A Season of Hope by Christi Caldwell Page A

not seen him in months, and they’d not left off on the best of terms.
    “No, I imagine he isn’t happy about your last meeting .” Mother correctly interpreted the path Olivia’s thoughts had wandered down.
    Olivia shared a smile with her mother. “It was entirely an accident.”
    Her mother nodded, her face a solemn mask. “Oh, yes, yes. I’m certain of it.”
    “I mean, how was I ever to figure the earl would react so to my discourse on the European honeybee?”
    “Because, every prospective mate wants to hear how the male bee explodes upon copulation?”
    Olivia felt her cheeks go warm. “I didn’t say it in quite those terms, Mother.”
    “And I’m sure he marveled at your scientific brain, daughter.”
    Olivia chuckled. She’d happened to attend a rather dull scientific workshop at London Museum on Carolus Linnaeus’ work with the European honeybees. She’d only been in attendance because she’d known it to be the perfect place to ensure herself privacy from tedious Society members.
    Olivia had been nodding off when the speaker revealed that fascinating bit about the male bee. Said information had proved very useful when Lord Ellsworth had paid her court.
    “It was hardly amusing to your father .” Her mother’s disapproving tone interrupted her thoughts.
    No, it hadn’t been. Olivia lifted her shoulder in a little shrug. “How was I to have known the earl would react as he did?”
    Sick, to be exact. The earl’s complexion had gone a grossly shade of green and he’d hurried from the room ill.
    That had been the last time he’d made an appearance.
    Olivia frowned. Until today.
    Now, it would appear as though it were her time to become ill. A knot twisted in her stomach and she had to force back the dread that climbed up her throat.
    Mother took her hand. “You know you can’t avoid marriage forever.”
    “I know,” Olivia said, her voice flat to her own ears.
    Except she didn’t know it. She’d hoped that maybe, just maybe, she’d manage to escape the marriage noose.
    “Not all marriages are unhappy ones,” her mother continued. “Your sister…”
    “I know. Alexandra is beyond happy.”
    Her sister, wed to the 5 th Earl of Pembroke, was blissfully content. That hadn’t always been the case. Nathan had first broken dear Alexandra’s heart before doing right and soothing the shattered organ.
    “You could…”
    “Do you truly believe I can be happy with the earl, Mother?”
    Mother’s lips flattened into a single line.
    Olivia nodded. “I didn’t think so.”
    “But you were happy once .”
    Olivia jumped up from her seat, a hand up. “I don’t want to speak about it.”
    For nearly five years, she’d done a remarkable job of shoving memories of him to the side. How ironic that she had teased dear Alexandra over being in love, had mocked the emotion, only to then go and commit the very same faux pas.
    Olivia tried not thinking about the man she’d given her heart to. She didn’t allow herself to think of him during any waking moments. It was only at night when his memory would filter into her dreams. Those times she was unable to escape his grinning façade. The midnight black hair, unfashionably long by Society’s standards.
    He loved me.
    And he promised to return .
    But he hadn’t.
    For nearly five years, Olivia had honored his memory and the hope of his return by scaring off prospective bridegrooms. Only now was she forced to concede—he wasn’t coming back for her, and the time of childlike games would have to end. She could not remain the Marquess of Tewkesbury’s unwed daughter forever. Society left very few options for ladies outside of marriage.
    “He loved you,” her mother said.
    Olivia’s throat worked up and down. She wanted to clamp her hands over her ears and drown out those words. Damn her mother for raising his memory.
    “I was a mere child.”
    Her mother was as unrelenting as a pug tearing at one’s skirts. “You were eighteen.”
    Olivia’s