“Me.” Calum shot an arm around hers, capturing her wrist in a tender yet determined hold. He brought her around to face him. Some indefinable emotion glittered in his eyes. “You forgot me, madam.”
Her heart caught. “I don’t . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.
The column of his throat moved. “I returned to find you’d gone, and with you went my heart.”
She gasped and clutched at her chest, searching for words.
“My every happiness. My reason for smiling.” He continued over her breathy exhalation. “I believed you cared for me.” His throat bobbed. “Mayhap loved me even.”
“I do,” she whispered. “I’ve always loved you. It is why I left.” Surely, he understood that? “All you ever dreamed of was that club—”
“Do not presume to tell me what I ever dreamed of, Eve, for if you indeed knew that, you’d know that you were the only dream I’ve ever had.”
Her heart caught.
“And you do not get to decide what is best for me or my club. You don’t get to simply walk out as though nothing mattered,” he said on a harsh whisper, releasing her quickly.
My God . . . He was hurting because she’d left. “I love you,” she tried again, needing him to understand. “But—”
“Do not mention the bloody club now or the next breath, madam.”
She promptly closed her lips and tried again, needing him to understand. “I could not let you sacrifice everyone for me.” She loved him too much to ever have him abandon his dreams for her.
“Oh, Eve,” he said hoarsely. “You have always thought of others. I have loved you since you were a girl taking care of a street urchin—”
“You were never an urchin.” She had never seen him in that light. “You were my—”
“—to when you stole my books.”
“—friend. You were my friend.” She paused. “I did not really steal them,” she said achingly. “Your books. I more borrowed them.”
“To when I followed you to the Salvation Foundling Hospital.”
“You followed me because you didn’t trust me,” she pointed out.
“Eve?” he said on a ragged laugh. Blinking tear-filled eyes, she lifted her gaze to his. “Can you let me please do this?”
“I don’t know what . . .”
“Because I’m not a gentleman, no doubt. Because if I were, I wouldn’t make such an absolute bumble of asking you to be my wife.”
Eve pressed her palm to her mouth.
“I’m desperately trying to do this properly and making a blunder of it.” He reached inside his jacket and fished out a candle.
She cocked her head.
Silence lingered in the mews, broken by the whinnying of horses. “You once told me that the Greeks placed candles upon cakes at the time of their birthdays,” he said solemnly.
“And blow those flames out to send their wishes to the heavens,” she finished for him, reverently gathering the narrow white wax. He recalled still all these years later those stories they’d shared and read together.
“I rejected that offer so many damned times. I want it now.” Her heart squeezed at the emotion in his pronouncement. “I want that damned cake, and I want that wish, and I want it to be you.”
Eve leaned up and placed her lips to his. “Oh, Calum,” she whispered when she drew back. She captured his cheek in her palm. “You never needed a wish. I was yours since you stumbled into those stables, and I’m yours forever.”
“I love you, Eve Pruitt.” He caught her wrist, dragging it to his mouth for a lingering kiss. “And when I am with you, I am home.”
She twined her hand with his. “We are home, together.”
Epilogue
Eve had never spent her life dreaming of a fortune, but seated inside her office at the foundling hospital and evaluating the food reports, she had a great appreciation for just all that money provided.
Eve frantically scraped her pen over the page, completing the monthly reports for the Salvation Foundling Hospital.
In the weeks since she’d wed Calum and secured her dowry, those monies had been put to use inside this institution that had come to mean so very much to her.
One number upon the ledger, however, commanded all her notice.
Fifty children. Pausing, she reverently stroked that now dry number she’d inked earlier that day. Only this was solely the beginning. Those children who’d found homes in the expanded space inside the foundling hospital were just the first. Discussing it the night they’d been reunited, Calum had proposed they expand the help they provided . . . to other hospitals and establishments around England.
A quivery smile turned her lips up. With their monies combined, they’d care not only for the children here but also other boys and girls all over who’d been living on the street, as her husband had been. Those young souls would be spared some of the horrors he’d known . . . and for the ones who’d already known too much darkness, now they’d know light.
How many men who ran a thriving business would devote not only their money but also their time?
A knock sounded at the office door, and she glanced up. It was as though she’d conjured her husband from her thoughts. Butterflies fluttered wildly in her belly, as they always did at the sight of him.
Wholly elegant in his repose, Calum lounged against the doorway. “Is my wife altogether too busy to accompany me on a short walk?”
Warmth suffused her breast, and she dropped her pen. “I’m never too busy for time with my husband,” she protested as he came over and dropped a kiss on her lips. The heat of that contact fanned her desire. “Just sometimes shamefully engrossed in my numbers,” she whispered as he broke contact. Then she widened her eyes. “I missed our appointment.”
He cuffed her teasingly under the chin. “By five minutes, Mrs. Dabney. Should I sack you for such an offense?”
A smile pulled at her lips, and she repressed that grin. Setting her features into a teasingly somber mask, she met his eyes. “I have it on good authority that you were kind enough to show one of your former bookkeepers the benefit of the proverbial doubt, and hired her though she was five days late,” she said in grave tones.
“Did I?” At the feigned shock lighting his eyes, she grinned. “Well, she must have been a tempting minx, then, who hopelessly captivated me from the start.”
Her lashes fluttered, and she tilted her mouth up.
“Uh-uh,” he said teasingly, and she pouted. Calum took her by the hand. “We’d a meeting in the mews.”
Laughing, she allowed him to guide her through the halls and outside to where the recently renovated mews stood now complete.
“It appears we are to keep meeting like this,” she said breathlessly as he brought her to a stop outside a stable door. “First—” Her words ended abruptly as he opened the door of the stable.
She covered her mouth with her hands.
The magnificent old black horse chomped noisily at his hay. A familiar old horse. Tears popped behind her lashes, and she blinked them back. To no avail. “Night,” she whispered. The beloved stallion who’d been present for her every meeting with Calum snorted in the quiet. Eve whipped her gaze up to her husband’s. Through blurry vision, his loving visage met hers.
He dusted his knuckles back and forth over her cheek in a tender caress. “So many interesting things about the Greeks. I learned much of it from a small girl in a different stables,” he said quietly.
A tear slipped down her cheek. “D-did you?” Her voice caught.
“Oh, yes. The Greeks had an idea that the horse could help a person who was hurting or suffering. That they could bring happiness and calm and peace.” Another tear joined the first, and then another and another. Calum lovingly framed her face in his hands, and with the pads of his thumbs, he caught those crystal drops and brushed them away. “And given all the happiness we found together among those magnificent creatures, I thought it only fitting that we bring that gift to th
e children who are—oomph.” Eve hurled herself into his arms, and Calum staggered back under the unexpectedness of that movement.
Night briefly paused in his chewing and eyed them with equine boredom.
“I love you,” she whispered to her husband. “I—”
“I loved you from the moment you entered those stables all those years ago,” he said quietly, echoing every thought. “I was yours from that moment on.” So much love spilled from his eyes, her heart caught. “We were destined to be together.” He held her gaze, and at the piercing intensity there, she drifted closer to him.
Eve lovingly framed his face with her hands. “And now we’ll never be apart. Never again,” she whispered.
And going up on tiptoe, she kissed him, sealing that promise.
Acknowledgments
To Alison, Lauren, and my entire team at Montlake Romance, I’m so very grateful for all your support. Thank you for trusting my vision as an author and for allowing me to bring the Sinful Brides world to the page.
About the Author
Photo © 2016 Kimberly Rocha
USA Today bestselling author Christi Caldwell blames Julie Garwood and Judith McNaught for luring her into the world of historical romance. When Christi was sitting in her graduate school apartment at the University of Connecticut, she began writing her own tales of love. Christi believes even the most perfect heroes and heroines have imperfections. Besides, she rather enjoys torturing them—before the couple earn their well-deserved happily ever after.
Christi makes her home in southern Connecticut, where she spends her time writing, chasing after her courageous son, and caring for her twin princesses-in-training. For free bonus material and the latest information about Christi’s releases and future books, sign up for her newsletter at www.ChristiCaldwell.com.
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