Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
A FEW HOURS LATER
Saskia hadn’t been able to return to bed after…
Well, after.
She hadn’t been able to read.
She hadn’t been able to write.
So, she did the one thing she could do: she packed her belongings and sent for a footman to hire a carriage and driver from the nearest coaching inn to carry her back to London.
Now, here she was, in the receiving hall of Endcliffe Grange, surrounded by all the trunks and accoutrements one lady needed to leave her house for even one night, waiting for the hired coach to arrive.
It was the correct decision—leaving Yorkshire…
returning to London—for the truth was she could be just as miserable and ineffective there as she was here and, at least, in London she could lie sleepless in her own bed.
Had he asked her to marry him?
He might have—or he might not have.
And depending on which, she might have refused him—or she might not have.
It had all happened so fast, and she’d spoken words she might’ve regretted.
Might presently regret, too.
Might regret for the rest of her life.
The swift click-clack of efficient footsteps against marble echoed through the hall, and Saskia had but a moment to brace herself.
Not against a polite greeting that would’ve been necessary if one of the many near-strangers currently housed beneath the Grange’s slate roof joined her, but because she knew those footsteps—had known them all her life, in fact.
She turned and met her sister’s gaze. “Tessa.”
“Good morning.” Tessa eyed her up and down in frank appraisal, as was her way. “I received your note and thought I would see you off.”
“I didn’t intend to disturb your sleep.” In fact, Saskia had planned on being several miles down the road before any of her family caught wind of her departure.
“I was already up with Ian. He’s a ravenous little brute.”
Saskia understood she should laugh. Usually, she would have. But all she could summon was a smile that barely lifted the corners of her mouth and surely didn’t reach her eyes.
Tessa held out her hand. “Come with me.”
“But my carriage will be here soon.” Even as the protest left her mouth, Saskia took Tessa’s hand.
“Your carriage can wait.” She pulled Saskia to her feet. “We’re going for a walk.”
So it was that Saskia found herself walking the grounds of Endcliffe Grange with Tessa. In the previous century, the estate must have been quite a Palladian gem with formal gardens and mazes and such.
“Do you know much about the Grange?” asked Tessa, conversationally.
“Actually,” said Saskia, “the scullery who came to bring fresh water and stoke the fire this morning gave me an abbreviated history.”
“Lady Artemis inherited the estate from her grandmother, I know that much.”
Saskia nodded. “Over a decade ago. But it wasn’t until five years ago—after the death of her beloved racehorse, Dido—that Lady Artemis turned these acres into a horse sanctuary.”
“Which turned into a sanctuary for all manner of animals,” observed Tessa. “No longer a purposeless aristocratic estate.”
One couldn’t mistake the current iteration of Endcliffe Grange for anything but a working estate.
In the place of those long-ago formal gardens and hedge mazes stood divided pastures and structures for housing the various animals strutting about—horses, yes, but also sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, donkeys, and even a flock of geese and ducks.
“I admire a woman like that,” said Tessa. “One who goes after what she wants.”
Though Saskia agreed—after all, hadn’t she followed her own inclinations all her life?
—agreement stuck in her throat. The fact she had to face—that she was waiting to face in the safety of her London flat—was that if she were, indeed, the sort of woman who went after what she wanted, why was she running away?
They stopped at a fence and watched a pair of donkeys graze peacefully in the distance. “So, Saskia,” said Tessa, at last.
Saskia tensed. A note sounded in her sister’s voice that presaged a talk. Whatever Tessa was about to say was what she’d sought out Saskia to say.
She’d turned to face Saskia full-on, leaving Saskia no choice but to meet her sister’s too-sharp eye. “How long has Liam Cassidy—” Tessa shook her head. “How long has the Earl of Bolton been courting you?”
However much Saskia had been bracing herself, it wasn’t nearly enough. “Courting me?”
The look Tessa leveled her with would brook no dodging or dithering. “Viveca mentioned he joined Sirens.”
Saskia knew.
She absolutely knew her sisters had been gossiping about her. Mrs. Dunlevy, too, she reckoned.
“Sirens is publishing his memoir.” She’d gone slightly breathless—and more than slightly defensive. “It only follows that he would want to join the library to gain a feel for what we’re all about.”
Tessa’s head tipped to the side. “And I suppose that’s all he’s been gaining a feel for?”
A sudden wash of mortification stripped Saskia’s mind clean of any further defense she might attempt, leaving her no choice but to stand beneath Tessa’s penetrating gaze, vulnerable and seen down to her very soul.
Her sister nodded slowly. “I suppose you have been spending a bit of time with Bolton, given that you’re helping him write his memoir. It’s only natural you would become…close.”
Oh, that the earth beneath Saskia’s feet would open up and swallow her whole.
Anything to make this conversation end.
Tessa looked as if she’d only gotten started. “The two of you were seen riding in Hyde Park. I believe there’s even a wager in the White’s betting book about future prospects regarding the Earl of Bolton and Lady Saskia Calthorp.”
A groan escaped Saskia.
“I didn’t know you could ride, sister.”
“Liam—Lord Bolton—taught me.”
Tessa’s brow lifted as if to say, See?
No small amount of satisfaction in the lift of that brow or in the cat-who’d-got-the-cream smile that curved Tessa’s mouth. “Well, it’s clear.”
“What is clear?”
Nothing was clear as far as Saskia could see.
“The man is completely besotted with you.”
“I think you have the wrong end of the—”
“Saskia.”
“Yes?”
“It’s not up for debate. The man is besotted with you.”
“He is?”
“The evidence is irrefutable. And further—”
There was more?
“You, my sister, are besotted with him.”
Saskia opened her mouth, surely to launch an unassailable defense, but no such protection came to her rescue.
The fact was she was besotted with Liam.
And she’d ruined it.
An unanticipated rush of tears pooled in her eyes.
“Oh, my sweet girl.” Tessa gathered Saskia in her arms, encouraging the indiscriminate flood of tears to spill over.
“I just don’t know,” she sobbed wetly into Tessa’s shoulder, “how to navigate that distance.”
Tessa pulled back enough to catch Saskia’s eye. “What distance?”
“From where I am to where I want to be.”
“And where is that?”
A long, shaky exhalation shuddered through Saskia. As if this were a breath she’d been holding since that first night—the night she met Liam at the Drunken Piebald. “With Liam.”
“Oh, Saskia, you do know how to navigate that distance.” Tessa used her thumb to dry Saskia’s eyes, just as she’d done when Saskia was a child. “My dear, you’ve written entire books on that very subject.”
“But that’s—” She stopped. Her brow creased. “Wait, you know I’m—”
“Harriet LaPlume?” Tessa smiled. “Of course, you’re Harriet LaPlume. She could be none other than you. I would know your voice anywhere, sister.”
It took a moment for those words to sink in. “Then you know,” said Saskia, “what I write is romance. It’s fiction.”
Tessa gave a chiding shake of the head. “You’re wrong there. Love between two people is that romantic.” She took Saskia’s hand and squeezed. “And it’s real.”
Viveca’s words from a few months ago returned to her: “I want you to have what I have with Blaze… I want you to have your own version of it, sister. The version that makes you happy.”
Saskia hadn’t been ready to hear those words then.
But now, she was.
“You have an important question to ask yourself, though,” continued Tessa. “And you cannot dodge it. Which is greater? Your need for the certainty of your present life? Or your love for Liam? Is your love for him great enough to risk lowering your defenses?”
More tears pooled in Saskia’s eyes; more tears spilled. “I…I want him, Tessa. With all my heart and soul.”
“It’s actually there in the title of your first book—When a Lady Dares.”
“When a lady dares.” Saskia repeated each word as if she were speaking them for the first time.
“That impossible distance you speak of?” continued Tessa. “It’s daring that sets our feet on the path that bridges it. Daring to fly. Daring to fall. Daring to give your heart. Daring to love. Saskia, you have so much love banked within your heart. Won’t you consider opening it?”
The breath caught in Saskia’s lungs.
All along, it had been this simple.
“Yes,” came, at last, on a trembly exhalation. Then, strongly, joyously, “Yes.”
She still wasn’t sure how to navigate this feeling.
She couldn’t hide herself away.
She couldn’t be Harriet LaPlume or Arabella.
She had to be nakedly herself.
But if Liam was besotted with her, then that was who he wanted…Saskia.
“I need to find him, Tessa, before it’s too late.”
“Oh, my sweet girl, it isn’t too late.” Tessa’s eyes went glassy with unshed tears. “The life you want has only begun.” She gave Saskia’s hand a final, parting squeeze. “Now, where does one find a horse-mad man?”
Saskia’s feet were already on the move. “The stables,” she tossed over her shoulder. She didn’t know where the proper stables were, but she would scour every inch of Endcliffe Grange until she found them.
Until she found Liam.
Until she knew if she would fall—or if she would fly.