Nicola Cornick - One Night Of Scandal

‘Ross, take this! Take it and go! You may be sure that your pigs will be the better for it.’

Ross was looking understandably confused. He looked from her stormy face to the pot in his hand.

‘I beg your pardon, Olivia?’

Olivia could feel a curious sensation building up inside her like a volcano about to blow its top. She kicked her dirty slippers off and sent them sailing across the room with a violence that made Ross flinch.

‘This is the pig ointment, Ross! Lady Newlyn sent two pots. I have been using the pigs’ unguent on my face and you have been using my-’ Olivia caught herself up quickly before she could utter the word aphrodisiac. ‘You have been using my rose-scented cream to try and cure their skin condition.’

Ross took the pot and looked at it, then back at her. Not a muscle moved in his face.

‘I hope,’ he said politely, ‘that this has been beneficial for you, Olivia?’

‘Perfectly, thank you,’ Olivia snapped. ‘My skin smells a little of goose grease, but it is very soft.’

She thought that she saw Ross’s lips twitch, but could not be certain. ‘So the pigs’ skin cream was meant for you…’ he began.

Olivia was beginning to wish she had not said anything at all. She felt hot and shaky and quite uncertain of how the conversation might progress now that it had begun.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I shall not press for it to be returned, having seen what it has done to your pigs.’

Ross was still watching her, an unfathomable expression in his very blue eyes. ‘Did you know about it’s…ah…invigorating…capacities?’

Olivia evaded his gaze. Her shakiness seemed to be getting worse as they approached the crux of the matter.

‘I had been told to use it sparingly,’ she admitted, ‘but I never imagined what the effect might be. I expect that you have been plastering it all over the Gloucester Great Spots in order to cure them-’

‘And instead I have made them quite astonishingly rampant,’ Ross finished drily.

‘Ross!’ Olivia blushed crimson with shock and mortification. Ross took a step closer to her.

‘What on earth would have happened had you used it yourself?’ he mused.

Olivia toyed with the tie of her dressing robe. ‘I cannot bear to think,’ she said crossly.

‘Really?’ Ross drawled. ‘So whatever possessed you to try the potion in the first place?’ He was lounging at the foot of the bed now and Olivia was annoyed to see that he looked rather amused. The torment inside her tightened as she looked at him laughing at her. She made a last, desperate attempt to hold on to her temper. Ladies did not show anger, she reminded herself. It was not the done thing.

‘Deborah passed it to me,’ she said tightly, and closed her lips to forcibly prevent any other words from spilling out.

Ross raised his brows. ‘That may account for many things, my dear Olivia, but it does not answer my question. Why on earth would you want to use it?’

The mockery in his tone was too much for Olivia’s overstretched nerves. Her anger erupted with the force of a tidal wave. So long repressed, there was no stopping it. With a gesture that would not have been out of place on the stage at Drury Lane, she turned and swept her hairbrush and a selection of bottles off the top of her dressing table on to the carpet with a resounding crash. She swung round on her startled husband.

‘Why would I want to use such a thing? Perhaps it is because I cannot seem to attract my own husband! The last time that you came to my bed you swore not to trouble me again! Perhaps I could not bear to imagine you taking solace in the arms of someone like Lily Benedict. Perhaps I was jealous of the thought of you even considering consoling yourself with another woman!’ She paused for breath. Ross was looking absolutely riveted and Olivia was astounded to discover that she felt wonderful, vibrant and alive, and, for once, totally unguarded. That being the case, she carried on.

‘Would it astound you to know, Ross, that I wanted you from the first moment that Papa introduced us? Oh, yes-’ she saw his look of shock ‘-I wanted to marry you! I wanted you to sweep me off my feet!’ She turned away. ‘But you courted me with such decorum. It was very sweet but utterly unfulfilling. Yet it fitted with everything that Mama had ever told me about gentlemen requiring their wives to show no passion and conduct themselves with absolute propriety.’ She gave a bitter shrug. ‘So I thought that there was some fault in me for feeling the desire I did. I thought I would give you a disgust of me. So I subdued it and conducted myself in the manner a wife was meant to behave.’

Her gaze swept over him from head to foot. ‘After a little while I forgot all about my girlish desires. I realised that you did not wish to be close to me. I would have given anything then just to be able to talk to you, Ross, but I could never reach you. You shut yourself away from me. So in the end I lost the habit of trying to please you.’

Ross had turned pale now. ‘I thought that you wanted me to preserve some distance,’ he said. ‘I thought that you had ice in your veins. I did not want to trouble you with the memories of all things that had happened to me before I met you, or talk to you about matters I assumed would not interest you-’

Olivia laughed. The blood running through her veins felt so hot now she thought she might be in danger of taking a fever. ‘So we are both as foolish as each other,’ she said bitterly. ‘There is a certain justice in that.’ She shot him a look. ‘Have I said enough yet?’

‘Nowhere near enough,’ Ross said. He was white, but there was a spark of something in his eyes and it lit an answering flame within Olivia. She spun away from him and picked up the thread of her thoughts.

‘You asked why I wanted the rose-petal potion. Why not? I had nothing to lose and I thought that perhaps I might even kindle some degree of interest in my husband before it was too late. So I took the pot and I have been lathering myself in pig ointment this month past whilst your pigs have been frolicking in rose-petal aphrodisiac-’ She broke off. ‘Damn you, you are laughing! It is not funny, Ross!’

She realised all of a sudden how thin the line was between anger and despair and stopped before the tears could break. She could see her reflection in the inset mirrors, her hair tumbled, her breasts heaving with outraged fury. And she could see Ross, who definitely was laughing, coming towards her with a very purposeful look in his eyes. Panic seized her throat.

‘And if you think for one second that I love you-’ she gasped.

‘Well,’ Ross drawled, grinning openly now, ‘I think it is a little too late for disavowals now, my love.’

‘Arrogant beast!’ Olivia glared at him, beating her clenched fist helplessly and with very little force against his chest.

‘Sweetheart,’ Ross said, trapping her hand and pulling her close. ‘I love you too.’

Olivia opened and closed her mouth silently, like a landed fish.

‘Perhaps we could talk now,’ Ross said, with scrupulous politeness, ‘unless it is too late.’

Olivia stared at him, knowing he was not speaking of the hour. ‘I do not believe that it is too late,’ she said huskily.

She licked her dry lips and watched, fascinated, as Ross’s eyes fixed on her mouth and darkened almost to black with desire. He was still holding her hand and her skin burned beneath his touch.

‘If you prefer to retire and would like me to send for your maid then I shall, of course, comply,’ he said, but his eyes gave her a different message.

Olivia freed herself from his grip and reached out with both hands to grab him by the lapels of his jacket. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she said, a second before his lips met hers.