The Elusive Lord Everhart: The Rakes of Fallow Hall Series (26 page)

She clasped her hands over his chest and rested her chin on them, a smirk toying with her well-kissed lips. “What if I don’t want to marry the love-letter Casanova?”

“It is too late for that.” He kissed her impertinent smirk. “You’ve already given your consent in the many different ways you pleasured me.”

“Hmm,” she mused, pursing her lips as if she needed a moment to consider her options. “I suppose I did thoroughly ruin you.”

“Completely,” he agreed, grinning like a half-wit.

CHAPTER TWENTY

H
ours later, Calliope donned the same traveling costume she’d worn the day she’d arrived at Fallow Hall, but she never could have imagined how drastically her life would change during these past weeks. Abundant proof was in the telltale, albeit delicious, aches inside her body.

Gabriel indeed possessed a poet’s soul and a passionate nature. He was the perfect man for her. The
only
man for her. This was not a whim for him, after all. He’d declared his love for her. And they were getting married!

How strange would her brother think it of her marrying Everhart within a fortnight? As for own thoughts, she could hardly believe it. Yet her heart told her that the past five years had been nothing more than a trial to be borne in order to earn her happily ever after with Gabriel. Beaming from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, she drummed her fingertips over the door to Pamela’s bedchamber. “Cousin, are you awake? It is time for me to leave.”

Much to Calliope’s surprise, her cousin answered the door. Even more surprising, she was not in her morning dress but in traveling clothes, her hair arranged in an elegant coiffure.

“Pamela, you are looking remarkably well this morning.”

With a glance into the mirror, her cousin agreed. “Yes. It is time for us to leave Fallow Hall as well. Milton reminded me this morning that it has been nearly six weeks since the accident.”

Good for Brightwell
, Calliope mused. She supposed there was a limit to how much cosseting anyone could give. And Brightwell had indulged his wife a great deal already.

“I suppose it was silly to have stayed for so long,” Pamela said, turning to walk to the opposite end of the room. “But I so wanted to be near Lord Everhart.”

Calliope stiffened in shock. Gabriel was hers and hers alone. She felt compelled to explain this fact to her cousin. “I don’t see why
you
would want to be near Everhart.”

“I’m sure many a young woman, married or not, finds herself in love with him. Then again, I’m certain there aren’t many who can say they’d planned to run away with him,” she said on a sigh as she stood gazing out the window.

A prickle of unease draped over Calliope’s shoulders like a horsehair shawl. She stared at her cousin’s back, unable to speak. Surely, she didn’t know what she was saying.

“Oh, but that was before the accident,” Pamela continued. “It was my fault that he broke his leg. If I hadn’t leapt across the carriage to kiss him just as the driver turned a corner, we never would have tipped over.”

Unease gave way to the heavy weight of dread. Still, Calliope tried to convince herself that she’d misunderstood. Her cousin didn’t always make sense. “The accident . . . you were with Everhart?”

Until now, Calliope had never connected Gabriel’s broken leg and Pamela’s carriage accident.

Pamela looked over her shoulder with a dreamy smile on her lips. “He was always so attentive, asking me all sorts of questions about my family. Milton never asks. I don’t even think he likes my family. Lately, he’s been very cross with me, especially since I received the letter.”

The letter—
the one that Pamela claimed to have received not long after she arrived here at Fallow Hall. Calliope had nearly forgotten. It had been her sole purpose for extending her stay here, yet the urgency she’d felt about finding it seemed so far removed from where she was today.

Gabriel had never explained about Pamela’s letter. Was it a love letter as well or full of drivel?

Yet drivel or not, the letter obviously meant a great deal to her cousin. And if it meant nothing to Gabriel, then why would he keep it a secret?

None of the answers that came to her eased her worries.

Dizzy, she reached out and braced herself against a corner post of the bed. “You and Everhart were planning to run away together? You were going to leave Brightwell?” All the sudden, she recalled what the dowager duchess had said about Everhart’s convenient friendship with Brightwell and how competitive young men at that age were.
No
. . .

She shook her head, refusing to believe everything that had happened in the past few hours had been nothing more than a lie.
Or
a competition that had begun five years ago.

“Of course, Lord Everhart wasn’t nearly as friendly after you arrived.” Pamela pouted, and her words sparked a memory.
“Why doesn’t Everhart join us all for dinner any longer? He was always a consummate host before my cousin’s arrival. I wonder what has changed.”

“With my letter gone as well, I was left to languish,” her cousin continued. “Milton hardly smiled at all . . . until this morning, when he came into my room, having found my ivory patch box. He said it must have been in his own chamber all this time.” She gestured to the table beside her, where the box lay open, covered with a piece of unfolded parchment. “Can you believe the luck? Now I have my letter back, and every word speaks to my heart. I will cherish it whenever the diversions of
town
do not fulfill me.”

Calliope couldn’t stop staring at the table. “Is that your letter?”

“Oh, yes.” Her cousin picked it up and pressed it to her bosom on a sigh. Then, she crossed the room and held it out for Calliope. “Please read it and tell me if your heart does not fairly fly from your breast.”

Her hand shook as she reached for the letter. She turned away from Pamela, pretending to study it closely. In actuality, she feared her emotions would reveal themselves in her expression.

My dearest Pamela,

My heart yearns for the siren who captured it . . .

Siren?
Calliope could read no more. Her vision blurred. A sea of tears washed down her cheeks. This letter was not rhyming romantic drivel, like Gabriel’s others had been. These words were too similar to her own letter.

I am a fool
. A blind, overly romantic fool.

Then, one alarming truth struck her with crippling force—she had never been special to Gabriel. Not when he’d written the love letter. Not when he’d taken her on a sleigh ride. And not even last night when they’d . . .

“What do you think?” Pamela asked, her voice ebullient with excitement. “Is it not the most romantic letter you’ve ever read?”

Surreptitiously, Calliope wiped her cheeks and, without turning around, passed the letter back to Pamela. “It’s lovely, cousin. I wish I could stay and admire it more, but my carriage is waiting.”

Before she gave herself away, she rushed out of the room, down the hall—and directly into Everhart.

“O
of!”
Gabriel caught Calliope by the shoulders as she barreled into him from around the corner. “What’s this? Are you so anxious to see me that you’ve taken to running through the halls?”

He didn’t see the dampness of her cheeks or her red-rimmed eyes until she lifted her chin and stared straight at him.

“It was never me, was it?” She sniffed and lifted the back of her hand to swipe at the tip of her nose. “All those things you said last night, I . . . I was merely a diversion like all the others. A whim.”

Panic set Gabriel’s pulse racing. She’d just come from the direction of her cousin’s room. He could only guess what she’d heard. “You don’t believe that. You can’t, not after . . . We’ve made plans, Calliope. My carriage is waiting.”

“And when I arrive at my brother’s house, how many days, weeks, months,
years
will I wait for you?” She shook her head and took a step back.

He’d proposed in the letter and again this morning. He
was
going to marry her! Nothing else mattered. Couldn’t she see that? “You still have the letter. That is your proof, a binding contract, no matter what you may have heard.”

“The letter.” she scoffed. “I’ve been fooling myself for too long. I thought mine was special. I thought that
I
was—” She broke off and gave an angry shrug to dislodge his hands.

He released her, dropping his arms to his sides. Pamela’s missing letter must have been found. He should have told Calliope and explained everything last night. “You are special to me. You are everything to me. The letter I sent to your cousin was merely a chance to—”

“Don’t you mean a
second
chance?” she spat. “I believe your first chance was right before the carriage accident, when you were planning to run away with her. Your second chance of luring her away from her husband was in the guise of the letter.”

Bugger it all
. “I was not running away with your cousin. She misunderstood my friendship.” He’d been trying to explain that very thing to Pamela Brightwell that day.

“Friendship?” Calliope’s brows lifted, her mouth set in a grim line. “I seem to recall that you have no women friends.”

“I used the word in an effort to be polite to a member of your family. I couldn’t very well tell you that she was too bird-witted to understand that the sole reason I spoke with her was to glean information about you.”

Gabriel had thought Calliope was able to see past his façade to the real man beneath in a way that no one else had. Hadn’t she said as much when they were alone in the nook?

“Perhaps I was merely in love with the idea of him. Of what love could be like.”

His breath caught. Was she in love with the idea of the man who’d written that letter, or was she in love with
him
? Recalling every moment with her, he realized she’d never once told him that she loved him.

He had always been afraid of loving someone so completely that he was lost without her, that he would drift through the remainder of his days as a mere shell.

“Were you not alone in the carriage with my cousin moments before you broke your leg?” Calliope asked.

He gritted his teeth. “Yes.”

“And did you kiss my
married
cousin?”

“No.” But he could see that she did not believe him. Although it was ungentlemanly to explain, he said, “But she attempted to kiss me.”

“I’ve always been a romantic person. Too romantic.” She exhaled, her breath catching ever so slightly. “I should have expected this outcome.”

He was battling the Fates again. And losing. “You were right to expect more from me. You deserve everything.” Was he destined to lose her?

No. He refused to believe that, and yet . . .

He couldn’t force her to love him.

Calliope walked past him but paused. “I wish there had been a way to read the last page, Everhart. I never would have chosen this story.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

F
or the next week in Scotland, Calliope pretended that she was the same person Griffin and Delaney had left at Fallow Hall. She went on walks with her sister-in-law and visited shops in the village. She wrote to her parents and to each of her sisters, telling them all about the wonders of Brannaleigh Hall. Yet she did not mention a single day from her two weeks in Lincolnshire.

Those days were hers, and hers alone. Her mistakes. And if her brother caught her daydreaming, he did not think it unusual for her.

When a letter arrived from Fallow Hall, however, she could no longer pretend that she was the same. Everything had changed. She’d left her heart in shreds on the stone floors of Fallow Hall. Receiving the letter from that address was only a reminder. She stared at it for several minutes, her hand shaking.

“Are you unwell, Calliope?” Delaney asked from across the table in the cozy breakfast room.

Standing at the buffet, Griffin looked over his shoulder. His brow furrowed instantly in concern. “You’ve gone pale.”

“All the better for my complexion.” Calliope attempted a laugh, but even to her own ears it sounded a trifle
off
. Her brother and sister-in-law stared back at her with mirrored expressions of concern. “I suppose you could say that I’m homesick. As lovely as it is here, I miss the Temple of Muses on Finsbury Square.” Her favorite bookshop. Though the truth was, she no longer had the desire to read. Happy endings were mere fables, better left to children who’d never experience heartbreak.

In response, Griffin nodded and went back to filling his plate, and Delaney smiled warmly. This answer seemed to ease their worry.

“I feel the same about Haversham’s,” Delaney said. “With the Season beginning, there will be many new ribbon colors to choose.”

“And last Season’s ribbons?” Griffin crossed the room to his chair, pressing a kiss atop his wife’s head as he passed. “Did they all dissolve into nothing, or are they still bulging from drawers in your dressing chamber?”

“I’ve sent them to Mr. Harrison in preparation for the new school. I’ve spoken with the headmistress, and she and I both agree that every girl deserves a selection of ribbons.” Delaney beamed, deservedly pleased by her efforts at establishing a school for less fortunate girls. “With that said, I think we should make plans to return to London by week’s end.”

“Well, if it is a matter of ribbons, then
of course
we shall.” Griffin winked at Delaney.

“Only if you’ve settled your business here,” Delaney said. “I must say, you have been somewhat distracted since your last meeting, though you never gave a reason.”

“It was nothing. Some local half-wit spouting Homeric nonsense about being caught between Scylla and Charybdis.” Griffin glanced over to Calliope, his expression turning serious. “I hope that once your appetite for new novels is fed, then your appetite for food will improve as well.”