Page 13 of Deceiving an Earl
“He’s a boy,” Oliver said. “Boys will do these things. He’ll feel sick for a few hours and hopefully that will dissuade him from going on another binge like that.”
Ellen dropped her hand from her eyes and looked at a spot on the wall a distance down the hall.
“I’m sure you’re right,” she said, but her words sounded hollow and defeated.
“Is there anything wrong?” He waved his hand toward the closed door. “Besides that?”
She took a deep breath and Oliver thought that she was going to say something, but instead she shook her head. “No. Other than my disappointment in Philip at the moment.”
Philip. How had Oliver not known the lad’s name was Philip?
She looked at him and seemed to note his attire. “You were called away from something important. I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Ellen. I was happy to do it.” He sensed that there was more to this than she was saying, and he was curious. At the same time, he didn’t want to be curious. It’d taken a long time to get Ellen out of his system, to stop thinking about her constantly, to stop wondering why and what had gone wrong. He’d moved on years ago and didn’t want to be sucked back into her vortex.
Somewhere in the house a clock struck five.
“Would you like some coffee?” she asked. “I can have the cook start a pot.”
“No, thank you. I’ll take my leave.”
Oliver hesitated, wanting to say something but not knowing what he wanted to say.
“Thank you again,” she said.
Oliver nodded and made his way back downstairs and into his waiting carriage, more unsettled than he wanted to be.
Chapter Four
When Oliver awoke that afternoon, he lay in bed and thought a long time about Ellen, Philip, the incident with Philip, Bertrand, and even the surgeon who seemed to be a special person in Ellen’s life.
But mostly, he thought about Ellen. He’d wondered about her through the years, as anyone would. They’d had something special a long time ago. Something that Oliver had thought came along only once in a lifetime. He’d been madly, breathlessly, deeply in love with her. He’d planned to marry her. But life or fate or whatever you wanted to call it, had other plans. It’d taken Oliver a long time to come to terms with the fact that he had lost. He’d lost the future he’d planned for himself and for Ellen, and he’d lost her affection. The how and why still haunted him to this day.
What had he done wrong? Why had she turned away from him?
Eventually he’d had to push those questions to the back of his mind, realizing he would never get an answer. Now he found them surging back, the old hurt returning. So silly. It’d been nearly twenty years since that fateful night when his world had come crashing down.
But through the years he’d wondered about her. If she was happy. What her life was like.
Tonight he’d gotten a glimpse of her life and it seemed…off.
Her reaction to her son’s drunkenness had seemed more like acceptance. There seemed to be more to the story and for some reason, and against his will, Oliver’s heart went out to her. She was alone in her parenting, trying to raise a seemingly capricious boy who didn’t take well to being told what to do.
Oliver had no children of his own, had never married. Someday he planned to have a family—he was, after all, an earl who needed an heir, as his mother was fond of telling him—but he didn’t know how to raise a child. So maybe what he’d seen was a normal part of parenting. Maybe he’d kept his mother up at all hours waiting for him to return home.
Once he was dressed, he sat at his desk, reviewing the ledgers that his steward had brought him. Off to the side were Ashland’s ledgers. As Ashland was a newly minted earl, with no training whatsoever, Oliver had offered to help his friend learn his position and teach him the financial side of running an earldom. Not an easy task in this day.
But his mind was not on the numbers.
He withdrew a blank piece of paper etched on the top with his name and his coat of arms. For a long moment the pen hovered over the creamy white page as he wondered what to write.
He had a need to reach out to Ellen, to let her know that she was not alone, and if she needed anything he was there for her. But he feared that the olive branch he was extending would be refused. Just like his proposal had been refused. And then he wondered why he wanted to help. For so long he’d allowed a low hum of anger to churn toward Ellen. He’d needed the anger to survive, to justify what she had done to him. And now he found himself reaching out, offering help.
Was he a fool or had he finally grown past the old hurt?
Until the night of the salon they had not spoken in seventeen years. She may not—probably did not—want him in her life again.
And yet he could not walk away from her until he’d reached out to her.
