Chapter 35
Dinner was a sumptuous five-course affair in which Calliope’s mother once again made overtures regarding stealing Edward’s cook right out from underneath him, to which he replied, “You are more than welcome to visit anytime you’d like to sample her fare,” while giving Calliope a knowing look.
Calliope glanced away, the war between her head and her heart growing louder as two possible futures sat on opposite sides of the table: Edward and the life they could lead together on one, Tommy and everything she’d left behind in New York on the other.
As the meal ended and the dowager countess stood to announce, “I think we’ll go through,” Tommy rose to his feet.
“Actually, Your Ladyship,” he said, inclining his head apologetically, “if you don’t mind, I think I will retire for the evening. My journey has left me feeling rather exhausted.”
“Yes, of course,” the dowager replied.
Calliope stood with the others, watching him as he circled his way around, stopping just in front of her and taking her hand, sneaking a small square of paper into her palm. “Good night, Callie girl.”
She kept the note hidden at her side as Tommy quit the room. It was only once he’d left that she glanced back at Edward—
And noticed him staring at her hand.
Had he seen?
She opened her mouth to say something to him—what exactly that would be, she had no idea—but then her mother was shooing her forward. “Come along, dear. We don’t want the tea to grow cold.”
“Of course the sea is old,” Aesop barked as he skirted the table. “What an odd thing to say.”
“Not ‘the sea is old,’ Soppy,” Bethilda screeched in his ear as she followed him into the foyer. “The tea grows cold.”
“Well, you don’t have to tell me that,” Aesop replied, his voice carrying back to Calliope and her mother as they followed them out of the dining room, Edward a few paces behind.
“I’ve been ready to go through for ages.
Thought I was going to die right there waiting for Margaret to finish her cake. ”
Even though there were several feet between them, Calliope felt the warmth of Edward’s gaze on her back. Glancing down as if she were merely admiring the scrolling pattern-work on the carpet, Calliope opened her palm just enough to read:
Complain of a headache. Meet me in the garden in ten minutes.
Passing notes undetected was a system that she, Tommy, Charlie, and Lenore had been perfecting their whole lives, and it brought on another wave of nostalgia and longing for home.
“Everything all right?” Edward asked, noticing her steps had slowed.
Calliope cleared her throat and tried to discreetly wipe away the tears clinging to her lashes. “No, actually. I . . . I have a bit of a headache. If you’ll excuse me.”
His hand twitched as if he wanted to reach out to her, to ask her not to do what she was about to do, but then it fell back at his side.
“Feel better,” he told her before brushing past and following the rest of the party into the drawing room.
She watched him go, wondering if she was making a mistake, meeting Tommy like this.
But he was her oldest friend, and he’d traveled three thousand miles to see her.
She couldn’t put him off. And so she ignored the way her heart tugged toward Edward, turning and forcing her feet to take her to the garden instead, where Tommy and everything he represented waited for her, reminding her of just how much was at stake.
The garden was dark, with only traces of amber light from the three gas lanterns encircling the balcony overhead. Calliope could just make out the shapes of the shrubbery around her, which had perked up immensely from the rain, and the trees beyond, limned in silver from the crescent moon.
She found Tommy seated on the edge of the inoperative fountain, his demeanor so much more relaxed than any gentleman with which she had come into contact since arriving on English soil.
It made her relax too. Helped her remember who she was outside of all of the parading around and house calls and lessons on the British aristocracy.
“You managed to sneak away.” His smile—which she could just make out in the silver and gold clash of moon and gaslight—did not quite reach his eyes. She also noticed his hair looking slightly disheveled, as if he’d been running his hands through it, trying to think of what to say.
“I did.” She bumped her shoulder against his. “What’s the big secret?”
He hesitated. “The funny thing is, I’m not quite sure where to begin.”
“Perhaps you should start with the real reason you decided to journey all the way across the Atlantic,” she suggested. “Is it your father? Did he pressure you to join the family business again?”
Tommy, being the eldest son, was the heir apparent to the brokerage empire his great-great-grandfather had built from the ground up, along with the fortune that went with it.
But Tommy, disagreeing with the old-fashioned way his father ran the business and believing he could increase profits by astronomical margins for both the company and its clients, started his own firm instead.
He was still getting it up and running, with only a handful of accounts, but his profit on every transaction far exceeded his father’s, and his clients were more than happy with his dealings.
He had even sat down with a Vanderbilt to discuss partnership opportunities, but he had not been at liberty to say which one.
“No, it isn’t him,” Tommy replied. “He still makes it a point of predicting my business will be closed by this time next year, even though we’re growing at a faster rate than the old firm ever has, but that’s not why I’ve come.”
Fear gripped her heart as a thought that had not occurred to her suddenly slammed into her brain.
“Is it Charlie?” she asked, half-rising. “Or Lenore? Are they okay?”
Tommy took her hands in his and gently drew her back down. “They are fine. Missing you terribly, but fine.”
Her brow furrowed. “Well, I know whatever it is couldn’t possibly have anything to do with me, so—”
“Actually, it does.” He swallowed. “It very much does.”
She tilted her head at the solemnity in his tone. It was not something she heard often from him. “What do you mean?”
“I wasn’t joking,” he told her, moving closer. Measuring his words. “When I asked you to marry me in that letter, I meant it. Every single word.”
For a moment, Calliope sat immobile. She couldn’t have been more shocked had the king himself jumped out of the bushes and yelled, “Boo!”
A burst of laughter escaped her. “Oh, Tommy, thank you! I could always count on you for a good joke. No one here knows how to tell one!”
He swallowed. “It’s not a joke.”
“But . . .” She blinked. “It has to be. I mean, you couldn’t possibly—”
“Why couldn’t I possibly?” he asked, not taking his eyes off her.
“Because we’re friends,” she replied. “We’ve always been friends.”
“Friends, yes. But for several years now, I’ve wanted more.
I tried to ignore it, knowing you didn’t feel the same way about me.
And then when your mother booked your passage to England, I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to move on.
Find some other girl to fall in love with.
” He smiled sadly as he shifted closer, so that their hips were nearly touching.
“One who would not break my heart so easily as you seem able to do.”
Calliope inhaled sharply. “What are you saying, Tommy?”
“Marry me, Callie,” he said. “Be my bride. Let me take you home to New York. Let me take you back to where you belong.”
Calliope stared at him. This couldn’t be happening. It had to be a joke. Marry him? How could she, when he’d only ever held her heart as a brother would? She loved him with everything she had inside of her, certainly, but not in that way.
And yet . . .
He was offering her a chance to go home, to resume her life as it was before her mother had come up with this ridiculous scheme.
She could go back to her articles, could see her work become the book of her dreams and celebrate it adorning bookstore shelves and home libraries.
She could dine with her friends; shop with Lenore; swim in the ocean at Newport; fish with her father at Tuxedo Lake; ride horses in Central Park.
Everything would be the same, with just one tiny change: Tommy’s ring on her finger.
It wouldn’t make her mother happy, but a marriage to Tommy would still be more than respectable, especially as his firm continued to rise in popularity.
But for all the things she would gain from such a marriage, she would lose something that might be even more valuable: a chance at true love.
Tommy did not make her heart race as Edward did.
He did not draw her to him with his mere presence like the moon draws the tides, nor make her imagine what their future children would look like.
But Tommy was safe and reliable, and she knew when he told her he loved her, he meant it, because he had nothing to gain from declaring such a thing.
He did not need her money as Edward did, and he did not seem to mind that marrying her would completely alter his lifestyle, forcing him to say goodbye to the bevy of debutantes throwing themselves at his feet.
But could Calliope be happy in a marriage built on warm friendship rather than romantic love, knowing Edward still lived and breathed an entire ocean away from her?
Her heart screamed at her to refuse him, but she could not deny that accepting Tommy would put her world back to rights, and so, instead, she asked, “Can I think about it?”
Tommy appeared disappointed but quickly hid it as he kissed the backs of her hands.
“Of course. Take all the time you need. Although . . . perhaps don’t take too long,” he told her, tilting his head in that charming way that had always been so natural for him. “I can’t imagine the dowager wants an American businessman taking up residence in her home any longer than necessary.”
A half-broken chuckle fell from her lips. “I’ve yet to meet a woman who would not relish the opportunity to have Tommy Daily under her roof for an extended period of time.”
He leaned forward, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “I don’t know if that’s true, but I can tell you there’s only one girl I want to be under the same roof with for an extended period of time, which is why I’m really hoping she’ll say yes.”
Squeezing his hands, Calliope rested her head on his shoulder and breathed in his familiar scent, a cascade of memories flooding through her.
They sat like that for several minutes, unspeaking, simply content to be in one another’s presence after so much time away, before Tommy helped her to her feet and escorted her inside.
She imagined, as she said good night to him and entered her bedroom, that the thoughts swirling through her head would force her to suffer another restless night’s sleep, but only seconds after Sara helped her change into her nightgown and combed out her hair, Calliope collapsed into bed and completely fell away from the world and everything in it.
The only thing she remembered when she awoke to the golden rays of a midmorning sun streaming through her bedroom windows were six adorable children playing and laughing in her dreams, each of them bearing her white-blond hair and Edward’s star-strewn eyes and begging her to take a chance on love.
But the dream soon faded into wisps of smoke, until all she remembered was the resolution she’d come to the night before.
She knew what she had to do.
She just hoped she had the strength to do it.
“The most successful marriage mart campaign is the one that ends in several proposals. From these, a debutante is given the freedom to choose her future husband after having weighed all of the necessary considerations. She may also choose to reject each proposal in turn if she believes she is capable of obtaining a superior offer the following Season, although she should do so with great trepidation, as there will be a whole new cache of debutantes against whom she will be forced to compete, and it is difficult to say whether the bloom will have gone off the rose in the time between one Season and the next.”
—Mrs. Marcell’s Book of Proper Etiquette, Second Edition