Chapter 25
“It seems we were gone longer than I thought,” Edward remarked upon finding the room empty.
Calliope would have agreed with him had it not been for the fact that she could still smell the faint scent of her mother’s perfume in the air, as if she and the dowager had heard them coming and scrambled away.
She also imagined her mother’s and the dowager’s teacups would have still been warm to the touch had the butler not already disposed of them.
She spoke her presumption aloud, causing Edward to make a hmm sound in the back of his throat.
He turned toward her, his hands behind his back. “One would almost think they were up to something.”
Calliope met his gaze. “Almost.”
She watched his Adam’s apple roll down his throat.
“Thank you,” he said, his tone taking on a more formal quality than it had held previously and his posture becoming rigidly straight once more, as if realizing he’d let his guard fall much too far this evening. “For letting me show you our family’s history.”
“I enjoyed it,” she replied. “Truthfully, I could have examined its contents for hours, but now—”
“Now,” he said as both of their gazes landed on the clock on the mantelpiece, “it is getting late, and you have a day’s travel from which you must recuperate.”
She forced a smile, not really wanting to leave but also having no reason to stay. “Exactly.”
“Good night,” he murmured as she made to move past him, her shoulder brushing his. “Calliope.”
She glanced at him. This close, he blocked out the rest of the world, so that all she could see were the interlocking fibers of his dinner jacket and the crisp lines of his pressed white shirt. Her gaze drifted up to the hard line of his jaw and the fullness of his lips.
“Good night,” she replied. “Edward.”
There was a part of her—the part that vividly remembered her silly, little girl dreams of princes and fairy-tale castles—that wanted him to follow her.
For his hand to encircle her wrist and pull her close.
That wanted him to kiss her, not for practical reasons as he had done in the opera box, but because, like her, his feelings had become muddled, and he was beginning to think that perhaps, someday, there could be more between them than a mere business transaction masquerading as a marriage proposal.
But she knew better than that. Once this week was up, Calliope would refuse his proposal for good, and Edward would not darken her doorstep again, as detailed in their agreement. He would move on to another heiress who could save Whitefawn.
Calliope was nothing more than a bank account to him.
And he is nothing more than an interesting way to pass the time.
She tried to believe it, but the thought was growing more threadbare in her mind, pulling apart at the seams, and not for the first time, she worried her heart might not come out of this arrangement unscathed.
It terrified and fascinated her in equal measure.
She had never felt this way about a man, and for it to be the Earl of Hayward she found herself becoming so attracted to was incredibly inconvenient, considering she’d sworn to never marry him even if her life depended upon it.
Even so, she wanted him to stop her as she passed on her way out of the drawing room and was incredibly disappointed that he—
“Calliope?”
She turned much too quickly on her heel, almost stumbling forward once more but catching herself just in time. She cringed at the thought of what Madame Dupré would say if she saw one of her students almost fall flat on her face twice within the span of one evening. “Yes?”
He took a step forward.
Was he going to do it? Was he going to cross the room and take her in his arms once more?
“Do you remember,” he began, his gaze cast to the floor before finally meeting her own, “how to get to your room?”
“What?” She blinked, momentarily confused by the question. “Oh, um. Yes, I think so. Up the stairs, down the hallway to the, uh, left, the third door on the . . . right?”
He’d started shaking his head around the word ‘left,’ which had thoroughly discombobulated her. He laughed at the confusion so clearly etched on her brow. “Do you need an escort?”
She rolled her eyes at herself. “Yes, I guess I do.”
He offered his arm and she took it, hating how right, how safe she felt when she was at his side.
“This is it,” Edward announced upon approaching her bedchamber. “The Winter Room.”
“Fitting name for it,” she replied, letting go of his arm to stand in front of the door.
He smiled. “I hope you like it. I chose it for you myself.”
“Because I am so cold?” she teased.
“No,” he replied, his brows knitting together. “No. Because when I first saw you, you—”
He stopped, casting his gaze to the Turkish carpet runner beneath their feet.
“What?” she entreated.
“You reminded me of a snowflake. A wisp of enchantment conjured on a summer breeze.”
Her breath caught.
He laughed, a heavy, self-deprecating sound. “Ridiculous, I know.”
She swallowed. “It’s not. It’s beautiful. No one has ever said anything so lovely about me before.”
“Well, they should,” he told her, his armor slipping yet again. “You deserve to hear lovely things for the rest of your life.”
Now it was her turn to glance at the carpet and not know what to say.
He cleared his throat. “But if the room isn’t to your satisfaction, I can ask Mrs. Drake to prepare another—”
“I was only teasing, Edward,” she said, glancing up. “I love it.”
He exhaled. “That’s a relief.”
A moment of awkward silence passed between them. It seemed he did not want to say goodbye any more than she did.
Finally, he took her hand in his and brushed his lips across her knuckles. “Good night.”
“Good night,” she replied.
She watched him walk away, her heart tugging toward him, yearning for him to return in a most painful and inconvenient fashion, so that even when she had changed into her nightgown and slid into bed, she could not sleep for thoughts of Manhattan and Edward kaleidoscoping through her mind.
When he told her she was beautiful—that she was a ‘wisp of enchantment conjured on a summer breeze’—was it because he truly felt that way? And when he looked at her as if he could die for want of kissing her, was that real as well?
Though she knew it was a pointless exercise, that it wouldn’t do anyone any good, she wondered what would happen if she did marry the Earl of Hayward.
Would she awaken the day after her wedding to a cold, distant husband?
A greedy miser who had gotten what he wanted from her and now wanted nothing more to do with her?
Or would she awaken to a man who believed she was beautiful, who stared at her as if she were the only thing he could ever want in this world?
And could such a husband be worth everything she would leave behind, and everything she would undoubtedly face upon entering British society, if it meant she would be adored in such a fashion for the rest of her days?
When the sun rose the following morning, it did so to find her eyes open and her mind whirling, envisioning a future she had never imagined before—one in which Edward was hers, and she was his.
And for the first time, it did not sound so terrifying.
“When it comes to matters of appearance, it is vital that every young woman in search of a husband receive at minimum ten hours of sleep per night if she wishes to prevent unsightly half-moons from developing beneath her eyes, as well as premature wrinkling of the skin. This author recommends a strict bedtime of nine o’clock, with a waking hour no earlier than seven, except on those evenings when an invitation to an event is secured, in which case the lady in question must clear the following morning’s schedule to make up for the sleep she will miss the night before.
Perfect presentation begins with perfect sleep. ”
—Mrs. Marcell’s Book of Proper Etiquette, Second Edition