Chapter 10
Untangling the length of twine binding a stack of estate correspondences, Graeme lifted his eyes to the clock… again. Five minutes late. A wiser man would take this as a sign to return to reason, to stay at the desk and finish the tenant accounts, to play the solicitor and nothing more.
But he was not feeling particularly wise.
In fact, he was feeling—
The door opened.
Miss Whittington swept inside with a breeze of orange blossoms, a hopeful smile, and her usual poise. “What enterprise today, Mr. Ellison? Have you a list of broken teacups requiring inventory?”
“Only if you insist on documenting each chip and crack yourself,” he said, masking his grin by pretending to straighten the parchments before him. “Though I confess I’ve lost heart for indoor tasks.”
She lifted a brow. “An ailment I had not thought capable of afflicting you.”
“The sun is wickedly persuasive,” he said with a peek at the nearest window. “Shall we risk Mrs. Redshaw’s ire? We will take the work to the garden and claim virtue for having read estate accounts in fresh air.”
Miss Whittington gave a sham sigh of defeat. “I should not like to be held responsible for a clerk led astray by good weather.”
“You mistake me for a disciplined man.”
Her responding laugh tugged something tight and pleasing inside him. “Is this rebellion?” she teased. “I should have thought you too steady for such impulses.”
She would not have used the word steady if she could hear his heartbeat.
Notably leaving both ledgers and correspondences on the desk, he offered his arm. When she took it—so easily, without hesitation or question—his pulse stuttered. He had offered her an escort before. But this, for a brief moment, felt different. Felt… natural, and altogether dangerous.
They left the maid behind in the study and stepped into the warm hush of early afternoon. Bees buzzed low over the hedges, the gravel path gleaming pale under the sun.
Miss Whittington inhaled deeply, then let a contented sigh escape. “One can almost forget what strain of duty presses indoors.”
“That is precisely my intention.”
Their steps slowed where the path narrowed, lined by parterres and a trickle of water from a garden fountain.
“Tell me, Mr. Ellison,” she began, eyes not on him but forward, as though the air itself had pried loose a lingering question. “How did you come into the Earl of Collumby’s service? Or did you always intend to be a solicitor to a peer once you traded indigo for law?”
Graeme kept his gaze ahead lest he betray the truth on his face.
“We crossed paths in London. The earl never expected to inherit, and so once the estate solicitor found him and broke the news, that once humble gentleman desired a man of law, his own, not one tied to the estate. The cordial Mr. Ellison won his favor for the task, having offered legal advice previously.”
That, at least, was true. He spoke easier when he could share truths, even if she would understand the meaning differently.
Her lips curved. “A ringing endorsement of your talents.”
“It suited us both, he needing unbiased perspective on inheritance matters and the learned Mr. Ellison wanting the challenge.”
“And so, you walked away from your father’s business,” she said softly, as though filing the fact with respectful curiosity. “How noble. Did the earl approve of such independence?”
“As it happened, the learned gentleman in question required no endorsement from anyone on the matter.” Another half-truth, but spoken with just as much wryness as remembrance.
“How long have you known him, only since the inheritance?”
“Err… longer.” He racked his memory, searching for another grain of truth, namely when one Mr. Lockwood of the severed line had met one Mr. Ellison, Esq. “Perhaps five years.”
She hummed, stealing a glance up at him beneath tremulous eyelashes. “He must have been persuasive to acquire you. Tell me you did not find a bee in your bonnet and suddenly decide to cast in with aristocrats.”
“Not a bee,” he said cautiously. “Something more like… disquiet.”
She looked at him fully, then, eyes wide and unguarded. “I understand disquiet very well.”
And he believed her. Perhaps more deeply than she suspected.
That she fell into her own thoughts rather than question his meaning was a relief, for he did not know how to answer without exposing more of his life than he ought.
They passed beneath a rose arch where he paused at the fork in the path. The sunlight fell warm across her hair, coaxing mahogany depths from her dark curls.
“And what of you and the late earl?” he asked. “You had said your father exchanged letters with him this summer. Did you, as well?”
“No,” she answered without hesitation. “The man was a stranger to me. All of this is still rather… strange to me.” She gestured around the grand garden, then let her hand fall, as though the moment had revealed something vulnerable she had not intended.
He let that sit for a beat, then, gently, said, “And yet, here you are.”
“Yes, and here I am.” Her smile tipped, wry and a little sad. “For that matter, here you are, Mr. Ellison. We are both in places we were never meant to be.”
Something pricked at him. Not pity so much as kinship. As if a string had been tied between them in that small remark, drawn taut by shared displacement.
“Tell me,” he said as he steered them down the shaded walk where the cherub stood sentinel, its marble face angled skyward. “If you had your choice of destination, where would you be?”
“Anywhere without a ledger!” She laughed gaily at first, but then, after seeing something in his face he could not himself see, she added with a somber brow, “Anywhere a man cannot take it upon himself to decide my worth.”
His breath stilled. Her words, however lightheartedly said, held honesty. He also heard the bruised thread beneath them.
Swallowing, he braved, “Would you hold it against me if I said you are decidedly worth knowing?”
Her stride faltered.
He steadied her with a hand cradled beneath her elbow.
She said nothing at first, only tugged at a curl and looked from the cherub to the distant treetops, as though the world had become too fragile to stand still beneath.
Before he could apologize for the remark or claim it a jest, she tipped her head towards him with a returning spark. “And what of you, Mr. Ellison? Have you ever met an earl before all this?”
Graeme’s mouth tugged in rueful amusement. “Only one. I… endured the encounter.”
“You’ll forgive me, but the way you carry yourself, I had assumed attendance amongst nobles.”
“I assure you, if I appear polished, it is merely the reflection of my spectacles.”
Her laugh, this time, was full of music and bright with surprise. Something inside him yielded. He reached out without thinking and tucked the curl behind her ear. The contact was brief, but his thumb brushed her cheek. The warmth lingered.
“Now your turn, Miss Whittington. Have you ever met an earl?”
“Yes and no,” she said with a self-conscious titter.
“I’ve been introduced to several noblemen at soirees, but no one I could later meet in a crowd and claim familiarity.
No one, that is, except a marchioness and, through her, the marquess, but the acquaintance is one of circumstance rather than intimacy.
That is the extent of my illustrious friendships.
You see, nothing so grand compared to your position as the great advisor to an earl. ”
He chuckled. “Not so great, only a modest man treading in boots too large for him.”
“You are not the humble clerk you claim to be,” she said, low and direct. “You speak as if you were born to command. I see it every time you step forward. There is nothing of the timid about you.”
His chest tightened. “And yet my training is… insufficient for what’s required.”
“No man needs training to prove good character. A pox on titles and fortunes. Courage is what gives a man stature, and I see before me a brave man stepping into daunting responsibility.”
He stopped.
So did she.
Sunlight filtered through a passing cloud. Her gaze was bold and unrelenting; her chin lifted just enough to keep her dignity and her soft uncertainty in the same glance.
He swallowed. Could not speak. Words, suddenly, were a poor vessel for what hung between them.
Then—
“Mr. Ellison, sir. A letter!”
They both turned as the butler shuffled down the path towards them, a sealed missive held aloft.
Miss Whittington stepped away quickly, her composure as swift and graceful as the flutter of a bird’s wings settling into stillness. The spell was broken… just slightly, just long enough to remind him of danger. Of timing. Of everything he had not yet said.
While her attention was on the butler, Graeme stole one last, lingering glance, unable to stop the flicker of regret.
She saw it.
Her eyes sought his, stealing a glance of her own, and he knew the moment she caught his bold expression of longing. But she smiled, just enough to promise nothing had truly been lost. At least, not yet.
The letter blurred.
Graeme dragged a hand across his face and forced himself to read it for the fifth time, as if repetition might turn sense into madness, or the reverse. Thank the Lord he had torn the seal and read the letter alone.
The estate solicitor’s response to his initial inquiry was thorough. Too thorough. The facts—if they were facts—were plain enough:
One year prior, the late Earl of Collumby had issued a formal offer of marriage to Miss Phoebe Whittington. She had declined. Instead, she had accepted a proposal from the impoverished Marquess of Pickering and, according to the solicitor, was even now living in Yorkshire as the Marchioness.
Which made the woman upstairs a liar.
A fraud.
And he, Graeme, a fool.
He shoved back from the desk, reaching for fresh parchment with numb fingers, anger guiding his quill rather than sense.
Before long, a hasty letter to the Marquess of Pickering had been sealed—by the Collumby crest of all things—and given to the butler for posting.
It was not until the study door closed behind Mr. Willet that the enormity of the blunder struck him.
The letter should have gone from solicitor to solicitor. Ellison to Barmby. Not earl to marquess. And certainly not with such graceless haste.
He sank into his chair, elbows on the desk, head in his hands.
Was this how easily he could be undone? A single letter. And he trusted a stranger’s word over the woman who had just an hour ago confessed knowing a marquess and marchioness? She had been honest. Or close enough. Why, then, had he been so ready to doubt her?
He wanted, desperately, to send for her now, demand truth, explanation, anything to ease the sting of betrayal. But no. That was not justice. That was vanity, seeking proof he had not been taken in by a pretty face and a handful of clever smiles.
He breathed out, shaken.
There had to be another way. But it required something he was no longer sure he possessed.
Trust.
And the question that knotted his insides was not whether Phoebe Whittington was lying. It was whether he had ever given her the chance to tell the truth.