“Not now, Louisa,” Max growled. His grip tightened on Olivia’s hand, and he tried to move his body between her and Louisa. Then Max lost his footing. His arm swung in a wide circle as he tried to catch his balance. He twisted around and gripped Olivia’s waist. His momentum pushed her off-balance as well, and her right foot slipped out from under her. They executed a strange slow-motion dance movement before tumbling to the ice. Max’s arm wrapped around her at the last minute, and he took the brunt of the fall with her landing on top of him.
“Oh my! Are you two hurt?” Ginny exclaimed.
Olivia couldn’t answer. All her breath had been knocked from her lungs in the fall. She raised her head and stared down at Max’s face.
He grimaced. “Sorry. You all right?”
Olivia nodded. She sucked in a deep breath slowly through her nose, filling her lungs back up. “Yes. You?”
His eyes twinkled. “You are in my arms. I’m not complaining.” He squeezed her waist where his arm still banded around her.
Olivia felt her face flush hot. Max’s lean hard body pressed against hers from shoulder to thigh. How would it feel to be this close unencumbered with all these layers of clothing? Somewhere private where she could run her hands across his muscled chest and press her lips to his throat right where his pulse raced. She stared at the spot hidden by his cravat. Would the skin be smooth or scratchy with stubble?
Max’s lips inches from hers, curled up into a slow smile as though he knew exactly what she was thinking. He was incorrigible! She pushed against his chest to lever up, and he grunted.
“Oh, sorry!” She scrambled off him to her knees.
Ginny held out a hand to help her get to her feet. “Thank you,” Olivia said as she brushed snow from her skirts.
Max lay on the ice staring up at the sky.
“Max, aren’t you going to get up?” Louisa asked him.
“No, I’ll never manage it. This is my life now. Promise you’ll come to visit me when I’m a snowman.”
The girls giggled. Olivia shook her head and held out a hand. “Come on. We’ll help you.”
Ginny also offered her hand, and between the two of them, they managed to get Max to his feet. He looked longingly at the bank. “Ginny, would you be a dear and get me to dry land so I can take these blasted things off?”
Olivia watched him shuffle slowly across the pond as he held onto his sister’s arm. She chuckled. He really did look like a geriatric penguin.
Chapter Sixteen
Olivia sipped hertea while her friends chatted around her. The library was always their meeting spot, the coziest room at Belhaven. Situated on the second floor of one of the turrets, it had an odd octagonal shape. But Henry had shelves custom built in to house her book collection, and she had chosen upholstered chairs that were made for comfort to create a seating area in the middle. The room’s one window was tall and narrow, soaring up eight feet and bringing in much-needed sunlight on this winter afternoon. Opposite the window, a fire roared cheerfully in a Pantheon stove.
She couldn’t concentrate on the conversation around her. Instead, her mind kept rolling over Max’s comments from earlier at the pond. As much as she had decided to focus on her future and not dwell on their past, she increasingly needed to know why Max had severed their friendship so callously. A long while ago, she had come to terms with the fact that Max had moved on to more exciting things—that their feelings had just been a product of adolescent infatuation. But his words today seem to belie all those assumptions.
Blast it. She was doing it again, mooning over Maxwell Drake! Analyzing every comment, overthinking every interaction. No more. She needed to get Max out of her system. The trouble was that his presence was frying her wits every time he was near. She couldn’t stop thinking about kissing his full lips, exploring that broad muscled chest, and tasting his tanned skin. He was an all too handsome distraction, to be sure. Olivia huffed out a frustrated breath.
“What’s wrong? You don’t like the idea of reading aloud?” Charlotte asked.
Olivia blinked and forced herself to concentrate on her friends’ conversation. “Pardon? Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”
“I was just saying that we should read the new letters aloud as opposed to passing them around,” Charlotte said.
“But who is brave enough to read aloud? We all know how explicit some of the letters can be.” Eleanor blushed.
“I will,” Olivia offered. She had already read them with Max, and they didn’t contain anything racy; in fact, they were rather sad. She picked up a letter.
My dearest love,
Your letter tore my heart from my chest. I cannot bear the thought that you would marry another, that you have no choice in the matter. Your words of love are little balm for my soul when I know you are trapped in a life you do not choose. I berate myself every day that I am not the man you need me to be. My soldier’s pension barely keeps the roof over my mother’s head, and only the talent of my prose allows me enough to feed and clothe myself. Mrs. T’s good recommendation might afford me my next commission, but alas, I can’t give you the life you are used to, the life you deserve. I feel that I am drowning in the stormy sea, our love a ship that is lost to me, growing smaller and smaller on the horizon.
Yours always, J
Olivia laid down the letter on the table. “I feel as though we are eavesdropping on his pain and desperation. Poor man.”
Susanna sniffled. “He is giving up on them. I can feel it.”