The Viscount's Runaway Wife

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 (#u5ec3ef9e-a5f0-502a-970d-e80f8cac0b31)

‘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.