A night’s sleep blurred the edges of Olivia’s memory. When she woke, she could almost have thought she’d dreamed Gareth’s presence in her room and the events that had followed. Lord knew she’d had similar dreams often enough.
He had been careful too. There were no bruises on her neck or thighs, no stubble marks to alarm the maids. Not much at all to give evidence of their…
Sport was perhaps the most tactful term, aside from the words a doctor or a preacher might have used. Certainly Olivia wouldn’t have ventured to use lovemaking, not with the way she and Gareth had dealt with each other over the last few months.
He had been surprisingly tender when she thought about it. Not gentle, exactly, but concerned for her pleasure without the edge of competition that had come into their earlier interludes. And there had been that moment afterward, just before he’d left, when lust had been satisfied and something like affection had seemed to take its place.
That had been only because he was tired, Olivia told herself. He had left, after all.
She didn’t let her thoughts proceed any further along those lines. The man could work with her, the man wanted her, to their mutual satisfaction, but she’d seen his opinion of her quite plainly the first day she’d arrived, and then again when they’d spoken in the gardens. Only a fool would have believed it changed on the strength of a few moments of passion.
Schoolroom days were long behind her. Girlish daydreams belonged in the past with them.
***
Olivia picked up the lengths of rope, coiling them slowly. The class had gone well, objectively, very well, for her first class in skills other than magic. None of the students had asked where she’d learned how to escape bonds. Some of them had likely guessed, but that didn’t matter. They knew her. There’d been no contempt in their eyes, and no suspicion.
It should have been more of a relief.
Mostly, Olivia just felt tired—tired and prickly. She needed to have a cup of tea and a quiet hour by herself. Perhaps a nap before dinner.
She didn’t need Gareth’s voice behind her, and she certainly didn’t need to flush with anticipation when she heard it. Especially when he started off by asking, “Do you really think this is wise?”
“I think it’s useful,” she said, spinning to look at him. “Or probably will be.”
“Ah,” said Gareth, clearly not believing her.
Very well, Olivia thought. She’d clearly hallucinated whatever tenderness she’d thought had been between them. She’d behaved like a stupid schoolgirl, and over a man who was looking supercilious and fidgeting with an edge of the chair.
She knew why he was here.
“You don’t have to worry,” she said, striving for matter-of-factness in her voice. Really, she wanted to shake him, to demand whether he was concerned she’d weep or try blackmail or both. “I told you before. And I’m hardly going to expect anything now.”
“No. I didn’t think you would.” Gareth glanced over his shoulder, clearly making sure the door was closed and they were alone, then looked back at Olivia and sighed. “I’d like to ask you a rather personal question. You may choose not to answer, naturally”
“Thank you,” she said, trying not to sound too sarcastic, and motioned for him to continue. She expected some question about their night together. Whether she was sure there’d be no adverse consequences, perhaps, or perhaps something to do with her future plans.
Instead, Gareth paused then said, “After your husband died, before you came here, what made you choose to pose as a medium?”
Really, Olivia thought, she should have expected that. She looked back at Gareth flatly. “Money,” she said and smiled a little. Not pleasantly. “Why else?”
Taken aback for a moment, he recovered quickly. Olivia remembered that from their first days. The clashing steel that had lain below all their conversations, in this room and elsewhere. Now the blades were out again.
“There wasn’t anything else you could do?” He sounded somewhere between scornful and horrified.
Oddly, it was the last that drew her into responding, when she hadn’t planned to justify herself. “Oh, I’m sure there was,” she said with a glance down at her body that made her meaning clear. “But I had a silly girlish aversion to dying at thirty from the pox.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I assure you,” Olivia said, feeling her eyes narrow and her shoulders draw back, “I would have appreciated any helpful suggestions at the time. Tom had no family living, and his inheritance had gone toward his rank. Then he fell ill, and your colleagues are not cheap, sir, nor do they give refunds when their treatments fail. My dowry and his salary together gave me three months’ rent after the funeral, discounting trifles like food and clothing. I was too young and too poorly educated for a governess, and I was far too gently born for a maid. I knew how to dance, how to ride, how to play the piano, and how to be charming. When I saw a way to support myself with the last of those, I took it. Blame me for that if you’d like.”
Gareth stepped back a little at the force in her voice, force Olivia hadn’t intended. Memory was more powerful than she’d given it credit for. Speaking had brought back gray days and restless nights, when she’d watched her money dwindling little by little and stared alternately at the paper and her hands.
“I…” He halted and cleared his throat. “Your family?”
“Father died before Tom did. Our estate was entailed, and my cousins would have made very sure I knew what my status was.” Olivia sighed, some of the anger leaving her. “These days I might have lived with that. Looked for another husband, perhaps. At twenty I could not have supported living as a poor relation. Not then. It would have taken far more willpower than did asking a showman to take me on as an act. Perhaps if Hawkins had refused to teach me…but he didn’t.”
The walls seemed to swallow her words. They gave back silence. So did Gareth, and it filled the room for a few moments.
“Then you regret it?” he asked, vicar’s son to the end.
Olivia closed her eyes. She could say yes. She wouldn’t be lying, precisely. And then Gareth would see her as a victim. He’d switch from suspicion to sympathy, and everything would be so much easier than it had been.
She opened her eyes and met his. “I don’t know,” Olivia said.
Gareth blinked. “You don’t know?”
“I don’t. I can’t. If Tommy had lived, if there’d been another way, if I’d gone to my family…I’d have been more comfortable and less desperate, and I wouldn’t have been lying to people. Yes. But I wouldn’t have ended up here either. I wouldn’t know anything but the normal world and the surface of things. I wouldn’t have met…people whose company I value.” She drew a breath and continued, before Gareth could read much into that last statement. “And yes, the lying did bother me somewhat. But, Gareth”—she spread her hands, palms up and open, in a gesture that begged him to see—“lies were what most of them wanted.”
Gareth shook his head quickly, an instinctive denial. “I can’t believe that.”
“Can’t you?” Olivia asked. “Truly? With everything you’ve seen of the world?”
He was silent. She pressed the advantage, such as it was. “I never played some of the nastier tricks. I never made anyone think their money was cursed, or they needed to put me up with them to keep evil spirits away. Nothing like that.” Olivia watched Gareth’s face as carefully as she’d ever examined of any audience member. He was listening. “Most of the time, I gave shows,” she said. “People came to me because they had the evening off, or a spare pound, and they wanted a little otherworldly flavor to their entertainment. Most of them didn’t care whether I was real or not, only that I was a bit of a change from the music hall.”
“I suppose some didn’t,” said Gareth. He frowned, but not at her—not until a few seconds later, when he asked, “What about the others? The ones who were honestly grieving or troubled? I think you must have attracted some, and I cannot think they came only after you learned real magic.”
“No,” Olivia said quietly, remembering aged faces drawn in lines of grief, and weeping women no older than she’d been. “But they didn’t want the truth either. Not really. They wanted to know the ones they loved were at peace. Mostly, they wanted a chance to say good-bye, to say the things they were never able to tell the living.”
Gareth nodded once. “And?” he asked.
“And their loved ones were at peace,” Olivia said. “Most of the dead are. Most of them also know what’s in the hearts of the living, particularly anyone they were close to. The people who came to me wanted comfort. I gave them that.”
“You gave them an illusion,” Gareth said. His voice was flat.
“And you’ve never told a dying man he’d be all right?” Olivia had to take the shot. She could no more have passed it up than she could have refused Mr. Grenville’s offer of employment. All the same, she had no pleasure in seeing it connect.
“A dying man won’t be easy prey for the next fraud to come along.” Gareth’s eyes were dark, cold green. “And I very much doubt your…patrons’…comfort was ever the first thing on your mind.”
There it was, and here they were. The afternoon light was gray on the carpet. A soft, heavy weight settled on Olivia’s shoulders then quickly spread through her whole body. “No,” she said, and it took tangible effort to shape that one word, let alone the ones that followed. “No, I didn’t. I made my choices for myself alone. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
Gareth said nothing.
Olivia swallowed past an unexpected tightness in her throat. She’d known this would happen. She’d been prepared. The pain would pass. “I have some work to do, I think,” she said. “Please excuse me.”
The doorknob was too large in her hand, but she got the door open before Gareth could come to assist her. There was that.