Chapter 31 #2
Over the dowager countess’s shoulder, Edward noticed Great-Aunt Bethilda taking advantage of the game’s disruption to check everyone else’s cards against her own.
Of course, she couldn’t see well enough to determine who was actually paying attention as she took cards straight from Tilly’s hands.
Tilly, apparently used to such hijinks, handed the cards over one by one, looking rather bored of it all.
Aesop arched a thick, woolly brow and waved his hand toward Edward and Calliope. “What about—?”
“I’ll accompany Edward and Miss Hart before retiring for the evening,” the dowager replied, slipping away from the table to stand before them. “They won’t get into any mischief, I can assure you.”
Aesop narrowed his gaze as if determining whether some trick was afoot, but then he sighed and made his way to the table.
“All right, but you don’t know what you’re getting these ladies into.
I was the whist champion of Aberdeen in my youth.
Move over Bethy, and for goodness’ sake, keep track of your cards,” he told Bethilda as he took his seat, pushing over two tricks that had belonged to the dowager countess, much to Bethilda’s delight.
Edward’s mother moved toward Edward and Calliope.
“Quick,” she whispered, “before anyone else decides to join in.”
Smiling conspiratorially, the three of them exited the parlor and headed for the music room.
Once they arrived, the dowager countess stood to the side of the door. “If you two don’t mind, I’ll head on to my room from here.”
Edward frowned. “Is your head really bothering you?”
“Not in the slightest,” she replied. “But it isn’t often a hostess is able to make such an escape from a house party, and there is a book on my nightstand I’d love to finish reading tonight. I trust the two of you will get on fine on your own?”
Edward and Calliope met each other’s gaze and quicky looked away.
Edward’s mother, missing nothing, smiled and placed a kiss on Edward’s cheek. “Good night, darling.”
“Good night, Mother,” he replied.
With a swish of her skirts, the dowager continued down the hall toward the staircase.
Edward turned to Calliope, motioning for her to step inside the room. “After you.”
He tried to see the music room through Calliope’s eyes as she took a turn about the space, studying the landscape painted across all four walls by Thomas Gainsborough in the late eighteenth century.
It was a mural of the English countryside that had ignited Edward’s imagination as a youth, when he’d steal away into this room to make believe himself a pirate who had stumbled upon the land of the fairies.
He’d had to be careful of the various instruments displayed throughout the space, particularly the flute, which he’d had a penchant for knocking off its pedestal.
He remembered a time in which he’d dented the barrel during a particularly boisterous battle with a rival pirate crew played by the village children, so that there was a high-pitched whistling sound that echoed throughout the room when it was played by a visiting duke the following month, much to his mother’s chagrin.
Edward shared the story with Calliope as she trailed her fingers along a cello situated by the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the garden terrace.
“Were you in trouble?”
Edward grinned. “Let’s just say Nanny was not allowed to let me out of her sight for the rest of the summer.”
Calliope moved to the pianoforte. “Do you play?”
Edward shook his head. “Not well, I’m afraid. Mother insisted on lessons, but my heart was never in it.”
“Why?” she asked, taking a seat at the bench, a ribbon of hair grazing her exposed neckline. “Don’t you like music?”
He stood next to her, his hands knotted behind his back. Could she hear his heart hammering against his chest? He was certain she must, for it sounded as loud as thunder in his own ears.
“I do,” he replied. “Very much. But my head was always full of adventure, and I could never calm it long enough to pay attention.”
She arched a brow. “What changed?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you say you were a boy who loved adventure, and from what I gathered from the conversation I had with your farmer, Mr. Connelly, you were a high-spirited child who loved to lead the village children in make-believe games, and yet most of the time I have known you, you have been rigidly proper, as if afraid to let yourself go and enjoy the present moment.”
“Most of the time?” he teased, drawing closer.
Her cheeks colored beneath his gaze. “Well, it wasn’t particularly proper of you, an earl, to do the farmwork you were doing this afternoon.
I can’t imagine your mother or anyone else in the peerage would have been pleased to see you doing such a thing, although as an American, I appreciated it immensely. ”
“You did?”
She nodded as her fingers began moving deftly over the keys, playing a lilting melody he believed belonged to Mozart, or perhaps that more recent composer, Debussy.
“We believe in working hard for what is earned, and the fact that you are willing to do whatever it takes to see Whitefawn succeed, even to the point of digging in the dirt yourself, does you credit.”
“I’m happy to hear it,” Edward said, taking another step forward so that he stood directly behind her. “What else?”
Her playing, which had been perfect up to that moment, fumbled slightly. “Well, there was of course the, um”—she swallowed—“opera box.”
Edward watched the line of her neck tighten at the memory.
“Have I apologized for that yet?” he asked.
She stopped playing as her gaze met his. “Do you feel that you need to?”
He cleared his throat. “Well, as you say, it wasn’t entirely proper.”
“But it was logical,” she replied. “Your reasoning. As you said, there are certain aspects to consider when one is determining whether they should spend the rest of their life with someone.”
“And what was the result of our experiment?” he asked, his body drawing closer to hers as if of its own accord, and hers responding in kind as her blush deepened.
“Well, I . . . I think it showed that we could get along very well in that regard.”
A breathless moment passed as they stared into each other’s eyes. But then, as if coming back to herself, Calliope blinked and, looking away from him, resumed playing.
He watched her for a moment, taking in the delicate curve of her jaw, the gentle slope of her nose, the shape of her lips, and felt that he might as well have been asking for the moon, thinking he could make this woman, who must have been crafted from the stars of heaven themselves, his wife.
Surely she had been made for someone much better than himself, and he felt a right fool, wanting her to be his.
But it did not stop the wanting. If anything, the ache only grew.
And without even knowing it, she had hit the nail on the head.
Somewhere along the way, he had lost his adventurous spirit.
It was partly from growing up, he was sure—how easy it was to lose one’s truest self beneath the weight of obligation—but mostly from losing his father and bearing the responsibilities of all that had followed.
But Calliope had reawakened that part of him that dared to dream, that dared to hope, that dared to fight for what he wanted.
He didn’t want to lose that part of himself again, not now that he was just beginning to rediscover it, and he feared very much that if he lost Calliope, not only would he suffer the pangs of a broken heart, but the devastation of a broken spirit, and having gone through it once already through the death of his father, he did not imagine he could survive it a second time.
He was quite certain he would turn into a curmudgeon who could rival Scrooge himself, and then he would be of no use to anyone.
“Calliope.”
She turned. For a moment, he couldn’t believe she’d heard him; her name had been barely more than a breath on his lips. But she was looking at him with a mixture of hope and expectation in her eyes that made him nearly forget what it was he wanted to say.
“I feel I must amend my proposal.”
Her brows arched. “Oh?”
“I need you to know . . .”
He hesitated, uncertain if this was the right move, but knowing he could not go a second longer without it being said.
“It’s no longer just a business arrangement for me,” he continued.
“Over the past few weeks I’ve spent with you, something has happened.
You’ve inspired a great shift within me that I want to see continue.
You’re . . . you’re making me remember who I am.
Who I was always meant to be. I didn’t kiss you in that opera box because it felt like the logical thing to do.
I did it because I wanted to. Because you stir something inside of me that makes me lose my mind for want of you.
I . . .” He took a deep breath. “I think I’m falling in love with you. ”
Whatever she’d been expecting him to say, it wasn’t this. In her surprise, she scooted back an inch on the bench, but she might as well have crossed to the far wall, the distance felt so great.
“I don’t expect you to feel the same way about me,” he resumed, his heart fracturing as she stared at the piano keys to keep from looking at him.
“But as you consider my proposal, I wanted you to know, it’s no longer just about Whitefawn.
It’s about me, and the fact that I truly do not think I could be happy with anyone else. ”
“Edward . . .” she began, her voice heavy as she continued to stare at anything but him, as if trying to determine how to let him down easy.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t say anything now. I just wanted you to know that everything has changed for me, and if you think that perhaps, at some point, you might feel something similar, well . . . I ask that you take that into consideration when regarding my proposal.”
Finally, she met his gaze. “Of course.”
They stared at each other for a moment, as if the entire world had fallen away and all that remained was the two of them. Edward held his breath, hoping she would return his sentiments.
But, of course, she did not.
“Perhaps we should be getting back to the drawing room before the others form a search party?” he asked, breaking the silence.
“You go,” she said, taking a shaky breath. “I need a moment alone.”
Leaving her was the last thing he wanted to do, but he stood and promised to send a footman to stand outside the door and escort her back once she was ready.
He did not return to the drawing room, but instead retired to his study, where he promised himself he would spend the rest of the evening looking over ledgers and balancing the accounts and not thinking of the fact that he had just put his heart on the line, and now he waited with bated breath to see what would become of it if Calliope chose another path.
One that led her back to New York and far away from him.