Free Ryman, Rebecca by Olivia, Jai

Drummond he has positive proof that when Barnabus
Slocum's sister from Brighton went missing last year and wasn't seen for a
week, she was with him—not Dave but this man we're talking about—for seven days
and seven nights. The
Slocums told everyone she had gone to the hills." She gasped for a fresh
supply of air and smiled triumphantly.
    Overwhelmed
by this barrage of unsolicited gossip, Olivia subjected her cousin to a stern
look. "Considering you're not allowed to even mention his name in this
house," she remarked drily, "you seem pretty well informed about the
man!"
    Estelle
tossed her head and pouted. "Well, you're the one who is dying of
curiosity. I'm only repeating what I know, what everybody knows. He doesn't give a
hoot who says what about him so why should you?"
    "Oh,
I don't! And just to get this straight, I am not 'dying of
curiosity' about the much-talked-about Mr. Raventhorne. I'm only trying to
figure out why I should have upset Lady Bridget so much." She frowned and
sucked on a lip. "But I haven't really, have I?"
    "No,
nor will you, I promise." Estelle swallowed a yawn and stared into her
empty biscuit tin with regret. "If I were you, I'd forget all about it.
Mama is unpredictable at the best of times; it's useless trying to get to the
bottom of her mind. And in any case," she opened her mouth and yawned
fully, "you're not likely to meet him again, are you?" She slipped
under her sheet and pulled down the mosquito-netting.
    "No,"
Olivia agreed slowly with a hand on the door knob. "I'm not likely to meet
him again."
    Unaccountably,
she felt a small twinge of regret.

    Future
prospects notwithstanding, some form of apology was certainly due to her aunt,
Olivia decided. Next morning—Sir Joshua having left for work earlier than
usual—she found Lady Bridget alone in her bedroom sipping tea.
    "I'm
extremely sorry about what happened last night, Lady Bridget," she began
without preamble as soon as a cold cheek had been presented for the morning
kiss. "If I hurt or offended you in any way, it was entirely without
intention."
    Lady
Bridget's cup rattled once as her hand shook. She did not look up to meet her
niece's eyes. "You are in no way to blame, child. I do know that. It's
not...," she swallowed, "not anything to worry about, but some ...
explanation is due to you. Josh will speak to you later. I ... we will consider
the matter closed . . ." Her voice faded and she turned away, again
visibly agitated.
    For
the moment there was nothing more to be said. The subject was not referred to
again through the day.
    Even
though it was too soon to expect mail from her father, Olivia had got into the
habit of writing to him almost every day. She also wrote regularly to Sally and
her boys, to other friends she had left behind and to her father's spinster
sister in Dublin, his only surviving relative still close to him. While she
waited impatiently for mail packets to start arriving from home and from
Honolulu, she found the enforced discipline therapeutic, for it assuaged her
homesickness. Normally she enjoyed writing letters, but this
morning, somehow, her concentration wavered. Instead of her thoughts dwelling
on what they should, they kept wandering back to Jai Raventhorne.
    What
lingered most in retrospect was not the physical man but the atmosphere he had
created around himself of something amorphous and indefinable. There seemed to
have emanated from his person a strange nervous, darting energy, almost a
turbulence, that on those river steps had packed the space between them with
tension. Beneath his occasional insolence there had been an underlying
hostility that baffled Olivia. No, she had not been comfortable in his
presence. As for his scandalous reputation, she paid it little heed; among her
father's friends she could name at least two whom various sheriffs would be
happy to accommodate as their guests, and there were many drawing-rooms in
Washington where her father himself was strictly non grata because of