The Seduction of Lady X by Julia London Page B

realistic choice.”
    Startled by his honesty—or perhaps by the truth—Alexa suddenly stood and walked away from him.
    But Mr. Tolly casually followed. “As for me,” he continued, “I didn’t know my father’s identity until I reached my majority. I had only seen him from a distance. I can’t even tell you where the name Tolly comes from. I was shunned by proper society and my playmates were the children of servants. My mother sold the jewels she received from her lovers to bribe the headmaster of a proper boy’s school, who used her, took her jewelry, and still refused me. So she bargained with one of her benefactors to provide my tutoring.”
    “Mr. Tolly, you have said enough,” Alexa said. The color had bled out of her face. Olivia wasn’t certain it hadn’t bled out of hers, too; her heart and imagination were racing.
    “She sold her jewelry again to gain me an apprenticeship,” he doggedly continued. “Had it not been for that, I shudder to guess what my occupation would be today. I had no sponsor, no protection, and now that my mother is gone, I am utterly alone in this world, for I have no legitimate relations. That is the reality of your situation, Miss Hastings. Your sister is determined that you not be forced to the same fate as my mother, and that your child not grow up in the shadows.”
    Olivia was stunned. She’d never heard Mr. Tolly speak of his childhood and she’d never imagined it to be so hard. He gave off no hint of it now . . . which made him seem all the more remarkable to her.
    His remarks had some effect on Alexa, too. “I beg your pardon,” she said dramatically. “I am sorry. I am sorry, Harry.”
    “Harry!” Olivia exclaimed.
    “It’s all right,” Mr. Tolly said. “Alexa and I have endeavored to find some common ground.”
    “I do not mean to be unkind, Livi, and I do appreciate what he’s just told me. But I do not wish to marry him. I’ve been quite honest in that.”
    It was the worst sort of frustration, being unable to do anything for Alexa when she needed Olivia most. Not to mention being unable to make her face the truth about her situation. She was so blessedly naïve for a woman about to be a mother! “I understand,” Olivia said, trying not to sound angry. “It is not ideal for either of you. Mr. Tolly and I still hope to find an alternative.”
    Alexa snorted. “If there was an alternative, we would have thought of it already and taken it to your wretched husband.”
    Olivia could hardly dispute that.
    “If only Mamma lived,” Alexa added wistfully. “She’d know what to do. She always knew what to do, did she not?”
    Olivia clucked her tongue. “Mamma believed the answer to all her troubles was to marry well.”
    At Alexa’s startled look, Olivia shrugged. “When my father died, Mamma was arranging her marriage to Lord Hastings whilst in her widow’s weeds. And when your father died, she scarcely bothered with a mourning period at all, but fled to Italy in search of a third husband and found a willing Signor Ruffalo.” Her mother was not so different from Mr. Tolly’s mother, Olivia realized, in that all she had to bargain with was herself, and she’d had two children who depended on her.
    “But Mamma was in love with Signor Ruffalo,” Alexa argued.
    Olivia did not believe that for a moment. Her mother had been a true survivor. She’d maintained her position in society in the only way a widowed woman without inheritance could manage—she married well. Olivia had no idea what her mother truly felt for Signor Ruffalo, but she knew what her mother had needed. It was the same thing Mrs. Tolly had needed—security.
    Olivia’s mother and sister had been planning their visit to Spain when she passed away. A month before their planned departure, Olivia’s mother complained to her husband of feeling fatigued and had retired early. The next morning, her maid could not rouse her; she’d died in her sleep. Just like that, Bettina Hastings