“But, I have seriously blotted my copybook with my behavior in the last few years as no one wished to even let me step inside their home.”
Olympia set down her tea, folded her hands in her lap to subdue the urge to go to him and stroke his hair, and studied him for a moment. “You have rather thrown yourself headlong into a pit of debauchery and done so somewhat publicly, but so has many another gentleman. I do not believe, and never have, that you have done anything more than many another has, and they were not banished from society.”
“Yet all doors are now closed against me.”
“Perhaps,” she began, but then hesitated as she tried to think of how to express her thoughts on the matter in a way that would be the least painful for him to bear.
“Perhaps my behavior has been made to sound a great deal worse than it was by someone so close to me no one would ever question the truth of such tales.”
Olympia grimaced. “Yes, that was my thought when the first whispers about you began to slip through a drawing room or two.”
“Whispers about what?”
“That is not truly important.” She really did not wish to repeat any of them.
“It could be important to me since I am the one who must try to repudiate them.”
“You have been made to sound as if you are of the same ilk as men like Minden,” she finally confessed and saw him pale a little.
“My mother has been a very busy woman, it seems.” He noticed she did not dispute his choice of enemy. “Not only was I not welcomed inside a single home I went to but no one would even discuss the letting of a room or house with me. I wonder what variety of evils she has accused me of. Minden has so many, if she chose his way of living as the one to blacken my name, she had a great many sins to lay at my feet. I shudder to think what they might be.”
“I suspect you will soon discover that. If it is bad enough there will be many people willing to whisper the rumors in your ears or mine. After the first few I caught wind of, I ceased to listen.”
“But did you cease to believe them?”
“Of course. I know all your true friends, Brant. They would never have anything to do with a man of Minden’s sort, therefore you were being slandered. Now, as for where you may stay while you are in the city, you need not worry about that.”
“I am not sure it would be wise for me to stay here and not just because my name has been so tarnished even a slight connection to me could be the ruin of you.”
Brant knew it would be very unwise and not only because of the damage that would be done to her good name. He wanted her too badly to be within reach of her day and night. Just sitting there watching her sip her tea and nibble on a cake had him taut with lust. Despite how often he had spent himself in the arms of a woman over the past few years, he realized it had been a very long time since he had felt such a swiftly stirred lust, one brought on by merely watching a woman do the simplest of things.
“True. Unfair but true,” Olympia agreed.
“It would not even help save you if you reminded people that you are a widow.”
She caught the glint of annoyance in his dark gray eyes and winced. He obviously thought she had been keeping secrets. In some ways she had been for she did not like to remember her short marriage. She certainly did not like to talk about it. Olympia refused to be embarrassed by her reticence about her past, however.
“I know, but you could stay in the house next door and that would cause no gossip. It is empty at the moment because it is being redecorated for Argus and his new wife, but it is still quite livable. They will not be occupying it for months yet, either, so there will be no rush for you to find another place to stay.”
“That would suit me but are you certain your brother will not mind?”
“Not at all. There may be some work done in the kitchens while you are there but you will be little inconvenienced by that as you can share meals with us here.”
“Olympia, that is most kind of you, but I do not believe my coming and going from here constantly would be a very good idea, either.”
“Then it is a very good thing that you can do so without being seen.”
She stood up and motioned him to follow her. Brant did so, trying very hard not to watch the sway of her hips too openly. Olympia led him toward the back of the house and into a small conservatory. It was not until he reached the door at the end of it that he saw how he could slip from house to house unseen. A long archway covered in ivy ran from the door he stood in front of to the door of a matching conservatory on the other house. No one would see anyone slipping back and forth along that covered path.