Calhoun Chronicles Bundle (85 page)

Then, on a waft of floral perfume, Abigail stepped into the room, and Jamie could have sworn he felt the earth shift.

He’d always suspected her intense, unusual looks had been camouflaged by frowsy hair and weedy garments. He’d hoped Madame’s skill would be like that of the gem cutter’s art with a rough jewel, finding the hidden facets of beauty and fire. But never, not in his wildest flights of fancy, had he anticipated a transformation as dramatic as the one he witnessed now.

Madame Broussard had waved a magic wand and brought all of Abigail’s unseen beauties to the surface, making use of every possible attribute. The careless brown braid was now a shining coronet atop her head. A vibrant wine-colored dress infused her skin with radiance, and Madame had done something to her eyes and mouth, adding lush color to her lips and bringing out the deep midnight glow of her eyes.

My God. She had a neck. And it was a lovely neck, rising from an artful décolletage. She had a waist, too, and shoulders of the sort that made him ache to touch her, to see if she was as velvety soft as she looked.

But the biggest change of all was in her face. She wore an expression of self-confidence, barely tinged with amazement.

“I won’t say a word,” he announced as he held out a hand, palm up.

“Why not?” She placed her hand in his, and he had to resist the urge to lift it to his lips. Her eyes had always been incredible, but now they looked even more compelling, those wide, intense eyes that saw stars. God, he could drown in them.

“Because if I were to say anything now, it would be so insufficient and self-congratulatory that you’d smack me.”

“I would?”

“Yes. I have the urge to take credit for this.”

“Fine. Then I’ll accept your silence.”

Butler is done for, thought Jamie. He’s calf’s-foot jelly. Even a navy man would not be too dense to see what Abigail Cabot was. Jamie would pound Butler silly if he failed to fall to his knees before this woman.

“Oh, look,” Helena exclaimed, standing at the window and holding the drape aside. “He’s here.” She turned to regard her sister with nervous eyes. “Oh, Abigail, he has a coach-and-four. And he’s in dress uniform. Come see. Don’t you want to come see?”

The glow faded from her face, draining away along with her self-confidence. “I can’t.”

“But you wrote all of those letters just to get him to come courting.”

Abigail smiled a bit sadly, a bit mysteriously. Standing in the doorway of the sitting room, she resembled a Pre-Raphaelite portrait, dappled by shadow and light. The way her gaze lingered on Jamie made him chafe as though the room had grown too warm.

“It can’t work,” she said softly, “even though, for a time, it was fun to pretend.”

“He’s coming because of the letters.” Helena dropped the curtain in irritation and turned to her sister. “The moment I open my mouth, he’ll know I couldn’t have written those brilliant, poetic letters. It’s your job to tell him the truth, not mine. We discussed the matter this morning. Now that you’re wearing a new dress, you have no excuse for being bashful about it.”

“You’re wrong, I—”

“Am I? We’ll see about that.” She marched to the door.

“Helena? What are you going to do?”

“What do you think? It’s rude to keep the gentleman waiting.”

D
espite the lively fire crackling in the hearth, Helena shivered. The tips of her fingers were icy as she ran her hands down the front of her dress to straighten the folds. Only this morning she’d been prepared to defy her own father for the sake of true love, but Michael had spared her that folly. His cruel denial had frosted her heart, numbing her to the hurt she refused to feel. She’d been a ninny to fall in love with him in the first place.

The only man she could ever rely on was Papa, and starting now, she would attempt to change that. She
had
to, for despite what Michael believed, she had someone else’s life to consider.

It was time to grow up, she told herself, squaring her shoulders. And her first act of maturity would be to marry the man her father had chosen.

When she walked into the formal drawing room where Lieutenant Butler waited, she expected to feel a soul-cleansing surge of purpose. Instead, panic flooded her. She must have betrayed herself with a sound, for he turned abruptly from his post in front of the fire.

In his crisp dress uniform, shoulders draped in gold braid, the man was as handsome as a war memorial statue. Even before he spoke, he worshiped her with his gaze. “My dear Miss Cabot. Every hour apart was a lifetime.”

Crossing the room, he held out a perfectly symmetrical bouquet of gardenias and pink carnations. She accepted the offering with a tremulous smile, setting it on a side table.

The lieutenant did not seem to notice how horribly cold it was in the room. With an expert motion of his fingers, he took out a pocket watch and flipped it open. “Your father has requested a rendezvous at four o’clock,” he informed her. “That gives us thirty-four minutes, by my reckoning.”

No wonder Abigail liked him, Helena thought. He was as obsessed with numbers and precision as she.

“And then we can tell him of our plans right away,” he added.

She sank down on a chair. “Plans?”

“The ones you outlined in your last letter.”

“You’ll have to remind me.”

A small frown marred his noble brow. “The Christmas wedding. The honeymoon in South America.”

“She would pick South America, wouldn’t she?” Helena murmured. “There’s to be a complete solar eclipse in the southern hemisphere. She’d be eager to see it.”

“I beg your pardon.”

Helena waved a hand. “Never mind. Let’s get on with it. Shall I ring for tea?”

“Dearest, is something wrong?”

Her heart was screaming. Couldn’t he hear it? Couldn’t Michael?

“What could possibly be wrong?” she asked, fighting a burst of bitter, inappropriate laughter.

“Before we prevail upon your father, I must say how happy you’ve made me. The night we met, my hopes soared. But I didn’t dare believe a love like ours could flourish as it has. Then your letters began to arrive, and I came to believe we were destined to be together.”

This man, she realized, was nothing—
nothing
—like Michael. The lieutenant was impeccably neat, unfailingly earnest and utterly unaware of what she was feeling or thinking. She shouldn’t want him to be like Michael, to be sensual and crude and brilliant. But she did, oh, she did.

“What made you believe that?” she asked.

“Your letters, of course.”

“The letters.”

“I memorized them, my darling. ‘If I am nothing else in this life,”’ he recited, “‘I am the keeper of your soul. You have given me reason to believe in things even beyond heaven.”’

“She said that?”

“She?” He scowled. “You wrote it. Don’t you remember? I never knew I could be loved like that.”

The awareness that had been nagging at her strengthened into certainty. “Good glory. She loves you.”

“What?” His perfect composure seemed to be fraying at the edges.

“I didn’t realize—I thought she was merely writing the letters at my request, and nurturing this match to please our father. But she is in love with you. Not Mr. Calhoun, as I supposed, but you.” She frowned, trying to adjust her thoughts to this new information. “What a pickle. Mr. Calhoun loves her but she loves you. Now, I like my sister better than I like Calhoun, so I shall give her what she wants. And that, apparently, is you, Lieutenant.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.” His forehead creased with worry.

“I didn’t either, until just now.” Oh, Abigail, she thought. Why didn’t you tell me?

Because Abigail was simply being Abigail. The obedient sister, accustomed to stepping back and allowing Helena to take first pick of everything—including husbands. Helena would have kicked herself if she could have figured out how. She, who always prided herself on her keen insights about people, had been completely blind to her sister’s desire.

“Darling Helena.” Crossing the room, he went down on one knee before her and took both her hands in his. “Are you quite well?”

She studied his earnest face. She thought about her own need, and knew that if she went through with marrying him, he would be a steady and loyal husband and father, for he truly was a good man.

Yet she couldn’t do that to Abigail, not even for the sake of Papa. Yet now Helena was faced with the task of explaining the situation to this man.

Upright and honest, Lieutenant Butler was surely not the sort to take deception lightly. For Abigail’s sake, she must make him understand where all the passion in those letters was coming from.

“Tell me when you fell in love, Lieutenant. Tell me the exact moment.”

“It was the first moment I saw you.”

“It was not,” she snapped. “Love at first sight is a romantic notion but quite false.”

“No, I swear, I thought you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen—”

“Nonsense. If everyone fell in love with something they admired for its beauty, we would all be pledging ourselves to the Washington Monument and the azalea bushes in our neighbors’ gardens. When did your admiration change to love?”

“I suppose it was…” He hesitated, and his expression softened with fondness. “When you said I was as constant in your heart as the polestar. I felt valued and strong. It was extraordinary, overwhelming.”

Helena hesitated one last time. She was in real trouble, and marrying the lieutenant could solve that. But nothing, she realized, was worth stealing the man Abigail loved. Helena would find some other way out of her own troubles.

“I never wrote that,” she said.

He frowned. “I have the letter—”

Taking a deep breath, she prepared to do one of the few selfless acts of her life. “The woman you love wrote those words,” she told the lieutenant.

“Indeed you did, my darling. And so I’ve come today to—”

“Oh, Lieutenant Butler, do hear me out. I am guilty of the most desperate deception.” Finally Helena felt liberated, lighter than air. To hell with Michael, thinking he could leave her in the keeping of another man. She clasped her hands in glee and laughed at the confusion on the lieutenant’s sculpted face. “And it’s all going to work out so marvelously well. I have such a particular talent for pairing people up in ways that make sense.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t. You’re a man. Get up off your knees. We have much to discuss. Your life is about to change, sir.”

“G
o away.”

Jamie stood on the stoop of the small arbor behind the Cabots’ house, while Abigail sat on a banquette beneath twin arched yew trees, denuded of life this late in the season.

Even though she kept her back turned to him, she could see his reflection in the large silver gazing ball set atop a pedestal nearby. Distorted by the shining curve of the ball, he appeared larger than life, vaguely threatening. He stepped closer, and she felt the phantom heat of his stare between her shoulder blades.

“I’d like to be alone,” she stated. “Is there any possible way to get you to go away?”

“Of course not. You’re not supposed to be hiding out here. This was not the way things were supposed to turn out,” he said.

“I should have known better than to listen to you.” She watched a lone yellow leaf float to the ground.

“It’s not like you to abandon a project,” he pointed out. “You haven’t even done your part yet. This was supposed to be a day of triumph for you. This was supposed to be the day you revealed yourself to Boyd Butler, just as you revealed your heart to him in those letters.”

She cringed, thinking of her own stupidity. Turning, she sneaked a glance at Jamie, and for once his cocky grin was gone. Good. He deserved to feel like a failure for a change.

“No good ever came of a lie,” she said. “I’ve always known that. Your mad schemes and my own stupid longing impaired my judgment. While we were so busy painting me up like a puppeteer’s marionette, we forgot one key element. We forgot to consider what Lieutenant Butler wants.”

“That’s not true.” He paced back and forth. “We worked hard for this, Abby. The dress fittings, the dancing lessons. You learned to ride a horse and eat raw oysters. You learned to laugh, not be laughed at. Damn it, I taught you to kiss.”

The reminder stung with unexpected intensity. “Oh, you did, didn’t you, Jamie? You taught me everything a young lady needs to know about love and romance, except what to do when it doesn’t work out.”

“Abby—”

“He fell in love with Helena. He came to see her, not me. Now, please,” she said. “Leave me. I’d like to be alone.”

With a frustrated gesture, he shoved a splayed hand backward through his hair. “You’ve been alone so much that you don’t know any other way to be. At least talk to me.”

“I’ve talked far too much to you. That’s why I’m in such terrible trouble. I beg you, if you have even the smallest bit of compassion left, please leave me. And don’t come back.”

“You surprise me,” he said. “For a person who has the tenacity to search the whole universe for stars, you’re surrendering a simple matter very easily.”

“I’m giving up on a lost cause I never should have taken up in the first place. I suggest you do the same.”

Making a sound of impatience, he sat on the bench beside her and captured her hands in his. “Did you even bother looking at yourself, Abby?”

She pulled her hands away and brushed them over the rich silk of the skirt Madame Broussard had created. “A pretty dress is not going to turn me into my sister.”

“Nor would you want it to.”

“It won’t make me beautiful, either.”

She expected him to dispute that, but he smiled sadly and said, “True. Only you can do that. What will it take to make you believe it?” He didn’t let her answer, but stood up and stepped behind her. A moment later, he put something cool and metallic around her neck.

“What’s this?” she demanded, touching it.

“A little something I had made for you. Sort of a…commencement gift, to commemorate the completion of your education.” He positioned her in front of the silver gazing ball.

Abigail gasped, staring at the distorted image. Her hand shook as she passed her fingers over the exquisite necklace. “Dear heaven. Are these…”

“Diamonds,” he said easily. “There’s really no point in pretending any other stone is equal to a diamond, is there?”

She leaned forward to admire the design. “The stones are set in the shape of the constellation Andromeda.”

“The Chained Princess. She was in the sky the night we met.”

Abigail couldn’t believe he’d noticed that, much less remembered it. “I don’t know what to say.”

“‘Thank you’ would be appropriate.” Jamie took her by the shoulders, giving her no choice but to face him. The late-afternoon sun accentuated the gold of his hair, the silver of his eyes. How could someone with a face like his ever understand what it was like to be plain? Yet she felt like a different person when she was with him, as though she were as golden and graceful and attractive as he.

“I’ll go find your lieutenant,” he said, apparently growing impatient with her long silence.

Alarm flared through her. “You’ll do nothing of the sort. He’s with Helena now.”

“Are you saying you won’t even greet the man? After pouring your heart out to him, you won’t even do him the courtesy of saying hello?”

“Believe me, he won’t notice. Jamie, we tried something that didn’t work. You should learn to accept defeat with grace.”

He spread his arms with elaborate innocence. “I only wanted to see you happy.”

“And to win my father’s vote.”

“Well, that, too, but your happiness does matter to me. Please believe that.”

She didn’t want to feel what she was feeling. His words sounded as though they came straight from the heart, but he would only laugh at such a notion. And even though his incredible gift lay upon her throat, growing warm from her skin, she knew it was meant as a sop to his conscience.

“I can’t accept this necklace,” she said.

“You have no choice. You’re the only woman on the planet who understands what it is,” he said with brusque impatience, and then he was gone.

In the empty silence following his departure, she felt more bereft than ever, drowning in her own transgressions. She had done a terrible thing; she had gambled and lost, and now she was suffering the consequences. It was the law of cause and effect. She understood this law intimately. She should have had more respect for it, but she’d allowed her head to be turned by foolish dreams.

An unexpected tear plopped onto the back of her hand. Sweet heaven, she was weeping. How humiliating. On top of everything else, she was weeping, and couldn’t seem to make herself stop. She tried to rationalize the sadness away, to tell herself that her troubles were over—the lieutenant would marry her sister and Father would be delighted and life would go on. But there was no reasoning with the sort of hurt she felt. It rolled through her in a great dark wave, touching the lonely places that yearned for something that could never be.

A rustle of dry leaves, followed by a masculine clearing of the throat, alerted her that Jamie Calhoun had returned. The cad. He probably felt guilty, as well he should.

“I told you to go away,” she said, keeping her back turned and her head down. She didn’t want him to see her like this. “I meant for you to stay away.”

“Well, then, it’s a bit awkward, because in your recent letter you begged me to come to you.”

Abigail froze. Fine hairs on the nape of her neck stood on end. Dear God, it was him. Boyd Butler.

She couldn’t think of a word to say. Squeezing her eyes shut, she prayed to every deity she knew to make the earth open up and swallow her whole. But no one heard her prayers. She remained seated in a sodden mess on the garden bench. With a furtive hand, she reached up and brushed the tears from her cheeks.

Then she forced herself to stand up and face him. In formal dress, his cocked hat tucked beneath his right arm, sword at his side, his epaulets glittering and his mustache perfectly groomed, he resembled a lead soldier in a display case. Only the small bouquet of flowers he held out to her contended with his military bearing.

But when he saw her face, his composure faltered a little. “I’m sorry,” Lieutenant Butler fumbled. “I was looking for Abigail Cabot.”

Abigail pondered the irony of the moment. Here she was, face-to-face with the man she’d vowed to love until the stars fell from the heavens, the man to whom she’d penned excruciatingly personal letters, crammed with every tender emotion she had ever felt. And he hadn’t even recognized her.

In spite of her misery, she managed a short laugh. Her hand crept to the new necklace, feeling the sharp constellation that lay against her throat. “I’m not sure whether I should feel offended on behalf of the old Abigail, or flattered on behalf of the new.”

He blinked, widening his eyes. “Miss Abigail! I didn’t rec—er, you’re looking exceptionally—um, that is—”

“Don’t go any further,” she said, deciding to rescue him. “I accept the compliment.”

A dull red flush crept upward from beneath his starched collar. Shuffling his feet, he held out the bouquet.

She had no choice but to take it. And then she had no choice but to sneeze. Flinging the bouquet aside, she groped for a handkerchief, found none, and then sneezed again into the end of her sash. “I’m sorry,” she said, blinking watery eyes. “I have a bad reaction to certain varieties of flowers.” When her vision cleared, she gazed into his handsome, earnest face. “But, Lieutenant, that’s not the apology you came to hear, is it? I scarcely know where to begin.”

“Then let me begin it. When I first heard of your deception,” he said, “I was all for storming back to Annapolis and shipping out to patrol the Canary Islands. But your sister prevailed upon me to reconsider.”

“So you’re here at my sister’s suggestion?”

“I am here of my own accord. This is between you and me,” he said. “And I will not leave until we sort this out.”

“There’s nothing to sort,” she said, but couldn’t go on, for her voice was afflicted with the most humiliating quaver.

“I’m not marrying your sister,” he stated. “I want you to know that.”

Her first thought was that their father would be bitterly disappointed, and her second thought was that she would take the blame. “Lieutenant Butler, I am so utterly ashamed and filled with regret for all that happened.”

“Please don’t say that, Miss Cabot, my…dear.” He held his fists clenched, white-knuckled, at his sides. “You mustn’t regret one word of those letters. Ever since you started writing to me, they have been my whole world.”

She was sure she’d heard him wrong. “I don’t understand.”

“You do understand me, better than anyone ever has. Each time I received a letter from you, I felt as though I’d received a gift from heaven.”

A cautious hope glimmered. “Really?”

He nodded, but maintained his stiff, military posture. “I want to tell you about the moment I fell in love,” he said. “It was when I read something in a letter from a remarkable young lady. She told me I was the other half of her soul. No one had ever said such a thing to me or made me feel so adored and valued.”

“But how do you feel now that you know those were my words, not Helena’s?”

“Miss Abigail, I fell in love with the person who wrote the letters, the person who kept me in a state of perpetual joy waiting for each new delivery.”

Abigail felt a sudden rush of bashfulness. She wanted to believe what she was hearing, but did she dare?

After a few seconds of being tongue-tied, she remembered something Jamie had taught her in one of the many lessons on social conversation. If she could imagine writing the words, then she could say them aloud. Closing her eyes, she pictured her pen moving along the page and said, “I cannot begin to find a way to express my regrets that I took part in this deception. Lieutenant Butler, I beg your pardon. Please know that I’ll understand if you simply disappear, never to return.”

“I don’t want to disappear, Miss Abigail. I want to know you, better and better with each passing day. To know the woman whose letters touched my heart and filled my days with meaning.”

Panic and joy bloomed inside her. Was he saying what she thought he was saying? Could Jamie have been right after all?

She couldn’t be sure. He was so formal, standing there, revealing the depths of his heart with soldierly deliberation. Jamie would be touching her at this point, she thought. He’d grab her by the shoulders or perhaps even kiss her—She stopped the thought in its tracks. It was disloyal even to think of Jamie when Lieutenant Butler was addressing her.

“I only regret that you didn’t feel comfortable explaining yourself to me right from the start.”

“Your feelings changed very quickly, Lieutenant. You thought you were coming here to see my sister.”

“I came to see the woman who told me she experienced a second sunrise when she received my letter. The woman who wrote that I am her polestar, guiding her heart.”

Dear heaven. He had memorized her letters, just as she’d memorized his.

“This isn’t quick,” he said. “It isn’t sudden. I’ve had weeks to think about it.” Keeping his hat beneath his arm, he sank down on one knee before her.

She nearly exploded with giddy panic as reality closed in. Could he love her as he claimed to love the writer of the letters? What would he think when he discovered she had a physical imperfection? She’d imagined this moment a thousand times, but she’d never remembered to consider everything that was at stake.

This wasn’t happening, she thought wildly. Dreams simply didn’t come true, not like this, not for her. He took her hand, holding it with the reverence he might afford a holy relic. She braced herself, expecting to be swept away in the same currents of awareness that engulfed her when Jamie touched her, but at the moment she was too numb with shock to feel a thing.