Chapter 13 #2
And because he was perilously close to wanting what he had no right to want.
The storm worsened with every passing minute. Thunder cracked. Wind moaned. Rain lashed the windows in wild, relentless sheets.
At last, the study door flew open, and for one heart-pounding instant, Graeme thought the storm had forced its way inside. But it was only Miss Greeley.
She clutched something to her chest, eyes round with terror. “That’s no ordinary storm. That’s judgment, that is!”
Miss Whittington stifled a laugh. Graeme did not dare look at her, not when his coat still wrapped around her shoulders, not when he could still feel the echo of her pressed against him.
The maid thrust her prize towards her mistress. “I found these tucked behind the books, miss.” Triumphantly, she added, “They are addressed to you, so I thought you’d want them at once.”
Miss Whittington’s smile slipped. “Addressed to me? Fanny, that makes no sense.”
“But… but it says so right here.” She freed a letter from the bundle with fumbling fingers. “P.W. Exactly as your mother named you.”
“Fanny, those are not… those cannot—”
“Perhaps Prunella again?” Graeme offered, hoping to coax a smile. But Miss Whittington’s gaze remained fixed on the letters, troubled and disbelieving.
He approached the maid. “May I?”
She surrendered them with visible relief.
Thunder boomed overhead, shaking the glass. Another gust tore at the house, wrenching open the latch on the window where the maid had been sitting before her errand.
“Oh no!” she shrieked as rain slapped through the opening, soaking her chair.
Unlike her mistress, she did not find the storm amusing.
She bolted for the door. “Towels! I’ll fetch towels!
” Her hem caught around her ankles; she barely recovered herself with a squeak before disappearing into the antechamber.
Pressing a hand to her lips to stifle another laugh, Miss Whittington said, “Poor Fanny.”
Graeme allowed himself a smile, realizing too late in his distraction that the maid had left the window open.
Another surge of wind blasted inside, whipping the papers they had only just saved back into chaos.
Setting the letters on the table, he lurched for the window as Miss Whittington dove for the scattered pages yet again.
“Hurry,” she called, a bit too gleeful for the occasion, hardly sounding as though she wanted anything hurried at all.
He latched the window with a decisive click and turned back to find her kneeling on the floor, curls tumbled, cheeks pink. The sight of her there, unguarded and joyful, tugged at something deep in him.
He joined her, crouching beside her as she gathered pages into little piles. A damp curl clung to her temple; she pushed it back with an impatient huff.
“Here… before these become puddle-paper.” Her voice tangled with mischief.
He carried her stacks to the desk, retrieved the remaining sheets, and returned far sooner than he wished.
Too soon, they were idle again, alone with the journal, the storm, and the small bundle of letters waiting on the table.
He settled into the chair, eyes drawn to the twine-tied packet.
Only a handful of letters. Neatly bundled.
Freeing the twine, he let the letters tumble between them.
“What have we found?” She poked at the pile, wary.
Their hands reached towards the same letter and brushed. Heat shot through him at the contact, sharp, immediate, impossible to ignore. She did not withdraw. A faint blush bloomed across the bridge of her nose, but she continued sifting through the letters.
Each was marked only with:
To P.W.
Miss Whittington inhaled sharply. “They cannot be for me. Can they?” She lifted one letter after another at random.
Graeme chose one with careful fingers. The paper was crisp, unworn, unsent. “No fraying,” he murmured. “The wax remains intact. These were never posted.”
“Why would he write to me but never send them?”
“I cannot say,” he admitted in a low voice, his thoughts churning.
They both stared at the pile. Then at each other. Then back again.
Thunder rippled. The room dimmed. Lightning flickered across her face, enchanting and ghostly all at once. Rising, Graeme crossed to the desk for the tinderbox, striking steel to flint until the cloth caught so he could light the wick.
The candle cast restless shadows.
Watching the flame glow, Miss Whittington repeated, “Why write letters but never send them? Why keep them hidden away?”
He had no answer.
She held one of the letters closer. “And this—this one is like the journal entry: ‘my little P.W.’ It feels so… possessive.” She shuddered, the earlier laughter replaced by pinched brows. “I do not know whether it should frighten me.”
Graeme felt a primal urge to shield her from that fear. “Phoebe, I—”
He stopped. Her given name had slipped out, natural as breathing.
Her gaze snapped to his, startled.
Before either could react to his uninvited familiarity, the maid crashed back into the room.
“Towels! I have towels!”
Miss Whittington jolted from her thoughts, clutching his coat tighter with one hand and an unopened letter with the other.
And just like that, the spell of the moment fractured, but the weight of it lingered, heavy as the storm clouds outside.
The door had barely closed before Graeme exhaled his pinned emotions. He pressed both palms against the desk. Her scent lingered on his coat, orange blossoms and rain, and the memory of her soft against him during their brief embrace hit him with far more force than the storm had.
He sank into the chair, raking a hand through his hair.
What had happened?
The room remained in mild disarray. Papers lay drying across the desk.
Towels lined several windows like soldiers on parade.
The candle guttered. Rain tapped an uneven rhythm against the windows.
He forced himself to move, to collect pages, straighten stacks, occupy his hands because his mind refused to steady.
Her laughter clung to the air.
Her warmth pressed phantom-soft against his chest.
He pulled open the drawer and looked at the bundle of letters he had tucked inside.
To P.W. He had not imagined her bewilderment.
There had been no guile, only confusion, concern, and that spark of humor she used to fend off discomfort.
She had not known the earl. Instinctively, he knew she spoke the truth.
But the letters… they were something he could not ignore, not with the codicil an ever-pressing obstacle.
He closed the drawer.
More pressing, far more unsettling, was the realization blooming slow and hot in his chest: he wanted her.
Not as a suspect.
Not as a responsibility.
Not as an obligation handed down by an earl’s dying whim.
He wanted her.
Her wit, her light, her impossible reliance, and yes, her touch.
He swallowed.
The codicil now felt like a stone in his pocket rather than a weapon.
He needed time, time to understand what the letters meant, time to understand what she meant to him, time before telling her anything that might send her running from the hall—and from him.
Not because he wished to trap her, but because—
He inhaled shakily.
He simply was not ready to let her go, not before they had a chance together.
He stood and crossed to a window, staring out at the last fragments of the storm.
The rain had softened to a thin silver mist. Irrationally, foolishly, he hoped she would return later, as she had the afternoon she discovered the journals.
If only to ask about the letters. If only to sit near him again.
If only to look at him with those wide, bold eyes and ask—
What happens next?
He did not know. But he wanted to find out.
Phoebe dismissed Fanny the moment they reached her chamber. Poor Fanny looked ready to write an outraged report to the Almighty about storms, puddles, and dripping papers.
Once the door closed, quiet finally settled.
She leaned back against the wood, breath catching.
The memory of his coat still hung about her shoulders, heavy with rain and warmth, with the essence of him.
She breathed in the scents of cedar, soap, and something alluring and unmistakably him. Her pulse leapt.
What is happening to me?
She crossed to the window. The storm clouds were thinning, light breaking through in pale, shy patches. She pressed her fingertips to the glass, remembering the moment the window had slammed shut, sending him stumbling backwards into her.
Then his arms had come around her.
His breath had tickled her cheek.
The way he held her… instinctively, gently, protectively, as though she mattered.
Her heart thudded.
She should change out of her damp gown. She should ring for tea. She should do anything except stand there, holding her breath like a green girl fresh from her first ball. But she could not stop remembering the moment.
Thoughts of the letters and the journal intruded, unwanted. She could not stop thinking about them either.
My Little P.W.
The words unsettled her… but not as much as the thought of what Mr. Ellison must think. She hoped—more desperately than she wished to admit—that he believed her, that he did not imagine her exchanging secret missives with the late earl.
What must he think of her?
This morning, he had returned to the self-contained clerk she knew so well, yet she could no longer see him as a stiff and unsmiling guardian of duty, not after their ride.
Now, she saw a strong, decisive, and masculine man.
At no point in her life had she ever felt so safe and so vulnerable all at once.
Pacing the room, she struggled to settle, to calm. Every part of her felt alive from his embrace.
He had looked at her differently today, not like a clerk scolding a troublesome guest, or as a man burdened with responsibility, rather he looked at her as if he saw her.
As if he could see straight through the armor she polished daily: charm, wit, varnished confidence.
He had stood with her at the window, his breath steady and close, and she had felt…
Safe.
Exposed.
Seen.
Pressing a hand to her warm cheek, she whispered to the empty room, “What am I doing?”
She wanted to see him again. Tonight. Tomorrow. After all she had been through, she was not ready for desire. It was far too terrifying, too unsettling, but curse it, she wanted, and that want felt wonderful.
Crawling onto the bed, still dressed in her damp gown, she closed her eyes.
After dinner… was that too soon? Too desperate?
She could… yes… she could ask him if they might read one of the letters.
That was a believable excuse. Would he be in the study after dinner or, better yet, after supper, the cover of evening far more to her advantage? She aimed to find out.