The Heiress's Deception

by Christi Caldwell

  She forced her gaze out the stable door, to the courtyard where servants rushed about their daily tasks. Eve blinked frantically trying to dispel the useless drops. For the name he’d chosen hadn’t a thing to do with tender remembrance of their friendship . . . but rather he’d selected it so his own folly and her greatest crime could live on. That fleeting friendship that marked the happiest moments of her solitary existence was nothing more than a regret for Calum. She rubbed the dull ache in her chest. To no avail. “I should go,” she said hoarsely, taking a step toward that door. “The report—”

  “You’ve worked all morning, Eve,” he called out, staying her. “I’m not a cruel employer who’d not allow you your rest.” He paused. “Unless you care to go, in which case, I’ll not keep you here.”

  She whipped back. “No,” she said on a rush. “It is not that. It is . . .”

  Calum held up the brush in a silent challenge.

  Eve warred with herself.

  His gaze worked a path over her face—searching, questioning. Those fathomless brown eyes possessed an intensity that hinted at a man who could see a person’s darkest secrets and pull them out for his own. Eve shivered, hugging her arms close. What would he say if he discovered the girl he’d spent years hating for her treachery stood before him now?

  He let his arm fall back to his side. “What is it, Eve?” he asked, worry creasing his brow.

  Tell him. Tell him so he knows and you can be done with the deception and he can be done with you . . . And then what? Do you think he’ll issue aid to the girl responsible for his misery at Newgate? “It is not that I don’t want to be with you,” she said softly. It was entirely the opposite. There was no one she’d ever wanted more in her life, then as a friend . . . and now as a man who valued her cleverness and gave of his time to help the foundling hospital.

  “Then stay,” he whispered, like temptation itself.

  I want to stay here . . . with him . . . in this stable . . . in his home . . . Oh, God. I’m falling in love with him. Terror clutched at her insides, and she briefly shut her eyes.

  Calum held that brush out, and now she knew the hold the Devil had when he’d dangled that forbidden fruit. Drawn like one of those hopeless moths to a flame, she wandered closer. To give her fingers something to do, she accepted the brush and studied the thick bristles.

  He brushed his knuckles along her jawline, forcing her gaze up to his. “What is it?” His deep baritone washed over her. Those strong, sure tones that made a lady want to reveal all.

  “I . . .” Tell him. “It is your club,” she finished lamely, proving that she was a coward to her very core. “Your club is in trouble.”

  Chapter 13

  She’d never gone to bed.

  The dark circles under her bloodshot eyes and the rumpled garments she’d been wearing hours earlier marked her exhaustion.

  When he’d taken leave of her, he’d meant to refocus her on her task inside this club. She was here to serve in the capacity of bookkeeper: oversee the ledgers, provide reports, meet with vendors, and that was it—matters strictly pertaining to business.

  Leaning out a window and teasing the lady while she teased back went counter to every purpose she served. It recalled Adair’s thinly veiled accusations and roused Calum’s own inherent guilt. Now he stood there, talking of his past and learning her interests, and with every exchange his existence became more and more muddled.

  “You should be resting,” he finally said, removing the brush from her long, ink-stained fingers. They were the hands of a woman unafraid of real work. Callused digits that served as a window into the life she lived.

  She leaned into the stable wall. “Are you being deliberately evasive?”

  Actually, he wasn’t. And the fact that she’d doubt his concern grated. “Eve, I put you in charge of my books detailing my club’s finances. It’s my expectation that you’d eventually ascertain the shift in our numbers, and if you didn’t . . .”

  “You’d sack me?” she finished for him with a small smile.

  Yes. That was the practical reply. If she was incapable of adequately gathering every last detail from the hell, then she’d no place being here, and he should have no hesitancy tossing her out. Calum scratched his horse between the eyes. “It doesn’t matter what I would or would not do,” he added, this time evasive. “A woman with your cleverness would have always accurately sorted through the club’s business.”

  She cocked her head, and that slight movement sent her loose chignon toppling back. The ink-black arrangement hung loose at the nape of her neck, those strands desperately hanging on to propriety. Hanging on when Calum wanted nothing more than to pull the pins free of her hair and let it tumble around her shoulders. And because in this instance it was vastly safer speaking about the Hell and Sin’s changed circumstances than this hungering to lay claim to her mouth again, he explained, “Our numbers are down, as is our patronage. We’ve seen a steady decline.” Since Niall had wed the Duke of Wilkinson’s daughter, he thought. “In recent months,” he said aloud.

  “Your profits are still staggering.”

  He patted Tau on the withers and tossed the brush in the corner. “If one focuses on a given month and not an overall trend, then one’s certain to find oneself wondering in little time what happened and where it all went.”

  “So, you can trace it, then,” she persisted, and his skin pricked with the feel of her gaze on his movements around the stall. “You’ve already identified that the change has been several months ago.”

  “It goes back before that,” he said tersely. She was too clever. Calum sighed and swiped a hand over the day’s growth on his face. As a rule, neither he nor his siblings had let strangers inside their world. The one time Calum had, he’d been burned by life. It had been the last he’d ever committed that folly. So, what was it about Eve Swindell, a woman he’d known less than a fortnight, that made him want to share the burdens that had been weighing on him when he’d not even wanted to speak to Adair, Ryker, or Niall? “There’s a rival club—the Devil’s Den,” he began slowly. “For nearly two years, they’ve been attempting”—he grimaced—“and succeeding in stealing our patrons.”

  “There aren’t enough to go around?” she asked with a pragmatism not shown in either of the two cowering bookkeepers to come before her.

  He snorted. Given the number of reprobate lords? “One would suspect there should be. There were a series . . . of recent events that have earned society’s disapproval.” An increasingly familiar panic simmered under the surface. He began to pace, at last airing the frustration and worry he’d silently and secretly battled. “This club has been my home for eleven years. I’ve found security here. My family’s found security, and there are workers dependent upon us, where we’re the only thing between starving on the streets and—”

  Eve pushed away from the stable wall and drifted closer. The whispery hint of lemon that clung to her skin wafted about his senses, more intoxicating than any spirits served and consumed inside this hell.

  Wordless, he stared on as she gathered his hand in hers, joining their fingers together. Her palm was smaller, softer, and more delicate against his, and yet they went together in a perfect pairing. Pull away . . . This gesture of comfort and solace was as unfamiliar to him as when he’d been forced to suffer through Helena’s ball. Long ago he’d known the gentle touch of a mother and the kind words of a father . . . but all that had died along with them. In the new family he’d made for himself, of his siblings on the street, there were no shows of affection. Those living inside the Hell and Sin had become masters of their emotions. He made to pull back, but Eve tightened her grip in a surprisingly strong hold for one of her diminutive size.

  “I know”—she dropped her gaze to their joined palms—“some of what you speak to.” Eve whipped her head up. “Not in the same way, at all. But in others. I know what it is to worry that your work will decide if families eat or starve or whether there will be funds to repair
roofs.” It didn’t escape his notice that she didn’t herself speak to knowing those struggles.

  Then, her cultured tones and flawless English were proof that she, too, had been born to higher beginnings.

  “And that is all you do now,” he said more to himself, as the pieces to this woman began to fall into place. “You oversee the records and books of others.” Calum turned her hand over in his, and trailed the pad of his thumb over the intersecting lines upon her palm. “What else do you do?”

  Eve’s breath caught in a noisy inhalation, the sound explosive in the cramped quarters of the stall. “What do I do?” she whispered.

  “When you’re not overseeing your responsibilities, where do you find your pleasure?” It was the wrong thing to say. A question sprung of a genuine need to know more of Eve Swindell, but as soon as it escaped him, dangerously wicked imaginings surged forward.

  Eve toed the hay, marking a perfect circle with a distractedness that doused his ardor. “I used to . . .” Her mouth scrunched up.

  Did she seek to stifle that admission? His intrigue redoubled. Time, however, had taught him not to press another person. That whatever secrets Eve chose to share with him were hers and hers alone to decide when to unveil.

  “I read.” Past tense.

  She drew her hands from his and folded them neatly before her. Shoulders erect, chin back, and bearing regal, she’d the look of the proper governesses and tutors they’d first brought in to work with Calum’s family.

  Tau nuzzled his shoulder hard, and he favored the loyal creature with several strokes, all the while trying to imagine Eve bent over a book. What words would hold her riveted? “Mathematical and scientific journals?” he ventured.

  An inelegant snort escaped her. “Because I’m a bookkeeper?” She gave her head a shake and wandered around the opposite side of Tau’s muzzle. “My work with numbers is a necessity. It’s something I’m accomplished at.” She spoke as a matter-of-factness, absent of conceit. “But it’s never been something I’ve either loved or enjoyed. It’s simply something I . . . do.”

  That eerie echo of his very own thoughts on those miserable responsibilities cemented an ever-expanding awareness of Eve. It deepened their connection as a man and woman more alike than he ever would have credited after her arrival eleven days earlier. “And yet, even with that, you became so proficient in mathematics that you found yourself numerous posts using that very skill?”

  She strolled over to Tau and captured his enormous midnight-black face between her hands. “When I was a girl, my father would tell me of the great Greek stories contained in the night sky.” She directed that quiet admission to the middle of his mount’s eyes.

  Greek stories . . . for a second time . . . A memory danced around the farthest corners of his mind.

  “Nothing is more useful than silence.”

  “That’s your favorite saying, Calum . . .” That indignant child’s voice of the girl who’d betrayed him rang as clear now as it had been when he and Little Lena Duchess had lain in another stable, looking over one of her many books.

  “That is the reason you know the meaning of Tau?” he asked, thrusting aside those remembrances of Bedford’s sister.

  She nodded.

  A wistful smile pulled at Eve’s lips. “Every tale, every constellation mentioned, I was . . . riveted. I wanted to know everything about the stars and their stories contained within. When the household slept, I would sneak outside, gaze up at the stars, and trace them with my fingertip.” She pointed her index finger to the stable roof. “My mother despaired of me ever learning anything except astronomy, and my father vowed I’d never be a woman with singular interests.”

  When his own parents had died, he’d still been just a boy, with a rudimentary understanding of his letters and words. Now the well-guarded gates of his memories opened up, and in flooded thoughts of his loving parents: the booming laugh of a man, pointing at pages while he read to Calum. He started. It had been so long since he’d thought of either of the Dabneys. The day they’d died, Calum’s whole existence had gone with them. Disquieted by the intrusion of his past twice now, he broke the thick silence. “Your father limited your studies?”

  She glanced up. “No. Rather, he expanded them.” At his puzzled brow, she explained. “He insisted if I appreciated the stories in the stars, then I must know the men responsible for creating those stories. So, he opened my mind to Thales, Pythagoras, Plato.” She lifted her shoulders in a little shrug. “And through that, I discovered math.”

  And despite her great love for the stories contained within the stars, as she’d said, instead she remained shut away in an office righting books and ledgers. Did she dream of those long-ago pleasures? Or had she, like Calum, with the passage of time put aside that past and followed along the path of a practical future?

  Thunder rumbled in the distance, and with it, reality intruded. As one, they looked to the entranceway. He stared out. The club never rested. There were always fights to break up, records to keep, shipments to order.

  “You should return,” he said. And given Adair’s earlier suspicions, it wouldn’t do well for them to return together.

  “Yes,” she murmured. She lingered. Did she wish to remain as much as he wished her to stay here and share more of those fleeting details about herself? She turned to go.

  “Have the morning off,” he called after her.

  The lady glanced back. “It is not Sunday.” There was a challenge there, as they were instantly restored to employer and bookkeeper. At the fiery glint in her eyes, his admiration for Eve Swindell grew all the more. But for his siblings, not a single employee would reject that offer of rest. “And your reports—”

  “You’ve two more days to complete them,” he allowed. Would you have made those concessions for another member of your staff? Adair’s previous accusations reared in his mind.

  His spirited bookkeeper propped her hands on her hips and gave a determined thrust of her chin. “I don’t need two more days. You’d not make that concession for a man on your staff.” How in hell did their thoughts move in a like harmony? He’d not have made that concession for anyone on his staff—except her.

  “I do not treat you any differently,” he said tightly, lying to the both of them. He had. On numerous scores. Even hiring her when he’d have thrown any other man or woman out on their arse for infiltrating his club.

  “Then, if you’ll excuse me?” Eve started forward. “I have reports to see to.” With a queen’s regal grace, she swept out of the stables so all that lingered was the citrusy lemon scent of her.

  Calum remained staring after Eve, long after she’d gone.

  For the past eleven years, the Hell and Sin had earned his every thought, effort, and emotion. There’d been no place for anything else. Prior to that he’d been solely fixed on surviving. He’d not truly thought of the children alone on the streets, with the only thing between death and survival their own wits. Yet Eve, even as she’d taken on the responsibilities of employment, still thought of those less fortunate—and more, gave her time to assist where she could. She might spend her time reading those works she spoke of with a nostalgic melancholy, and yet she chose to help others. He was both awed by her selflessness and shamed by his own selfishness.

  Surely that explained this quixotic hold she had over him?

  Reason said allow Eve her role inside the club and confine their dealings to only business matters.

  The impractical side he could not explain wanted to drive back the wistful smile she’d worn a short while ago and replace it with a sincerity that matched her eyes.

  He swiped a hand over his face.

  By God, she’d utterly upended him.

  Chapter 14

  “Mr. Dabney wants ya in the Observatory.”

  Engrossed in her work with the month’s liquor expenditures, Eve glanced up. The surly guard MacTavish glared back . . . just as he’d been glaring since she’d secured the post with some trickery fourteen da
ys earlier. After she sat for countless hours in the same position, her neck muscles screamed in protest. She winced and rubbed the tight tendons at the base of her skull. “I’ll be but a moment,” she promised, and resumed tabulations in one of her final columns.

  “’e said now.”

  When she’d first arrived, MacTavish’s pronouncement would have set off warning bells of terror that she’d been found out and that Calum intended to toss her out. But that had been before. In the time since she’d been here, she’d come to appreciate that not all meetings represented impending doom. Rather, he summoned her regularly to discuss the club’s business and share parts of the inner workings of his establishment. “He also advised me to complete a report for the liquor accounts,” she directed to her book. “Given that, I expect he’ll be forgiving if I’m a moment late.” Which she wouldn’t be if MacTavish ceased arguing and let her complete the final tallying.

  “Look at ya,” he said on a mocking jeer, “presuming to know what Mr. Dabney needs.”

  At his suggestive tone, her cheeks warmed. “I’ve been here just two weeks, and I’ve already gathered that he’d far rather I deal with his reports than your jibes.”

  MacTavish opened and closed his mouth several times. Good. Let him be silent. The miserable curmudgeon. She’d found over the years that most people—men and women of every station—didn’t know what to do with a direct woman who spoke her mind. Though, that wasn’t altogether true. In their every exchange, she and Calum conversed freely, and he didn’t eye her like she’d two heads all because she had opinions.

  Task completed, Eve set her pen down. After opening the crystal container, she dipped her fingers in and sprinkled drying powder upon the last page. She blew lightly on the document, then set it aside and gathered the previously completed pages in their proper order. Adding the still slightly wet sheet to the top, she gathered them in her arms and stood.