Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
W hen Rowan caught himself whistling as he sat at his desk the next morning, he snapped his quill down and frowned.
He hadn’t whistled in… well, he couldn’t remember. Too busy to whistle.
But he also could not remember the last time he’d felt so… happy, either.
Isabella’s fault.
He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. He’d chosen well. Last night proved it. All the weeks running up to last night proved it, too. She’d be an excellent wife in every way. He’d not propose yet. He wanted her full name before asking her to change it.
A short rap on the door preceded its opening, and Isabella poked her head in, grinning beneath a straw bonnet brim. He rose and had her in his arms within a few strides, pushed the bonnet back, untied its ribbons, flicked it aside, and sank into a deep kiss.
She let him. God, she let him, urged him on, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her lithe body against his. With a single kiss, she killed him. Pulling back and grinning at him, she brought him back to life.
“I did not expect you today,” he said, tugging her across the room and pulling her into his lap as he sat. A dam had broken, and he could not stop touching her, could not stop taking her in his arms, and feeling along every muscle as if she was his own.
“Shall I leave?”
He held her fast. “No, little sidhe .”
“You’ve said that before. What is it?”
“ Who is it. The fair folk who live in the fairy mounds in Ireland.”
“What are they like?”
“Depends on which one we’re talking about. Some are mischievous. Some will lead you to your death. Some will make you weep for their beauty.”
She fussed with his cravat. “Which one am I?”
“Hm.” He kissed her cheek, her temple. “Changeling I think. You stole up the real Isabella and took her place.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Why would I do that?”
“To make my life difficult.”
She gasped and popped out of his lap, and he laughed and pulled her back in, and then they were kissing and kissing and kissing, so sweet and soft, it might go on forever, sharing breath and touching tongues and letting the sunlight shift around them with each new hour.
When she broke away from him, he let her, needing breath, needing to think. He needed to wait , but how could he with her head resting sweetly on his shoulder.
She drew some pattern into his chest. “A changeling is not what they appear to be. Yes, perhaps that is right for me.”
“Tell me your name.” He could not stop the words from popping out, but damn they sounded pitiful, begging for any bit of her.
“I would like to. But… my brother's situation demands secrecy.”
“Once you have what you’re looking for, you’ll tell me? Your name.” Everything else as well.
She nodded. “You must understand that when I find it, I will steal it, and when that happens, Mr. Haws will likely raise hell for you. My actions have already risked his ire for the Hestia. All he must do is tell the right people that his property was stolen at the Hestia. If he ever discovers me snooping about, he’ll drag me to you and demand… something or other dire. Likely that you fire me.”
“Can’t do that. You don’t work for me.” He pinched the fabric of her skirt between thumb and forefinger, rubbing it, thinking. “I’ll kick him out. Once he’s at some other hotel, your snooping will not impact me.” A lie, that. He’d be worried about her. Each moment he was unsure where she was and what she was doing would be a knife in his gut. “Besides, blackguards are not allowed in my hotel. They are not allowed to hurt the people you love.”
She cupped his cheek. “He will spread rumors about the Hestia then, too.” Isabella slumped. “That gossip would be enough to dam the tide of guests here, to stop it entirely.”
“You’re saying that if you win, I lose.”
Her hand slipped away from his cheek, and her gaze slipped away from his.
Isabella should never have slumped shoulders. “Tell me what Mr. Haws has against your brother. Perhaps I can help in some other way. I’m quite a cunning fellow. I’m certain I can think of a different solution.” He kissed her temple. “We’ll find it together. Just as we’re securing the Blue Sheep together.”
After a pause of silence, she said, “Mr. Haws is blackmailing him. He has a letter that belongs to my family. With some compromising information in it. Your guest is pressing my brother to marry his daughter. Or he’ll send the letter to a newspaper, carefully selected, I’m sure, because of my family’s influence on certain broadsheets.”
She’d given a bit of herself away there. Her brother was perhaps a politician, serving in the House of Commons. Or he owned a newspaper or two. He was a plain man, then, like Rowan. A man who would not reject him at the very least. Whatever this letter contained…
Hell. A letter . A letter from Mr. Haws. Rowan slammed his eyes closed. He knew where the damn thing was. He’d held it. Haws had put it right into Rowan’s hand, and he’d slipped it into the iron floor safe hidden three doors away. He’d wondered why an old, fading letter needed such security. He knew now. It wasn’t parchment and ink to Haws. It was his daughter’s future .
Another clue about Isabella—her brother must be quite eligible. Or he owned something Haws wanted a stake in.
Hell. He squeezed Isabella more tightly, wanting to reveal the series of locks and buttons that would unlock the iron safe so nearby. He could not do that. The owner of Hotel Hestia could never open his safe to steal from his guests. No matter how much he wanted to.
“How much time does your brother have?” he asked. There had to be another way.
“My sister, the one you met last night—Imogen—has betrothed herself to a family friend to delay my brother’s engagement in favor of her own wedding. It is the most, I think, anyone can sacrifice to save him. They wed next month. After that, Samuel will have to announce the betrothal—” Her voice cracked, and she curled against him. “I have tried . I have tried so very hard to help him, to save him. But”—she thumped a tiny fist against his chest with surprising strength—“I have failed.” Another thump, her knuckles shining sharp and white, bone aching, skin screaming.
He rubbed them, tried to soothe them, soothe her. “ Shh . You haven’t failed. Shh .” She cried harder. The only thing that might stop her tears, he could give her. But he could not.
She sat up and pushed away, her eyes wet and bleak. “You do not understand. My parents adored one another. If your mother was your father’s pulse, my mother was my father’s everything. And she felt the same. The very first time I heard of the idea of romance, of being in love, I remember thinking, oh, I know what that is. I thought everyone had it. It was the color of my childhood, and it did not die with my parents.” She flattened her palms against his chest. “I know you understand this because I can see in how you speak of your parents their love did not die with them either.”
A hot coal of emotion climbed his throat, and he clung to her more tightly.
Her hands fisted, bunching silk, wrinkling his waistcoat. “Because they loved each other so well and held us safe in that love, we all survived. In our own ways and own times, and we have waited. To find a love like they had. Prudence, Lottie, Annie…” Her face softened, dr ifted toward a smile. “They are loved so well. But Samuel never will be.”
The deluge had started with a single tear, then two, and now she hid her face in his chest as she wept loud and long.
And he held her, arms crossing over her back, his heart willing her to give him her pain. He curled over and around her, hid his face in her neck, rubbing his hand up and down her slender back. Slender? Fragile today, like a willow wand, easily snapped.
Not in his presence. He’d snap a man’s spine before he let more pain enter her body.
He could help her. Dangerous, insistent idea. More insistent—this all-consuming need to protect her, to defend her, and care for her. It wasn't what he felt toward a possession or a partnership, toward Hestia or the admiral and Aunt Lavinia. It was different. The proclamations his mind made, the ones that rose deep from his chest, were very much like those his father had made for his mother, like those the admiral made for Lavinia.
He was in love. He wanted to give her everything.
He couldn’t .
The letter…
When she hiccupped herself, finally, into silence, she sat up straight. “I apologize. I—”
“No.” He brushed hair away from her face. “You needed that.” Such a simple sentence, but his voice wavered. Likely, because he could not stop what he was about to do. “When my mother died, my father was at sea. She’d been on her way home at night. A pickpocket with a knife took her life when she would not give him the meager pence she’d had in her pocket. I was alone that night, alone until the next day when a neighbor came by. The sun was so bright that morning I had to squint to see her face. She told me they’d found my mother’s body.” Her hand on his neck, tender. It helped him continue, “I cried… I don’t know how long. I cried alone, huddled in a corner of the room where we lived.”
“How old were you?”
“Ten. And when my father returned, he discovered the neighbor had been talking with a master sweep about taking me on. I was small, wiry. And she could not afford to fill my belly.”
“No!”
“My father saved me from a climbing boy’s fate, took me to sea. Then he died, too, tossed overboard during a storm. I’d been locked up tight and safe in the captain’s quarters. When the captain told me, the sun was bright, as if all the world were cheery and gay. It seemed to slice through the captain’s windows particularly to blind me. I cried again. This time the captain held me. I was twelve, and he let me cry, saying nothing.” He stroked a hand down her spine. “I am honored to be able to do the same for you.”
He'd do more for her.
He couldn’t . That damn letter.
A knock on the door made her jerk.
He held her tighter, scowling at the door. “Go away, Poppins.”
Another knock, then the door creaked open.
And Aunt Lavinia stepped inside. She froze, staring at them, her eyes blinking so fast she likely created enough wind to send a ship sailing.
Hell. Poor timing. He’d meant to put Aunt Lavinia off until he had Isabella’s full name. No waiting now. He stood, helping Isabella to her feet as well, steadying her when she seemed off-balance enough to topple right over.
“Good morning, Aunt,” he said. “I'd like you to meet Isabella, the woman I wrote you about.”
Lavinia stopped blinking, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh, I know Isabella.”
“Mrs. Garrison,” Isabella croaked out. She glanced at Rowan. “Did I hear you say she's your… aunt?” She looked back to Aunt Lavinia, every movement a hesitation. “But… you only have one son, whom you… a… dop… ted.” She said the final word drawn out, her gaze swinging slowly back to Rowan. Both hands jumped up to cover her mouth, and she dropped into the chair behind her.
“Do you know one another?” Rowan asked. How? Lavinia ran in the highest social circles. She was the daughter of an earl and the wife of a marquess’s youngest son, who just happened to make a hero of himself at sea. The light began to hurt Rowan’s eyes, and he backed away from Isabella and into the shadows behind his desk.
“Yes,” Aunt Lavinia said. “I have known Isabella since her birth.”
“How in hell could that be?” he barked.
Isabella clung to the chair arm. “I don’t know your son’s name. You never introduced him. But I am sure you’ve spoken of him. Richard? Colin?”
“Rowan.” Aunt Lavinia conquered the space between the door and the desk chair to tower above Isabella, above even Rowan, though she stood shorter than him. “He does not like to socialize with the peerage. Has always avoided it at all costs. He insists on shutting himself up in this hotel and lurking about in the darkness instead of meeting with any of the perfectly acceptable young ladies I’ve befriended for him. All of which, you can understand, leaves me considerably confused. Rowan.” His name a bark, a condemnation. “What are you doing alone with Lady Isabella Merriweather in your lap?”
A wave of water, grave cold and salty as tears, doused him through and through. God, he was going to drop to his knees like a ship was tossing beneath him. “L-lady?”
A rustle of skirts, then Isabella was peering up at him, her face pale and pinched. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Rowan Trent.”
“Lady?” He sounded like a damn parrot. “Who is your father? No. Your brother. Who is he?” He knew already her father was dead.
“The Duke of Clearford,” Aunt Lavinia said, “a man you’ve gone out of your way to avoid time and time again. And though I understand why, what with your history and all, it does seem rather cowardly, especially since I just found you alone with his sister on your lap .”
A duke. A bloody duke .
“Didn't you know?” Aunt Lavinia screeched.
“I've never heard her make a sound like that,” Isabella said.
“A duke?” The only word Rowan seemed capable of producing.
“I demand an explanation.” Against the laws of the natural world, Aunt Lavinia’s voice rose higher. “How long have the two of you been…” Her face seemed an explosion of reds. “Cavorting! How long have you been cavorting?”
“Only since last night, truly,” Isabella said .
Right as Rowan said, “We’re not cavorting at all.”
Isabella glared at him. “We’ve been… partners for several weeks now. We’re helping each other.”
Rowan glared right back. “I caught her stealing gossip from my guests. Why would you tell her about the cavor—” Hell, he wasn’t saying that word again. Not in front of Aunt Lavinia. “About last night?”
“I’ve known your aunt, your mother—” She broke off with a huff. “Why is this so deuced complicated? I’ve known Mrs. Garrison as long as I’ve been alive, and to know her is to do as she says.”
She did know Aunt Lavinia, then. “Let me put a new rule before you, Lady Isabella. You do not speak with her about our—” Bloody hell! “Our anything!”
“There is an our , though?” she asked. “It’s difficult to tell at the moment since you’re hiding behind this chair and appearing rather terrified.”
Terrified? He was… he was… who the hell knew! Felt a bit as if a cannon ball had ripped off his head.
“Oh!” Aunt Lavinia wobbled and fell against the desk, hanging her head. Before Rowan could round the desk to help her to a seat, she shot back upright and stomped a foot. “Sit, the both of you.”
Rowan rounded the chair, looked at it, then at the barren room. The chair Isabella currently sat in was the only chair in the room.
His aunt looked, too, found Isabella’s hat discarded in the middle of the bare floor. She threw her arms up. “An entire hotel of chairs and but one for yourself? Not even a place to set a bonnet!”
Isabella stood and strode for the door that led to the sitting room. She flung it open and marched inside. When no one followed, she poked her head back into his study and said, “Well? What are you waiting for?”
Rowan stretched out his arm to let his aunt go first and then followed her into the room. Or rather, he walked right into her when she froze just inside the doorway.
“What has happened here?” she demanded.
“Don't you like it?” Isabella asked. “I did most of it, but of course Rowan”—she coughed—“Mr. Trent, I mean, picked out all the pieces for the hotel. I merely moved them up here.”
“For what purpose?” Aunt Lavinia was wobbling again.
Rowan took her arm and led her to the sofa. “ You sit. We will tell you everything.”
She folded her hands precisely on her lap, and he and Isabella stood before her, telling the story in turns.
“Rowan needs this inn in Stevenage.”
“And Isabella needs a letter. Though I didn’t know it was a letter at the time.”
“We fashioned an arrangement that would allow us to secure both.”
The marital ruse, the Barlows’ unexpected stay at Hestia. No need to discuss last night, though. He wasn’t about to lay bare those details with the woman who’d been his mother for over half his life.
“The Barlows leave tomorrow,” Rowan said. “They intend to deliver their decision before they leave, though I am confident I know what it will be.” He smiled at Isabella.
She smiled back, and it felt like they were in this together. In everything together. “I agree. They do not have to announce it so dramatically.”
Aunt Lavinia cleared her throat. “And then this ruse is over?”
He watched Isabella’s grin melt away, feeling his own drain down to his feet. Over? But Aunt Lavinia knew what he wanted. He’d written that letter, and she appeared this morning expressly to demand more information.
But she had more information now, didn’t she?
So did Rowan.
Isabella was a duke’s sister. A lady. And that made all the difference. No matter how much Lavinia loved him, even she knew—ladies of that sort had nothing to do with men like Rowan.
A wave crashed over his head—cold, salty, drowning, filling his lungs, sinking his body to the bottomless murky depths no man had yet explored.
Both women were staring at him, the collected heat of their concentration as hot as the damn sun. He might sneeze any moment.
Over ?
“Rowan,” his aunt barked, “it will be over, will it not?”
“Rowan?” Isabella’s voice softer, her fingertips on his arm gentle yet probing.
“You are… you are a duke’s sister. And I am a sailor’s son.”
“Those do appear to be the facts,” Isabella snapped. “Last night you did not seem to care who I was as long as I was not a murderess.”
Aunt Lavinia laughed, a short hard sound.
“I did not even imagine you could be a lady . What lady roams London as she pleases, pretending to be a maid? What duke lets his sister do that?” Rowan stalked toward the windows, still open, always open these days. “I need to think.”
“Think?” Aunt Lavinia spoke over the rustle of silk and soft footsteps. Her next words were next to his shoulder. “You are a gentleman, Rowan, and she was discovered on your lap. The time for pretending is over.”
“Mrs. Garrison,” Isabella said from farther away, “please, do not… no matter what compromising position I am discovered in, I will not be forced into marriage. You were the only one who saw. I know you will not…”
Ruin Isabella’s life by insisting she marry a man well beneath her station in life? No, Aunt Lavinia would not do that.
“I’m quite busy,” Rowan said, pushing between the two women and into his study.
“And I’m taking Isabella home,” Aunt Lavinia called out from the sitting room.
“I’ll return tomorrow. Before the Barlows leave.” Isabella lingered in the door between the study and sitting room, but he did not look away from his desk, from the items cluttered there, indistinguishable from one another in his blurred line of vision. “Rowan? Are you well? You’ve gone all… still. Are you going to faint?” Her footsteps across the floor behind him, light and airy, then her hand on his shoulder.
He tightened his hands on the desk edge.
Lady Isabella Merriweather.
“I’m fine. Go.”
Her hand disappeared, her warmth trailing away from him to the sound of more soft footsteps .
Over?
He strode after her, caught her hand, and pulled her close, her pulse at her wrist beating beneath the pad of his thumb. A chuisle. A lady. That he’d not expected. Perhaps because he hadn’t wanted to. Did that mean it was over?
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, the words like bile in his throat.
But they gained a smile. A feather of a thing she gave him gladly. And it became a curved blade in his hands, sharp enough to cut through bone and muscle.
He released her, and she wandered back into the sitting room, joined Aunt Lavinia, who watched him with a blank face.
After they left, Rowan fell into the chair behind his desk. Damn. It smelled of Isabella.
Lady Isabella Merriweather.
He’d fallen in love with the sort of woman he could never have.