Chapter 30
Star’s hooves pounded the earth beneath Calliope as they raced across the front lawn toward the tree line. She delighted in the rush of wind pulling her hair from its clasps, the beat of her heart as it rammed against her ribs, and the sound of Edward’s laughter rising above it all.
“This is amazing!” he yelled over the drumbeat of hooves against packed dirt. “I haven’t done this in ages!”
Calliope whooped and tightened her thighs against the saddle before dropping her reins, tipping her head back, and spreading her arms out wide. The streak of wild blood within her sang. For just a moment, she felt finally, beautifully, blessedly free, and she enjoyed every delicious second of it.
Too soon, they came upon the edge of the woods, and Calliope took the reins once more, slowing Star’s pace.
Edward beamed. “I can’t believe we just did that.”
“You should do it more often,” Calliope replied, her voice thready with laughter. “God knows I wish I could.”
“You can.”
Calliope, still catching her breath, hadn’t really heard him. “Hmm?”
“You can ride like this more often,” he told her. “Here. With me.”
She swallowed. “If you’re trying to make your proposal sound more appealing, my lord, I dare say you are succeeding.”
“Good,” he replied, expertly handling the reins as his horse danced beneath him. “I should hate to make it easy for you to reject it.”
She stared at him, her heart flipping inside her chest.
Edward rubbed his hand over his mouth, then turned his attention back to the woods. “We can cut through the trees here. There’s still plenty to see.”
Calliope smiled and nudged Star into a trot behind Edward, relishing the woodsy scent of moss and bark as they entered the trees, the rhythmic babble of a brook as it dipped and swayed over root and stone, and the sigh of a much-longed-for midday breeze rustling the thick, cathedral-like canopy above them.
It was beautiful beyond compare, but as much as Calliope was enjoying herself, she regretted that Whitefawn and its surrounding land weren’t less enchanting, for it was only serving to make her decision all the more difficult.
Whatever she decided at the end of this week would determine the rest of her days. Where she spent them, who she spent them with, what she spent them doing, and the fear that she might make the wrong choice made her reluctant to choose at all.
Calliope had never been in a public house before, and she was quite certain her mother wouldn’t have wanted her in one now, if it weren’t for the fact that she was there with Edward.
Her mind transported her back to the train she and her mother had taken on their way to Whitefawn, during which Mrs. Hart had given her daughter a lecture on how best to use her feminine charms to woo the earl into marriage, including lessons on how precisely she should smile at the earl, how many times she should bat her lashes, and how many words she should use in a sentence (too many and he’d think her verbose; too few and he’d think her unopinionated).
“I thought men liked women who were unopinionated,” Calliope had quipped as she’d stared out the window, using her own mother’s words against her as the houses on the outskirts of the city transitioned into rolling fields.
“No, dear,” her mother replied. “They like women who share their same opinions, and who have enough knowledge at their disposal to converse to a degree that is proper.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Calliope intoned. “Silly me.”
And maybe that was true of some men, and quite possibly true of most men in the peerage, who had been told their whole lives that their opinions were the only ones that mattered.
But she had come to learn that Edward wasn’t like that.
He was not the entitled, pretentious snob she had thought him to be the night they’d met.
He took his position seriously because good, hard-working people depended on it, and he didn’t like being forced to marry for money any more than she liked being forced to marry for a title, but the difference between them was stark and simple:
Calliope could get out of it.
She did not have to marry a man of the peerage, and before Edward had come into her life, she’d had no desire to do so.
If Calliope left England at the end of the Season without a husband, as she’d intended from the beginning, and married an American who could double or even triple the family’s financial interests, Mrs. Hart would be momentarily disappointed but come to terms with it in time and no doubt find some other way to ingratiate herself with the Knickerbocker set.
Edward had no such way out. Not if he intended for Whitefawn to remain standing.
That was another thing Calliope had not expected to find in Edward that first night she’d met him: passion.
He was passionate about saving Whitefawn, and there were times, like when his horse was flying over the grass this morning, or when he looked at her as they discussed how many children they might have—or when he kissed her in darkened opera boxes, or defended her against brutish men—that she saw a fire burning within him that looked as though it took every ounce of strength he had to restrain it.
The raw power of it took her breath away, as did the desire to be the spark that kindled that flame.
She was also, she had to admit, falling in love with Whitefawn as well.
The house, the land, the woods, and now the village, with its stone cottages and winding cobbled streets, had all enchanted her beyond her wildest imaginings.
The trail Edward had taken through the trees had spilled them smack into the middle of the marketplace, where farmers were selling fresh vegetables and fruits, their baskets overflowing in sprays of bright oranges, greens, purples, reds, and yellows.
But that wasn’t all. They passed stores boasting wheels of fine, aged cheese and loaves of crusty bread and round honey cakes; stalls selling mulled cider, mint-infused lemonade, and strawberry candies.
There were also fine homespun wares, such as quilts and linens; pottery and basketry; as well as needlepoints far superior to anything Calliope had ever managed, despite spending over half her life learning the skill.
She could’ve spent hours perusing everything, and she could tell Edward knew it by the smile ghosting across his lips.
Much like the night they’d met, she’d wanted to wipe that smile right off his face.
Unlike the night they met, she wanted to achieve her goal by doing something he would not at all expect, such as kissing him in the middle of a busy marketplace.
Then she would be the one wearing a smug smile.
She would also be wearing his ring by the end of the night thanks to the scandal it would cause.
Still, the sights and sounds of the day, along with the conversation she’d had with Edward regarding the importance of keeping estates such as Whitefawn going, had more than endeared the English countryside and its people to her, giving her much to think about.
Was it possible for her to transition the object of her writings to preserving British landmarks of significant cultural and ecological worth?
And if she did, would the properties she’d been fighting to save in New York remain standing if her series for Charlie’s newspaper and subsequent book went unfinished?
It seemed for every answer that presented itself, a thousand more questions sprang up, keeping Calliope ever swirling in a carousel of uncertainty.
Now she and Edward sat in the village pub, The Goose and Feather, Edward leaning back in his seat, perusing the menu, while Calliope sat with her hands in her lap, wringing her napkin as all of these thoughts and more tumbled through her head.
The barmaid came around to take their orders, startling Calliope into realizing that she’d been so focused on Edward, she hadn’t yet looked at the menu herself.
“Oh.” She quickly scanned the paper. “I’ll take the roast beef sandwich, please.”
“And to drink?”
She gestured to Edward. “The same as him.”
“Very good, my lady,” the barmaid replied before disappearing into the crowd.
Edward arched a brow. “I didn’t realize you were a fan of dark ale.”
Calliope blinked. “Is that what I ordered?”
“You weren’t paying attention?”
“I have rather a lot on my mind.”
“I can tell. Would you like to share any of it?”
Share it? How could she possibly, when she didn’t know what to make of any of it herself?
“Would you allow my father to stay with us often?” The words blurted out of her mouth before she could stop them.
Edward shook his head as if he couldn’t have heard her correctly. “Pardon?”
“If we marry,” she said, her heart racing in her chest. If we marry? What was she asking? “Would my father be allowed to spend a considerable amount of time with us throughout the year?”
The waitress appeared again, setting down their ales and sandwiches.
“Do you think he would want to?” Edward inquired, placing his napkin on his lap.
“He is very fond of nature and often seeks respite away from the city,” she replied, eyeing the ale with trepidation.
Edward leaned back in his chair, amused. “It won’t kill you.”
“How do you know?”
“Trust me.”
She brought the glass to her lips and took the smallest sip, letting the dark liquid barely grace the tip of her tongue.
“Well? What do you think?”
She winced. “It tastes like muddy lake water.”
Edward laughed. “Would you like me to get you something else? I can go to the bar—”
“No, that’s all right,” she replied, taking another sip. “I’m sure it will grow on me.”
Edward stared at her a moment, impressed, before focusing his attention on his sandwich.
“I understand your father wanting to get away from the city, and of course he would be more than welcome for however long he wished to stay, but Hampshire is a long way from New York. It would be difficult to visit more than once per year. Wouldn’t he be missed at his office? ”
“I’ve been nagging him for years to train a successor to take his place. He worked his life away while I was younger, and it’s taken a toll on him. If I can convince him to allow others to take over the bulk of his work, I would like to offer him a place of rest here whenever he would like it.”
Edward’s brows arched at how official her last statement made everything sound. She colored slightly but, for the first time, didn’t feel the need to make it clear that nothing was decided.
“Besides,” she continued, taking another sip of her ale and instantly regretting it, “he’s not entirely sure what he’ll do with himself if I marry an Englishman. He doesn’t like the thought of me living so far away.”
“Whitefawn would be his home as long as he wished to stay,” Edward promised.
The swarm of butterflies started up again at the sincerity in his gaze, sending her heart into a tizzy.
“And your mother’s too, of course,” he added, although he did not sound quite as sincere on that score, which made Calliope laugh.
“Oh no,” she replied. “Let’s find reasons to hole her up in Mayfair during her visits.”
He chuckled. “Deal.”
Edward did not point out that Calliope was speaking on the matter of their marriage as if it were inevitable, but the weight of her words hung in the air between them anyway, and Calliope, more confused than ever, wondered what sort of spell Whitefawn and the village proper had cast on her that suddenly New York and her friends and her life there seemed too far away to be consequential to the life she could have here.
Or perhaps it wasn’t the estate or the charming marketplace or the kind farmers changing her mind at all. Perhaps it was the man seated in front of her, who had somehow gone from annoying her to no end to charming her at every turn.
Perhaps the man she thought she wouldn’t marry even if her life depended on it was the man she’d been waiting for all along, and she’d just been too proud to see it.
But was that worth everything she would lose?
Would she wake up one day as the mistress of Whitefawn and realize she’d made a grave error?
Or would she say goodbye to Edward and regain her life back in New York, only to spend the remainder of her days searching for a man who could never compare?