The Heiress's Deception

by Christi Caldwell

  Cursing, he scanned the area. Even breathing a hint of a problem facing the hell was enough to do in their reputation with not only their noble patrons but also the men and women on staff. Oftentimes a person was only as powerful as his or her perception. Calum drew back and quickly closed the window. Determinedly, he found his way to Eve’s office. Without sparing a knock, he pushed the door open.

  Standing on the tips of her slippers, Eve leaned dangerously far out the window. “Calum?” she whispered, rousing another grin. Short, slender, and yet in possession of notably rounded buttocks now pleasingly outlined by the fabric taut from her efforts, she was an unlikely carnal delight. Silently, he stalked over. “Cal—” He caught her about the waist, hauling her back in.

  “You lean out any farther, you’re going to tumble out,” he said through tight lips.

  She gasped and angled her head back. Her voice emerged on a breathless whisper. “I didn’t hear you.”

  No, she wouldn’t have. Growing up in the streets, that stealth had saved his life and become a way of his existence. “But everyone heard you,” he countered. Calum gave her waist a light squeeze. “Rule one, don’t publicly discuss matters of business, Eve,” he ordered, and the enormity of what she’d nearly done sent tension coiling inside.

  Color suffused her face. “I didn’t think . . . I didn’t realize . . .” She worried her lower lip—her full lower lip. He lingered his gaze on that lush flesh and swallowed hard. A woman by the name of Eve could only ever have such a mouth that conjured thoughts of sin and wicked delights.

  “Now you know,” he said hoarsely. Reluctantly, he set her free, his hands bereft at the sudden loss of her. He took a quick step away from her. “I want a report drawn up by tomorrow evening. A detailed accounting comparing the past three years of profit earnings and cost expenditures across all ends.”

  And before he did something mad, like forget the dire situation Adair had insisted they confront openly and again kiss Eve Swindell, he marched from the room.

  Chapter 12

  For a long, never-ending moment built on wanton hope, Eve had believed Calum was going to again kiss her.

  And having been caught leaning out the window and listening in on his personal discussion like a naughty child, she should be awash in proper humiliation. Except, everything had gone right out of her head—including logic, order, and reason—the moment he’d sneaked into her office and taken her about the waist. Then he’d looked at her mouth in a way that made her believe he was about to kiss her—again. And how she ached to know the feeling of being in his arms, with the heat of his solid body pouring off his muscled frame and burning her from the inside out.

  Instead . . . he’d left. Not before he’d issued a heap of work for her to complete by tomorrow night.

  The door opened, and she wheeled around.

  MacTavish entered, his arms near overflowing with books. Favoring her with the same glower he had since she’d deceived him and then set up residence here, he emptied his burden onto her desk. They fell with a noisy thunk and scattered about the surface.

  Folding her hands primly before her, she offered him her most winning smile. “Mr. MacTavish, thank you so much for—”

  “Oi don’t want your thanks,” he snapped, giving her more words than he had since their first meeting. “Ya made me look bad before Dabney and Thorne and every other guard here. Ya nearly cost me my assignment.”

  In her selfishness to secure her own safety, she’d put her well-being above everyone else. Regret pebbled in her belly. She’d not thought how her bold commandeering of Calum’s books and rooms might impact the guard MacTavish, who’d handed over the club’s ledgers. “Forgive me,” she said softly, turning her palms up.

  His scowl deepened. “And Oi certainly don’t want your apologies.” He wagged a finger at her. “Oi don’t trust ya. Oi don’t care how ya are with the club’s numbers, no woman who sneaks inside the way you did can be up to any good.” MacTavish touched that same scarred digit to the corner of his eye. “And Oi’m watching you.” With that he stomped out and slammed the door so hard it shook the frame.

  She winced. “Well.” This day had become a veritable disaster. She’d been caught listening in on something she’d had no place listening to. Calum couldn’t have been clearer in the perfunctory list he’d given her that she’d shattered the peace between them. “You fool,” she mumbled, returning to her now cluttered desk. “Gazing at stars. Smelling the St. Giles air. Gah.” Eve grimaced. Where most ladies of the ton were demure misses capable of prevarication, Eve had always been hopeless. She’d never been one to possess a distracting smile. Instead, there’d long been a bluntness to her words and actions that earned stiff recriminations from her governesses. When Calum had challenged her, she’d owed him the truth. She had been listening in.

  And it was how she now knew his club was in dire straits. Eve tapped her index finger against her bottom lip. One would never know as much, given the impressive profits the Hell and Sin had yielded these past three months. She, however, had failed to remember a lesson she’d first gleaned after taking over her father’s accounts. How one’s business fared in the past against how it fared in the present was an even more important mark of its success.

  Determined to sort through Calum’s finances, she pulled out her chair and slid into the comfortable leather folds. Skimming her gaze along the gold etchings on the spines, she set to work organizing the books into neat, corresponding piles. Each month filed with each like month until there were twelve rows, with three ledgers in each. Next, she withdrew a sheet of parchment from inside her center drawer, as well as a pen. “Let us begin,” she murmured, and gathered the most recent dates. Beginning with the oldest, she proceeded to read. Periodically, she made notes on the page, the rhythmic tap-tap of her pen soothing. Now, just like when her father had been ill and she was left to right the family’s books, it served as a slight distraction. It was far easier to focus on that light beat than the misery of one’s own circumstances.

  Moments turned into hours, and Eve worked with a frantic diligence until the numbers and annotations blurred before her eyes. She worked tirelessly on book after book, creating a detailed chart with her information.

  Her fingers cramped, and she gasped. The pen slipped through her fingers, scattering ink upon an otherwise flawless page. She sighed and flexed her sore digits. Stretching her palm over, she shook it in a small circle to bring blood flowing back to the appendage. Eve took in the large stack completed, and the even larger one awaiting her attention.

  Groaning, she dropped her head atop the desk. If he’d been attempting to punish her for listening in on business that wasn’t her own, Calum couldn’t have found a more miserable, fitting one. God, how she missed being able to simply read a book . . . with words. Fictional ones that didn’t pertain to failing crops and dwindling coffers and now declining club profits. Those tales of great Greek gods and goddesses now read so long ago, she may as well have imagined poring over them. Yet, losing herself in those pages didn’t dull the reality that was life. It hadn’t solved her own miserable circumstances, and it wouldn’t help Calum and his club.

  That discourse she’d overheard between Calum and his brother whispered forward. Aside from finding a refuge from her brother’s machinations, Eve hadn’t truly given thought to the Hell and Sin. It had merely represented a shelter until she reached her majority and at last found her freedom. Since the day Nurse Mattison had insisted on this course for her, she’d always known and embraced the fact that her position as bookkeeper was to be not only a temporary one—but also a brief one. She’d come here to fulfill the responsibilities of a bookkeeper, but whether Calum’s business thrived or died hadn’t really been a consideration—until now. Remorse settled like a stone in her belly.

  With the sun peeking out past thick gray storm clouds, she shoved to her feet. She yawned, burying that sound of fatigue in her ink-stained hand. In a noiseless whir of skirts, she returned to the
window where she’d earned Calum’s annoyance. Eve tugged the curtains back. And then, as though she’d conjured him with her musings, he was there. She pressed her eyes briefly closed. Or mayhap she’d worked her eyes to the point she now saw him everywhere. Yet, he remained.

  Calum stood exchanging words with the guard who’d pointed a pistol at her last evening. She cocked her head. How in absolute control he was of every exchange. The guard gave intermittent nods, and then he stalked off.

  After he’d gone, Calum lingered.

  She should quit her spot at the window. She should seek out her rooms and steal at least an hour of sleep before she resumed her onerous task. Having been discovered a short while ago should have taught her the peril of watching from windows. Except, she remained transfixed.

  Calum withdrew the gold chain tucked inside his jacket and consulted the timepiece, and that glitter of gold harkened her back to another fine piece . . . and another mews. Her family’s. And her brother’s watch fob. The horror of that day came rolling over her in waves. Eve’s throat worked spasmodically. How many years had she believed him dead? How many years had she thought that her carelessness in summoning Gerald had found him swinging from a rope—as Gerald used to taunt her with?

  An errant ray from the sun played off his face, highlighting his strong, unyielding jawline and sharp cheeks. With his height, power, and strength, he embodied that statue of the Greek god Helios once erected in her family’s Kent estate. Only, where that marble masterpiece and the Colossus of Rhodes had both fallen, Calum Dabney could never be toppled. Gerald’s attempt to destroy him all those years ago was proof of that. And Calum had become not only wealthier with the passage of time—he’d also become more powerful.

  Except that wasn’t altogether true. Unbidden, her gaze traveled back to those piles of ledgers. All was not perfect in the Hell and Sin world. Then, wasn’t that life for all people, regardless of station? Eve let the curtain fall back into place. Abandoning her offices, she found her way from the room and down the corridors, where servants awake for the day bustled back and forth. She skirted a bevy of maids carrying buckets of steaming water. Eve reached the end of the hall and made her way down the servants’ stairs. She stopped at the doorway leading out to the mews. An unfamiliar guard with hard eyes and a scarred right cheek gave her the once-over.

  “If you’ll excuse me?” she murmured, and he jerked his chin.

  Eve grabbed the door handle and let herself out. The early-morn air, cool and invigorating, drove back the fatigue that had driven her from her assignment. She strode down the alley, heading for the mews.

  How very different life within this new, temporary home was. She’d left a world where, even with the Pruitts’ failing finances, servants had always been plenty, and those meticulous servants had always rushed to open her doors. Those same men and women had anticipated what she needed and when she needed it, and through their devotion, she’d been denied the simple acts of walking freely inside a house and opening her own door without questions raised or sneaking involved.

  Eve reached the center of the mews and glanced around.

  “Do you ever rest, Mrs. Swindell?”

  Heart racing, she jumped. Pulled forward by that husky, familiar baritone, Eve came to a stop at the edge of an open stable door.

  Time stopped, with the earth ceasing its perpetual movement.

  Calum stood beside a magnificent black mount. The horse’s face clasped in his hands, he’d the look of that boy she’d first come upon all those years ago inside her father’s once prized stalls. Only, then Calum had been a belligerent boy who’d threatened her life if she raised a hue and a cry. Instead, she’d remained, and an unlikely friendship had been born—until with one reckless request put to Gerald, she’d killed that precious bond.

  They’d been reunited, inside a different mews, alongside a different horse, and with only Eve knowing about their shared history. Numb, she followed his movements as he gave that enormous creature a final scratch between the eyes and fetched a currycomb. Silently, he scrubbed those bristles over the stallion’s body. Calum’s large hands revealed a power and strength that could easily fell a man or effortlessly inflict pain. And yet, unlike her brother, who’d buried her head in a bucket of freezing water and threatened her very life, there was tenderness to Calum’s measured strokes. He was a man who, despite his own club’s precarious circumstances, gave of his time anyway to a foundling hospital with a woman he barely knew, actions that spoke to the strength of his honor and character. He’d never descend to the evil Gerald or Lord Flynn was capable of. She’d bet her very life Calum wouldn’t even put his self-interests before those dependent upon him. Unlike Eve’s brother Kit had.

  “I was listening in,” she said softly. He briefly paused, looking over from his task. Their gazes locked. “I should clarify that I do have an appreciation for the night air and starlit skies.” For it was important he know she’d spoken some truth. Those were details he’d known long ago. She’d shared them with him early on in their friendship. If he knew, remembered, or ever thought of that girl he’d called Little Lena Duchess, he gave no hint of it. Eve sucked in a slow breath and glanced around the elaborately appointed stall. “But it was not my place to interfere in your discussion with Mr. Thorne. Forgive me.” When he still said nothing, just resumed looking after his mount, she fiddled with her skirts. She turned to go.

  “Here,” he called out, staying her. He set aside the comb and walked over to the fine equipment hanging up. Calum grabbed a hard-bristled brush and held it out.

  Why do they need so many damned brushes . . . ?

  Eve came over without hesitation and accepted that offering. She automatically stroked the horse in the direction of his hair-coat growth.

  “You’ve experience with horses.”

  His was an observation more than anything. Nonetheless, she nodded anyway. Her hand ceased its strokes as the past trickled forward. Here, let me show you, Calum . . . you stroke him this way . . . Her lips ached with the struggle of keeping the truth in. To keep from telling him that she’d, in fact, been the small girl who’d shown him how to hold a comb and care for a horse.

  “Here,” he murmured in an eerie echo of that memory. Calum settled his hand over hers, and a thrill burned through her, like running barefoot across the carpets and feeling that sharp charge. He merely guided her hand back into the forward strokes. The horse stomped his rear right leg in equine approval.

  Eve continued brushing Calum’s mount. “He’s magnificent,” she murmured. The creature whinnied his approval. “Aww, but then, you know that, don’t you, you arrogant thing.” She touched her nose to his, softening the gentle rebuke.

  Feeling Calum’s eyes on her, she briefly paused. Her cheeks warmed. With the exception of that fleeting time when she’d found Calum, Eve had never had friends. She’d developed a tendency to speak to herself and the horses in her family’s stables. Embarrassed, she swiftly resumed brushing his horse.

  “Ah, but you are correct. Isn’t she, Tau?” Calum directed that question to his mount, and the evidence of his bond with the magnificent creature and that he either did or pretended to speak to his own horses, sent heat blossoming in her chest. Then . . . she froze. She dimly registered Calum gathering the brush from her fingers and returning it to its proper place on the wall alongside the other fine equipment.

  Surely, she’d misheard. You have the mark of life . . . it means . . . “Tau.”

  Calum moved beside the horse’s—Tau’s—right shoulder. Angling his back toward the massive stallion, Calum bent his knees. “Tau,” he confirmed. He ran his long, calloused fingers down the horse’s right leg. Instantly complying, Tau lifted the limb. Calum examined the right hoof. “It is Greek for—”

  “Immortal,” she finished on a whisper.

  He glanced up from his task, something akin to surprise in his brown eyes.

  Eve went motionless, her gaze stubbornly, of its own volition, drawn to the jagged T
au-shaped scar near his mouth. You are immortal, Calum . . . Did he recall their long-ago exchange? That bold, girlish request to test the jagged edges of that mark.

  “You’re familiar with it?” he asked, releasing Tau’s limb. The horse immediately stamped his foot in the hay.

  Of course, he wouldn’t remember her. Except, in a way—he had. That long-ago exchange between them had meant something to him that he’d named his beloved mount after it. Surely, if he’d despised everything about the girl he’d called Little Lena Duchess, he would have stripped all hint of her from his life.

  “I am,” she began hesitantly. “How did you come to name him that?” It was a bold question pulled forth by an inherent need to know just why he had all these years retained hold of that part of their now distant meeting. For a long moment, she thought he might not answer and despaired of his silence. And then, when he spoke, she wished he never had.

  “I nearly died.” He spoke casually, the way one did about the quality of the soup or the stretch of fine weather they’d enjoyed, and yet even with that nonchalance, her heart ached still. “Picked the wrong pocket and found myself thrown in Newgate for it,” he explained, fetching a heavy leather brush. Returning to Tau’s side, he proceeded to pull it gently through Tau’s mane.

  The air stuck in Eve’s lungs, choking off the ability to properly breathe. She fisted her hands into tight balls.

  He continued, his actions remarkably mundane while tumult raged within her. “I made the mistake of trusting a person I’d no place trusting, and for it nearly swung. I chose Tau’s name as a reminder of what those missteps can cost a person.”

  Eve bit the inside of her cheek hard, and she, who’d insisted she was not the crying sort, was proved a liar once more. Tears pricked behind her lashes, blurring her vision. Thunder rumbled in the distance, an ominous laugh of the gods.