The Elusive Lord Everhart: The Rakes of Fallow Hall Series (18 page)

“Oh, but we have already surpassed mere friendship by leaps and bounds.”

With their backs to the corner of the room, he angled his body in such a way that his arm draped behind her. His touch came as a surprise, but still she did nothing to dislodge him. This was his way of taunting her in return, a challenge to see who would be the first to concede.

Slowly, he traced a finger along the inward curve of her spine and proceeded to draw meandering shapes. They were like hieroglyphics that her mind could not comprehend. However, her body was fully capable of deciphering them.

To the rest of the room, it must appear as if they were deciding on one particular sheet of music, for they each grasped a side of it. “Friends do not seduce one another,” he said, as if passing her the blame for his actions.

Her mouth watered, and she swallowed. “Then you must stop.”
Oh,
please
don’t stop
.

“I will, if you promise me one thing.” His fingers were relentless. They moved more suggestively, stroking up and then down, rubbing in circles at the very base of her spine where it surely was indecent.

She felt a primitive desire to roll her hips against his hand. “If it involves another episode of kissing in the map room, I’m afraid our last encounter—”

“It doesn’t,” he said, his voice a familiar rasp. It brought to mind echoes of the previous night. Likely, his eyes were dark onyx jewels rimmed with aquamarine at that very moment. “I won’t even be in the same room with you but far away on the opposite side of the manor.”

“All right, then,” she said, trying not to be disappointed. If he would take her hand and lead her from the music room right this instant, she didn’t think she would object. “What would you have me do?”

“After you have finished reading your book by the fire in your chamber this evening—”

“How could you know that?” she asked, turning her startled gaze to him. She was right; his eyes were dark. He was so close, all she would have to do was lift up on her toes and her lips would be against his.

Grinning, he gave her a slight pinch as if he knew the direction of her thoughts. “And when you stand up to cross the room toward your bed,” he continued, his voice mesmerizing, persuading her pulse to plummet down from her heart and settle between her thighs. The hand that was hidden from the rest of the room splayed over her hip, his fingertips gently molding her flesh. “You’ll slip out of your night rail, letting it fall heedlessly to the floor.”

She nodded, already imaging herself naked. Already picturing him there with her.

“When those wayward locks of hair brush against your shoulders,” he murmured. “I want you to remember what it felt like to have my lips against your flesh.”

It took a great deal of effort to turn away from him and pretend to study the music again. It took a great deal of effort to catch her breath. “Is that all?” she asked in a rather convincingly bored fashion.

Everhart chuckled. “I believe I have found our perfect duet.”

She blinked in order to focus on the title. It helped when he removed his hand.

Staring down at the title, a laugh escaped her. Even though it was in German, she recognized enough to translate it. “ ‘An Invitation to the Dance’?”
How absurdly . . . perfect
. Still, she shook her head. “It is a score for the piano. There are no lyrics for us to sing.”

“I’m certain that inventing some will not be a problem.” He turned his head to her ear once more. “Not for us.”

L
ate that night, Calliope slipped downstairs to the parlor. The house was quiet. Montwood’s soft lullabies on the piano had worked magic on the inhabitants of Fallow Hall. All except for her and, apparently, Duke.

The dog sat waiting outside the parlor, his head quirked as if he’d been expecting her.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she explained in a whisper.
Not with the end of my quest so near
.

Accepting her answer, he stood and wagged his tail. Thankfully, he wasn’t near enough to any tables to cause damage. She scratched him behind his ears as she stepped into the room. He followed, loping along beside her.

Holding her lamp high, she searched the room for the basket of clues. Duke offered a low
woof
, drawing her attention. Paws on the table where they’d played cards the previous evenings, he sniffed the basket in the center.

Her heart beat faster. Though her steps were quick as she crossed the room, it felt like an age had passed before she finally arrived.

“You are a very good boy, Duke. I completely forgive you for misleading me last night.” She rubbed his head and patted his neck, his tongue lolling off to the side. “Tomorrow, I’ll ask Mrs. Swan for a special bone for you.”

Setting down her taper, she took the basket in her hands and upended it. Folded scraps of foolscap skittered onto the table.

She held her breath. This was it. She would know in a single moment if the love-letter Casanova was here.

Drawing the first one from the pile, she studied the scrap carefully. The script was small and even, without a flourish.
Not a match
. The next one she’d written. The one after that had swooping, rounded letters that took up the entire space, as if it were a royal decree.
Pamela’s
. The following one was nondescript, every letter formed as if it had come from a tutor of penmanship. Casanova would never write with such a lack of finesse.

Now, there were only two remaining. Reaching out, she chose the one on the right. She opened it and let out a breath, noting a very sloppy, severely slanted script. Recalling what Brightwell had said about his hand injury, she imagined this was his.
Not a match
.

She didn’t allow herself to feel relief quite yet.

There was one left.
This could be it
, she told herself. She’d already found both hers and Pamela’s, so this last one belonged to one of the gentlemen. The candlelight flickered, and she realized she was breathing hard.

Placing a hand on her chest to keep her heart from leaping out, she opened the last one.

Calliope closed her eyes.
Not his. Not a match
. The handwriting was too perfect and without a flourish. And so, that meant Casanova was not here at Fallow Hall. She was correct to discount Danvers and Everhart. She even crossed Montwood off her list. More important, it was
not
Brightwell.

Relief swept over her. She hadn’t been wrong to refuse him after all. And yet . . .

Now she was back to where she’d been since the beginning. She still didn’t know Casanova’s identity. And the more time she spent with Everhart, the more desperate she was to find out.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

T
ension gripped Gabriel by the throat. The lighthearted mood he’d carried with him yesterday had evaporated during another sleepless night.

Playing at seduction with Calliope was going to kill him. He didn’t know what had come over him last night. Or the previous one, for that matter. Asking her to imagine his lips on her flesh had backfired. Because all night long, he’d known she was thinking about him as much as he’d been thinking about her.

He was taking a ridiculous risk by spending any time at all with her. With each and every encounter, he found himself more and more drawn to her. He thought of her constantly and found himself roaming about the manor simply to know where she was at any given time.

This had to stop.

“You appear inordinately preoccupied,” the Duke of Heathcoat said, standing beside the chair across from him. Gabriel’s father and grandmother had arrived a short time ago, along with the bespectacled family physician, who was now examining Gabriel’s leg with a series of indecipherable murmurs.

Gabriel cast his father the careless shrug he’d perfected over the course of his life. “I was just thinking of an expedition to South America and hoping our good doctor would proclaim me fit enough to disembark within the month. I hear von Humboldt will be returning there soon. Perhaps he wouldn’t mind a stowaway.”

After all, if Gabriel had something else to occupy his thoughts, he could remove Miss Croft from
all
of them.

Alistair Ridgeway stood up from his kneeling position and removed his pince-nez with a pinch of his thumb and forefinger. “The bone has set nicely. You were fortunate that it was such a small break and just above the ankle. It has been six weeks since the accident?” At Gabriel’s nod, Ridgeway continued. “Your movement will likely remain limited for a few more weeks, perhaps months, but I see no reason to resume the splint. What you need now is to strengthen the leg, but carefully. I would suggest that your valet continue to wrap it. Perhaps a shoe, but not a boot yet. You may begin to walk by using a cane.”

The fact that Gabriel had been doing that for weeks went unsaid. He merely nodded, glad to finally be rid of the blasted splint.

“Thank you. That will be all, Ridgeway,” the duke said, dismissing the doctor with the same severity as he spoke to everyone. After the door to the map room closed, he returned his attention to Gabriel. “You were fortunate this time.”

“Yes, I—” Gabriel stopped. The instant he met his father’s hard glare, he knew they were no longer speaking of the accident. No. They were speaking of the scandal surrounding it. Neither the gossips nor papers had ever breathed a word of it. Gabriel had paid to keep everything quiet. And yet, apparently his father had found out anyway. “There won’t be another.”

The duke issued a humorless laugh and set about wandering the room. “You have said that before.”

Begrudgingly, Gabriel admitted that was the truth. It now seemed like ages ago. He felt like a completely different person, in a way that he never had before. “Yes, well . . . this time, I mean it.”

“You’re only saying that because you want me to provide the funds for your expedition.”

“Not entirely.” There was no point in avoiding the truth with his father. “I do feel ashamed of my actions. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

The carriage accident and Lady Brightwell’s involvement had been a huge mistake. Nothing he would ever repeat. While he might be accustomed to letting people down with his actions, on that occasion he’d let himself down as well. He could not simply shrug off this mistake.

With a purse of his lips, the famed austerity in the duke’s expression was complete. “I do give you credit for not running away this time. Then again, much of that had to do with your leg, I’m sure.”

“My leg could have healed just as easily on a ship.” Gabriel stood in an effort to dispel the tightness climbing along the back of his neck and stretching across his shoulders. Testing the stockinged foot, he leaned forward on it. A sensation of pins and needles climbed up from his heel.

“Your mother would not have wanted you to go on another expedition.” The duke extended the cane that had been perched against the arm of the chair.

At the mere mention of her, the inescapable void she’d left behind was all the more apparent in the lines on his father’s face. It was almost as if his outer husk was crumbling. There was a time, Gabriel remembered, when his father hadn’t been so empty. When he was more man, husband, and father, rather than a
duke
.

Gabriel waved off the cane, earning his father’s growl of disapproval. “I disagree. She was the one who sent me on small adventures, preparing me for the larger ones later in life.”

“Perhaps when you were younger, but now that you are eight and twenty, I know that she would have expected you to put aside the waywardness of youth and find your rightful place.” The cane fell against the low table with a clatter, rousing the dog from his lounging place by the fire, ears slanted backward.

“This isn’t about Mother,” Gabriel said, feeling his own hackles rise as he turned, unsteadily, to face his father. “This is about what
you
want—what you’ve wanted all along.”

The Duke of Heathcoat released a slow breath. “Your mother and I were alike in this regard. We only desired your happiness and yes, part of that is dependent upon your assuming your rightful place as my son and heir.”

The pressure to live up to expectation surrounded Gabriel, closing in bit by bit. If it wasn’t his father or his grandmother, it was Montwood, Danvers, and Calliope.

Out of everyone, Calliope’s assault was the worst and because she expected nothing.
Not a damned thing!
Which—insanely enough—made him expect more from himself. He was used to the outer battles with others. But this inner war could kill him.

Gabriel felt a wave of panic rise up his throat. He wanted to run from it but couldn’t. It was inside him, forcing him to face his fears. “Do you realize that every conversation we have revolves around Briar Heath?”

“Because it is where you belong!”

“I
am honored that you would visit me here at Fallow Hall, Your Grace,” Pamela said, smiling serenely from one of the green chairs in the sitting room across the hall from her chamber.

Calliope fought the urge to shake her head in disbelief. Her cousin did not seem to be aware that she was in the presence of one of the
ton
’s elite. One could not simply speak to the Dowager Duchess of Heathcoat as if she were an equal or presume that she’d traveled all this distance to sit and chat with a baron’s wife, whom she’d never met with previously.

“Undoubtedly, you are.” The dowager duchess quirked her brow, incredulity in every arched wrinkle. Then, without another word, she shifted her attention to Calliope. “Miss Croft, my maid informs me that you are responsible for the fresh flowers in my rooms.”

Calliope felt as if a trapdoor yawned in front of her. If she accepted responsibility, then she could easily be perceived as taking advantage of her hosts by raiding the hothouse in an effort to win favor with the dowager duchess. On the other hand, if she explained that she’d been assisting in the management of Fallow Hall, then more questions would arise, along with the likely assumption that she had an understanding with one of the gentlemen here.