Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran

scenes printed in the newspaper, Marwick’s handwriting exerted a morbid fascination. Here, grief had made his hand shake. And here , his grief had darkened and twisted, becoming something so awful that it had finally silenced his pen completely.
    Bah. So he was human. What of it? He was a terrible human. She would not pity him.
    She moved on to the next drawer, which yielded a set of twine-bound folders. Within, she found drafts of speeches, records of parliamentary proceedings, notes on debates in the Commons and Lords.
    As she looked through them for Bertram’s name,she felt increasingly, unwillingly curious. Was this how politics got conducted? Documented here was a history of frustrated negotiations, of visions dashed by corruption and the recalcitrance of supposed allies. These papers did not tell of a puppet master, but of a man who struggled for compromises, and who employed elegant, impassioned rhetoric (here was a draft of one of Marwick’s most famous speeches, on the importance of primary education) to persuade others of the justness of his cause.
    These records belonged to an idealist.
    She shoved them away as if they burned.
    The final drawer yielded a slim stack of personal correspondence—very promising. Her heart leapt when she saw Bertram’s signature, but the next moment, she cast it down in disgust—it was only a note of thanks for a dinner party. The next sheet was a draft, much scribbled upon, concerning . . .
    A gasp escaped her. This was a love letter!
I have wracked my brain for a way to heal this breach between us. I promise you, Margaret, that you are wrong to think I don’t care for you. When I envision my life, you are at the center of it. Without you, I see only an Eden after the fall: empty, imperfect, broken . . .
    Her own curiosity suddenly revolted her. She cast down the letter. It had nothing to do with Bertram. She was not the kind of low woman who pried into other people’s business for pleasure.
    Or was she? Sometimes, lately, it seemed she was losing pieces of herself, all her most cherished convictions: I am innocent; I am wronged; I did not deserve any of this. Instead, she was discovering new things about herself, terrible things. Just look what she had done to Elizabeth.
    Elizabeth Chudderley led a fast life, treated her staff too familiarly, and offered no Christian example of temperance and virtue. But despite her life as a flibbertigibbet, she was also generous, thoughtful, and kind. She could have used the duchess’s letters to blackmail Marwick into endorsing her marriage to his brother. Instead, she had decided to do the honorable thing and hand them over to him.
    And so Olivia had stolen some and fled.
    But what choice had she had? For so long, Olivia’s only ambition had been to hide—first at the typing school, and then as a secretary to an elderly widow in Brighton, and finally, most happily, in Elizabeth’s employ.
    But at Elizabeth’s house party this summer, a guest had pulled Olivia aside to mention her resemblance to a portrait he had glimpsed in the private study of his friend Lord Bertram. Olivia had realized then that it was time to run again. For the first time, the thought had made her angry.
    She made herself retrieve the papers. But now she scanned them mechanically, her mind elsewhere.
    As a rash eighteen-year-old, she had assumed Bertram, being in his forties and somewhat wrinkled, would die soon enough. Seven years later, she knew differently. He might live for four more decades. And his mania was not fading. Her very existence was evidently an intolerable offense to him.
    Must she spend the next forty years in flight? Would she never be allowed to truly live ? For the first time, this summer, she had wondered if she might not try to fight instead of flee.
    Her opponent was far above her. Bertram was an aristocrat, with the resources to match his barony. But he had made a mistake. He had connived with the Duchess of Marwick, and she had