Love by the Letters: A Regency Novella Trilogy

by Kelly Bowen

  “And so was this. This wasn’t about me or you or who deserved more. We agreed to be allies. And as your ally, I promised you that I would do everything I could to help you in exchange for your assistance.”

  “I don’t want to be your ally anymore, Maeve,” Henry said. He caught her hands in his and lowered himself to one knee. “I want more.”

  “What are you doing, Henry?” Maeve asked, feeling suddenly and absurdly close to tears.

  “Marry me.”

  Her knees wobbled. “Henry—”

  “Do you think that the steward of Greybourne might, on occasion, leave the estate in the capable hands of Isaac Dunlop so that she might travel with an architect who is madly in love with her? So he might take her to every place she’s always wanted to see but has only read about in books?”

  Maeve let out a shuddering breath, tears of happiness blurring her eyes.

  “In return, this architect that we speak of is quite certain that there is a great deal of work to be had in and around Greybourne. And London is only a half-day ride away.”

  Wordlessly, Maeve nodded. Love and joy were making it hard to think.

  “This steward once told me that she was willing to find common ground, but it is, of course, her decision, and I fully expect her to negotiate whatever terms are—”

  Maeve bent and kissed him into silence, a long, lingering kiss that held the promise of the future. “Yes,” she said.

  “That wasn’t a negotiation.”

  “I’ll think of something in a minute.”

  “I love you, Maeve Murray,” he whispered against her lips.

  “I love you too, Henry. I’m glad you came back.”

  He grinned at her then, a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made her knees wobbly all over again. “I had to come back. You stole my foreman. And my best crew.”

  Maeve laughed, wiping at her eyes. “Maybe I feed them better.”

  “I’m going to need them again.”

  “You can have them back eventually.”

  “When?” He stood and enfolded her back into his arms.

  Maeve leaned into his warm embrace. “When they’re done with the mill.”

  Epilogue

  The business diary on William Carruthers’s desk held only a single entry for the remainder of the day, week, month, and year. His final appointment before quitting England would be with the same client whose business had launched him into his own practice, fittingly enough. Other than the journal, the desk was bare—the blotter devoid of documents, books, and correspondence for the first time in years.

  Afternoon light gleamed on bare mahogany, though of course, Marigold sat directly in the path of the sunbeams slanting through the window. She looked quite at home in the empty correspondence tray, as if the shallow box had finally found its true purpose.

  “This time tomorrow,” William informed his cat, “I will be sailing away from English shores, back to the warmth, color, and beauty of Assam.”

  Marigold squinted at him, then settled into a sphinx-like pose.

  “My mother waits for me there,” he went on, pacing before the desk as if composing a legal argument, “along with cousins, aunties, in-laws…” So many years, they’d waited for him to return and yet, the notion of leaving London saddened him.

  “Who would have thought that London—stinking, filthy, bustling London—could ever become dear to a boy raised in India?” He took the seat behind the desk, the cushion intimately contoured for his comfort. “But her ladyship loves London, loves the noise and busyness, and even the damned winter snows. I will never recall this place without also recalling the woman who stole my heart. Larceny is a crime, you know.”

  Marigold, with the vast indifference for which felines are infamous, began to purr. Larceny might be a crime, but harboring a tendresse for a client was professional suicide—also pointless.

  “She needed a competent solicitor,” William said, scratching Marigold’s shoulders. “Not another conquest. And as for what I needed…”

  To grow his business, to uphold the client’s faith in her trusted advisor, to be honorable.

  “Perhaps a little less honor might have resulted in fewer regrets, eh, cat?”

  The answer to that question was a contented rumbling larger than such a petite beast should be able to produce. The clock on the mantel showed five minutes to the hour. Time to put the water on for tea.

  William rose to swing a kettle over the coals on the hearth. He measured chamomile into the strainer—the client’s favorite—and checked the sugar bowl, for she preferred her tea with a dash of sweetness.

  The sound of the heavy outer door opening warned William to gather his composure and assume his customary position behind the desk. A murmur of voices—the clerks all knew this client by name—and then the space of thirty-six confident footfalls to bury the longing he’d carried in silence for years.

  “Will she miss me half as much as I will miss her?”

  Marigold replied with a toothy yawn.

  Lady Katherine Blackmore sailed into the office, her smile radiant, the roses in her cheeks rivaling the season’s prettiest blooms. She’d always exuded confidence, but time had gilded her self-possession with a feminine assurance that William found more alluring for being all too rare among the ladies of polite society.

  “Mr. Carruthers, good day.”

  He bowed. “On time as always, Lady Kitty.”

  She untied her bonnet and stripped off her gloves, placing them on the sideboard. “You are a busy man. For you, I bestir myself to punctuality.”

  He moved around the desk. “I will always have time for you, my lady. Shall I take your cloak?” He made certain the office was well warmed on the days she was scheduled to call, in part because that was mere consideration, but also because the simple act of removing her wrap pleased him.

  Silly, that. To look forward to performing a basic courtesy for a woman he’d never see again.

  She passed him her cloak—merino wool, very soft, and lightly scented with her jasmine perfume. The feel of it in his hands was exquisite.

  “I have never seen your office looking so…” She took her time surveying the room.

  “Tidy?” William suggested as the kettle began to hiss. “Clean?”

  “Your office has always been spotless,” her ladyship said, settling into the chair before the desk. “Now, it looks empty.”

  “I sail tomorrow. If the new fellow is to move in, the least I owe him is a clean blotter. He professes to love cats. Marigold will soon know if he’s telling the truth.”

  Kitty’s gaze—usually forthright to a fault in the opinion of her meddlesome family—was unreadable. “You returned twenty thousand pounds to my account. Which of my couples failed their challenge?”

  William used an ancient potholder to pour the boiling water into his Jasperware teapot. He’d chosen this set for today because the blue of the ceramic had reminded him of Kitty’s eyes, more fool he.

  “Mr. Sedgewick did not sell enough art. The piece he brought me did not sell in time. He missed the challenge by twenty-five hundred pounds.”

  Kitty and Marigold indulged in a nose kiss while William nearly poured scalding water on his own fingers.

  “He missed by that much?” Kitty murmured. “That is a shame.”

  “Sedgewick and his lady were happy with the outcome. Two of the challenges were completed according to your terms, for which I congratulate you. That’s greater success than I expected.”

  Marigold turned a smug expression on William then curled up again in his letter tray. No success for you, old man. Bon voyage.

  “You were skeptical of my approach,” Kitty said, sitting back.

  “A little.” He’d had no blessed idea what she’d been about with these challenges and still did not. “I admire your generosity and your dedication to your family. The funds you disbursed will make an enormous difference to those involved. I’ve always respected your sense of purpose, and
your willingness to risk your assets for the right causes.”

  “They were all three good causes, and I account them all successful.” She was confident of her opinion, as always.

  “Even though Sedgewick didn’t meet the terms?”

  “Mr. Carruthers, this little project was never about money.” Lady Kitty spoke quietly.

  She knew her mind, though William was still baffled by the motivation behind her “little project.” He added a single lump of sugar to her tea and passed the cup and saucer across the desk.

  “Perhaps you were concerned with the specific couples,” he said, pouring his own tea. He’d packed himself a cannister of chamomile for the voyage, and because he was a sentimental fool.

  Kitty saluted with her tea cup. “You are correct.”

  “So Lady Katherine Blackmore has turned into a matchmaker.” Ironic that. “How did you know your schemes would go well?”

  She took a sip of her tea, stalling perhaps, or gathering her thoughts. “I’ve not been successful at love, but did you think it impossible for my ideas to bring couples together?”

  Abruptly, they were on difficult terrain. Kitty posed her question with a particular glint in her eyes that William had learned to respect.

  “Your engagement to that bleating disgrace of a lordling was hardly a matter of the heart, my lady. The only failure was his inability to cozen his way to your fortune with obvious flummery.”

  “Or cozen you with his consequence and threats. Have I ever thanked you for convincing me to cry off?”

  “I merely provided you advice based on the available facts.” That she’d heeded William’s guidance had earned him her family’s enmity, also their grudging respect.

  “I knew Adelicia Beauvais’s determination and pragmatism would balance Lord John Waverly’s optimism and pride,” Kitty said.

  “Miss Beauvais, now Mrs. Waverly, is your niece. I suppose that would give you insight into her character, but how did you know Waverly?”

  “I’m well acquainted with his sisters, and believe he’d do anything for those he cares about. I also knew his orphanage was failing for want of dedicated patrons. Honorable men seldom excel at plainly stating their needs and desires.”

  William would have the entire voyage to India to ponder what veiled scold might lurk in her words. He rose, teapot in hand. “And Mr. Sedgewick and Miss Nettles? They are opposites in many ways.”

  She held out her cup and saucer, he refreshed her tea and set the pot down on the tray. Rather than resume his seat, he leaned a hip against the side of the desk.

  “Sometimes,” Kitty said, “different perspectives are not only desirable but ideal. August and his wife are different, but they are similar too.”

  William would miss even the sound of Kitty’s voice, even the way she wrinkled her nose when indulging in a delicate sniff of her tea. “Similar, how?”

  “Miss Nettles rescued me when I very much needed rescuing. The day you told me the truth about my womanizing, gambling intended, I was so upset I went for a drive. My carriage broke down in the wrong part of town. This wonderful apprentice to a dressmaker went out of her way to help me. When I made an outing shortly thereafter to her place of employ, intent on repaying her kindness, I learned she’d been turned off for tardiness that had been my fault. I didn’t know how to contact her until my niece Sarah’s wedding. Miss Nettles is a prodigiously hardworking woman. She needs August’s humor.”

  “Did she recognize you? I find you unforgettable.”

  Kitty took a sip of her tea and cradled the cup in her hands. “She did not remember me, which was fortunate, else the challenge would have been ruined. I had a great feeling she and August would suit.”

  “Feelings are important.” Did Kitty feel anything for her solicitor other than admiration for his professional abilities? Would he get on that damned boat tomorrow without even asking her? “And Henry Blackmore?”

  “Henry needed to move beyond his grief and Maeve needed more than Greybourne. I sensed they would understand each other. Support each other’s dreams.”

  “You had a prior acquaintance with Miss Murray?”

  Kitty passed William her teacup. If he’d been a fatuous, doting swain he might have drunk from the place on the rim her lips had touched and then sent her a melting glance. Kitty would likely laugh uproariously and bid him to pack up his romantic aspirations along with his chamomile tea.

  “Miss Nettles was not the only soul to help me when I sorely needed aid,” Kitty said, “When I was too wrapped up in myself. When I didn’t know how much I would regret…”

  William put his teacup beside Kitty’s on the desk and leaned a few inches closer to her. “How much you would regret what?”

  She looked around the empty office, a place where they’d argued, plotted financial strategies, and even laughed together. “I regret how selfishly I acted in my youth. The careless way I treated those I cared for most.”

  She’d been indulged, up to a point, but never spoiled. “Then these challenges were what? Atonement? To prove something?”

  “Maybe.”

  “To whom?”

  “To myself.” She rose and untied the sashes holding the curtains back from the window. The result was a gloomier office, but sensible. Sunlight damaged upholstery, furniture, and wallpaper, after all, and the office would be vacant for at least a week.

  “I had the means to help those who had once helped me,” she said, smoothing wrinkles from the curtains. “I simply did what was right. Do you remember what you said to me when we first met? You told me that a selfish woman, regardless of her beauty, her fortune, or her title, would be a burden to any man.”

  He’d nearly shouted that at her, when she’d been holding forth about marrying any titled suitor she pleased to marry. “My words may not have been fair—”

  “Don’t apologize, William.” She laid her hand on his arm. “What you said was fair, and it was honest.”

  She and he did not ever touch, except to share the most fleeting and inconsequential of courtesies. And yet, her hand remained on his sleeve, a small presumption he’d feel all the way to India.

  “Kitty—”

  “You alone have always been honest with me, William Carruthers. You have safeguarded my well-being and my fortune. No man could be … no man has been a better friend.”

  William took her hand in his, surely a permitted familiarity when two friends of long acquaintance were parting. What could he say, as a man hopelessly in love but determined to cling to his dignity for one more day?

  “My lady, I will miss you.” And wasn’t that just brilliant oration from highly trained legal mind? He tried again. “I will miss you terribly.”

  The cat rose from her perch on the desk and leapt to the sideboard. Her gaze struck William as pitying, then she commenced washing her paws.

  “I hope you find happiness,” Kitty said, smoothing her free hand over his lapel. “I hope you find your heart’s desire. You deserve every joy life has to offer.”

  The cat paused in her ablutions and flicked her tail. Get on with it, man. Bow and say farewell, why don’t you?

  And therein lay the difficulty. A solicitor William surely was, but when it came to Lady Katherine Blackmore, he was first and always, a man in love.

  “What if all I want is to have the woman I admire—have admired for years—at my side?”

  Another pat to his lapel, but was that a tear shimmering on Kitty’s eyelashes? “I hope your mother has chosen such a fine person for you. Someone who’ll know how to draw you into long conversations and make you smile.”

  “Mother has probably found sixteen wonderful women, each more beautiful and accomplished than the last. None of those ladies will be you.”

  Kitty’s hand went still on his chest. “What are you saying, William?”

  He took both of her hands in his, lest she snatch up her gloves and cloak and flee before he could be honest with her one last time. “You are my heart’s desire. I
wish to be the man worthy of your love.”

  Dignity be damned. He’d sail for India knowing he’d at least had the courage to face the truth, much as Kitty had faced the truth about her family’s plans for her all those years ago.

  “Say that again, William." She offered him not a command—and Lady Katherine Blackmore was very comfortable with imperative tones—but a plea.

  “I love you. I have loved you since you first stormed into my office demanding to know why a lowly solicitor presumed to request a private audience on the topic of a client’s nuptial plans. I will love you in some fashion until I’m an old man who can’t recall where he’s put his spectacles, though they are on his very head, but who will always know to whom he once gave his heart.”

  She slipped her hands free of his grasp, and William steeled himself to be gently chided, perhaps even mocked.

  Instead, Kitty slid her arms around his waist and leaned against him. “You need not fashion an argument for the jury, William. I considered buying the HMS New Hope so I could stop you from sailing.”

  The feel of her, warm, female, nestled so sweetly against him was intoxicating, and yet, William’s legal mind had to parse the heretofores and notwithstandings.

  “You need not have set up those challenges to convince me of your goodness or the depths of your generous heart, Kitty. I love you exactly as you are.” He pressed a soft kiss to the back of her fingers. “But I have a challenge for you now.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, one that comes with benefits, such as travel and love, but also demands.”

  Kitty leaned into him, and if ever a man envied the feline ability to purr, William was that man.

  “What would be the conditions of such a challenge?” she asked.

  “Allow me to love you for the rest of our lives. Marry me.”

  “I am headstrong, Mr. Carruthers. I am opinionated, obstinate, and incorrigible.” The words were doubtless meant as a disclaimer, but William heard the vulnerability in them too.

  “As your solicitor, I appreciate the disclosure of potential hazards, and in the same spirit of good faith and fair dealing, I warn you that my Mother is nearly as opinionated, obstinate and incorrigible as you are. You will get on splendidly. I must also advise you, though, to finalize the terms of this arrangement posthaste, that the benefits of the union might accrue to the parties with all possible speed.”