armchair behind his desk. Except to raise one dark eyebrow when she entered the room, he gave no other indication that he’d noticed her presence. Nevertheless, she felt his gaze following her as she took a turn about the room. If he expected her to speak before he did, he was sadly out of it there. Olivia knew her place, knew that she could remain silent until she understood the purpose he had in mind for her.
Alastair would be depending upon nothing so much as her circumspection.
“Is it your nature to be so tolerably composed?” he asked. “Or must I anticipate that you will fly into the boughs at any moment?”
“Fly into the boughs?” she said, turning to face him. “No. That is not done. Not by me.”
He stood suddenly, taking note that she held her ground. If she flinched, it was quite literally only in the blink of an eye. “Griffin Wright-Jones.” Coming around the desk, he made a small bow. “You look puzzled, Olivia Cole.”
“I understood this place to be Breckenridge’s establishment.”
“It is.”
“But you’re not Mr. Breckenridge.”
“That might be a comfortable fit, but alas, I am not. You must try not to judge me too harshly when you hear the truth of it. It is my dubious honor to be the Viscount Breckenridge. Ahh, yes, well, there you have flinched. It is not an exalted title as these things go, so I don’t allow myself to believe you are intimidated by it. You’ve had some experience with members of rank, I expect, and it did not go well for you.”
His glance dropped to her hands. She had long, beautifully tapered fingers that had whitened where she was gripping her bonnet. “You are clutching.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Clutching.” He indicated the black velvet brim of her bonnet. “Is that why you removed it? So that you might have something to do with your hands? Or did you think that by making a display of your hair I would be persuaded not to look elsewhere?” He watched her stir a bit uncomfortably as his deliberately narrowed gaze made a slow assessment of her person. “I am credited to have an eye for a woman’s true beauty, and I judge that on a day less fraught with tension than this one, your hair is the very least of it.”
It was a pretty compliment in a peculiarly left-handed fashion, Olivia thought. She gave it the credence it deserved, which was to say she gave it none at all. He might just as well have picked up a stick and poked her with it. The only recourse she had to spite her tormentor was to relax the grip on her bonnet. To remain unaffected in the aftermath of such a casual and demeaning study was the best revenge.
“Please, won’t you be seated?” he asked. “While I applaud your effort, you are not so steady on your feet as you would have me believe.”
Olivia would like to have denied it, but being caught in an obvious lie always had unpleasant consequences. Although her pride was wounded, it was relatively unimportant that he correctly surmised that she had yet to get her feet firmly under her.
“Allow me to take your coat,” he said. “And the bonnet. You are yet wont to crush it.”
Olivia was afraid that even the thought of flinging it at his head would be revealed in her face. She made herself think of jonquils instead, picturing the slim green stems and yellow buds just as they might be moments before flowering. At peace with this vision in her mind’s eye, she released the bonnet and permitted him to help her remove her pelisse. Her kid gloves fell out of the pocket where she’d stuffed them earlier, and she almost collided with him in her haste to pick them up.
It was too much to hope that he would not notice the loose stitching on the seams of the second finger and thumb, or that he would not see the palms were shiny with wear. “I was asked to make a rather hurried departure,” she said by way of explanation for the poor condition of her gloves. “I took what I was given, I’m afraid. A pair of old favorites.”
Olivia watched, vaguely disturbed as he turned them over and touched the back of one with his fingertips. The sensation was such that he might well have been brushing her own hand.
For the second time in the matter of an hour, Olivia dropped heavily into a chair behind her. She followed her host’s progress to the door where he pulled the bell cord. In just under a minute a footman appeared in the doorway. Breckenridge gave him the pelisse, bonnet, and gloves and some instructions that Olivia could not properly hear before sending the servant away again.
She had not given a thought to servants before Breckenridge’s man made his appearance. Although she had no intention of calling upon one to lend assistance in any circumstance, she was moderately calmed by the knowledge that she and the viscount were not alone in the house.
She’d made her own study of the viscount as he’d stood waiting for the bell to be answered. If he’d noticed her stealing glances in his direction, he’d given no indication that he was the least bothered by it.
Olivia was certain that she’d never seen him before, not that there would have been many opportunities to cross paths. Alastair did not introduce her to his friends, or even his amiable acquaintances, of whom she was now sure Breckenridge was not one.
He did not cast his profile in a way that made him an imposing figure, merely an intimidating one. His dark, chestnut-colored hair was longer than was the current fashion and carelessly furrowed by the fingers he’d plowed through it. His eyes were darker yet and given to narrowing so they did not simply gaze upon the object of his study, but secured it. His features were strong, angular, and except for a pale, thin scar bisecting his left cheek from the temple to the corner of his mouth, perfectly symmetrical. The scar saved him from the beauty that was the marble work of master sculptors and lent him something that was at once more striking and more human, the work of God twisted by man.
Olivia judged him to be not yet thirty, though it was a narrow thing. There was a weariness in his expression as he waited that he had taken pains to hide from her earlier. Even as she wondered at its source, it vanished. If it were not for the fact that she’d glimpsed a similar look in her own mirror, she could have been convinced that she’d imagined it. This commonality did not cheer her in the least. There was no conceiving of what harm might be done by two people with these unfortunate dispositions.
She thought he held himself in a posture of such correctness that it was most likely the product of the combined efforts of nannies, tutors, and a martinet of a mother. His stance lent him height and a certain polish. He made to carry himself in a manner that looked supremely natural, without a hint of the tension, superiority, or self-consciousness that she’d had occasion to observe in others of privilege and formidable education. Then, just as if to dismiss Olivia’s notion that he was uncommonly unconstrained, he rolled one of his shoulders and rubbed the nape of his neck with his palm.
The scar was proof that he’d been vulnerable once. His brief massage of corded muscle reminded her that he was vulnerable now. It struck her that it was little enough advantage knowing this fact, but she would accept every scrap he gave her.
When Griffin returned to his desk, he took up a position in front rather than behind it. He pushed aside a stack of ledgers and made room enough for him to rest one hip on the edge. Bracing himself by extending his other leg, he folded his arms across his chest and regarded Olivia Cole with a frankness that had been absent in his earlier scrutiny.
“Have you arrived yet at the reason you are here?” he asked.
“If I am to judge by the interview
