Page 44 of The Lover's Eye
Come to Cambo House and see the gardens in bloom, just as we spoke of in winter.Allow me to prove my worth to you.
Trevelyan
“Take this to Miss Ridgeway,” he said, depositing the meticulously folded notepaper into the footman’s hand.“I’ll wait here for her response.”
The young man ducked his chin and took off for the stairs with dizzying speed.Either he was anxious to earn another coin, or it was Giles’s head that was swimming from all the port and brandy in his gut.
As he waited, his impatience grew to gnawing strength.His tapping boot heel dispensed echoing clicks on the tile, and the swinging weight in the grandfather clock made him want to punch someone—himself, of course.Elias Sempill would also have sufficed.
No.He wanted to kill Elias Sempill.
After several minutes, he began to fear Isobel was truly ill, indisposed beyond the point of writing.He had the strange and impetuous compulsion to race up the stairs and open each door in search of her, when the footman reappeared.
Giles swallowed.There was something white and square in his left hand.“Here you are, sir.”
The white notepaper was warm in Giles’s hand.Logic told him that sensation had been lent by the timid servant standing before him, but he wanted for all the world to imagine the heat had been transferred from Isobel’s own body.
He cleared his throat, placing another coin in the footman’s palm.“Thank you for your discretion.”
The man disappeared, leaving Giles alone with Isobel’s missive.His heart pounded as he opened it along the paper’s crisp folds.
I feel it necessary you include my brother and sister.As for myself—
Saturday.11 o’clock would suit.
Giles crushed the note in his fist, his hand convulsively closing in mingled joy and relief.
♦
Isobel stared at the note in wonder.It did not assuage the pain in her head, but bewildered her enough to distract from it.
When she heard a faint knocking at her door, she had expected Marriane, or perhaps Betsey.When the person had not responded to her entreaties to enter, Isobel had begun to suspect something was afoot.
Wrapping a large, concealing night rail about herself, she had opened the door to a timid footman.“I’m terribly sorry to bother you, miss,” he’d said in a whisper.“I’ve a message from Lord Trevelyan.”
Isobel’s body had frozen, her hand wavering over the bright paper being extended toward her.She had managed to take it, and began easing the door closed.“T-Thank you.”
“Miss?”
The footman’s voice had been high with anxiety, an appeal to keep the barrier open between them.But the line of connection was truly threading between her and Trevelyan, not the downcast servant doing the earl’s bidding.
Isobel had paused in closing the door.“Yes?”
“He is downstairs.He awaits a response.”
The encounter had been hours ago now, if the mantel clock held true, but Isobel found herself unable to think of anything else.Moonlight streamed in through the window beside her bed, falling over the notepaper and making it glow blue-white between her fingers.What had possessed him to make such an intimate gesture?
She could assume he’d learned of her ‘circumstances’ from Pemberton.How much did he know?Did he know what Elias had done to her?Did Pemberton even know as much?
Would they share her father’s opinions, and attempt to force her into marriage with the man who had harmed her?
Heat rose up her neck, making her feel more exposed than the thin fabric of her nightdress did.
The idea of Trevelyan’s guilty conscience was permissible to Isobel’s logical mind; his urgency in writing an apology note less plausible, but not impossible.It lay in her hands, after all.But her brain wrestled to believe the rest.His entreaty for her to join him at Cambo House, another reference to her impromptu stay there in winter, and his doggedness in demanding a response while he waited below.
The footman’s nerves had been palpable.Isobel wondered how insistent Trevelyan had been when he’d asked for a reply.
As she’d hurried to jot down a reply, she told herself it was only polite to submit to Trevelyan’s wishes.She would like to see the gardens at Cambo House, after all.But now that she was alone, lying in bed with nothing for company but his letter, she felt the low thrum of attraction in her body, the same sensation he’d coaxed from her months earlier.
