Chapter 27 #2
My hand flew to my stomach. We had several inappropriate situations between us, but we didn’t speak of them. Especially not in this house. “Have you been drinking?”
His grin widened at my question. “No. Am I acting too joyful this evening?”
He definitely was. I shook my head, feeling the sooner I delivered Hattie’s message, the better.
“Well, I hope the message I have from Hattie brings you even more joy. You will be a regular Brookhouse before we know it.”
The warm smile fractured and he furrowed his brow. “Miss Pryor has a message for me?”
I nodded.
His smile was completely gone now. “Not you?”
I shook my head.
He was so close, it wouldn’t take any effort at all for him to reach his hand up to my cheek and hold it again like he had just before he’d kissed me. But he was in his right mind now. That was never going to happen.
“If that is so,” he said, taking a half-step away from me. “Why didn’t she simply tell me herself?”
All the pent-up energy in my limbs and chest made a quick escape through my throat—a strange, strangled laugh I couldn’t hold back. “I don’t know and I agree wholeheartedly.”
“You didn’t want to meet here?”
“No.” I put my hands out, palms facing him and shook my head. “I wouldn’t have been so foolish or so dramatic.”
“Ah,” he said, and the determination in which he’d entered the room faded like last vestiges of light when curtains were drawn.
His shoulders drooped and his gaze fell to his boots.
One hand went to the back of his neck and he tugged down, breathing slow and deep.
The force that had linked us from the beginning tugged at me.
But I couldn’t go to him. I couldn’t do anything.
He was the reason Hattie’s eyes lit up with pleasure.
Her heart had been his for years. With an exhale, he dropped his hand and lifted his dappled eyes to mine. “Are you certain?”
“Of course.” I lifted my chin, but it quivered. I balled my hand into my skirt, willing myself to stop shaking. I held his gaze even though the vulnerability in his was shredding the outer layers of my heart. “What reason could I have to meet you, if not for Hattie?”
“That’s something I’ve asked myself a thousand times this evening.
I came here with a hope I didn’t know I was capable of.
I’ve spent the last hour pacing in anticipation of finding you here.
I would have been here sooner if Mrs. Wickerton hadn’t found me in the corridor and peppered me with questions about my woman in white.
So when you tell me you are only in this room by Hattie’s request, I must admit to a fair amount of disappointment. ”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You don’t?” His eyes searched mine. “Then tell me this. Do you have any idea what seeing you in that wrap has done to me?”
I closed my eyes and leaned against the bookcase. I couldn’t look at him, not when his eyes burned like a sunrise breaking through the dim light of dawn.
“Evelyn.”
I shook my head. “Stop.”
He was silent.
“I’m only here to tell you Hattie would like you to wait until at least the end of the house party to propose.”
“To you?”
My eyes flew open and my hand went to my heart. “No,” I said breathlessly. “To her.”
Captain Calder tipped his head to one side and studied me again. “That cannot be right.”
“Lieutenant Davis told me about the glove you carried into every battle. You’ve been practically engaged for six years.”
“That was a mistake.”
“A mistake?” I stepped closer to him. A part of me had worried for him.
I saw heartache in his eyes tonight. Even though I knew it made no sense, and that I was vain for even considering his heartache had anything to do with me, I assumed he felt torn between this .
. . force between us and his duty and love for Harriet.
I could understand that. I could have wept over the anguish it caused and might continue to cause us, but calling Harriet a mistake?
Impossible. “My cousin is one of the best and kindest humans in England.”
He stood his ground so calmly I had to fight the urge to shove him away. “I will not argue over that with you. She was kind to me when I desperately needed it.”
“And this is how you repay her?”
“Miss Pryor has no designs on me and I have none on her.”
“You don’t think Hattie wants to marry you?”
“I know she doesn’t.”
“Why do you say that? Because of Lieutenant Brookhouse? Perhaps she is simply trying not to make her preference for you obvious.”
“But she doesn’t prefer me. And while I don’t know her heart, I do know I never made her smile the way Brookhouse does.”
“Then why are we here, Captain?”
His eyes dropped to my mouth. “I think it safe for me to assume it is not so I could have the opportunity of kissing you when I was certain to remember it.”
The room was silent . . . distractingly so.
When he spoke again, his voice rolled over me. “It is rather unfair, isn’t it? That you know what my mouth feels like, and I’ve had to muddle through with only my imagination.”
There was the softest of touches on the tip of my smallest finger. I inhaled sharply. He’d inched closer, his head bent down, examining the place our fingers touched.