“He’s a proper little gentleman, this one.” Grim held the pup up high to admire him, then handed him down to Oliver.
Ferris nodded his agreement. “Did his business, then snuggled up to Mr. Grimsley here and dropped off to sleep like a wee angel, he did. It’s his fancy breeding what makes him so agreeable, I reckon. Good bloodlines, like.”
“He’ll make a proper hunter for Lord Archer.” Oliver climbed into the coach, settled the pup on his chest and wrapped them both up in his greatcoat for warmth. When the pup fell asleep again at once, Oliver was inclined to agree with Ferris’s reflections on superior canine breeding.
That is, until he was awakened from a nap by the sound of cloth tearing and discovered even a puppy with excellent bloodlines could cause quite a bit of damage when he was left unsupervised. “What the devil? What are you about?”
The pup had taken a sudden and intense interest in the lining of Oliver’s greatcoat, which shouldn’t have been terribly surprising, since Oliver had tucked a few of the savories Massie had given him into his pocket. Canine boredom and the tantalizing scent of treats had led to naughty behavior utterly unworthy of a pup with such elevated breeding.
“Why, you little imp.” Oliver tugged the wriggling, squirming devil from the folds of his coat. “What have you got there?” he demanded, snatching at a corner of soggy cloth the pup had clamped between his teeth. “My pocket!” The pup had torn his greatcoat pocket clean off and was now attempting to eat it.
“No! Bad dog.” Oliver tried to wrestle the bit of silk away from him, afraid he’d swallow it, but the puppy, a hunter down to his superior bloodlines held on, thrashing his head from side to side and letting loose with small, puppy-like growls that would have been adorable under any other circumstances.
“What in the world?” Dinah struggled upright on her seat, rubbing her eyes. “What are you doing to that puppy, Oliver?”
“Me? He’s destroyed my greatcoat. It’s lucky I woke, or he would have bitten a hole right through me!”
Dinah made a sound suspiciously like a choked laugh and reached down to pick up something from the floor. “Here, you’ve nearly lost Maddy’s locket. What’s this? Did you buy something else?”
Oh, no. Oliver abruptly abandoned the battle over his pocket. “I…it wasn’t…I didn’t…”
But he had, and the truth was about to erupt in all its messy, inconvenient, and inevitably destructive glory.
Dinah’s face drained of color when she lifted the lid off the case and saw the glittering sapphires laying in their bed of pale gray velvet. “Oliver?”
“I…they’re for you.” Oliver swallowed. “I knew you wouldn’t like…I didn’t think you’d accept…I want you to have them.”
“You can’t have bought them for me.” Dinah closed the lid of the case with a snap. “You can’t think I’d ever accept jewels from you, unless…” She jerked her head up, her stricken gaze meeting his. “Unless you think to make me your—”
“Wife,” Oliver blurted.
“Mistress,” Dinah said at the same time.
They stared at each other in disbelief.
“Not my mistress, Dinah,” Oliver whispered, when the silence between them grew unbearable. “I want you to be my wife.”
CHAPTER 6
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN SOUTHFLEET AND ROCHESTER, LORD OLIVER’S COACH
“Your wife!” Dinah’s piercing cry echoed throughout the coach.
Oliver grabbed the strap as the horses’ startled lurch nearly bounced him off his seat. “You really must stop doing that. If we had a hired coachman at the reins instead of Ferris, we’d be in the ditch by now.”
Dinah knew she should be mortified at shrieking like a madwoman, but she was so overwhelmed with shock there was no room left for mortification. His wife. Dear God. “Fashionable aristocratic gentlemen don’t take actresses for their wives, Oliver.”
He gave her an incredulous look. “You do recall my brother’s an earl, don’t you? An earl who plucked an actress straight from the Pandemonium Playhouse’s stage, married her, and made her mistress of Cliff’s Edge?”
“I…well, yes, but…” Dinah fumbled for a reply, but what could she say? She’d never seen a married couple more devoted to each other than Lord Archer and Penelope. Indeed, they seemed to have been made for each other.
But Dinah wasn’t like Penelope. It had been inevitable Dinah would end up on the London stage, or worse, the London streets. That had never been true for Penelope, who was nothing like the jaded women who earned their bread on the stage, or on their backs. Penelope was lovely and gracious and refined. Her father had been a vicar, and at heart Penelope had always been a clergyman’s daughter. The stage hadn’t changed her, yet Penelope’s marriage to Lord Archer had still been a scandal, despite her claims to gentility. A tragedy, even, according to the ton.
Fashionable London would swoon with horror if Oliver followed in his brother’s appalling footsteps. There’d be no end to the scandal and gossip when the ton discovered Dinah’s own father had been a wastrel who’d abandoned his wife and daughter, and her mother…well, the less said about her mother, the better.
She didn’t care for what the ton thought of her, but Oliver would become a laughingstock if she became his wife. His aristocratic friends would ridicule and then abandon him, and he’d come to regret marrying her.
Oh, but this was terrible. She’d known for weeks Oliver was nursing a mild tendre for her, but it had never occurred to her he wanted to make her his wife. His mistress, yes, but then he’d taken up with Lady Serena, and Dinah had thought—
Lady Serena. Dinah seized on her like a lifeline. “You can’t marry me. You have a mistress.” It was an absurd argument, of course. One couldn’t stir a step in London without stumbling over some married aristocrat’s mistress.
Oliver raised a skeptical eyebrow at this, as well he might. “Is that your only objection? Because Lady Serena isn’t my mistress, despite every wagging tongue in London insisting she is.”
Dinah stared at him. “Not your mistress? But she’s—”
“I’m surprised at you, Dinah. You should know better than to listen to the actresses at the Pandemonium. They’re the worst gossips in London. If you recall, they also claimed you were my mistress, and we both know that to be false.”
Dinah couldn’t deny the London gossips were about as reliable as a pack of chattering monkeys, but if Lady Serena wasn’t Oliver’s mistress, what was she to him? “You’ve been seen all over London with her these past weeks. If she’s not your mistress, then what—”
“Lady Serena is Lord Erskine’s mistress. I’ve been seen all over London with the two of them because I’ve been trying to pry him from her clutches before she ruins him.”
Dinah stared at him, speechless.
Oliver gestured to his eye. The swelling had gone down enough he could open it now, but it was still a dozen different shades of black, blue and yellow. “How else do you suppose I ended up with this? I tried to drag Erskine from the hazard tables before Lady Serena wagered away his fortune and got his fists in my face for my trouble.”