Page 51 of A Season for Scandal

“No,” he said quietly. “You’re … something else altogether.” He took another sip from his glass. “Anyway, why is it always you interrogating me? Perhaps I have some questions of my own.”

“Such as?” I asked.

“Such as why did you agree to marry that awful toad we met in the street?”

I shifted, surprised. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. Simon’s father owns the building Bloom’s is in. It made sense as a business opportunity.”

“Simon’s father…” Oliver trailed off, a distant look in his eyes. “You mean the man who propositioned you?”

The outrage on his face warmed my heart. “Yes, but the Aviary took care of that. Thanks to you.”

“I hope they bloody castrated him,” Oliver muttered darkly into his glass.

“I believe Sylla handled the matter, so I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“So your family were willing to let you marry the toad for the sake of the business?”

I stretched out my legs, wiggling my toes to stop them from falling asleep. “They didn’t know it was only for business. I told them I liked Simon. Ididlike Simon … I think. He was very sweet to me, at least in the beginning.”

“What does that mean?” Oliver asked.

I shrugged. “When he courted me at first, it was all gifts and sweet words. When our relationship …progressed, things changed.” I glanced at Oliver here, preparing myself for any judgement I might see on his face, but there was none – he only watched me steadily. “He started making a lot of comments,” I continued. “Little things. Things about the way I looked, the way I dressed, the way I behaved. He told me I wastoo much. Not wife material, I suppose.”

I kept the words light, but Oliver’s expression grew increasingly furious.

“He belittled you,” he said roughly. “Made you feel small, ashamed.”

My eyes flashed to his. “Yes.”

He must have seen the surprise in my face because this time when he smiled there was no warmth to it at all; this smile was a parody of the real thing, something bitter and sad.

“I watched my father do the same thing to my mother for eleven years. Men like that, they’re the ones who are small. They imagine inadequacies in others to make themselves feel better. Believe me, it is a very good thing you didn’t marry him.” The look he fixed me with then was solemn. “He would have dimmed your light, Marigold Bloom. And that would have been a damn tragedy, because you blaze brighter than anyone I have ever met.”

His words spread through me, slow and searing like the brandy that I could still taste on my tongue. I felt my mouth open, but no words came out. In the glittering light from the fire, Oliver’s eyes were almost black.

Suddenly he exhaled, falling back into the chair again. He lifted the glass to his lips and drained it. “This is precisely why I shouldn’t drink. Or speak to people. I don’t even know what I’m saying. You should go. We wouldn’t want Mrs Lavigne getting the wrong impression.”

“That you were trying to seduce your fiancée?” I said, but the joke fell flat, the words loud and awkward between us.

Oliver’s eyes turned away from me, towards the fire.

“Goodnight, Miss Bloom.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

When I woke the next morning, I was groggy from lack of sleep. Unsurprisingly, I had spent much of the night tossing and turning, agonizing over the events of the day in my mind.

While I knew it should have been the encounters with Helene and the Lavignes that occupied my thoughts, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t spent more time picturing a pair of dark, flashing eyes, if I hadn’t heard the words “you blaze brighter than anyone I have ever met” playing over and over in my mind. I wondered if I had imagined the heavy, drugging sensation of that moment as it stretched between us, the way the air thickened, my heartbeat a wild staccato that I could feel everywhere.

The quiet didn’t help. I had never known anything like the thick blanket of silence that fell over the world at night out here on the moors. Londonneverslept, and to me the symphony of rattling hackneys, leary drunks and street sweepers was as soothing as a lullaby.

Here, the absence of sound felt unnatural, broken only by the occasional mournful wail of the wind or a jagged screech, which I eventually attributed to an owl, after first reassuring myself that no one was being murdered directly outside my window.

All in all, it was in a slightly worn and definitely agitated state that I approached the table in the breakfast room (a different dining room from the one we had eaten dinner in, because apparently one needed a separate room for every meal).

Only Helene and Mrs Finch were in there, and Helene looked more relaxed than I had seen before thanks to Mrs Finch’s animated chatter.

“Good morning, Marigold.” Mrs Finch smiled up at me over her coffee cup. “Beth has laid out tea and coffee, and she said she’ll be back shortly with the food. I was just regaling Helene with tales of my grandmother and her brush with spiritualism.”