"So far, this hasn't mentioned anything about Viscount Trotten or the Queen."

After a few minutes of reading Lady Whitley's account of parlor games and dances and the conspicuous advances of some poor guy by the name of Simon, Olivia put the little notebook down, a disappointed look on her face.

And then she sneezed so intensely that I felt her whole body shake next to me.

"Liv, why don't we get out of this dusty library?" I asked, trying not to laugh.

She pursed her lips, and I braced myself for her stubbornness. But she surprised me, saying, "Okay, Asher."

Clutching the journal in her hands, she stood and walked over creaking floorboards. I followed her with my eyes, not really believing it was that easy. Nothing with Olivia was ever easy.

She disappeared out of the double doors leading from the library, and I scrambled up, remembering our conversation earlier about falling through the floors into the basement. Olivia was fiercely independent—almost ridiculously so—but the ruinous Rosecrest Manor was not a place where I felt inclined to leave her on her own.

By the time I made it back out into the main hall, Olivia was already vanishing down another hallway.

"Olivia!" I called after her.

She paused, merely looking back with an arched brow. And because of that, I couldn't keep the exasperation from my voice. "Where are you going now?"

"You said we should leave the library, so I am exploring the rest of the house."

Stuffing my hands in my pockets to hide the clenched fists that would undoubtedly reveal my frustration, I strode toward her. "Is that really necessary?"

"Is what really necessary, Asher?"

"Do we really need to poke around this mess? It's obviously a wreck, Liv."

"Yes, obviously, it is a wreck." She stomped her heeled foot a little, and the floorboards wobbled hazardously beneath her. I gritted my teeth. "And I wonder whose fault that is, Mr. Graham?" she bit out.

I rolled my eyes. "I'm sorry if I didn't want to spend all of our money fixing an estate we would never visit."

"The only reason we wouldn't have visited is that you wouldn't have taken me." Her words were pointed and sharp. Then with a toss of her hair, she added, "You never took me anywhere."

With that, Olivia spun on her heel and continued into the depths of Rosecrest Manor.

"Fuck," I muttered. Why did I think this was going to go well?

Following her—again—I stepped carefully over a fallen door and down the darkened hallway. "I took you places," I retorted, my thoughts finally catching up with what she'd said. I'd been too busy thinking about how to get her out of here before.

"Oh yeah," she drawled, the sarcasm evident, just absolutely dripping. She didn't even look back at me as she tapped her way down the hallways in her heels. "Trips to Tesco do not count, Asher."

I once again rolled my eyes even though she couldn't see me. Although, that was probably for the best. "We went to fucking Fiji for our honeymoon, Liv."

Her dry laugh echoed through the cob-web covered space. "Are you really trying to use the one holiday that you are practically required to take as an example? That's rich. Really rich."

I took a deep breath to steady my nerves, inhaling the overwhelming musky scent of Rosecrest. Olivia had never mentioned wanting to go on more vacations before, and of course, now she was throwing it at me like I'd deprived her. The constant implications that I treated her poorly were grating on me today. Maybe there would have been a better way of going about doing this instead of sticking us together for an entire day.

"You have no idea where you're going," I called up to her, trying to catch up without breaking something or making a wrong step.

"I'm looking for another set of double doors," she said simply.

"What? Why?"

"Double doors means double the fun, obviously." She flicked her wrist in the air without turning around.

"You're crazy," I muttered lowly.

But somehow she heard me.

"I'm not crazy, Asher. You can tell by the doors what rooms were most important. The doorknobs, the framework, the material. The grander the entrance, the grander the room."

Olivia stopped then, and even in the shadows of the hallway, I could see her little grin. She faced a set of double doors, and sure enough, they were a different color than the others that lined the hall. I'm not sure what it had been in the 1800's, but now it was a slightly dirty, off-white hue. The effort into the details of it was apparent, though. A rusty gold trim lined the edges, and the doorknobs were made of chiseled, cloudy glass.

"Shall we test the theory?" She smiled at me, and it was a nice change. Even though I knew the smile was likely a spiteful one, I'd always loved how she would tilt one half of her mouth upwards like that.

"Go for it," I said, waving my hand at the set of doors before stuffing them in my slack pockets again.

She grabbed those knobs of glass, twisted, and pushed. Light streamed into the hall, surprising me. Olivia stepped into the glow, and instantly I heard her little gasp call out my name.

"Oh, Asher. Come here."

I groaned. I didn't like the sound of that. But I stepped into the room after her anyway. What else was there to do?

The problem was evident from the moment I strode into the luminous space. It wasn't just a room. Meaning that Olivia, unfortunately, was right.

The ceilings were two, maybe three, stories tall, sweeping high above us. Webbed chandeliers hung from corded stands; I counted four of them. And everything was gold. There was a gem-like shimmer all around despite the years of sitting vacant here in the English countryside.

"It's a ballroom!" Olivia squealed. She strode purposefully into the middle of the room, and spun in a tight circle, still clutching the notebook from the library.

"Yes, I can see that," I said, and my voice was as dry as the air in this place.

Olivia's feet stopped spinning, but her head kept turning, studying the room. Her slender figure was so solitary, so small, in this vast room. Her profile was tilted up as she admired the burnished gold ceiling, the incised designs still clear after all these years. I wish I could take a picture without her noticing. The sunlight hit Olivia's face perfectly. Shadows covered those golden eyes, but her pert little smile shone through.

Suddenly she spun around in a circle again, and I wondered—not for the first time—if Olivia had simply been born in the wrong era.

She glanced at me. "Well what are you just standing in the doorway for?"

My feet rocked forward. "And what is it that I am supposed to be doing?"

"We're in a ballroom. Use your common sense, Ash." She held out her hand.

"Oh no," I said, taking a step backward again. "I'm not dancing. You know I don't dance."

Her hand fell to her side, slapping against her leg right below the hem of her white sundress. But she didn't look disappointed. "Yes," she breathed. "I figured you'd say that."

Spinning around, Olivia made her way across the ballroom to the large curved windows. Every step reverberated throughout the space. When she reached the window, she wiped at the sill, presumably removing a handful of dust before propping herself on the ledge.

She opened up the little journal she found in the library and cleared her throat.

"Liv," I cut in. "You can just keep the journal. You don't need to read it right now."

She shut the book with unnecessary force and whipped her head up, glaring at me. "Could you try, for just once, to not ruin my fun? It won't be the same reading it at home." She glanced wistfully around the ballroom before poking her nose against the glass window pane. It was cloudy from years of weather, and I wondered if she could even see out of it.

I sighed. As much grief as she gave me, I hated disappointing her like that. I'd disappointed her a million times before, which was why we finally decided to just stop—just stop our marriage since I never made her happy. But I wanted to. I really did.

"Okay, Liv," I said, softening my tone. "Go ahead."

With a little smile, she glanced down again, carefully opening the journal.

"June 1868. Simon and Sawyer Pearce are really only good for one thing. And this is the fact that their mother, the ravishing Lady Farrington, is secretly the most famous woman in London. Do not tell diary, but my mother tells me she is the one and only Madame Mischief."

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