Moving to the small table near his easel, he picked up the diary. The hunger in his heart to know both women was driving him mad.
Dearest Diary,
I had cake for breakfast. Three wonderful slices. I even licked the icing from my fingers, quite unladylike, I know, but it was glorious. I believe I shall have cake again at luncheon.
Oliver smiled, fancying he could feel the defiant joy in that simple statement. Devil take it. He wanted his secret lover and Mrs. Lily Layton to be the same, despite its impossibility. With a curse, he snapped the journal closed, put it back on the table, and exited the room, moving down the corridors then the winding staircase at a quick pace.
“Branson, where is my mother?” Oliver asked the butler.
“Her ladyship is taking tea in the Rose drawing room, my lord.”
Grateful he wouldn’t have to search Belgrave Manor and possibly find her in a compromising situation with the viscount, Oliver made his way to the drawing room. Despite what his mother thought, he wasn’t oblivious to her liaison with the much younger viscount. If Oliver recalled correctly, the man was at least ten years her junior. But he would not interfere, not when his mother seemed so happy for the first time in years.
He entered the drawing room, his gaze settling on his mother. She was alone, busy writing by the windows overlooking the gardens she tended herself.
“Mother.”
She glanced up with a warm smile. “Oliver! I missed you at breakfast…and luncheon. Oh, I see, you’ve been painting. You are a mess,” she said, giving a delicate sniff.
Dahlia had exhausted him, and he had been mildly surprised to wake and find her gone. “I overslept, and then I went on a long ride to clear my thoughts.”
His mother frowned and gently put down her quill. “Is everything quite well, my dear?”
“Yes.”
“Are you here to discuss Lady Emma?”
“No, Mother. Vicar Layton.”
She frowned. “What about him?”
“Would you confirm his Christian name, please?”
“I believe it was Robert.”
Oliver contained his reaction, though his heart wanted to burst from his chest. Robert had been the name in the diary. Lily Layton and his mysterious stranger were one and the same. “Thank you.”
“What is that about?”
“Nothing of import, please return to your writing.”
The marchioness harrumphed and once more dipped her quill into the ink pot.
Oliver scrubbed a hand over his face. With all the examination he had done of widows, he had never thought…never in his wildest imagination had he thought to consider the widow who had been living under his roof for months.
He left the Rose drawing room then headed to his chamber and called for a bath. The evidence was still flimsy at best, but what were the chances of two widows’ departed husbands being called Robert. And it hadn’t been Oliver’s imagination that she had behaved oddly this morning. She had stared and acted so flustered. She had seemed different today, and there had been knowledge, and also something heated and elusive, whenever he met her regard.
Impossible…yet probable.
A groan whispered past his lips. Dahlia could only be Lily Layton. Had he unwittingly bedded an employee in his household? The even more distressing realization was that he wanted to do it again, and again.
He shrugged from his jacket, removed his waistcoat, and slowly unbuttoned his shirt. This bore further investigation. He would clean the paint from his body, dress, and return downstairs to mingle with his guests before going over the investment portfolio his banker had sent down this morning. Then, after dinner, he would wait a reasonable time then venture into the secret passages.
Only this time, he would take the one that led to Lily Layton’s bedchamber.
Several hours later, Oliver felt like an ass, standing at the threshold of Lily’s room. He lifted his hand to draw back the portal that would show him the entrance, yet he hesitated. What if he was wrong, and he intruded on her privacy for no bloody reason? The dark voyeur in him stirred, the need twisting through him, suppressing the doubts.
He slipped open the portal and stepped closer, so he would have the perfect view. Oliver’s knees almost buckled, and he braced his forearms against the wall.