Hope Tarr - [Men of the Roxbury House 02]

by Enslaved

  Daisy looked over to Callie, realizing she’d lost all track of the time. It might be midnight or midmorning, five minutes or fifty since she climbed inside the carriage. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me where it is you lot are kidnapping me to?”

  The carriage lamp swinging overhead illuminated Callie’s small, Mona Lisa-like smile. Lips twitching with suppressed laughter, she shook her head. “Not on your life. The destination is meant to be a surprise. Were I the one to spoil it after all the elaborate scheming that’s been carried on, Hadrian and Rourke would have my head on a platter and rightly so. For now, lean back and don’t fret about the destination. Just enjoy the ride.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “The sight of lovers feedeth those in love.

  Bring us to this sight, and you shall say

  I’ll prove a busy actor in their play.”

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Rosalind,

  As You Like It

  They were traveling eastward, Daisy gathered that much. The streets were becoming progressively narrower and more winding and the smells wafting in through the carriage window considerably less pleasant. The carriage rumbled to a halt. Looking out the window on her side, she saw they’d pulled off the main street. A single torch lit the entrance to a large timber-framed structure in the Tudor style. The building sat back from the street, the turnabout paved in cobbles, a sign it must be very old.

  The carriage door opened and Rourke offered a hand to help Daisy out. She took it and then turned back to Callie. “Aren’t you coming?”

  The brunette shook her head. “This is your night, and your second chance. Good luck.”

  “Thank you.” Daisy turned away to accept Rourke’s outstretched hand. She stepped down and, lantern in hand, the Scot escorted her to the main door. Somehow she wasn’t really surprised when he opened it without needing a key.

  Stepping back, he said, “This is the final leg of the journey for me, but the first step for you.”

  “Thank you.” She tried for a smile, but it felt as wobbly as the rest of her.

  “You’re most welcome, lass.” Drawing back, he hesitated and then said, “He really loves you, you know.”

  “I know, or at least I do now. And I love him, too, with all my heart.”

  “Go to, then.” He handed her the lantern and turned back down the path.

  With a final wave to her friends, Daisy stepped inside. The ancient arched oak door groaned closed behind her. Inside she had no need of the lantern. Candles lit her way from the entrance foyer to the auditorium. She followed the candle-lit path down the center aisle between rows of low, backless benches to the pillared platform stage. The tattered stage curtain rose as she approached, revealing a cloth-covered table set for two. Next to it, a silver pedestal bucket stood within reach, holding what looked to be a bottle of champagne on ice.

  Gavin, heart-stoppingly handsome in formal evening dress, strolled out onto the stage. “I was beginning to think Hadrian might have gotten you lost in the dark.”

  “Gavin, what is all this? Why did you go to the trouble of having our friends kidnap me from one theater only to bring me to another? A dusty one,” she added, suppressing a sneeze.

  He shrugged. “I wanted some time alone with you, a private celebration, and Hadrian and Rourke were good enough to step in as escort and driver.” He reached down a hand and, taking it, she climbed the three steps up.

  He released her and she said, “You mean step in as co-conspirators in a kidnapping?”

  He shrugged, gaze stroking over her. “It was the only way I could be sure you’d come.”

  “You might have simply invited me.”

  He cocked a brow. “Would you have accepted?”

  She thought about lying and then dismissed it. Far too many lies stood between them as it was. “I’m not certain.”

  “Have you dined yet?”

  Daisy thought for a moment and then realized she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Though the lobster patties, French cheeses, and strawberries dipped in rich, dark chocolate served at the reception had looked tempting, she hadn’t been able to summon much of an appetite.

  She shook her head. “No.” Feeling eyes upon her, she chanced to see Jamison poke his silver head out from the side curtain as if awaiting his cue. Apparently, Gavin’s servant was yet another co-conspirator.

  Following her gaze, Gavin said, “In that case, I’ve champagne chilling and a cold supper waiting in the wings, so you won’t thirst or starve. The only stipulation is that you have to spend the next few hours here with me talking, just the two of us. Do you mind?”

  Daisy had no inclination to play coy. “Mind? Mind! I spent the better part of the day and then the evening after the performance wishing you might materialize next to me.”

  She reached for him, but he held up a staying hand. “First we need to settle things between us, once and for all. We need to come to terms, an arrangement we can both live with, if you will.”

  All this talk of terms and arrangements made him sound more like the flinty barrister of his reputation than the tender lover she knew. She opened her mouth to say as much when it occurred to her what he was about to propose wasn’t all that different from the no-nonsense business arrangement she’d insisted upon that first day at his flat.

  If laying out their future in black-and-white terms was what it took to keep him, she was prepared to do so as well as to sign nearly anything he proposed. She wanted, needed, Gavin in her life. They were two halves of a single soul and though he was without doubt the better half, she wanted nothing so much as to spend the rest of her life working to make him happy, to complete him as he most certainly completed her.

  Praying she wasn’t too late, she confided, “Oh, Gavin, I’ve just had what was supposed to be the most glorious night of my life only …”

  “Only?” He still held himself from her but his voice was gentle.

  “Only it didn’t mean a bloody thing without you there to share it.”

  “But I was there, for most of it. I left midway through the final act.”

  “But you weren’t in your box. I … I looked for you.” She felt embarrassment sting her cheeks and hoped it was too dark for him to see.

  She couldn’t tell. He rested his gaze on her face, expression unreadable. How she wished she might fathom his thoughts as easily as she had just a few days before, but his heart, which he’d worn on his sleeve until now, appeared to have been put away. “I stood in the back just behind the curtain. You couldn’t see me, but I could see you. You were brilliant. Better than brilliant, you were Rosalind. Your performance tonight is certain to go down with the likes of Sara Siddons and Dorothy Jordan.”

  “Thank you but I fancy myself as more of a Nell Gwynne.” She managed to get the words out over the lump lodged in her throat. Gavin’s compliment was sweeter to her than any praise penned by the most lauded of London theater critics.

  He turned to the ice bucket. “Champagne?”

  She shouldn’t, her head was reeling as it was, but she nodded her acceptance anyhow.

  Watching him pour the frothy wine into two flutes, her gaze fell to his hands. She found herself remembering the feel of them moving over her, inside her, and shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the draft.

  “You’re cold. Here.” He took off his dinner coat and tucked it around her shoulders. “This is where we came in, remember, with me tossing my dinner jacket about your very bare and very lovely shoulders. Did you think me mad?”

  Daisy smiled. “Completely. And what of you, did you find me brazen?”

  “Utterly shocking, but over these past weeks I’ve discovered that I rather fancy your brash ways so long as, like those lovely legs of yours, you display them in private, for me alone.”

  She couldn’t think with him standing so close. Champagne in hand, she stepped away under pretense of examining the carved paneling on the side of the stage. Even coated in cobwebs and dust, the craftsmanship was exq
uisite. “Where are we, by the way?” He stepped back, too. “An old, abandoned theater built in Shakespeare’s day and last known as The

  Parisian. The final play performed here was The Misanthrope by Moliere. It’s been vacant for a decade, longer perhaps.”

  “What a shame.”

  A slight smile played about his lips. “Yes, I thought so, too.” A pause, this one longer than the last, and then he added, “Sometimes people abandon their dreams much like abandoning an old building. Because it’s less trouble that way, because there isn’t enough love to see it through.”

  The thinly veiled metaphor had her snapping up her head to meet his eyes. “I never said I didn’t love you. I’ve always loved you. I never lied about that.”

  And yet she lied about so many other things. Now that she considered it, what a great lot of energy she expended needlessly when truth telling would have been so much simpler.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you’d written me all those years ago?

  The question and the accusation underlying it took her aback. Shaking, she set her glass down on the table before it could slip through her fingers. “I assumed you knew.”

  “I didn’t.”

  Even now she couldn’t trust herself to believe him. “One unanswered letter I could have chalked up to mishap but, Gavin, I wrote you so many times. The last letter I sent was from Calais.”

  “I never received a single one, at least not until today.” He grimaced. “My grandfather left orders with the school that my correspondence be strictly monitored. He gave the headmaster a list of persons from whom I might receive letters. Everything else was to be sent on to him.”

  Daisy felt tears prick her eyes. “When you didn’t answer, I thought you must not care to be bothered with me any longer, that your fancy new life hadn’t room for a foundling without even a surname to recommend her. When I sent my last letter and a month went by and you still hadn’t answered it, I told myself I had to face the fact you’d moved on—and that I had to move on, too.”

  “I didn’t move on. I drifted. Wherever I went, whatever I did or saw, all I could think of was, ‘How Daisy would love this’ or ‘I can’t wait to tell Daisy about that.’ When I got back to London, the first thing I did was hire a detective to find you, but it was too late. There wasn’t a trace of you to be found, not in London and not in the counties, either. I never thought to look in France, let alone considered you might take a stage name. Foolish, foolish … “ He shook his head.

  “How did you find out about the letters after all this time? Did your detective uncover them somehow?”

  He shook his head. “My grandfather confessed what he’d done and then gave them to me. Along with owning up to the business about the letters, he admitted to attempting to bribe you into breaking it off with me. He also told me you refused him flat out. He even showed me the torn bank note. Why did you lie to me, Daisy? Letting me think you had a lover was bad enough but then to lead me to believe you betrayed us for the proverbial fifty pieces of silver … Why would you do such a thing?”

  She looked down at the dusty floorboards. “I couldn’t have you ruining your life over me. I gathered your grandfather would cut you off if we married. I couldn’t come back into your life only to destroy it.”

  He shook his head as though she were a careless child. “Had you but troubled yourself to come to me that day I would have told you I don’t give a tinker’s damn about my grandfather’s money.”

  “You say that now but it’s been a while since you were poor. It would be very hard to go back to that kind of life.”

  “Difficult, yes, but not unthinkable, and I would have done it, I would still do it without a second thought if it was the only way we could be together. As it happens, however, I have money of my own, independent of my grandfather’s legacy. Not great riches, by any means, but enough to take proper care of you and Freddie and the Lakes, too. But of course you didn’t come to me, did you, Daisy? Because despite everything we shared, you still didn’t trust me enough, didn’t love me enough, to believe we could work it out.”

  “Oh, Gavin, don’t ever think that. If there was anyone I don’t trust, or love enough, that person is me.

  Pushing you away before I could hurt you seemed the kindest thing I could do, but now I see it was cowardly and … self-defeating. As badly as I hurt you, I hurt myself that much more. If I could step back in time a month, I’d go about it all so very differently, but I suppose it’s a silly wish. It’s too late now, isn’t it?”

  Rather than answer that, he said, “I almost forgot. I have something for you.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a slender, brown paper-wrapped package.

  Taking it from him, she asked, “What is it?” Surely she was the very last person deserving of a gift.

  Gaze trained on her face, he said, “Open it and find out.”

  She slipped off the string and tore through the paper. Unfolding the contents, she snapped up her head. “It’s a deed. The deed to this theater … with my name on it. You bought me a theater, this theater!” Daisy had never owned a piece of property in her life, let alone a whole theater. Well and truly overwhelmed, she found herself speechless, drowning in the rush of love she felt.

  He nodded. “I know it’s not the Savoy—yet—but I’ve had a surveyor out to look about and he’s assured me that the basic structure is sound. It’s everything else that wants fixing, but it’s yours if you want it, outright without obligation. You can take it and choose never to see me again. But I’d very much like to be a part of it, not just this theater but your life, yours and Freddie’s, if you’ll have me.”

  “Gavin, are you asking what I think you are?”

  His answer was in his smile, that wonderful lopsided smile that reached his eyes and lit up the whole of his handsome face. “Marry me, Daisy. Marry me and let us both stop drifting. Marry me and let the three of us be a family.”

  “Oh, Gavin, I don’t know what to say.”

  He set his champagne glass on the table and walked toward her. “Say yes. Say you’ll marry me. No more delays, my dearest darling girl, and God help us, no more lying. Whatever difficulties arise in the future, we face them openly and honestly and above all, together. And as much as I love you, I don’t want you to accept my suit for Freddie’s sake or the Lakes', for that matter. If you accept me, it must be for myself alone. And I’m giving you fair warning, Daisy, I’ll expect you to love me with all your heart and all your mind and, yes, all your body, for the rest of our lives. Can you promise that? Can you possibly want me that much?”

  She swallowed hard. “I can and I do.” She loved him so much she felt as though her heart were squeezing in on itself. “But, Gavin, are you certain you’ve thought it all through? I’m an actress and before that a dance hall girl—not exactly the best background for a barrister’s wife.”

  “I’m certain I love you, Daisy. Beyond that, nothing else really matters. I don’t care what outrageous stage name you take or what color you dye your hair. You can dress in purple taffeta and rooster feathers if that’s your fancy, it doesn’t matter because I love you. You’re the woman I want to share my life, and I want you to share yours with me. I want to be a father to Freddie and to whatever other children God may grant us. I want to grow old with you, making love to you long after our bones have begun to rattle and creak. And when my time comes to die, I pray it comes before yours because I can’t fathom a world, my world, without you in it. What do you say to that?”

  In answer, Daisy wrapped both arms about his neck and, standing on tiptoe, kissed him with all the intensity, all the passion, and all the love she’d shored up for fifteen long years.

  Resting a hand atop either of his shoulders, she tilted her face to the side and brushed her mouth across his. “Thank you for loving me,” she said, almost a whisper.

  “You’re welcome.” He slid a hand through the warm cinnamon of her hair and brought her face to his. His mouth hovering above hers, he asked,
“You’ll marry me, then?”

  “Oh, Gavin.” Holding his face between her hands, she brushed her lips over his brow, his jaw, his lips, trusting that her answer was reflected in her eyes and in her kiss and in her touch. Just in case, she drew back. Smiling up at him through the happy tears, she said, “I promise to love you through thick and thin, forever and ever. Come what may, we’ll stay together … just like a real family.”

  EPILOGUE

  “Wherever there is a playhouse,

  the world will not go on amiss.”

  —WILLIAM HAZLITT

  Six Months Later

  Who would have thunk it?

  Sipping her post performance champagne with a satisfied smile, Daisy cast her gaze across the theater’s freshly painted green room bursting at the seams with the crème de la crème of the London theatrical world as well as her and Gavin’s family and dearest friends. Even Gavin’s grandfather had deigned to attend their debut performance, A Midsummer Night’s Dream with a lovely older lady on his arm, Callie’s aunt-by-marriage, Lottie Rivers. Apparently the two had known one another for decades and over the past six months romance had blossomed. Glancing to the pair clinking champagne flutes in the far corner, Daisy saw Mr. St. John was actually smiling. Astonishing.

  Hadrian and Callie managed to arrive for the play’s final act, but missing from their celebration was Rourke. The Scotsman had sent his regrets in a telegram along with some rather astounding news. He’d eloped with, some might say abducted, Lady Katherine Lindsey. The newlyweds were even now making their way north by train to his crumbling castle in the Scottish Highlands. According to Hadrian, who’d seen the place, Lady Kat would likely have to spend months working her soft, delicate hands to the bone to render it halfway to habitable. Daisy hardly thought a ruin the proper setting for wooing a reluctant bride, but when she said as much to Gavin earlier, he only winked at her and reminded her of where—and how—they spent their own honeymoon night. Thinking back on how they made love in every dusty nook and cranny of their yet-to-be-renovated theater had prompted them to repeat the experience all that morning and afternoon.