Caleb’s gaze narrowed. “Your parents would never force a marriage between us.”
Force. Amazing how so much meaning could be packed into one small word.
She laughed, high and bright like broken glass. “I think my parents would host a wedding for the ages if you deigned to offer for my hand. And I think they’d make it impossible for you not to offer for my hand if you turned up at two o’clock in the morning with me in tow like this, skirts filthy, hair askew.”
He watched her in the darkness for a long moment, the dim light casting shadows over his troubled face, the muscle in his jaw working at speed. “You’re right.”
She hated the words even as she knew that they were the ones she’d been aiming for. Hated her triumph, even as she knew that she didn’t want marriage to Caleb any more than he wanted it from her.
But did he have to look so horrified?
She turned to face the breeze. “I know I’m right. But there is no need for you to worry. You are not destined for the parson’s noose.”
“Why not?”
She cut him a look. “First, as I said, I’m a grown woman, not some girl to be shoved down the aisle. And second, my parents are in the south of France until the spring.”
On another night, with a different man, she might have enjoyed the wild play of emotions over his face, delighting in the guilt and surprise and shock and frustration and exasperation he could not hide from her.
But it was not another night. He was not a different man. And Sesily did not enjoy the fact that his final emotion was relief.
“So this was, what, toying with me?”
She flashed him her finest grin. “I told you I was trouble.”
“God knows that’s true.”
“Drop me home, please.”
“No.” She turned her head, disliking the casual refusal, the way he’d crossed his enormous arms over his enormous chest and leaned back into the corner like this was an American stagecoach and not a perfectly reasonably sized carriage into which he did not fit.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m not leaving you alone at Talbot House in the middle of the night.”
“Believe it or not, I have spent a fair number of middles of the night at Talbot House.”
“Well first, considering your actions tonight, I’m not sure that’s true.” Fair, but she wasn’t about to admit to that. “And second, if your parents are not here, you require a chaperone.”
Her eyes went wide. “Did you miss the bit in which I am thirty years old?”
“No, Sesily, I’ve never known a woman so eager to tell me her age.” He paused, then, “So we return to my original plan. I’m taking you to your sister.”
“No.” She’d rather leap from the damn carriage than be delivered to her sister.
He sighed his frustration. “Sesily.”
“I don’t require a chaperone!” she shouted.
“You do tonight!” he shouted right back.
Lord he was infuriating. “Well then, you’ll have to drive me around London until it’s safe for me to return to my home. I will not be brought to Haven House in the dead of night.”
“Why in hell not?”
There were a thousand reasons. “My sister is not my keeper.”
“Neither am I.”
“And yet you cannot stop acting like one.”
“Goddammit, Sesily, you were nearly killed tonight! In some … reckless bid for what … attention?”
She was feeling less nauseated at the moment. Indeed, her nausea had been overcome by rage. “A bid for attention?”
He had the grace to look away, apparently realizing that he’d misstepped. “I didn’t—”
“But you did,” she cut him off, her anger rising. “You did mean it. Ah, scandalous Sesily, at best a vapid bright eyes, and at worst a tragic lightskirt, but either way, bored and alone without a man or a family to keep her properly leashed. With nothing to do but while away her hours and descend into recklessness.”
“I didn’t say any of that.” The words came on a grumble that might have sounded like guilt.
“Not tonight,” she retorted, hating herself for saying it.
His gaze found hers and the air between them crackled like fire. “I’ve never said it.”
“No, but you’ve thought it,” she retorted. “You, like the rest of the world, thought it the moment we met. The worst kind of woman. A wild scandal. A threat. Christened Sexily by the men of London and leans into it, don’t you know?”
He came forward like a shot. “Don’t. Don’t call yourself that.”
“Why not? Is it not true?”
She would have laughed at the way he struggled to find the right reply in the darkness. If she weren’t so furious with him. “You, like everyone else in London, think life happens to me. That I live by the swing of my skirts and the breeze in my hair. You think I ran into the fray on a lark. And now you return me to my sister, hoping that she will leash me. That she will keep me out of the next fray.”
His lips flattened into an impossibly straight line.
“Bollocks that,” she said, turning back to the window, the shops of Piccadilly flying by, her sister’s home growing ever nearer. “The Place is safety. It is a gift to those of us who don’t have the life my sisters have. The one they chose. And when men came for it, I did what any decent person would do—what you did, I might add—I fought.”
She returned her attention to him, then, anger and frustration rose in her breast, making her want to do more than shout at him. Making her want to shout at every man who had stepped into O’Tiernen’s that evening and threatened that place she loved. “They came for my friends, and I fought. And it wasn’t harebrained or misguided or a lark. And I didn’t do it without thought. And it wasn’t stupid and it wasn’t reckless and I don’t have to explain it to anyone—least of all my sister who adores calling me reckless—simply because you couldn’t keep your hands off me long enough to walk away. That was your mistake. Not mine. And if you feel some false sense of responsibility or guilt or misplaced heroics because of it, that’s your problem. I won’t pay for it.”
The words fairly ran together at the end, trailing off into the heavy silence of the carriage, filled with the sound of wheels and hooves on the cobblestones outside. She watched him for long moments, wondering if he’d even heard her. Wondering if he’d reply, before deciding she didn’t care.
She turned to the window as he said, “I was to leave you? Unconscious?”
She breathed deep, swallowing around the ache in her throat, before adding, “I wasn’t alone. I had my friends. And I didn’t ask for you to play the savior. Indeed, I would not have required a savior at all if not for—”
“—if not for my interference. Yes. You’ve made that clear.” The words were like steel. He was angry.
Good. So was she.
Her stomach began to churn again.
And then, he finally, finally, said, “What then?” And there, in his tone, she heard it. He was ceding the fight.
“What then, what?”
“At some point, either under cover of darkness or during full light of day, you’re going to have to exit this carriage.”
“I don’t see why.”
“Because it is only a matter of time before you vomit all over it, or the horses require rest. So, where? Where can I take you, where someone will watch over you? Where you will receive the care you require, should you need it?”
She sighed. “I don’t need it.”
“Not an hour ago, you were nearly dead. I’m not taking you to an empty home to skulk off to your bedchamber as though nothing happened.”
Irritating man. “Take me to Trevescan Manor.” The duchess had a dozen guest rooms and a penchant for elaborate breakfast spreads.
“No.” He shook his head firmly. “The rest of London might not see it, but you four are up to something and I’m not about to leave you to it. Not tonight.” He paused, then added, “You took on
an opponent who was stronger, larger, and crueler than you tonight.”
She waved the words away. “Find me a woman who hasn’t had to—”
“Yes, but that’s the second time in a week. What in hell are you four up to?”
Shit. This was just what the duchess had feared. Caleb, a man who saw more than most, with a newly piqued interest in their activities. That meant two things: first, they would require information about him. Enough to buy his silence if necessary.
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
Second, he had to be thrown off the scent. She put her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “Caleb, I have a raging headache, a roiling stomach, and I went head-to-head with a gang of brutes tonight. Please …”
He reached up and rapped thrice on the roof.
Instantly, the vehicle turned.
Inhaling sharply and grabbing the sill of the now destroyed window to keep her balance and her stomach, Sesily said, “Where then?”
“My home.”
Her eyes went wide.
His home.
What an odd idea. That he had a home.
A place with a hearth and a kitchen and a bedchamber. And a bed. A place full of his secrets, and he was taking her there.
She turned to the window, grateful for an excuse to look away.
To breathe.
She was grateful for the fresh, cool air when he added, “But you shall owe me, Sesily Talbot. And I’m a man who collects.”
Sesily could hear the truth in the words—even as they pooled inside her, less a threat, and more a promise, making her wonder at the way he might collect from her. With another man, in another place, at another time, she might have had the courage to ask him to be more clear.
With another man, in another place, at another time, she mightn’t have cared so much about his response.
But she did, and so she remained silent—heroically silent, if she was being honest—afraid that if she pushed him, he’d return to his original plan, and take her to her sister.
The carriage turned off Piccadilly and up Regent Street, bypassing Mayfair altogether. She bit her tongue, refusing to speak as they entered the new neighborhood, where she knew he kept a home.
A home that had been open twice in the two years she’d known him.
Not that she’d noticed.
Not that she’d gone looking.
The carriage slowed, making several quick turns in succession into a web of the quiet streets of Marylebone, the silence within accentuating the turning of her stomach. When the vehicle stopped, she didn’t wait for anyone to open the door, instead scrambling out onto the street. The fresh air in the carriage had helped, but nothing cured carriage sickness like solid ground.
Only then did she consider Number Two, Wesley Street—clean and well-maintained in three floors rising up from the quiet, tree-lined row. The carriage set off, and Sesily slid a look up and down the street. Not a soul to be seen.
“Inside,” he commanded in a low grumble as he pushed past her, up the steps to the bright white door, and set a key to the lock. This was it. Caleb Calhoun’s London home.
He stepped back from the door to reveal the darkness within, barely lit by the light from the single lantern left on a small table just inside the door, presumably by an enterprising servant before they’d taken to their bed.
“Thank you,” she said, happily, enjoying the surprise and irritation on his handsome face as she pushed past him into the foyer of the home, which smelled exactly like him. Amber and leather and paper and scotch. She took a moment to breathe in the place—his London sanctuary—as he increased the light from the lantern, allowing just enough to make out the space he’d called his home.
There was a sitting room to her left, and in the dim light, she found a low settee and a large, leather upholstered chair, each facing a large, ornate hearth where a fire had been banked. Those invisible servants again.
A small table sat covered in papers—presumably related to the tavern that he and her sister owned. Or perhaps one of the dozen he owned in America.
“Your study?” she asked.
“No one comes here. The rooms all serve equal purpose.”
She entered the room, and her slippers were lost in the thick pile of the carpet, lusher than any she’d ever trod before. She couldn’t help her smile. Caleb Calhoun might play the simple American, needing little more than a crust of bread and a pallet of hay for survival, but he liked a decent carpet. A large chair.
“I apologize for the …” He trailed off, waving a hand at the papers before raking his fingers through his hair. Was he nervous? “I wasn’t expecting you.”
She gave him a little smile. “I wasn’t expecting me, either.”
He was not amused. Instead, he cleared his throat and turned away from the room, toward the staircase at the far end of the hallway.
She followed, unable to resist peeking into another room as she passed its open door. It was too dark inside, but she registered a great, hulking piece of furniture within. A pianoforte, perhaps? Then light was gone and Caleb with it. Sesily hurried to keep up, reaching him at the base of the staircase that rose to darkness above.
She lifted her skirts and followed him to the first floor and then the second, where he paused outside another open door, the only light inside from the embers of another banked fire.
A bedchamber.
Sesily’s heart began to pound. He entered and she waited at the door as he busied himself with more light, wondering how to artfully present herself so that when he turned around, she appeared both innocent and tempting.
Come on, Sesily. You’ve done this before.
She’d broken her fair share of hearts. Surely she could make sure this American noticed her.
He never noticed her.
Wasn’t that how he’d broken her heart? By not noticing her? By making it clear that he wanted nothing to do with her?
Memory came, summoned by darkness, as it always did.
They’d been outside her sister’s country house, and Sesily had made every effort to tempt him with her winning smiles and clever retorts and magnificent curves, this impossible man, who’d refused her even as she’d known he wanted her.
I know better than to get anywhere near you, he’d said. You want love.
She’d resisted the words then, telling herself he was wrong. Love was for other women. Women who wanted marriage and children and large country houses with follies and lakes and things.
Sesily didn’t want love. She wanted him, and nothing more. Nothing complicated. Except Caleb Calhoun was nothing but complicated.
If he was the only man she’d ever wanted, and couldn’t have, so be it.
Sesily crossed her arms over her chest, memory and frustration flaring as she resisted the instinct to capture his interest again. She’d done that enough, and to no avail. And besides, even if she could interest this enormous American, tonight was not the night for it.
She was tired, and would likely be sore in the morning.
As he lit what seemed like the hundredth candle within the large room, it occurred to Sesily that this was a very nice bedchamber. Complete with a very nice bed, that she would happily sleep in.
Except, as she took in that very nice bed, the stack of books on a small table at the far side of it, and the fire in the hearth—it occurred to Sesily that this was not simply a very nice bedchamber.
“This is your bedchamber,” she said.
He grunted a reply from where he fussed with a lantern, and her jaw went slightly slack. Surely he didn’t mean for her to … for them to …
She put the thought—and the instant zing of response she had to it—away. Instead focusing on his work. “You have a lot of candles.”
He held a match to a lantern at the far end of the room. “Doesn’t everyone?”
Not like this. “Do you read a great deal in the evenings?”
“I like to see what I am doing.”
“What
? Or whom?” The bawdy question caught his attention, and he looked to her. A hit. “Ah. You finally noticed me.”
His gaze narrowed, as though he had something choice to say, but he did not share it, because the lamp caught in that moment, and the flame singed his fingers. He hissed a curse that Sesily thought might have been for both her and the lamp, and snapped the glass door closed. “Believe it or not, Sesily, I am not elated at your presence here. It is a last resort.”
Of course it was. But he didn’t have to say it, did he? She swallowed the sting to her pride, came off the door, and entered the room. “You needn’t rewrite history, American. I proposed a perfectly good alternative.”
He didn’t move, but he watched her carefully as she approached the bed. She set her fingers to the counterpane and said, “If you prefer me to be out of sight, I am happy to take a lesser chamber.”
His gaze flickered to where she touched the bed, then back to her. “It is the only one in the house.”
She tilted her head. “There is only one bedchamber.”
He scowled. “I’m never here. I do not require guest quarters.”
She smiled. “So, there is only one bed.”
He moved to cross the room, for the door. “It is yours.”
“Caleb,” she said, when he was close—near enough to touch if she tried. Not that she did. “I cannot push you from your bed.”
He looked to her, a retort on his tongue. She could see it, thanks to the lights all around the room making it impossible not to. But before he could speak, the lights made it impossible for her to hide from him as well—from his eyes focused on her cheek.
His brow furrowed, something like disgust flashing, and Sesily flinched. “I-is there something—” She put a hand to her cheek. “On my face?”
It took longer than it should have for him to answer, and she watched as a muscle flickered at his jaw, as though he were resisting saying precisely what he was thinking. “You’re …” He trailed off, his gaze tracking over her face, to her neck, to the bare skin above the tight line of her dress.
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