Candace Camp - Mesmerized

“What is it?” Kyria questioned her in a low voice. “Are you—well, have you developed any feeling for this man?”

“Kyria!” Olivia gave her a horrified look. “No! How can you ask that? I just met him.”

“Sometimes it does not take long,” Thisbe, usually the most pragmatic and logical of the sisters, interjected.

“The thing is...well, when he grabbed my wrist, it jolted me. I actually screamed, I was so surprised. And scared.”

“Of course. Who wouldn’t be?” Kyria sympathized.

“But then they lit the lamp and I saw who my captor was, and the oddest thing happened. Even though I did not know him at all, and even though he was looking at me quite fiercely, I was no longer afraid.”

“Well, I suppose you saw that he was a gentleman and not a ghost or some such. It is what we cannot see that is the most fearsome, ofttimes,” Thisbe said.

“But it was more than that. I felt the oddest sensation. This sort of tingle ran up my arm, and for just an instant I felt—oh, I don’t know. This sounds mad, I know, but I felt as if I knew him. Yet at the same time I was sure that I had never seen him before. Of course then he made me quite irritated, and the feeling fled. But still...there was that instant. I don’t know what to make of it.”

For a moment both sisters looked at her. Then Thisbe said calmly, “It’s chemistry.”

“What?”

“That moment of attraction. It is all a chemical reaction. I’m convinced of it. I remember the moment I met Desmond. I have never been so startled in my life by the shiver that ran through me when he turned his eyes to mine. And when he reached out and touched my arm, I felt it all through me. Chemistry.”

“No! I’m not going to marry the man!” Olivia cried out in protest. “I told you, I scarcely know him. He was perfectly odious, too. Not only did he ruin my chance to expose that dreadful Mrs. Terhune, but then he had the audacity to call us the ‘mad Morelands.’ Right to my face!”

“No!” Kyria’s green eyes flamed with anger.

But Thisbe shrugged philosophically. “They all do. It’s their narrow minds. One really has to feel sorry for them.”

“Well, I don’t,” Kyria said. “I give them a piece of my mind. And if that is the sort of man Lord St. Leger is, then you are better not to feel anything for him.” She reached out and took Olivia’s hand. “Come with me to the soiree, Livvy. We’ll search for a gentleman good enough for you—well, that’s not possible, I suppose, but at least one who measures up as well as a man can.”

Olivia gave her a faint smile. “No. Really, Kyria. I’m not interested in Lord St. Leger or any other man. I am fine just as I am. I enjoy what I do, and a gentleman would only interfere.” She smiled over at Thisbe. “Men such as Desmond are few and far between, I’m afraid. To find a man who respects one’s mind and one’s career, even shares it—well, rare isn’t even the word for such a man.” She sighed unconsciously.

Beside her, Kyria echoed the sigh. Then she summoned up her usual glittering smile. “It is just as well that I decided never to marry, isn’t it? Still, there is fun to be had. Please, do come with me.”

But Olivia shook her head, saying, “No. I am a bit tired, I’m afraid. And I must work tomorrow. There is correspondence to be answered, and...” Her voice trailed off. “I fear I have forever lost the opportunity to expose that charlatan Mrs. Terhune. Still, there are other avenues to explore.”

“Of course.” Thisbe patted her youngest sister’s hand, and Kyria accepted Olivia’s refusal with a philosophical shrug. She was well aware that, despite Olivia’s fierceness if a loved one or a cause was threatened, she was a rather shy creature, not at home among crowds. Crushes such as Lady Westerfield’s tonight would at worst make her uneasy and nervous, and at best bore her.

Olivia watched as her beautiful sister let the footman help her on with her cloak, then swept out the door. She turned back to Thisbe, but at that moment the twins came in, accompanied this time by Desmond, a quietly good-looking man who usually wore a faint air of abstraction.

“We got the snake in time,” Con announced with satisfaction. “Cook never even saw it.”

“And we ran into Desmond in the kitchen,” Alex added, pulling Desmond forward. “We’re ready now, aren’t we, Thisbe?”

“Ready for what?” Desmond asked vaguely, and had to be reminded of his promise to star-watch with his wife and the twins. He seemed, however, quite pleased with the notion once he was told about it. “Jolly night for it. Not often you get such a clear sky in the city. Do you have your telescope?”

It seemed the boys did, tucked under the staircase, where it could come to no harm during their jumping from the stairs, and they had also brought a blanket, a lantern and a small sack of fruit for a midnight snack. They asked Olivia to join them, but although she normally would have done so, she demurred, pleading tiredness from her own adventure that evening.

In truth she was not tired so much as desirous of being alone. She wanted to think about the evening and go over what had happened and what had been said. The feeling she had experienced when she looked into Lord St. Leger’s eyes had been so odd...and though she was certain that it was nothing to do with being attracted to the man, either emotionally or chemically, as her sisters had suggested, she was not sure to what she could attribute that brief frisson of awareness that had run through her.

So she went upstairs and undressed, then sat by the window, wrapped in a brocade dressing gown, and brushed out her long hair. She typically did not require the attendance of a maid, for she wore her hair in a simple, practical style, low on her neck in a bun, that she was able to put up and take down without assistance. She also favored pragmatic clothes, with bodices that buttoned up the front and no whalebone corset that had to be yanked and tugged and tied into place to give her a minuscule waist. It was another of her mother’s dicta, adopted by her daughters, not to endanger one’s health with constricting corsets for the absurdity of an eighteen-inch waist. Therefore, she rarely needed help in getting undressed, either. Olivia deemed a personal maid an unnecessary luxury for herself, and besides, she usually preferred to be alone with her thoughts rather than listening to a maid’s chatter.

Brushing her hair normally relaxed her, but she found that this evening it did not, and her thoughts remained unaccustomedly scattered. She could not seem to concentrate, and she rose more than once to pace about the room. She could not figure out why she had felt as she did when she first saw Lord St. Leger, and it irritated her that she was so concerned with the subject. She kept thinking of things she should have said or done, witty remarks that would have put the man in his place. It was some time before she settled down enough to go to bed, and even then, it took her some time to fall asleep. It was another disagreeable problem to lay at Lord St. Leger’s door, she thought. She wished she could see him again, just to give him a piece of her mind.

She spent a rather restless night and arose early the next morning. The only person at breakfast was her great-uncle, Bellard, who smiled with pleasure at seeing her. He was a quiet man usually, but Olivia was his favorite relative, and today he was full of news about the arrival the day before of his latest acquisition, a full complement of French and English soldiers, made out of tin and perfectly replicated down to each tiny ribbon or epaulet the armies of Napoleon and Wellington at Waterloo. Her uncle was a history buff, and his particular pleasure was recreating famous battles in history. On the third floor in this huge house, not far from the nursery, was a huge room given over entirely to tables on which the terrain and participants of such epic clashes as Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar, in which glass painted blue carried replicas of the ships involved, and Churchill’s win at Blenheim were laid out with exactitude.