Olivia paused to scrutinize Mitchell’s features and assess how he was reacting. you bored already?” she asked, looking crestfallen.
Mitchell was worse than bored, but she was so transparently eager to impress him and make him want to be a part of all this that he found himself saying, at all.”
She looked doubtful. you planning to leave us soon?” she asked bluntly.
, in two weeks.”
She averted her face instantly, her hand clutching fiercely at his arm while a tremor seemed to shake her entire body. Mitchell automatically slid his arm around her back to brace her and looked for the closest chair. ’re ill—” he began, but the episode passed as swiftly as it had occurred.
am rarely ill,” she replied stiffly, if I were going to be ill, I assure you, I would never let it happen in front of company!” To prove it, she lifted her face and looked at him with proud defiance and a sheen of tears in her faded amber eyes.
Mitchell’s jaw tightened at the sight of those tears. He rejected herright to feel dismay over his leaving. He’d known in Cecil’s study why she’d wanted him to look at those portraits of his relatives. He knew why she was so damned anxious to take him into the living room tonight and introduce him to everyone as her nephew. In the last thirty-four years, she hadn’t so much as tried to send him a secret note telling him who he was or who she was to him, and now she intended to atone for that with a few empty gestures. Her woebegone face and clinging hand weren’t manifestations of any real affection for him; they were manifestations of her guilt and fear.
She was a frightened old woman, facing death with a guilty conscience; she was an arrogant, manipulative old woman who wanted to make quick atonement; and she didn’t want him to foil her by leaving too soon. In fact, she recovered from her bout of superficial distress almost immediately and inquired of him in a composed, impersonal tone, you be going back to London, or will it be Paris?”
,” Mitchell snapped, deciding to park her in the nearest chair and forgo the introductions in the living room. ’s getting late, and I want to take Caroline home.”
you plan to return to Chicago at some time in the future?”
weeks after I leave,” Mitchell replied, forcibly turning her toward an uncomfortable-looking antique chair right next to the entrance to the living room.
She stopped him from taking the first step toward it by angling her cane across the front of his knees. ’re coming back in a few weeks?”
Mitchell looked down at her ecstatic face and bright, tearful eyes, and a small boulder tore loose from the wall of indifference he’d erected and maintained against his unknown family members throughout his life. She was beaming at him and clutching his arm as if she couldn’t bear to let it go.
She reminded him of a cute little spider, heedless of his superior size and ready to brave the danger to those who venture near collapsing walls. He could have brushed her off his sleeve with a flick of his fingers, and even as he thought about doing exactly that, he heard himself say reassuringly, ’m building a house in Anguilla. I need to spend a couple of weeks there, and then I’ll be back.”
’m so glad!” she said, and impulsively pressed her parchment cheek against his arm to prove it. ’ve heard Anguilla is a beautiful island. There’s a hotel there that everyone is always talking about. Henry Bartlett goes there often,” she added, but her attention was returning to the delightful task she’d undertaken earlier and had yet to perform. ’s Matthew Farrell and his wife, Meredith Bancroft, over there. They’ve just returned from a trip to China. You’ve heard of them, I’m sure?”
,” Mitchell said, amazed to discover that he already knew—and actually liked—two people in that room.
Craning her neck, Olivia prepared to lead him into the fray. , who shall I introduce you to first?”
Farrell,” Mitchell promptly replied.
well, but we have to walk right past Evan and Henry Bartlett, so let’s start with them.” She tucked her hand through the crook of his arm, smiled eagerly, and urged him forward. Left with no other choice, Mitchell pasted a polite expression on his face and let her take the lead.
Cecil had obviously put the word out that Mitchell was present, and the word had spread swiftly, because the moment Mitchell entered the living room with Olivia on his arm, fascinated faces turned in their direction, scrutinizing him from head to foot. The conversation level dropped off, then erupted into smiling whispers.
Olivia took careful note of the favorable impact he was having and began taking tiny, slow steps so she could show him off longer. are causing quite a stir among the ladies!” she confided delightedly. After another sly glance around the room, she added, the married ones.”
Especiallythe married ones, Mitchell thought drily. He was a new stud being led into the stable—and a thoroughbred, too, if he was a Wyatt. As a potential lover, being a thoroughbred made him so much more desirable than the usual tennis instructor, physical trainer, or penniless artist.
He’d been playing in the big leagues, with people like these, forever—he knew all the games that were played and how to play them. He also knew how to win them. He was neither proud nor ashamed of his past successes, nor interested in trying to repeat them. In fact, his only reaction to the roomful of women who were currently looking him over was a sense of relief that Olivia was too old-fashioned to imagine what some of them were thinking.
She squeezed his arm to get his attention, and Mitchell tipped his head toward her. know what the ladies are thinking,” she informed him.
Startled, Mitchell said warily, do?”
She wagged her head in affirmation and dropped her voice to a happy whisper. ’re thinking you’re a dreamboat!”
Henry Bartlett didn’t think Mitchell was a dreamboat, Henry Bartlett knewexactly what Mitchell Wyatt was, and Henry Bartlett wanted Mitchell to know that. When Olivia said, , you’ve met Mitchell, haven’t you?” just as Cecil had instructed her to do, Bartlett’s frosty smile became a smirk.
,” he replied, crudely putting his right hand in his pocket instead of extending it to Mitchell. we met, however, Mitchell was a lot smaller.”
His unexpected answer threw Olivia into total confusion. ,” she said, must be thinking of someone else. You didn’t know Mitchell when he was small—”
think Henry is right,” Mitchell interrupted, directing his reply to Olivia while staring dispassionately at Bartlett. fact, I’ll bet Henry took me for my first plane ride.”