Chapter Nineteen
“Why here, brother? There are plenty of splendid restaurants just a few streets over.” Winnie craned her neck as she watched a couple stroll down the other side of the road, arm in arm. “Have either of you even been to this part of town?”
Andrew shook his head. Peter sighed. “Bowen’s Kitchen offers us a modicum of privacy. We couldn’t dine three streets over without all of London knowing about it.”
Bowen’s Kitchen was respectable, but it was approximately five hundred feet too far from St. James’s Street to be ton.
Winnie tsked. “Are you embarrassed by her already, brother? That does not bode well.”
Peter scrubbed a hand over his face. “I am not embarrassed by her.” What was there to be embarrassed by? She was intelligent, and sweet, and kind, and optimistic. She was light itself when recent days had been decidedly grim. How could he be embarrassed by light?
“Are you embarrassed by us?”
Andrew snorted.
Peter rolled his eyes. “I am not embarrassed by you, except when you do something embarrassing. Remind me why you’re with us.”
Winnie grinned. “You wanted someone to sneak a peek so that if she was of our acquaintance, you had time to gird your loins.”
Ah, yes. It had seemed sensible at the time.
The longer he and Booklover corresponded, the less he thought her part of high society.
Hopefully, when she saw him for the first time she would not know who he was.
But if she would recognize the Duke of Strafford the moment he entered, it was best to know that in advance.
Still… “Remind me again why I brought you, specifically?”
She skipped as he strode, swishing her skirts. “Because I was your only option. And had you tried to cut me out of this adventure, I would have nagged at you for the rest of your days.”
She would have been incessant. Still, if Meg had felt well enough, he would have braved Winnie’s threat of eternal pestering and brought the sister who would have calmed him rather than the one who forced his heart rate higher.
Conscious of Peter’s increasing agitation, Andrew held up his hands. “I am only here—”
Peter nodded. “To see her home safely. Thank you.”
From this distance, he could just make out the hand-painted sign outside the restaurant.
He checked his watch. They were five minutes past the meeting time because Winnie could not decide if she should wear white or if she could get away with pink, since Booklover liked the dawn, despite his repeated insistence that it was a pointless exercise given she would remain out of sight.
Booklover would not even see her, let alone appreciate what she was wearing.
Would Booklover still be waiting, or had Winnie’s tardiness cost him?
His legs were compelled to move, to reach her as quickly as possible.
She might very well be his future. If she was as kind and intelligent in person as she was in her letters, if she was age appropriate, if she had the fortitude he suspected and could withstand the gossip, it didn’t matter what she looked like or what social class she came from.
He would be mad not to marry that woman.
She was the promise of a wife who liked—perhaps could love—him for him.
Peter the man, not Peter the duke. He had never thought it possible.
He had dragged his feet for years, putting off the inevitable disappointment he’d thought his marriage would be.
Now that he was on the cusp of the greatest blessing, those feet he’d dragged were racing.
There was the slightest huff from his sister as she tried to keep up. “Will you ask her to marry you right away? May I watch? I will be very discreet. Andrew and I could take a table across the room.”
“I will not ask her to marry me.” Not tonight, at least. When—if—he asked Booklover to marry him, it would be at one of the many interesting places she had introduced him to.
It would be with a retinue of footmen carrying flowers of every color.
It would be without his sisters in a five-mile radius.
They slowed to a stop only a few yards from the restaurant. His heart rate picked up a notch. A couple breezed past them, paying him no mind at all, giving no indication that they knew who he was. Perfect. Meeting here had been the correct decision.
“A book with a rose, you say?” Winnie asked, tugging at her gloves as though she were going into battle.
“And she’ll be wearing yellow.”
“What kind of yellow? Honey? Sunflower? Daffodil?”
He and Andrew exchanged glances. “Is there a difference between those three shades?”
Winnie hmphed. “A world, brother. A world.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, frustrated with the added complication. “I do not know what shade she’s wearing, but how many women in yellow with a book and a rose could be in there?”
Winnie gave him a leveled stare, as though he was not considering the matter with appropriate gravity. “For your sake, brother, I hope one. It would be awkward to have to approach her with ‘Excuse me. Are you the love of my life or is it the woman sitting over there?’”
Breathe in. Breathe out. Even dukes could be tried for murder. “Booklover is not…” Winnie grinned and he cursed as he realized she’d been baiting him. “Would you just go look? Andrew, would you go with her?”
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his sister to do as he asked. Actually, it was entirely because he didn’t trust his sister.
She skipped up the steps and Andrew followed.
The doorman greeted her and she gave him a charming smile.
“Oh, I’m not going in. I was just hoping to see if a friend was in there.
” She craned her neck to look inside the restaurant.
Andrew did the same, no doubt just as curious, even if he hid it better.
“Well?”
“Just one moment. There are a lot of people in there.”
A lot of people. Damn it. He should have picked someplace quieter. Then again, he’d picked Bowen’s Kitchen because it would be busy enough that she could go on her own and wait for him safely.
“Ooh, wait. There’s a book with a rose.” Winnie clapped her hands and the doorman raised an eyebrow.
“And?”
“Patience, brother. There is someone blocking my view.”
Peter thrust his hands in his pockets and turned away, sighing out a deep breath.
“Wait, now they’re moving. Oh… oh.”
Peter spun back toward her. “Oh? What does ‘oh’ mean?” Oh was not the sound he was expecting. Nor was it one he wanted to hear. He gripped the handrail. “Do you know her? Is she ton? Who is she?”
Winnie and Andrew exchanged looks, both grimacing.
“She’s not Lady Cecilia, is she?” That couldn’t be. It was impossible. He didn’t doubt Cecilia’s intelligence, but she was cunning, not curious. She wasn’t at all kind.
“It is not Lady Cecilia. No.”
The relief was short-lived, replaced with frustration. He took the steps two at a time until he was at his sister’s shoulder. “Apologies,” he said to the footman who still held the door.
He didn’t need to scan the room like his sister had. His gaze went straight to her. His body knew exactly where she was, even if his brain didn’t know who it was he was looking for. All breath escaped him.
“It’s Miss Eleanor Wright,” Winnie whispered, watching as he absorbed the news.
Miss Eleanor Wright, the shrewish, combative bane of his existence. Miss Eleanor Wright, who had made it clear over and over just how much she loathed him. Miss Eleanor Wright, to whom he was heartless, soulless, and nothing but his title.
Eleanor was adjusting her book and rose, experimenting with different positions, no doubt trying to make them look just so.
As ridiculous as he’d thought Winnie’s questions had been, he had an answer now—Booklover was wearing rainy-morning yellow.
She was unsettlingly mesmerizing, just like those hours after a night of rain when the sky was clear and the sun was rising, and enough moisture hung in the air to fracture the light, casting the city in an otherworldly glow.
There must have been countless such mornings over his lifetime, but he’d only recently stopped to notice them, and the memories were entangled with the thought of her.
Here she was in a dress shot through with thread that shimmered, that puffed at the shoulders and was trimmed with ruffles at the collar that looked like alyssum in the summer.
Her dark hair swooped in intricate braids and was adorned with beads intentionally placed.
Booklover appreciated form and design as much as she did color—colors like those he’d seen Eleanor wear repeatedly.
Even visiting his warehouse, she’d eschewed the blacks and grays that would be sensible when working with ink and opted for green, with a rose-colored pin that he hadn’t marked at the time but had apparently stuck in the back of his mind.
Damn. How could he not have seen the parallels? Or had he, but his conscious mind had been so consumed with anger at Miss Wright that his subconscious hadn’t dared to address the thought that she and Booklover might be one and the same?
She was beautiful. Her eyes snapped with intelligence, her dimples betrayed her mischievousness, and he’d dreamed of those lips night after night.
His body thrummed at the memory of her in his arms and the fire he’d felt as his hand had grazed her waist. Damn it, she was everything he’d hoped Booklover would be.
Volcanoes. Vesuvius. Cholera.
How had he not made the connection? He could have ended things right then, never let their friendship deepen, and saved himself the heartbreak of falling for a woman who did actually see who he truly was—and didn’t like him.
He watched her take a deep breath and scan the room. She could look to the door at any moment and see him. He spun on his heel. “We’re going.”
“Wait. What?” Winnie was almost through the doorway and into the restaurant when Andrew grabbed her by the waist and carried her down the stairs kicking.
“You cannot be serious,” she said, scowling as Andrew put her back on her feet. She turned to Peter. “Brother, aren’t you going in?”
“No. I’m not. And none of you are to mention her again.”
“But she’s waiting for you.”
“She is waiting for someone else. Someone who doesn’t exist.” He tried to ignore the fading half of himself as he imagined her tossing his letters in the fireplace the moment she returned home.
He’d been foolish to think his words had been anything more than ink on a page—the Captain was fiction, just like the novels he’d wasted time reading.
Winnie looked at him, nostrils flaring. “And you’re going to leave her waiting all night? You’ll let her sit alone at that table until she realizes that she’s been stood up? That is badly done of you, brother. It is unkind and so very disappointing.”
There was the reason he’d kept Booklover from her in the first place.
On top of it all, he’d disappointed his sisters.
He pushed aside the feeling and hardened his heart.
“My failing to meet her barely registers on the tally of the things I’ve done to that woman.
I doubt she will even notice it.” Except that she would, because the duke might have done terrible things, but the Captain hadn’t, and the Captain was who she was there to see.
But the Captain didn’t exist outside of the world they’d created, and the person he’d become on those pages would flutter away the moment reality gusted across them.
There was hot fury in Winnie’s narrowed eyes. “You could go and have a conversation. Miss Wright deserves that much, at least.” She made to climb the stairs again.
“Edwina Abigail Montgomery, you are out of line.” It was as harsh a tone as he’d ever used with her, and her mouth dropped open.
“I have tolerated your interference in this matter thus far,” he continued, “but the limit has been reached. This matter is over. Resolved. Never to be spoken of again, is that clear?”
She went silent, pressing her lips into a mutinous line. It was not an agreement, but at least she seemed wise enough not to press him now.
Andrew shot Peter a blessed look of understanding, and tucked Winnie’s hand in the crook of his elbow. “Let’s head home, shall we? Can you imagine Jac’s face when you tell her about all the things she missed out on?”
Thank God for Andrew.
“Fine,” she muttered. “Are you coming, brother?”
Peter shook his head. No. He was not in any mood for company.
So, they left and he walked. He stalked north, toward St. James, toward the parts of London in which he’d lived his life, toward his duty, toward the society that would have a field day if they learned of what had transpired that night, toward the ballrooms that held his future—the same one that had always been crystal clear.
On the edge of Piccadilly—where the line blurred between the old world and the new, where centuries-old town houses shared the street with a new-world coffeehouse and a restaurant that offered a menu neither English nor French—he stopped.
One street over was where he should be. It was where dukes belonged, and where the hurt was telling him to go.
Booklover was not the future. His would not be a marriage of authenticity and feeling.
It would be like the marriages of all the Dukes and Duchesses of Strafford before him—a business arrangement, perhaps pleasurable at times, but not driven by feeling.
But he couldn’t bring himself to step out of the shadows between the buildings.
The image of her waiting for him would not budge from his mind.
What if he was mistaken? What if they could see past the versions of each other they knew in person to the ones they knew by word and heart and thought instead?
He looked at his watch. They’d been supposed to meet forty minutes ago. Would she still be there? Did she have more faith in him than he’d had in her?
He turned, and he ran.