by Merry Farmer
“I beg your pardon?” Basil glanced up from the newspaper he had been staring at without seeing.
“Miss Bond,” Ted said. “I saw her slip out and scurry down the street about half an hour ago. She hasn’t returned yet.”
“Oh?” Basil had no idea how he’d missed that. He’d been gazing out through the pub’s front window at his shop all morning. His thoughts must have truly carried him away.
Ted finished arranging glasses and moved from behind the counter, across the room, and seated himself at Basil’s table. “Love, eh?” he said with a knowing grin.
Basil tried to think of a sophisticated retort, but only managed to nod, then shake his head.
“I’ve been in love with the same woman since school,” Ted went on with a sigh, leaning back in his chair.
“June Lakes,” Basil said. As obvious as it was to the entire town of Brynthwaite that he himself was besotted with Elaine, it was equally obvious to one and all that Ted was in love with June. There were no secrets in small towns. There were no secrets in London either, amongst certain circles.
“June has barely looked twice at me all these years,” Ted went on, regret in his voice, staring at the passersby in the street between the pub and the bookshop. “Not that her father and brothers give her a spare second to notice anyone.”
“Quite,” Basil mumbled, not sure what else to say. At least they weren’t talking about his romantic problems.
“You, on the other hand,” Ted began, proving that Basil had thought too soon. “Elaine Bond has you wrapped around her little finger.”
Basil let out an ironic laugh, but didn’t contradict the man.
“Why you’ve been holding out on proposing is a mystery to me.” Ted arched a brow at him. “Do you think she’d say no?”
Basil leaned back in his seat, reaching for the beer Ted had brought him more than an hour ago. He took a sip. “She wouldn’t say no.” Not after their kiss. Not after the way she’d looked at him, as though wanting much more.
“Then what are you waiting for, man?” Ted pressed him.
Basil stared at the envelope resting on the table beside The Times. It had arrived that morning, immediately hand-delivered, as per the instructions on the envelope, by Bob Marcus’s assistant at the post office. It contained only three sentences in Malcolm Campbell’s hand. “I know it’s you, Basil. Your game is over. Pack your bags and be ready. I’ll be there on the next train I can book.”
It would all be over soon. Perhaps that afternoon, if the trains ran all the way to Brynthwaite on a Sunday. He might get one day of reprieve, but by tomorrow at the latest, his life as he’d designed it for the last two years would be finished. Elaine wouldn’t say no to his marriage proposal after their kiss, but there was a strong chance she’d say no to everything after Malcolm found him.
“There are things I haven’t told anyone,” he said in a quiet voice, running his fingertips along the edge of the table.
“Things about your life before you showed up in Brynthwaite, you mean,” Ted said.
Basil nodded, not looking at the man.
“Things that would stop you from marrying Miss Bond.”
Basil nodded again.
Ted hesitated before saying, “Are you running from the law? Are you a criminal?”
“No.”
“Army deserter?”
“No.”
“Are you already married then?”
“No, I’m not.”
“What, then?” Ted said with a shrug. “What else could there be that would stop you from marrying a woman you love and who loves you?”
Basil glanced to the newspaper. He sat forward, turning it so that the words faced Ted, then jabbing his finger on the article he’d read seven times already. The article about himself.
“The missing Earl of Waltham? What does some missing nob have to do with—” Ted stopped mid-sentence. His gaze jumped from the words on the page to meet Basil’s eyes. “No.”
Basil nodded solemnly.
“No!” Ted repeated, laughing. “There’s no way. You can’t be.”
“I am,” Basil confessed.
Ted roared with laughter. “All this time. Two whole years. You were right across the street, or in here, drinking my beer.”
“You only bought this place last year,” Basil reminded him, crossing his arms. “After securing a certain loan with very little collateral.”
Ted stopped laughing for a moment, gaping at him. “You didn’t. You weren’t…it was you?”
Basil nodded. “The bank was going to deny you because they believed you were too young and that you couldn’t repay their loan, but I saw how much of a businessman you are and knew you could make a success of this place.”
Ted continued to gape before letting out a breath and blinking in shock. “Thank you…my lord?”
“Don’t.” Basil met his eyes with a frown. “Not yet.”
“But you are a lord,” Ted reminded him.
Basil nodded, looking away. The knowledge of his loftiness didn’t give him any more joy in the present than had when he’d fled everything that being an earl meant. “Any day now, perhaps even today, the truth will come out.” He looked at Malcolm’s letter once more.
Ted seemed to fit the pieces together. He uttered an expletive. “And that’s why you haven’t married Miss Bond.”
“She doesn’t know,” Basil admitted. “I’ve failed to tell her even the most basic information about who I really am.”
“I don’t think she’d mind,” Ted chuckled. “Any woman who marries you would be, what, a countess?”
Basil met Ted’s teasing grin with a scowl. “Do you think Miss Bond is the kind of woman who cares about things like that?”
“No,” Ted said, nodding as he thought things through.
“Do you think she’s the kind of woman who would take kindly to discovering the person she considers her closest friend has deceived her throughout their entire acquaintance?”
Ted uttered another expletive, stronger than the first. “I hate to say it, mate, but it all makes sense now.”
Basil arched one eyebrow, then reached for his beer, taking a much longer drink.
“So what are you going to do?” Ted asked, studying him with a new calculation in his eyes. At least he was still addressing Basil as though they were friends.
Basil shrugged. “Miss Bond is my first priority. I must make sure she’s safe, first and foremost.”
“Because if this does come out,” Ted said, catching on and finishing Basil’s train of thought, “when it comes out, it will come out all over the place.”
“Like blood from a slaughtered pig,” Basil said.
“Not a pretty metaphor,” Ted said with a shudder.
“Which is why I haven’t said anything for two years.”
“How do you think Crimpley will react to the news that he’s been bullying a…you know?” Ted asked.
Basil didn’t have a chance to answer. The front door of the pub flew open, and Elaine marched through. Her color was high and she looked as though she’d been on yet another of her adventures. He could see it in her eyes as she scanned the pub. The fact that the glassy excitement of her expression brightened when she spotted him didn’t bode well at all. He sat up straight, grateful that his conversation with Ted had returned things to normal below the waist, as she dodged around the pub’s tables toward them.
“There you are, Mr. Wall,” she said, her voice higher than usual.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Ted said, getting up so fast his chair nearly tipped backward.
Basil stood as well. He wasn’t sure he could face whatever Elaine was up to sitting down. “Is everything all right, Miss Bond?” he asked. A second later, he remembered Malcolm’s letter, swiped it from the table, and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket.
“Everything is splendid,” Elaine said, a little too keen. “Well, I have to go to Windermere tomorrow to sign those wretched papers of Mr. Sudbur
y’s.”
“Would you like me to accompany you?” Basil asked. A quick escape might be just the thing to avoid Malcolm’s arrival…if he hadn’t already showed up by then.
“No, no. I want to face this on my own.” She waved off his offer, then shot straight on to, “But that’s not why I’m here.”
“No?”
“No.”
They stood where they were, staring at each other in silence. Try as he did, Basil couldn’t suppress the memory of her taste or the way she’d fit so perfectly in his arms.
“It’s time,” Elaine said at last.
“Time?” His voice cracked on the single word.
“For our afternoon walk, of course,” Elaine said with a nervous laugh. “What did you think I meant?”
“Our walk,” he answered quickly, hoping to hide everything else that it was time for. He offered his arm stiffly. “Shall we go.”
“Yes,” Elaine answered. She rested her hand awkwardly in the crook of his elbow.
They headed outside, passing Ted—who had a hand clapped to his mouth and mirth in his eyes—as they did. There was a nip in the air as they started down the street on their usual walking route, heading to the path that wound along the lake. Basil couldn’t think of a thing to say to open the conversation. Strangely enough, Elaine’s lips were pressed tightly shut as well. Lips that had opened so tenderly and passionately just one day before. They were still pink too, the way Basil remembered them after their kiss. And her cheeks were as bright as autumn apples. She might not have been speaking, but she was most certainly thinking. The very idea terrified him.
“Did you sleep well last night?” he asked once they had made it to the lake.
“No. I mean, yes, I slept fine.” She sent him a smile that told him instantly she was lying.
They walked on, passing a few other pedestrians. Where usually Basil glared at the odd stares Elaine received, today he barely noticed anything. His heart thumped so loudly in his chest that it drowned out any possible sniffs or muttering from the people they passed.
“Do you need anything?” he asked after a good ten minutes’ silence. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“No,” Elaine answered quickly, blushing even brighter. Again, she was lying, only now, the prospect of what it is she needed from him, what he could do for her, was enough to make it a challenge to walk comfortably.
“Is there anything you need from me?” she asked, tense and breathless, a few minutes later.
“I,” Basil began, but closed his mouth. There was no way for them to continue on like they were, but in a strange fit of overexcited emotion, all he could manage was a self-deprecating laugh. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
She let out a nervous breath, laughing along with him. “I suppose not,” she said. “But we have time to figure it out.”
Basil fought to keep outwardly calm for her sake, but inwardly he winced. Because time was precisely the one thing they didn’t have.
Chapter 7
By lucky chance, Malcolm did not arrive in Brynthwaite before the trains stopped running that day. Basil wasn’t sure if he was relieved to have a reprieve from the truth, or if dragging things out was torture. He’d confessed his true identity to Ted without holy terror raining down on him, so it should have followed that he’d tell Elaine everything. Perhaps she would handle the truth as calmly at Ted had. Perhaps revealing all before Malcolm arrived would stop the worst from happening.
But he knew Elaine. He knew how fierce her pride could be. The only outcomes he could imagine his revelation having involved tears, grief…or her pummeling him until he was a bruised pulp.
To make things worse, their walk that afternoon had been torture. On every other walk they’d ever taken, Elaine had chattered like a magpie, but that afternoon she was silent. Basil wasn’t fool enough to pretend he didn’t know why. Their kiss had opened floodgates, washing them out of their old, comfortable friendship and landing them firmly in some new, uncharted manner of relationship. Even more alarming, the peeks she’d stolen at him as they strolled along were ripe with curiosity—a curiosity that gave him the feeling she’d made a few significant discoveries of a romantic nature since he’d left her at the bookshop the night before.
Speculation about what she knew and how she’d found out made sleep impossible for Basil for the second night in a row. He paced his small room above the pub well after dark, glad that Ted kept the place closed on Sunday nights. Word had gotten around that Elaine had been evicted and that she was living above the bookshop with lightning speed. More than a few people had congratulated him on his upcoming nuptials when he’d run an errand earlier, asking why the banns hadn’t been read in church that morning, as though the plot to push them together had finally succeeded. Everyone seemed to have expectations of what would happen next, and yet none of them knew the storm that was coming. No one except Ted.
Basil let out a rough sigh, running his hand through his hair. He was too old to be in a scrape like this. Other men his age were comfortably ensconced in their lives, had been married for decades, and were concerned about the future of their children, most of whom were nearly grown. In fact, when he’d left London, Malcolm himself had been ruminating on how to manage his daughter Cecelia’s coming out, and Katya Marlowe had been talking about arrangements for when her son, Rupert, assumed the duties of his title, sending her into retirement. And here he was, pacing a room in a pub, no wife, no family, a life that was about to be blown to pieces, too fearful of rejection to declare himself to the woman he’d loved more than anyone he’d ever met.
“That’s your problem,” he muttered to himself, pausing his pacing to pull the ill-fitting, knitted dressing gown Elaine had given him last Christmas more tightly closed in the front. “You’re a coward. Always have been. You ran from responsibility when you came home from the war, ran from any sort of settled life, ran from Elizabeth when Royston came along. You ran from the life and responsibilities you were born to, and you’re running from Elaine now.”
He huffed a derisive laugh and shook his head at himself, switching directions and walking to the window. He crossed his arms and leaned against the edge of the window, staring out into the black night and his shop across the street. Somewhere, Elaine was asleep behind the upstairs windows. Elaine Bond. The most remarkable woman he’d ever known. Free in every way he had never been allowed to be. Sole owner of his heart. He wanted to believe he’d do anything for her, but in the cold blackness of the middle of the night, beset with exhaustion, he was forced to admit that he was afraid to declare himself, afraid to fight for everything his heart and body desired on the chance that he might lose it all. And if he lost Elaine, he had nowhere else to run.
He grimaced in self-disgust and began to turn away from the window, but something caught his eye. He turned back, frowning and squinting at his shop. There was a light moving downstairs, in the shop itself. It was faint, flickering, but it was there. A different kind of fear gripped him and he leaned closer to the window, throwing it open to get a clearer look.
There was no mistaking it. Someone was definitely prowling around in his shop. They must have had a candle or shuttered lantern. It bobbed as though whoever held it were moving fitfully, perhaps searching for something, such as the cash box. He slammed the window shut and crossed his room in a few, long steps. The whole town knew that Elaine was staying in the flat above the shop and that he’d moved across to the pub. That meant all of Brynthwaite knew Elaine was alone in a shop where money was stored. Some blackguard must have gotten it into his head that the bookshop was an easy target, not just for money, but for Elaine.
He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t even stop to put on shoes or a coat. Heart in his throat, he raced down through the pub and out the front door. Whoever dared to accost Elaine when she was at her most vulnerable would answer to him.
Elaine huffed out an impatient breath, setting her candle down on the bookshop’s counter and pulling Basil’
s robe close around her. “They have to be here somewhere,” she said aloud, as though someone would hear her and point to the location of the naughty books. “Basil isn’t that clever at hiding things.”
She blinked in surprise at her words. Basil. She’d never said his given name aloud, not even to herself. “Basil,” she repeated. She rather liked the sound of it. She smiled, then touched her lips.
Her smile faltered, giving way to the disturbing swirl of emotion that had been solidifying as physical sensation in tender spots all day. Rose had given her quite an education that afternoon. She’d known most of it already, at least on an academic level. It was nearly impossible to live in Cumbria for one’s whole life without seeing sexual congress demonstrated by horses, sheep, and cows every spring. But the way Rose had described that same sort of congress as it was conducted between human men and women was, well, edifying.
She cleared her throat and turned to survey the shelves of books once more. The most unnerving part of Rose’s explanation of sexual relations had been her imagination’s constant efforts to visualize herself and Basil playing the roles. Not because she couldn’t form those pictures in her mind’s eye, but because she could form them all too well. In fact, looking back, she realized she’d seen exactly the sort of feelings Rose’s descriptions had ignited in her burning in Basil’s eyes as he looked at her. All the time. Knowing she’d been desired that way for so long by someone she adored and trusted with her life was…extraordinary.
She pressed a hand to the butterflies in her stomach. “I have to find them,” she whispered to the darkened bookshop. She turned in a circle, begging the books to magically appear. Because Rose’s explanations weren’t enough for her. Oh no, she needed more information. Rose’s experience was one thing, but was it universal? Elaine was determined to find confirmation, determined to further her education. Or perhaps she just wanted to read about the things that had tickled her in such delightful ways earlier.
