Free It Begins with a Kiss by Eileen Dreyer

of.
    Madame had turned away to leave Olivia in the foyer when she stopped. “The handsome English lord, he had a message, him.”
    Olivia started. She managed to focus on the sour-faced woman. Lightning lit the room in a blinding blue, briefly stealing her vision.
    “An English lord?” she echoed. The awful portent of those three words began to break through her confusion. “What English lord?”
    Thunder cracked overhead. Olivia stood dripping all over Madame’s tiled floor and waited for the inevitable.
    The woman actually smiled like a girl. “But, yes, the nice man, him, who arranged for the Bottomlys. He says you wait right here, and back he comes for you.”
    There was only one handsome Englishman still in Brussels who knew Olivia.
    Suddenly everything made perfect sense. Ignoring the departing Madame La Suire, Olivia spun around and grabbed her portmanteau and bandbox. She straightened to see that rain poured in sheets against the windows. Thunder pounded and growled, and the trees whipped in a frenzy. Lightning shuddered across the lowering sky.
    She couldn’t go out in that. She’d be drenched in a second. Yet she didn’t have a choice. Madame had already disappeared back into the kitchen, and there was no one else she could turn to for help. Besides, the men she’d been caring for were still outside, lying helpless in that deluge. She had to get back to help them.
    She had just balanced her things on one arm and reached for the door when it blew open. Before Olivia could react, Gervaise strolled in.
    He was dripping wet, his umbrella turned inside out from the wind. Even so, he looked perfectly put together, the rain only making his hair glisten. And he was smiling.
    Olivia detested that smile, for it seemed she was the only one who saw past it.
    “Excellent,” he said happily as he closed the door behind him and set his umbrella against the wall. “You waited for me.”
    Olivia fought the sheer terror those words incited. “I did no such thing. I was just on my way back to the medical tents.”
    Gervaise took a considered look out the window. “In this? I think not.”
    “In the last fires of Armageddon if I have to. Get out of my way, Gervaise.”
    He stepped closer instead, so close Olivia could smell the tobacco he used, the vetiver cologne he preferred. The mingled scents turned her stomach.
    She should have known. The minute she’d recognized him, she should have anticipated this very moment. She should have run.
    He let his gaze drift to the neck of her dress. “Are you still wearing it, Livvie?”
    It was all she could do to keep from reaching up and laying a protective hand against her chest, where her locket lay hidden beneath her dress.
    He smiled. “Does it really help?”
    Panic hit, a hot, sweat-producing urge to flee. Please God, don’t let him know .
    “It’s the least I can do,” she whispered.
    He nodded. “He was a beautiful boy. It’s so sad you couldn’t protect him.”
    Another well-dressed threat. A reference to what he had done. What he would do again if necessary.
    “It’s just one more thing I love about you, Livvie,” he said as if he meant it. “Your strong protective instincts. I could have helped, you know. Don’t you think I can now?”
    She thought he’d destroy her, just as he had before.
    Reaching up, he stroked a finger down her cheek. “You’re so brave, Livvie,” he said, his voice gentle and confiding. “I have to admit, I’m impressed. Going to the lengths of becoming a companion for one of the most odious cits I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet.” He flashed a mischievous smile. “She was aux anges when I happened on her in the Parc Royale. When I offered to help her flee the city, she was so grateful it never occurred to her to wonder why I wasn’t able to include you.”
    Olivia was trembling, and it made her furious. She deliberately stepped back. “Do you have my reticule?”
    “Only because I felt that if you had any money, you