by Lily Maxton
She would sneak back into the house with the help of one of her maids whom she trusted not to gossip, and no one was ever the wiser.
But Elizabeth knew this furtive dalliance must end. It would have been easy to let it draw out for weeks or months or as long as Cale wanted her, but she was becoming dangerously fond of a man she knew would never commit himself to anyone.
And it was in an effort to salvage some small piece of her heart that she resolved to end their relationship on the eighth day. Because she knew with a horrible certainty that if she didn’t end it, Cale would. She didn’t know when, but it would surely happen.
She’d allowed herself one full week as his lover. It would have to be enough.
She took a carriage to Cale’s bookshop, thinking it would be easier to face him where he worked rather than at his home. His townhouse had become something of a sanctuary for her in the past few days. It felt more like a real home than Wycombe Manor ever had.
She would miss it.
She would miss him.
Suddenly, it was difficult to breathe.
He was bent over a stack of parchment when she stepped into his office. He had his shirt sleeves rolled up, ink stains on his hands. He wore the spectacles she’d seen perched on the desk that first day.
A little jolt—her heart lurching.
He looked so vulnerable, and yet masculine at the same time. Studious but strong, and more handsome than she’d ever seen him.
She made a noise…a whimper of despair, perhaps—that was all she was capable of in that moment—and he glanced up.
“Elizabeth?” He took the spectacles off and stood, then began to smile. But paused, arrested by whatever he saw in her expression. “Is something amiss?”
Her hands hung limply in front of her waist, the fingers of one hand circling the wrist of the other. “No,” she said. “I’m well.”
A tremendous overstatement.
She couldn’t think of any easy way to say it, so she simply closed her eyes and unleashed the words she’d been dreading. “I won’t visit you tonight. I think—” She swallowed. “I think it’s time to end this.”
She could have heard a feather drop in the absolute silence that followed. When she finally cracked open her eyes, she saw that he wasn’t looking at her. He was holding himself abnormally still, staring unseeing at a spot near the center of the desk. “Ah. You’re right, of course.” He turned his head to meet her gaze, his face inscrutable.
“I am?” She’d expected—
Good Lord, what had she expected? That he would fall to his knees and beg her to stay with him? Even if he didn’t want her to leave, she suspected he would never admit it. He was too used to protecting himself.
He lifted a negligent shoulder. “It’s best to end these affairs before the passion fades.”
She felt her face drain of blood. These affairs. She’d known that was all she was to him, all he would allow her to be. But hearing the words aloud was as shocking and overwhelming as being thrown into icy water. “Yes, well you would have more experience with that, wouldn’t you?”
And there was the bitterness. Whatever happened to a magnanimous exit?
His voice remained emotionless. “Indeed, I’ve made no secret of it.”
“No.” And yet, she’d hoped…
God knew what she’d hoped.
“Will you marry Thornhill?” he asked politely.
“Does my choice concern you?” she snapped, feeling waspish.
“No, I was simply curious.”
Once he’d argued against the match. Once he’d been emphatic. He was already pulling away, and the pain of it caused a stab in her chest.
This wasn’t going at all as she’d imagined. “Cale, I—”
He held up his hand, stopping her. It was probably for the best. She had no idea what embarrassing thing she might have uttered had he not. “I wish you well, Elizabeth.”
She swallowed past the sudden tightness in her throat. “And I you.”
She looked at him one last time, and his beautiful, achingly familiar face was that of a stranger, giving away nothing. She forced herself to move. She turned away and counted the steps to the door.
She actually made it to the front entrance of Cameron’s before tears welled and blurred her vision.
He didn’t call to her.
And she didn’t let herself look back.
Chapter Five
“I cannot marry you, my lord.”
Lord Thornhill, Michael, set his teacup back on the tray with a soft clank. “May I ask why? I believe we would suit very well.”
“We would suit very well,” Elizabeth agreed, glancing down at her folded hands before meeting his eyes again. “But for me, there are other considerations. I should have… I shouldn’t have told you I would consider your offer. It was a mistake.”
A pause. Then he came to sit next to her on the settee and took one of her hands in his. “If you have doubts about me, tell me what they are.”
She grimaced. She would have to tell him the truth. He deserved that much, whether it hurt him or not. “The considerations concern me. The fault is mine. I am—” She nearly faltered. “I am in love with someone else.”
Thornhill’s grip on her hand slackened and then fell away completely. “I see. But…where is this man? I haven’t heard that anyone else is courting you.”
“He’s not courting me.” When he drew a breath, she hurried on, breaking off whatever protest he was about to make. “It doesn’t matter. It would not be fair to you to have a wife whose feelings are engaged elsewhere. I’ve already lived through one unhappy marriage. I have no wish to repeat the experience.”
“No,” he said quietly. Thoughtfully. “I understand. I should not try to persuade you against your inclinations.”
He stood, an abrupt movement, and she stood as well. “I’m so sorry, my lord.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” he said. “We cannot choose whom we love.” But his voice was carefully level, as though he was angry and simply too good-mannered to reveal it. “I will show myself out.”
She let him go. There was nothing she could say that would help.
But she wasn’t alone with her feelings for very long before her mother, Olivia, and Anne hurried into the drawing room in a flurry of pale muslin.
“You refused him?” Lady Middleton screeched, the vein in her forehead ticking like a frantic clock. “How dare you, you ungrateful—”
“I owe Olivia a shilling,” Anne interrupted, looking at Elizabeth a bit accusingly. “She said you wouldn’t marry Thornhill.”
“Well, obviously,” Olivia pointed out. “We knew she was meeting someone at night. And since we saw Lord Thornhill on one of those nights, it couldn’t have been him.”
“Meeting someone!” Their mother’s face turned an alarming shade of red. “When an earl showed an interest in marrying you? Don’t you realize you’re supposed to save such behavior for after the wedding ceremony?” She pressed a hand to her forehead. “Have I taught you nothing?”
“No, Mama,” Elizabeth said calmly. “You’ve taught me a great deal.”
“Not enough, I see.” Her mother plopped onto the chaise longue, looking like an overgrown child about to have a fit, and waved her hand. “Away with you. I cannot bear to look upon my disappointment.”
Elizabeth didn’t need any further prompting.
She didn’t know when the change had occurred, or perhaps it had been happening very gradually, but her world no longer revolved around the axis of her parents’ approval. She swept out of the drawing room.
Her sisters followed.
“Who is it?” Anne asked, prompting Elizabeth to stop on the stairs and turn to face them.
“Cale Cameron.”
Olivia gasped. “The owner of Cameron’s Lending Library and Booksellers?”
Elizabeth nodded.
Anne’s eyes widened. “He’s a notorious rake. Did you know he had an affair with a duchess?
”
“Yes, I heard. I didn’t care.”
Her sister grinned suddenly. “How very scandalous. I approve!”
“His bookshop is wonderful,” Olivia said fervently. “The best selection in London.”
Elizabeth laughed, even though she had tears in her eyes. She wrapped her arms around both of them at the same time. “Well, as long as you two aren’t horrified, I suppose I should be happy.”
…
Cale was experiencing the worst weeks of his life. Well, the second worst. The worst had been the fire and being shipped off to the workhouse. But coming in second to that was no small feat.
He barked at his employees. He barely refrained from snapping at some of his customers. In a fit of temper, after he’d been informed one of the writers he’d wanted to acquire had gone with another publisher, he smashed an inkwell against the wall and watched with satisfaction as the black ink ruined his wallpaper. His very expensive wallpaper.
His satisfaction was frustratingly short-lived.
This wasn’t like him. He wasn’t a man who threw inkwells. It felt as if his whole world was unraveling. Utter ridiculousness. Cameron’s had always been the very center of his world, and Cameron’s was thriving as much as it ever had.
It was just that, sometimes out of nowhere, he would be pummeled by agonizing images—Elizabeth and Thornhill waltzing…marrying…sleeping…making love…every aspect of their lives entwined. And she’d be removed from Cale’s life forever.
He told himself it was for the best. But this yawning, howling chasm in his chest didn’t seem to agree.
He knew what his mistake had been. He hadn’t set an end date. Generally, when he embarked on a relationship, he had some estimation of how long it would last. A fortnight, a month, perhaps a few months at most. He hadn’t done that with Elizabeth. He hadn’t even thought of doing it. Elizabeth had been a beginning with no clear end, a future left open.
What in God’s name had he been thinking?
When she’d said she wanted to end their relationship, he’d felt the shock and pain of it like a physical blow. But that was for the best, too. It would have ended eventually. There was no other choice. Between the two of them, she’d been the one smart enough to do what was necessary instead of letting their affair drag out to a messy, bitter conclusion.
Yes, everything, just as it was, was for the best.
Even so, his heart leaped when he heard light footsteps on the stairs and sank in sharp disappointment when Julia Forsythe appeared in the doorway.
“Miss Forsythe.” He made a valiant attempt to remain polite.
She set a bound stack of parchment on the desk with a flourish. “It’s finished.”
“Very good,” he said.
She huffed incredulously. “I’ve been writing this for months, and that’s all you have to say?”
He drew in a deep breath through his nose, striving for patience. “I’m ecstatic that you’ve finished the first draft. I’ll read through it in the next few days.”
He heard an offended squeak as she spun toward the door. But then she stopped and spun back around, a few tendrils of hair escaping their pins with the force of her turn. He nearly felt dizzy himself.
“Is that ink on your wall?” she demanded.
“Yes.”
“Did you throw an inkwell?”
His politeness failed. “What does it possibly matter?” he snapped.
Julia moved toward the desk, taking the chair across from him as though settling in for a long conversation. “That’s not like you, Mr. Cameron. Now, I’ve been known to throw a few inkwells, but I wouldn’t have expected it of you.”
“Does this have a point, Miss Forsythe?” he ground out.
“It’s the woman, isn’t it? Mrs. Grey?”
God. He’d become obvious. It was a difficult blow. “Our…association…is over, and I do not wish to discuss it.”
Naturally, she didn’t listen. “But you don’t wish for the association to be over?” she asked tentatively.
No. No. No. No! His heart was like a screaming child.
His damned heart. He’d spent years trying to close it off, denying its very existence, and one woman, one unremarkable woman, had completely unraveled everything.
But that was the problem—she wasn’t unremarkable. Not to him. Far from it.
He’d known it, too. At the beginning. The strength of his desire had worried him even then. And like a fool he’d ignored the warning.
“What I want doesn’t matter,” he bit out.
“Why not? You could win her back if you tried. I’m quite good at observing these things. I’d wager she cares for you as much as you care for her.”
“I…I can’t.”
Julia’s eyes narrowed. “Can’t what?”
“Lose her,” he said. Or rather, gasped like a drowning man breaking the surface one last time.
“Then why are you here?” She looked at him as though he’d grown horns. “Why do you not go to her?”
He shook his head. Julia had misunderstood. “No. I can’t be with her, because I cannot lose her.”
A downward curve worked at rouge-tinted lips. “But if you’re not with her,” she puzzled out, “haven’t you already lost her?”
He let his head fall into his outstretched hands. The gesture of a defeated man.
That was precisely the problem.
…
The gig rolled bumpily over the dirt road. The sun was high in the sky, beating upon Elizabeth’s head with ferocity. She led the horse into the stables and unhitched him from the traces before walking back toward the cottage. She didn’t have any male servants in her new household to help with the creature, only a housemaid and a cook who came in from the village each day.
She pushed back her bonnet, leaving it to dangle down her back by its ribbons.
After many sleepless nights, interrupted by half-broken dreams and memories of Cale Cameron, and after many restless days, startling every time she saw a tall, brown-haired man in London—of which there were thousands, so she was perpetually startled—in desperation she’d decided it was time for a change.
She had left her parents’ townhouse with a small amount of money she’d saved, and sought refuge at one of the vacant Thornhill properties—a country cottage with lopsided shutters, vines creeping over the windows, and cobwebs in every corner of every room.
It had required a bit of work.
Her parents had thought she’d gone mad. They still did.
But she’d thrown herself into the busywork, thankful for any kind of distraction at all. The cottage was looking much more presentable now, and she had no small amount of pride in it. She’d never done physical labor before. She’d never lived alone. She hadn’t even known if she was capable of it.
Both things had helped revive her badly flagging spirits.
On her way to the front door, she stopped to look at some purple wildflowers sprouting beneath one of the cottage windows. She was contemplating starting a garden, but actually had no idea how to do it. A book from the lending library might—
Her stomach tightened. Books and lending libraries. Even deep in the country, there were reminders of Cale Cameron. She shouldn’t have had an affair with a man who sold books. They were too ubiquitous.
A sound broke into her idle thoughts and made her look up. She paused, startled to see a handsome, black-lacquered carriage throwing up dirt and heading for the cottage.
It took an eternity for the equipage to stop. At this angle she couldn’t see the occupants.
But her hands trembled, and her lungs seized. She knew. Somehow, she just knew.
A man stepped down from the carriage, both familiar and shockingly new. Her gaze collided with beautiful green-gold eyes and held. She was reminded of the night she’d attended the dinner party, and she’d seen him on the stairs. This moment had that same unnatural quality.
Time seemed to stop, and the world faded around them.
�
��Hello, Cale,” she said smoothly, pretending her heart wasn’t thudding wildly against her ribs. Pretending her body wasn’t screaming to touch him.
He ran his hand through his hair, tousling it. “Elizabeth.”
He didn’t move, so she stepped closer to him. “Are you well?”
A wry, strangled laugh caught in his throat. “Am I well?” he muttered. “No, I am not well.”
His expression was that of a man severely put upon, as though someone had played a cruel trick on him. He had dark circles under his eyes, and he looked ragged, worn.
Her shoulders relaxed. Giddy agitation made her take another step forward. “How did you find me?”
“Your sisters told me. You’re not marrying Thornhill, then?”
She folded her arms over her chest to create a small barrier between them. Though all of her instincts were telling her to collapse against him, she fought to remain poised. “You said it didn’t matter to you.”
Cale shoved his hands into his coat pockets, a defiant gesture that made him look more vulnerable than anything else. “He doesn’t make you laugh.”
She blinked, surprised he’d noticed. He’d only seen them together once. “No, not very often,” she agreed. “He’s rather serious.”
“You need someone who will make you laugh.” His voice was forceful.
“What right do you have to tell me what I need? It’s been three months, Cale.”
His hands came out of his pockets, and he reached out, then let them drop. “I shouldn’t have let you go. I should have begged you to stay.”
After a flash of surprise, her chin went up a fraction. “But you didn’t.”
He surged forward with such energy that she stepped back instinctively.
“I’m here now. I only let you go to protect myself, but staying away was far worse. These three months have been hell. I can’t,” he drew in a breath, “I can’t live without my heart.”
When his words stunned her into silence, he stepped forward. The front of his coat brushed her gown, but still he didn’t touch her. “For God’s sake don’t punish me, Elizabeth. I’ve already punished myself enough.”
