Oliver refused a number of requests by his acquaintances to join them. Instead he sat with a glass and a bottle of brandy before him, and pretended to be busy with his usual pastime of getting drunk.
“Oliver!”
He didn’t jump, although his entire body went rigid and his heart began to pound. As if he had suddenly come face-to-face with tremendous danger. Slowly, taking his time, Oliver rose unsteadily to his feet.
“Lord Lawson.”
Lawson returned his bow briefly.
Behind him, Toby Russell’s handsome, dissolute face appeared, his eyes as watchful as ever. “Lord Montegomery!” he said with false joviality. “This is a surprise, eh? I thought you were at the opera with my niece. Don’t say it’s finished already? Those things usually go on for hours, don’t they?”
Lawson gave Toby a curious glance. “With your niece, Russell? Is the forthright Miss Greentree your niece?”
“She’s come down from Yorkshire. She’s my wife’s sister’s girl.”
“And you asked her to the opera, Oliver?” Lord Lawson was smiling at him, but there was calculation behind it. “Alone?”
Oliver affected disinterest. “Lady Marsh asked Miss Greentree to the opera and then fell ill. I took the young lady in her place.”
Toby raised his eyebrows, but before he could question Oliver’s statement of events, Lawson said, “I thought you were hanging out for a wife, Oliver. Perhaps your aunt sees Miss Greentree as filling that role?”
“Not me, my lord. I have no intention of being leg-shackled yet. Look at Russell here, he’s a warning to us all.”
Lord Lawson laughed loudly and Toby smiled in a manner he probably believed to be good-humored, though looked anything but.
“She is a pretty thing, Oliver, this niece of Russell’s.”
“I suppose she’s attractive in a countrified way,” he said offhandedly.
“So you didn’t enjoy the opera?”
Oliver yawned. “No, my lord, I didn’t.”
“Strange, that wasn’t what I thought.”
Oliver felt his blood freeze as he looked into Lawson’s famous ice-blue eyes. There was amusement in them, and triumph, but worst of all, there was knowledge. Lawson had seen them, or someone else had done the spying and then reported to him. Oliver knew he should have thought of that—he should have planned ahead. And yet it had been innocent enough, until he kissed her.
Then the situation had spun rapidly out of control.
How could he have been so blind and so stupid? He must defuse the matter, brush it off as one of his escapades. He wasn’t supposed to care what happened to someone like Vivianna, and Lawson wouldn’t expect him to.
But he did. Despite what he had said to her tonight, despite what she had said to him, she mattered to him. He realized it now as he sensed the danger he had brought down upon her, and he also realized just how much.
“Ah.” Oliver wagged his
finger at the other two men. He made himself smirk and swagger a little, playing at being the drunken fool. “Then you know, Lawson, that Miss Greentree isn’t very happy with me.”
Lawson smirked back while Toby looked from one to the other in frustrated silence. “And why is that, Oliver? Do enlighten us, and I will tell you whether your story tallies with my own. What did you and Miss Greentree talk about at the opera?”
“Damned if I know. I wasn’t particularly interested in her conversation,” he said.
Lawson laughed, but his eyes were bright with contempt. “Do you often copulate with girls in public, Oliver? Very bad form. Especially when Her Majesty is present.”
Toby’s eyes popped. “You did what?”
“I didn’t manage it,” Oliver went on thoughtfully, as if he were discussing a horse race and not a woman’s honor. “I tried, but she wasn’t having any. I do believe I’ll have to let that one go. I don’t think Miss Greentree will come out with me alone ever again. Or that her uncle here would allow it, eh, Russell?”
Toby looked annoyed, but Oliver thought it was because he felt an idiot for not seeing the truth before now, rather than that any harm might have been done to Vivianna.