he said, pointing to an abandoned swathe of silk draped carefully over the arm of a chair.

‘The coral?’

‘It suits you,’ he said with a shrug.

‘It does bring out the honey shades in your hair,’ the dressmaker said.

‘And such a warm colour,’ the assistant added.

Oliver knew nothing about honey shades or the warmth of a colour, he just knew that when Lucy held up the coral silk against her skin something tightened inside of him.

‘I like it,’ she said, giving him a small smile.

Pretending to return to the papers in front of him, Oliver had to suppress the confusion blooming inside him. There was something rather enchanting about his wife; he’d felt it when they’d first married. It had been purely arranged as a marriage of convenience. He’d needed a wife to give him an heir and look after his interests at home while he was off fighting on the Peninsula. The details of Lucy’s home life had always been a little vague, but he was under the impression she was so keen for marriage to get away from an overbearing family. Given the reasons behind the marriage, he’d never expected to actually start feeling affection for his wife alongside the physical attraction that had bloomed immediately.

That affection and attraction were trying to rear their heads once again and this time it was entirely unwelcome. He couldn’t forgive her for how she’d left him, how she’d taken David away from him before he’d even had a chance to look into his son’s face. He didn’t want to desire his wife—he didn’t even want to feel that same affection he’d hoped for in the early days of their marriage. Yet here it was, trying to muscle its way in.

Turning a page to keep up the pretence of working, he regarded his wife for a little longer. As a debutante, Lucy had never been thought of as the diamond of the Season. She’d been out in society for a year before he’d proposed to her with no other suitors, but in his eyes she was beautiful. Slender and lithe from a year of living a simple life, she still had curves in all the places he liked. More than that, though, was how her face lit up when she smiled, how her brow furrowed when she was worried. He loved how expressive her face was, how you could tell so much from a single glance.

‘Off the shoulder, do you think?’ the dressmaker asked.

For a moment Oliver didn’t realise all eyes were turned to him. Carefully he put down his papers and rose, walking over to the three women.

The dressmaker was holding up two sample dresses, one with a tight bodice and low-cut front, the puffy sleeves sitting well off the shoulders. It was a design to draw attention, a dress that exposed a fair amount of skin.

‘I’m not sure...’ Lucy said and Oliver could see the hesitation in her eyes. Although the dress was lovely, and would no doubt make Lucy look beautiful, it wasn’t her style. It was too ostentatious, too scandalous for a woman who was used to wearing a brown woollen sack.

‘The other one,’ he said.

The second design was still tight in the bodice area, but not so low cut, leaving more to the imagination.

‘Good choice, sir.’

As the dressmaker and her assistant stepped away to find their tape measures, Oliver stayed positioned just in front of Lucy. He wanted to reach out, to run a finger over her cheek, feel the softness of her skin, the moistness of her lips. They had barely touched since their reunion, just gloved hand on jacket as he offered her his arm, and already Oliver was yearning for more.

‘Time to take your measurements,’ the dressmaker said, bustling in between him and his wife.

Reluctantly Oliver moved away. He knew this was his cue to depart and leave the women alone to do the more personal aspect of the fitting, but for a moment he lingered, watching his wife hold out her arms obediently as the tape measure was looped around her back. All the time he’d searched for her he’d told himself it was to find out what had happened to their son and to get his wife back for social occasions and the running of his household. Never had he allowed himself to believe there might be a deeper reason for desiring their reunion.

* * *

‘Parker,’ Oliver called, waiting as his young butler promptly turned and faced him. Despite it being four years since Oliver had been his superior officer in the army, the young man still almost saluted. Oliver saw his arm twitch at his side as he struggled to suppress the movement.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Meet me in the dining room.’

The butler grinned, nodding swiftly and hurrying off to prepare the room.

Oliver followed behind. With Lucy still being pushed and prodded by the dressmaker, he was feeling restless and the only solution was to use up some energy.

As Oliver reached the dining room, he saw Parker had recruited two footmen and between them they were moving the dining table and chairs to one side. A couple of the more expensive pieces of furniture had been moved out of the way and an antique vase placed on a high shelf.

Within minutes the centre of the room was clear of any obstacles, a long, wide space big enough for the coming physical workout.

Oliver stretched, pulling each arm to one side, and then opened the large display cabinet at one end of the room. He removed two fencing foils, long and sleek, giving them both an experimental swish.

Parker, the butler, shrugged off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, revealing a few more scars on his forearms to match the vertical slash down one cheek.

‘I hope you’ve been practising, Parker,’ Oliver said as he handed the foil to the butler.

‘Never fear, sir, one of these days you’ll beat me.’

The younger man was always respectful and deferential in his work as butler, but there was a subtle shift when the jackets came off and foils came out. It was as though they were back in the training camp, still superior officer and soldier, but a comradeship flourished that was peculiar to the army.

‘I’ll go easy on you, Parker,’ Oliver said, getting into position.

They fought, foil clashing against foil with satisfying clinks, moving backwards and forward with lunges and parries. As they clashed Oliver felt some of the tension that had been building inside him the last few days dissipate as it always did with physical combat.

They were fairly evenly matched, with points being traded backwards and forwards as the minutes ticked by. Oliver didn’t really care who won. For him it was more about the thrill of the fight, the wonderful way he felt liberated as his body lunged and defended.

‘What on earth...?’ a small voice said from the doorway as the foils clashed.

Oliver spun around to see Lucy’s shocked face in the doorway.

‘Forgive us,’ he said with a bow. ‘Just a little light exercise.’

‘Shall I put the room right, sir?’ Parker asked, wiping a film of sweat from his forehead.

‘Don’t let me stop you,’ Lucy murmured, backing away, but Oliver had already tossed his foil to the butler and was following Lucy from the room.

He caught up with her on the stairs.

‘That’s a very peculiar use of the dining room,’ she said. He could tell she was itching to ask for an explanation, but held back from fear of getting overly involved or invested in his life.

‘Sometimes I find I need to work out a little energy,’ Oliver said, offering her his arm.

‘And your butler can fence?’

‘He can fight,’ Oliver corrected. ‘He was my sergeant for a while on the Peninsula.’

‘And now he’s your butler.’

‘And now he’s my butler.’

Lucy looked at him with curiosity and he wondered if she might ask more. He knew she was interested in people, but so far she had kept her enquiries into his life to a minimum, as if asking about it risked pulling her deeper into it.

‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said. ‘Giving him a job. I know many soldiers struggle to find employment after returning from the war.’

It was an awful thing to see when walking the streets of London. Former soldiers who had once fought bravely for their country, abandoned by the very people they’d served. Many of the returning soldiers found their families had moved on and their jobs filled, leaving them without a true place in the world. It was a hundred times worse for those who had been injured, losing an arm or a leg or an eye, unable to find even the most menial of jobs to provide them with food and shelter, and having to resort to begging on the street.

‘He’s a good man—loyal. I never have to worry about my silverware disappearing with Parker running the household.’

Parker was a good man, one of the best, but with his facial scars he would have been turned away by any of the grand households who wanted their footmen and butlers to be aesthetically pleasing, sometimes even more than they wanted them to be efficient at their jobs.

When it became clear she wasn’t going to ask any more he turned the subject back to her dress fitting.

‘Will the dress be ready in time for the ball in two days?’

‘Mrs Farrar assures me it will be ready even if she has to stay up all night.’

‘Good. I don’t want anything to upset our plans.’ He saw her stiffen at the idea of the ball but couldn’t stop himself from adding, ‘It is very important we reintroduce you to society as my wife.’

‘We wouldn’t want the gossips speculating about whom you might have holed up in here,’ Lucy murmured.

‘This isn’t a joke, Lucy.’

‘I know. It’s my life.’

‘Our life. As husband and wife.’

‘But my freedom.’

‘Freedom?’ he asked, letting out a cold laugh. ‘I thought you’d grown up in the year we were apart, Lucy. No one is free, we all have responsibilities, all have to do things we don’t want to.’

‘You get to choose how your life ends up,’ Lucy said, turning to face him, lifting her chin so she was looking him straight in the eye. ‘And how mine does.’

‘There you are wrong. No matter what I feel, we’re still married—I’m just as trapped by that as you.’

Her eyes searched his face, as if trying to work out his true feelings.

‘You have the power to at least apply for a divorce—only men can do that. You have the power to set me free from this marriage, let me go back to my old life.’

‘That’s not going to happen, Lucy. We’re married and married couples live together and they socialise together. I’m not asking you to chop off a limb or scale a mountain. All I want is for you to fulfil your part of our wedding vows.’

They stared at each other in silence for over a minute before Lucy turned on her heel and stalked away. Oliver waited until he was alone in his study before he sagged. That exchange had not gone as he’d hoped. Every time he clashed with Lucy he wished it ended differently, but she was so distant, so difficult to engage and he could feel the simmering anger beneath his own words. How could she treat him like this when it had been she who’d run away? She who had taken their son? She didn’t have the right to remain aloof and angry. Admittedly she’d built a life for herself in the year they’d been separated, but that was none of his concern. He wanted her back here as his wife and if he could, he’d wipe out all trace of the world she’d been living in, but realistically he knew that wasn’t an option.

He wondered if she would ever thaw, if she would ever look at him with anything more than distant coolness. Surprisingly he wanted that, even though he doubted he could ever return the feelings. Perhaps they were destined to live their lives as many married couples did, putting on a front for society events and then barely speaking at home. It was what he’d imagined, when he’d first found her, but every so often he wondered if that would be enough or if one day, when his vexation had burnt itself out, whether he would want more than a cold and unfeeling marriage.

Chapter Six

Lucy shifted uncomfortably on the seat, feeling the layers of petticoats clinging to her legs and making her hot despite the cool October air.

‘Try to at least pretend you’re enjoying the evening,’ Oliver said from his position across the carriage.

Lucy felt like screaming. He was so calm, so unfazed by the evening Lucy had been dreading ever since he’d found her again.

Tonight was the night of the Hickams’ ball; the night when Oliver would introduce Lucy to his friends and acquaintances as his wife. All week she’d seen this event as the point of no return; once he’d brought her out in public there was no way he’d ever let her slink off into the night as a free woman.

‘Remember to smile once or twice.’

Suppressing the urge to deepen her frown, Lucy contented herself with looking out the window. They were barely moving, the press of carriages thick as they approached the house, and the temptation to get out and run was strong.

‘It might not be as bad as you’re dreading,’ Oliver said more softly, even giving her a brief but reassuring smile.

His words threw her. It was much easier to build her husband up into a heinous villain, but deep down Lucy knew that wasn’t the truth. Oliver was asking her to do something she didn’t want to, but he wasn’t a monster. He’d kept his side of the bargain and allowed her to continue her work at the Foundation. She knew the sensible thing to do would be to keep her husband happy and play the part of the dutiful wife tonight.

Somehow she couldn’t follow her own advice. Something inside was driving her to keep pushing, keep fighting. Perhaps it was fear, perhaps it was a certainty that she didn’t want to return to the mundane routine of her old life, but whatever it was kept her from doing what she knew was right; plastering a smile on her face and pretending she was happy to be there.

Letting a deep sigh escape, Lucy looked out of the window. They’d inched forward, but still weren’t at the front of the long line of carriages. This felt so different from her Season as a debutante, before she’d ever met Oliver, when her mother had whisked her around London in the hope she would find a suitable husband to marry. Lucy had hated it, not the balls or the socialising, but the constant pressure from her mother to impress a gentleman with a title and a fortune, when Lucy had been young and shy.

That had been part of the reason she’d accepted Oliver’s proposal so readily. Of course he was titled and rich, which kept her parents happy, but also marriage to him meant she wouldn’t have to endure another Season as a young woman seeking a husband. It wasn’t the main reason, which had been escape from her odious father and unhappy home life, but it had certainly been an added incentive.

Their carriage finally reached the steps in front of the house and a footman opened the door.

‘Come,’ Oliver said as he took her hand to help her from the carriage. He ensured she was steady on her feet before leading her up the steps and into the house.

The press of people was suffocating as they edged through the guests to the ballroom. Lucy had certainly been in more crowded places, but the scent of perfume and the press of layer upon layer of fabric was a different kind of crowded to the jostling mass of people in St Giles.

‘Lord and Lady Sedgewick,’ a footman announced as they entered the ballroom.

Lucy wondered if she imagined the slight pause in conversation that followed their names. No one looked directly at them, but there were a number of sideways glances directed their way. For a moment she wondered what the gossips had said about her absence from society for the year she’d been away. Then, just as her nerves were getting the better of her, she felt Oliver squeeze her hand.

Straightening her back and lifting her chin, she smiled, surprised at how reassuring she found Oliver’s subtle reminder of his presence at her side.

‘Sedgewick, what a surprise,’ a tall, thin man shouted as he made his way through the crush of people. ‘And the elusive Lady Sedgewick.’ The man leaned in closer to Lucy and gave her a conspiratorial wink. ‘We all thought he’d made you up.’

‘You’re not meant to actually say that,’ Oliver grumbled.

‘Seeing as Sedgewick has forgotten his manners, I’m Lord Redmoor.’

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