The Elusive Lord Everhart: The Rakes of Fallow Hall Series (24 page)

Frustrated, she stood and walked to the hearth to warm her hands. The mantel clock read midnight.

Instantly, the memory of kissing Everhart in the map room warmed more than her hands. She glanced at the crumpled pages on the desk and then to the door. The others would be abed by now. In Lincolnshire, people did not keep London hours. Therefore, it was entirely possible that she could speak directly to Everhart with no one the wiser.

Calliope was ashamed at how quickly her hand found the doorknob.

Then, like her first night here, Duke was there in the hallway. This time, instead of ignoring her, he began to wag his tail immediately, as if he’d been expecting her. Without delay, he led her down the hall to the stairs. At the bottom, he stopped and turned, as if to make sure she followed.

“Why, you sly matchmaker. You know exactly what you’re doing, don’t you?”

Duke gave a
woof
in answer.

She quickly bent down to scratch him behind the ears. “Shh . . . We mustn’t draw attention.”

He licked her hand, his tail wagging with exuberance. So much so, in fact, that he bumped a guéridon table and sent it tilting onto two of its three legs. Reaching out, she saved it just in time, catching the silver salver on top of it as well. Unfortunately, a stack of letters yet to be posted scattered to the floor.

After a quick peek over her shoulder to make sure none of the servants had heard, she kneeled down and picked up the letters. Duke’s enormous paws covered two of them. She tried to shoo him away, but his tongue lolled to the side, and his tail started wagging again as if this were a game.

Calliope couldn’t budge his paw. “If you could just”—she tried to lift it—“step off to the side.” She grunted and received a cold, wet nose to her ear as he sniffed her. With a huff, she sat back and shook her finger at him. Finally, his paw lifted, and she picked up the first letter and then the second.

However, just as she was prepared to return them to the salver with the others, something familiar caught her gaze. She looked closely at the letter addressed to Kinross.
Kinross
. . .

“The K,”
she whispered, staring down at the script. The slant. The flourish on the top. The tail on the bottom. She’d seen this K hundreds of times. Perhaps thousands.

Only one person wrote a K like this. Casanova was here after all. But how could that be? She’d read the Anagram clues in the parlor, and none of them had matched.

Slowly, as if she feared waking from a dream, she turned the letter over to examine the seal on the back.

In that same instant, it fell from her fingertips.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

F
rom the loft in the map room, Gabriel stared out the window. The moon shone so brightly that the stars were all but blotted from the sky. There was nothing in that dark expanse other than the bright white orb, hovering above the tree line.

Right now, he was waiting out the moon, listening to the low melody Montwood played, rooms away, on the piano and counting the hours until dawn.

He needed to see Calliope. A need that tempted him to traverse the darkened halls. There was so much to say. He needed to tell her about the letter and . . .

An unmistakable click of the map-room doors closing downstairs pulled him away from his thoughts. He was certain he’d closed the doors already before venturing up to the loft.

Stocking-footed, he made his way past the shelves and to the railing. The fire in the hearth burned brightly, illuminating the empty room below. The doors were still closed. Yet there was an unmistakable shadow rising along the wall, undulating in the light of the crackling fire. Someone was coming up the stairs.

Before he could call out to question who it was, his answer emerged from the circular staircase, beneath a fall of dark honey tresses.

His heart gave a jolt of longing. “Calliope, what are you doing here?”

“I needed to speak to you.” Without a glance, she skirted past him, making her way to the open room beyond the bookcases.

“I need to speak to you as well, but perhaps we should wait until morning.” Even he knew the temptation of having her here alone with him was too great. His gaze lingered on the tendrils spilling from her combs to brush against her bare shoulders and on those six pearl buttons. She had not changed after dinner and still wore her burgundy evening gown with white trim.

Still with her back to him, she shook her head. “This cannot wait.”

Her cool tone pricked an alarm within him.

“You don’t know my parents, Everhart,” she began, her voice barely above a whisper, “but they have this connection with each other that’s as elusive as it is tangible. I spent all of my life hoping to be as fortunate. I feared I’d never find it. The closest thing I came to feeling anything that powerful was when I immersed myself in a book. In those pages, I felt everything—love, fear, anguish, joy. It was all there. Only there. Until one day, I received a letter.”

It wasn’t until he heard the unmistakable crinkle of paper that he looked down to her hands. Every ounce of blood in his veins froze.

Turning slowly, she faced him. Her eyes reflected the shifting firelight from below, making them unreadable. She lifted a well-worn, yellowed page with a familiar tear at the bottom corner. “
This
letter.”

“Calliope, I—”

“When I read it,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard him, “something inside me altered. I felt as if the cover of
my
book had opened for the first time and the story of my heart was exposed. I read the longing in each word—a yearning so potent that it seemed to mirror my own. I thought I’d found the one who felt the same burgeoning passion that I did.” Her voice trembled. “I thought I’d found my soul mate.”

The firelight in her eyes turned liquid. The sight held Gabriel immobile. Seeing her pain, and knowing that he was the sole cause, was utter agony. Regret and anguish tore through him, ripping into his heart. “I was going to tell you.”

She lowered her chin, and her brows lifted in doubt. “And confess that it was only a lark for you?”

Gabriel shook his head, the only part of him he seemed able to command. “It wasn’t a lark.”

“Do you know what it felt like when the next letter was revealed?” She closed her eyes briefly as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. “Of course, no one knew it was the
next
letter, because I’d never revealed the first. Oh, but I knew. My only consolation was that her letter didn’t stir any souls. It was a simple rhyme that had no depth of feeling. At least”—her breathing hitched—“that’s what I’d told myself. Until the next letter arrived, and then the next. Six in all. Six chances for my heart to break a little more.”

He reached for her, but she shrank back two—
three
—steps. “I’m sorry, Calliope.”

A single tear caught the light as it swept down her cheek. “The worst part of all was the fact that I gave up on that dream. I decided love and marriage weren’t worth the pain. I didn’t need to marry. I would just read my books and take care of my parents and that would be my life.”

“No,” he commanded, but she went on, not hearing him.

“Then I grew bitter. I set about getting revenge. I was determined to unmask the love-letter Casanova and expose him to ridicule for playing with my heart. I kept a journal on every gentleman who showed possibility. I’d even had a few pages about you. I’m certain they would entertain you.”

When he shook his head again, she issued a short laugh, the sound hollow and dark.

“As time went on, and my anger gave way to disbelief, I convinced myself that the letter meant nothing. And I would do better to forget all about it. So, I gave my journal to my younger sisters and thought that my heart would mend.”

She searched his face, as if seeking an answer for the cruelty he’d wrought on her heart. “What I learned instead—what
you
helped me understand—is that a person might be able to mend the spine of a book, but a broken heart never heals. It remains splintered around the edges and breaks a little easier after the first time. I have proof of that in my hand. I never got rid of the letter. I’ve read it thousands of times until it’s worn and nearly transparent. I know every word, every letter, every flourish.”

“Calliope, I never intended to—”

“That’s why, when I saw this, I stopped in my tracks.” She held the sealed missive aloft in front of the letter in the same hand. “A letter to Kinross. A perfectly innocent letter, and yet there was a single thing that stood out.” The tip of her index finger traced the address. “You pen a very distinct
K
, Lord Everhart. A flourish on the top and a tail on the bottom.”

He’d hurt her. He’d let her down. It was killing him. He’d gone over every possible way to confess to her but had come up with nothing, time and again. For him, revealing her brother’s threat would be unconscionable. Croft had only been protecting his sister, after all. Gabriel should have protected Calliope too. He should have risked everything for her. He should have been worthy of her love from the beginning. Instead, he’d broken her heart.

He was going to lose her forever if he didn’t say something. “I love you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “
That
is how you choose to explain your actions?” She released an exhale, her shoulders sagging as the letters drifted to the floor. “Forgive me if I choose not to believe any more of your lies.”

“I’ve always loved you. Since that first night we met at Almack’s.” He stepped forward and took her hands before she could leave. “You’ve told me your story, and now it is my turn.”

“Wouldn’t you rather run away? Plan your next expedition?” She jerked her hands free. Even though her words came out harsh, her eyes told him how weary she felt. “We need not see each other again.”

She swept past him.

No
. He couldn’t lose her. Not now. Not when he finally had the courage to go after what he wanted most. “I don’t want to run from the truth any longer, and there is no reason for you to start.”

He managed to stop her at the top of the stairs but felt powerless, knowing that he couldn’t force her to stay. Yet she surprised him by lingering, her hand gripping the rail, her knuckles turning white.

This was his last chance. “I’ve already told you about the phoenix feather and dragon’s eye and how I’ve found them together over the years. I found them the evening we first met as well. They were lying side by side, directly outside Almack’s. Just waiting in the corner of one of the steps, as if I was meant to find them together. As if I was meant to be reminded of the missing string of white bells.” He took a breath. “But that night, I found those too.”

Still, she kept her back to him, prepared to bolt.

He quickly continued. “I tucked the feather and the stone in my pocket and climbed the stairs. Inside, not two steps from the ballroom doors, I saw those bells. A sprig of lilies of the valley. A simple adornment that stole the breath from my body.”

Gabriel took a step closer, his throat raw with a sudden wave of emotion at the memory. “Your head was turned. All the candlelight in the room focused on your face. And suddenly I knew.
I
knew
.”

On a sharp intake of breath, her hand slipped from the rail. She didn’t say a word, but he sensed something shift inside her.

“I didn’t want to believe in love at first sight. I fought it for months.” Stepping close enough to feel the silk of her gown brush his legs, he dared to take her hand. This time, she didn’t pull free. “But I could never stay away from you. I’d hoped that being among the circle of friends around you and Brightwell would give me the opportunity to catalog your flaws. I’d wanted to convince myself that I was wrong. Instead, I ended up liking you in spite of my efforts. Your wit, your brightness, those absurd little things you say that seem to come directly from a novel—I loved them all.” He loved them still.

Turning her head, she searched his gaze, her brow furrowed in confusion. “What about the others? Would you be having the same conversation if any of them had discovered your secret?”

He shook his head. “I wrote those other letters—those terrible lines of drivel—out of guilt and fear. The guilt because of what I’d done to Brightwell, and the fear because you were getting too close, asking too many questions. You even wanted to know if I’d had ink on my fingertips.”

“I remember,” she whispered, her expression tender yet wary.

“I was afraid of discovery.” He drew in a breath, preparing to reveal the truth. “I was afraid of loving you.”

C
alliope drew in a breath, startled by Gabriel’s admission. All of it.

He loves me?
When he’d first said it, she thought it was another of his tactics of distraction. But hearing his voice crack just now, seeing the vulnerability in his eyes, made her want to believe him more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life.

However, she knew better than to trust this feeling. “You hurt me. More than I care to admit. You could be saying anything to ease your own guilt, or to keep me from exposing your secret.”

“And now, my secret
and
my fate lie in your hands.” As he spoke, he slowly started to walk backward through the row of shelves, pulling her along with him, his grip light enough that she could let go at any time. “Come away from the stairs, please. I know I don’t deserve it, but I’d like one more chance to explain.”

Frustrated that she couldn’t will herself to leave, she lashed out at him. “
One
more? You’ve had five years.”

Her accusation hit the target. He winced. “You have every right to despise me.”

She should turn, walk down the stairs, and take her broken heart with her. But she wanted answers first. “Why would you be afraid of loving me?”

Gabriel drew her closer in nearly imperceptible movements. A subtle turn. A breath. A touch. His fingers threaded through hers, his thumb gliding along the sensitive inner curve between her thumb and forefinger. Before she knew it, they were less than a half step apart.