Page 10 of Meet A Rogue At Midnight
He read aloud the gold-embossed spine. “An Exhaustive Study of Vallum Hadrianiby Thomas J. Halsey.”
“I wrote it.” She waited, her brows pinching. Relief didn’t come.
“You wrote the book in your father’s name?”
“After he took ill last year. His notes, my words. I was at his side when he wrote most of them…have been since you left.” Her chin tipped high. “I may not have a university education, but I know as much as any antiquarian. I’ve been on nearly all my father’s summer excavations, helping him catalogue Roman relics.”
Jonas skimmed the volume in hand. His keen study wandered from the page to the table’s historic treasures before drifting back to the desk with its neat stacks of paper.
“You’re writing another one in his name,” his deep voice intoned.
“Yes.”
His face grave, Jonas set the book on the work table and folded his arms on the chair’s back rest. The toe of her shoe traced circles on the floor as if she were a girl caught cheating on her sums. This was supposed to be freeing, this confession to a friend, but the grim line of Jonas’s mouth made her push off the desk and pace the floor.
“Say something, please.” She wiped damp palms down her skirts. “I can’t bear this silence.”
“Livvy, surely you don’t plan to continue this deception. The Antiquarian Society will eventually find out.” He nodded at the desk. “Your father’s publisher will, too, I suspect.”
“I know.” Heels striking the floor, her voice dripped with misery. “I didn’t intend for everything to go this far.”
“One thing I learned while in service to the Earl of Greenwich, academic societies set great store on the integrity of their field of study.”
She walked the wide planks, wringing her hands. “It was only supposed to be that volume behind you.”
“What happened?”
She sighed heavily, looking to the pristine world beyond the window. “Fame from the Learmouth find.” Her pacing took her to the mullioned glass. “The book I wrote in my father’s name did well…better than his others.”
“Cause for celebration.”
“In a way, it was. I’ve always wanted to write fiction. Adventures about Roman generals.” She touched the window with both hands, a woman trapped in a world of her own making. “And then Father’s publisher sent a letter last month requesting a book on the Learmouth excavation.”
“And you said yes.”
“The offer was too good to turn down. Of course, they don’t want me. They want Thomas J. Halsey.”
“And you’re taking up your father’s work until his return.”
The frosted glass chilled her palms. A long-held ache rolled from her belly into her chest, lodging itself behind her breastbone.
“He’ll never work again, Jonas. He’s dying.” Her forlorn voice drifted through the tower. Lonely. Sad. A little lost. Her father was the sun and the moon to her.
Chair legs scraped behind her. Steady footfalls crossed the floor. Looking up, the stalwart face of her friend reflected in the glass behind her. Silent. Comforting. A man easy to be with.
The same man she’d kissed hotly one night and with disastrous results moments ago.
Jonas didn’t ask for her father’s tale. Nor did he hug her as he’d done the day she’d told him her beloved cat, Julius Caesar, had died. She was eleven years old, then. Tears had flowed that day and big-hearted Jonas had wrapped his arms around her until she could cry no more.
Was he trying to keep his distance now?
He might want safe detachment. She did not. The tale was already started. She’d see it finished.
“Summer of last year, we were at the Learmouth excavation. Everything was going well, except Father complained of his arm tingling. He insisted on climbing a tree to get a birds-eye view of the site,” she said, staring at the peaceful world beyond the tower. “When he was in the tree, a spasm wracked his body and he fell.”
“But he survived.”
“He did, but he hasn’t been the same since…in body or mind.”
