Let It Be Me

Nineteen

TO say that Oliver Merrick spent the rest of the evening counting the minutes until that precious hour at which Bridget had commanded his presence at the Hotel Cortile would be an understatement. To say that he was merely eager was blatantly untrue.

It could have started raining frogs, and he still would have shown.

He lay in wait for that interminable half hour, ordering his gondolier (in truth, a fairly unhappy Frederico, but, as Pomfrey’s gondolier was needed by the man himself, the best available option) to take a circuitous route through the canals until the appointed time.

“If I may be so bold, sir,” Frederico drawled at him in his native tongue, “you may wish to woo the lady with a little more than a boat ride.”

“Is this a wooing event?” Oliver replied in the same language, his nerves on edge. “She’s the one who set this rendezvous. After all, she could wish to talk about the music, the opera . . . the weather.”

“Still—a few flowers, a glass of champagne . . . could turn a conversation about weather to something else.”

“True,” Oliver mused, his focus fracturing by the minute in anticipation of what was to come. “But where would one find flowers and champagne this time of night?”

In this, his dour manservant surprised him by steering the gondola back to La Fenice, where women hawking floral bouquets and long-stemmed blooms were gathering up the remainder of their goods and their meager profits after a long night.

Oliver purchased a dozen long-stemmed roses, bright red and fragrant. However, by that point, there was little time left for finding champagne, as they were due back at the hotel.

And lucky that they returned on time, because there, waiting in the shadow of the hotel’s awning, was a cloaked figure that came directly up to the gondola before they even came to a stop.

She jumped into the little boat, her movements sure and purposeful. Once she was seated next to Oliver, she waved to Frederico, telling him to push off.

And once they were far enough away from the torchlight of the hotel, Bridget threw back her cloak’s hood and greeted him with smiling eyes.

“Hello,” she said brazenly.

“Hello,” he replied, struck dumb. Under the cloak, she was wearing the same thing she had been wearing all evening—a pale jade dress that made her eyes sparkle like dew-covered moss—and her hair was still arranged in the same fashion that Veronica had managed to cobble together (and one that her mother had noticed as different in the box, looking askance at her daughter and asking, “Did Molly try something different with your hair tonight?” to which Bridget paused before shrugging elegantly). And yet, even though she had not changed her attire, she had somehow transformed in appearance. Her eyes sparkled in the moonlight, her cheeks a high flush of excitement. He was captivated by the sight of her. By the nearness of her.

By the fact that he had her all to himself.

No, there would be no talk of the weather tonight.

“Hello,” drawled Frederico from behind them, breaking into the silent reverie of the two lovers staring at each other.

Bridget blushed dutifully and met Oliver’s eyes—and they immediately both burst into giggles, like children caught at games.

“Er, um . . . so,” Oliver said, trying to approach their situation with some gravity. “You should probably keep that up,” he said, indicating the hood of her cloak. “I should hate for anyone to spot you.”

“It’s the small hours of the morning,” Bridget countered. “Who is going to spot me?”

“No one you wish to have know that you are out here with me.” And with that, he leaned forward, took the soft, heavy velvet hood of the cloak, and brought it up around her face, shading her in darkness. This also had the side effect of bringing his hands to her shoulders—it took very little effort to lean her body into his, to put her lips so close to his . . .

“Are those for me?”

Oliver looked to where Bridget’s eyes had fallen. “Oh!” he exclaimed, shaking himself out of his reverie. Damn, but she had him acting like a green schoolboy. “Yes, of course.”

He reached behind him and—while avoiding the disparaging look Frederico was no doubt shooting at him—took the roses in hand, pulling one out of the bunch and presenting it to her.

“Would it be an embarrassing admission to tell you no one has ever given me flowers before?” she whispered, taking in the rose’s scent.

“Embarrassing? No.” Oliver shook his head. “Surprising—very much so.”

“Yes, well”—she blushed—“I told you, my first season lacked a certain amount of sparkle necessary to attract the attention of men who send flowers.”

“I can only be honored to be the first, then.”

Frederico smothered a cough at that moment. Oliver couldn’t be sure, but his manservant’s hacking sounded suspiciously like the phrase my idea. Luckily, either Bridget did not hear the same hidden message or she was happy to ignore it, because she took the rest of the flowers from his hands, put them together with the first, and placed them on her lap. She looked over them reverently as she spoke.

“I feel this is the time in my life for many firsts,” she said quietly, before meeting his eyes from beneath her lashes.

A streak of lust lanced right through him, causing his body to tense imperceptibly. What other “firsts” did Miss Bridget Forrester have in mind for that evening?

“I don’t suppose I am your first, as well?” she asked.

The tenor of Oliver’s racing thoughts before her inquiry had him rocketing back and forth between the wealth of possible “firsts” with Bridget Forrester and the logistics of achieving them in a gondola with the morose Frederico paying witness. Thus, her innocent question brought him sharply back down to earth, making him jump so much in his seat that the gondola wobbled beneath them.

“My first?” he asked, trying to hide the crack in his voice. “No—why on earth would you think that?”

“I . . . I didn’t,” she replied, blinking in astonishment. “I was just being silly—I assume you’ve bought flowers for hundreds of ladies.”

“Oh,” he sighed, relaxing visibly, and then he could not help a laugh. “You meant buying flowers.”

“Of course—what else could I mean?”

Oliver decided to ignore that and answer her first question instead.

“Sadly, you are not the first lady for whom I have bought flowers, it is true. The theatre world seems to support the flower markets single-handedly at times, and one way to keep things running smoothly is to have flowers ready at a prima donna’s door.” He reached out and took one of her hands, brought it to his lips. “But these could very well be the first flowers I’ve purchased that meant so much.”

Something must have caught in Frederico’s throat, because his infernal hacking began again, this time with enough lack of subtlety that the gondola stopped moving and drifted over to one side of the canal.

“Have a care, Frederico,” Oliver chided, turning to his erstwhile gondolier. “We almost hit that house!”

“So sorry, sir,” Frederico replied stiffly, returning both of his hands to the long oar he used to steer and propel.

Oliver returned his attention to the lady in front of him—hooded though she might be, he could still see the light of mirth in her eyes, but now there was something else. A nervous uncertainty. She had surprised him by asking—nay, demanding—this assignation. And suddenly, the light of understanding struck. She had surprised him even more with the prepossession she had displayed up until now. But underneath that—she was completely out of her element. It was as if she had thought out a plan of attack, of getting him alone, he realized. But beyond that—she had no idea what she was doing.

And neither did he. Here he was, acting as nervous as an adolescent, completely enraptured and eager, and having no clue what to do. And he could only find relief in the fact that she was nervous, too. It put them in the same boat. So to speak.

And it gave him the confidence to turn the tables.

“You are smiling at me, sir,” Bridget said, biting her lip, her glance unconsciously ending up on his lips.

“That I am, miss,” he replied.

They were in danger of simply smiling and staring into each other’s faces the whole of the evening. Unless, of course, one of them made the first move.

Oliver decided it should be him.

“Bridget, I am going to kiss you now. Just to get it out of the way,” he said, his voice a low grumble.

“You . . . you are?” she stuttered. Her freckles stood out against the pallor of her face—even under the hood.

He did not answer her; he did not have to. All he had to do was slip his hand around her back—which was halfway in place already—and press her to him. He held her near, his lips so close to her luscious, full mouth. Her eyes were wide with wonder, her body tensed to flight, until the moment that a decision was made and she let herself relax in his arms, her eyelids fluttering closed, her mouth parting of its own accord.

Then, and only then, did he plunder. Took what he wanted, what he had been aching to take. This was not the gentle persuasion he had begun in the cobblestoned alley. He did not force himself to keep his hands at his sides until the time was right, nor did he give her time to adjust to his intensity. No, once he had seen her decision made, he wanted her to be pressed against him, to know the full force of his feelings. He wanted to frighten her with it, to entice her. To leave her head spinning.

When he broke the short kiss, they were both reeling, both breathing heavily. He found her eyes in the darkness of her hooded cloak, wild and unfocused. Finally, they blinked their way back into the present.

“My goodness,” she breathed.

“Indeed,” he replied, bringing his hand up to caress her cheek, resting his forehead against hers.

“I . . . I didn’t think you wanted to kiss me again.”

“Are you mad?” His voice was strained with laughter. “It’s all I had been thinking of for a fortnight.”

“I, too. But then you kissed me on the forehead tonight—”

He could not suppress his guffaw then. And proceeded to kiss her on the forehead once again.

“You little fool. Don’t you know that if I did anything other than kiss your forehead, I would have ended up ravaging you on the floor of the hall? And if nothing else, it would have shocked the hell out of your sister.”

She laughed at that, a soft exhale against his skin.

“Well, now that’s out of the way,” he began, and she laughed again. “What would you like to do?”

“I . . . I do not know,” she replied, biting her lip again. “I’m afraid I had not actually planned that far ahead. We are outside the realm of my experience.”

He kept his hand on her cheek, secretly thrilled that he had read her correctly. But also, unaccountably, he was made more nervous by the admission. For with it, she had placed herself firmly in his hands.

Confirming that thought, the next words out of her mouth were, “What would you like to do?”

What would he like to do? A hell of a lot more than he could in an open gondola. The silly thing did not even have the decency to have a covered box, lending them some privacy from prying eyes. Add to that the visibly distinctive red cushions, and they were not nearly as private as one would like. That was the last time he borrowed a gondola from the flamboyant Lord Pomfrey. Especially if he could not also borrow a decent gondolier.

But the velvet cushions were comfortable, and the openness of the gondola provided them with a view of the city surrounding them and the night sky above them. And with that in mind, Oliver knew precisely what he wanted to do.

“I would like to wander with you,” he answered simply.

“Wander?”

“We have been denied a good wander through the city for the past fortnight. And I have missed it.”

Her face grew into a tremulous smile. “As have I.”

“Then let us wander—unless, of course, you are afraid you will be missed soon.”

Bridget snorted. “Amanda, if she wakes up, is firmly on my side these days. And my mother sleeps like the dead. Rousing her at this time of night would take a fife and drum corps.”

The corner of his mouth shot up. “Your mother is not only blind as a bat, but sleeps like a corpse. How terribly . . . useful.”

“I admit, I have recently found it so.”

“It’s settled then—Frederico!” he called back to the amateur gondolier. “We should like to wander.”

If Frederico had anything to say—or cough—about their ambiguous route, he kept it to himself and propelled them out from Rio di San Marina into the Grand Canal.

It felt right to put his arm around Bridget, so he did. It felt right to lean back in the seat, nestling her against his side and letting her cloak cover them both like a blanket, so he did. And it felt right to look up at the starry sky and let the peace of the night envelop them.

There were other boats on the water, of course—other couples wrapped around each other in illicit fashion, other solitary people on their way home after a long evening, but they paid no attention to them—and they, in turn, paid no attention to Oliver and Bridget. At least as far as Oliver could tell.

They wandered. Through quiet canals dotted with stars. And slowly, those things that they had not been able to say to each other, those things that had drawn them close, began to spill out of them.

“So . . .” he began.

“So . . .” she replied.

“How was your evening?” Honestly, with the way her green eyes were sparkling at him, it was the only thing he could think of.

“Enlightening,” she said, after a moment.

“Really? How so?” He tilted his head to the side. “Besides discovering how you looked in breeches, that is.”

She blushed. “Besides that. I’ve never spent any time backstage at a theatre. I know now why you love it.”

“It’s a very lively place,” he conceded.

“And you come alive there,” she replied.

“I do?”

“You do. I do not think I truly understood your love of the world of the theatre, of La Fenice, until I saw you moving through the halls and ropes and tight spaces with people who all have the same ambition—to tell a good story.” She paused for a moment. “It has such an air of movement. The entire atmosphere is charged, making the hairs on my arms stand on end—one can feel it, like one can feel the lightning before you see it strike.”

Oliver looked down at her, her small dark head resting on his chest. “You describe it exactly. Except that working at La Fenice is no longer my ambition. It has not been in some time.”

“No?” she asked, confused.

“Can I . . . May I show you something?” he asked, hesitation in his voice. Her head came up, turned to meet his eyes.

“Of course.”

“Frederico.” He spoke as he turned, to find his manservant’s eyes resolutely on the water in front of him. “Take us to the Teatro Michelina!”

Bridget’s brow creased in confusion, so as Frederico steered sharply to his left, down a different canal, Oliver endeavored to explain.

“When I left La Fenice, it was to come home to England—although that did not happen as planned, as you know. But when they—indeed, no house in Venice—could take me on in their companies, I decided to follow a long-held ambition . . . and create my own.” A strange sense of excitement, of nervous anticipation, began to churn through him, as it always did when he spoke of his teatro.

“While I began as a performer, I know well that I do not have what it takes to make a life out of performing. Those who don’t have enough talent have to have naked ambition to carve out a life there. I may have had some talent, but I had only enough to recognize those who had greater talent. Like Carpenini, and like you.”

“Like Veronica,” Bridget interjected.

Oliver blinked at her in surprise, then smiled. “Is that what she told you? What else did you girls talk about while she transformed you into a boy?”

“Oh, that is for me to know. And you are getting off the subject.”

“Right—well . . .” Oliver ran a hand through his hair as he spoke. “It was pointed out to me that I would be well served if I put this particular talent to good use.”

Frederico steered them up a smaller, side canal and finally backstroked to counter them to a stop. Oliver pointed in the direction of one of the darkened buildings. It was a tall, flat structure, with a few high windows and a landing that led to barricaded, arched doorways. They pulled up to the moorings and let Frederico hold them there.

“This is my theatre, the Teatro Michelina,” Oliver said. “I purchased it.”

“You have your own theatre,” Bridget intoned. “You want to be an impresario?”

“Well, as Carpenini pointed out, when I did not go back to La Fenice, I did not have a place to stage his composition. So I acquired one. You should see the inside—it is a true beauty. Or at least it will be, once all the dust and decay is cleared away. It is a warehouse now, but it still has the bones of a theatre,” he replied, his voice lighting with excitement. “It has been closed since just after the fall of the republic, some twenty years ago. It’s a smaller venue, more intimate—it could seat five hundred souls, all come to listen to music, and not distract themselves with the seeing and being seen of the larger opera houses. This would be for true musicians.”

“Can I?” she asked. “See the inside, that is.”

Oliver frowned for a moment, but then said, “I don’t see why not.”

He carefully stood and disembarked. He wobbled a bit, but Frederico caught a post at the last moment, keeping Oliver from splashing into the water. Then he took Bridget’s hand and helped her out. Hand in hand, they walked up to the dusty, dark teatro, where Oliver lifted the heavy wood beam barring the door and carefully poked his head inside.

“I’ll just wait here, shall I?” Frederico called after them—he could not be bothered to hide his bored disdain. Which was fine, as Oliver could not be bothered overly much to care.

Once he ascertained everything was all right, Bridget followed him inside.

The dark space was piled high with crates. And the parts that were not piled high with crates were piled high with dust. But the stage at the far end was uncovered, lit by moonlight from high windows that lined the backstage.

Oliver pulled Bridget up onto the stage. He held out his hand, as if painting on the air, seeing in his mind’s eye what could be, overlaying what was there. “Now you have to use your imagination, but over there, the wall behind those crates will be painted a cerulean blue, with white cornices and a marble-walled entryway. Four rows of boxes, curving around, like a horseshoe. Do you see how close the performers would be to their audience? And this stage will be polished, the curtain—well, it will have to be beaten of dust by a brigade of washerwomen. Then the whole place will be lit by brass lamps, so not a moment is missed.”

“Yes,” she replied dreamily, her voice echoing in the theatre. “I can see it all. But how did you purchase it?”

“Contrary to how I live, I do have some money.” He shrugged, answering as honestly as he could. “My father is very generous; he pays me well to stay away. I could live much higher than I do, but between the allowance that I never spend and the funds I earned at La Fenice . . .”

Of course, saving funds had become far more difficult when he took on Vincenzo as a destitute roommate—money that would have gone into savings seemed to flow elsewhere. Hence he did not quite have the funds for the renovation he saw in his head. But once the Marchese took Vincenzo back . . . perhaps, just perhaps, the Marchese would be interested in investing in Oliver’s theatre. Perhaps.

“Vincenzo says that he’ll give me his next work to stage—if he ever gets through writing it. And it seems as if—thanks to working with you daily—he’s actually making some progress on it.”

She blushed dutifully. “I don’t know if it’s my doing.”

“I disagree. Work begets work. Music begets music. And your hard work has influenced him more than you realize.”

Bridget blushed again, and fidgeted in his embrace.

“Are you embarrassed?” he asked suddenly. “By what? Praise?”

“No,” she cried. “Well, it just seems so strange, the idea that I could have influence over anyone.”

“You have great influence on the lives that you touch. And you should not be so surprised by praise. You are going to receive a lot of it in your life. Much like flowers.” He nodded toward the dark, closed theatre. “Especially when I put you on this stage.”

But she shook her head adamantly. “No, you will not.”

“Of course I will—once the competition is over, you will be in great demand—”

“But it is a demand I will decline,” she replied calmly, nimbly negotiating her way down the steps to the main floor. “I do not desire the stage.”

He stood up straight, confused. “You do not? If this is about your stage fright—”

“It is not.” She smiled up at him, a bright spot in the dark maze of boxes and dust. “Believe it or not. I may not like to exhibit, nor do I desire the life of a performer.”

“Then what do you want?” he asked gently.

“The same things other young ladies of my station want. A husband and children, running up and down stairs willy-nilly. A home of my own.”

“Then why agree to the competition?”

“A dozen reasons,” she replied, her voice becoming thicker with emotion. “I may want the traditional things in life, but I want this one thing first. To be able to look back and say to my children that I had, at one point, done something brave. That I wasn’t just one forgotten debutante in a season of hundreds. That I might have been something special.”

“You are special, Bridget,” Oliver said, following her down the stairs, finding her in the mess of boxes, and taking her face in his hands. “Never let anyone tell you otherwise.”

She leaned her cheek into his hand, accepting the devotion he gave, the adoration.

And suddenly, Oliver didn’t care that they were in a dusty theatre-cum-warehouse in the middle of the night. He did not care that Frederico was outside, waiting for them. He only cared about the look in her dewy green eyes, and that she was there, in his arms.

This time, there was no warning, no chance for her to tense or to decide. He swooped down and took her mouth with his, letting the dark warmth of her cloak envelop them both. He pressed her to him, letting his hands thread beneath that dark layer, find skin at the back of her neck, at the edges of her sleeves and the low neckline of her gown.

She pressed back, burrowing under his jacket, clutching at his shirtwaist, pulling at the fabric in a desperate need for something she could not define. But Oliver knew what it was, and it burned through him the same way it burned through her.

He wanted contact, so he took it. He took the liberty of finding the buttons at her back and loosening them. Perhaps he was a little too eager. Perhaps he felt one or two buttons pop off the back of the dress, clattering to the floor of the theatre, but he didn’t care. And from the way she lost herself in the sensation of his skin against hers, neither did she.

He wanted . . . wanted so desperately. But what he wanted, and what she wanted . . . was it possible?

Beyond the immediate needs. But for the future. He wanted the woman in front of him, but did it supersede the want for the building next to him?

. . . Did it have to?

In the haze of lips on lips, skin on skin, Oliver realized that two lives could meld into one.

And it scared the hell out of him.

“Bridget—” he whispered hoarsely, trying to tear his mouth away from hers, but being lured back like a magnet. “Bridget, we must . . .”

“Yes, Oliver?” Her voice came so sweetly, so hopefully. His name fell from her lips like a prayer, and it nearly broke the little will he had managed to dredge up.

Oh to hell with it! To hell with Frederico waiting for them, to hell with the theatre falling down around them. To hell with anything other than Bridget and him and—

He saw it a split second before it happened. A hand shooting out, setting the tallest stack of boxes to wobbling. Oliver reacted quickly, spinning Bridget around right before the—

CRASH! Oliver immediately covered Bridget with his body, protecting hers with his own. A crate had fallen to the ground, its weak wood splintering on impact, spilling out its contents of cheap ceramic pots, which also shattered.

Correction: A crate had been pushed. And if it had landed as intended . . .

“Are you all right?” he gasped, searching her face.

“I . . . I think so,” she said, bewildered. “What on earth happened?”

Oliver quickly scanned the surroundings. It was too dark in the theatre to see far . . . but Oliver would swear on a stack of Bibles that he saw something—some flash of something light-colored—move quickly from the top of one stack of crates to another. Then there were footsteps, running quickly away, out the door. Oliver zoomed his gaze to the front door as light from the outside flooded and gave their assailant a silhouette.

He couldn’t be certain—he could not trust his eyes—but even at that distance, Oliver could swear that he saw a man with light blond hair running away into the night.