Caleb was waiting for her at the end of the hall, leaning against the wall. He grinned when he saw her approach. “I thought you wouldn’t come.”
She held her bundle to her chest like a talisman. “Of course I will not back out,” she said indignantly. Her voice warbled a bit and she clenched her teeth.
He straightened and held out his arm to her. “Well then, are we ready, fellow adventurer?”
She took his arm, gripping it tightly as he led the way down the servants’ stairs and through a back entrance of the house into the gardens.
“You certainly know your way around,” she said in surprise.
“I was here many times as a boy. The pond I’m taking you to used to be a favorite haunt of mine and my cousin’s.”
She was oddly touched that he would bring her to a place he held special. “And what is that you have there?” she asked, motioning to the wicker basket he held.
“All good adventurers need nourishment. And it is just our luck that Cook is quite fond of me. This lovely basket will prove a godsend after a morning of swimming.”
Just then they reached the cover of the trees. There was a path here, though it was old and overgrown with disuse. She picked her way carefully through the brush at his side.
“As far as adventures go,” she said, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in the confines of the dense foliage, “this must be tame compared to what you’re used to.”
Caleb chuckled. “Tame can be a good thing,” he said, helping her over a fallen tree branch.
But Imogen stopped. Caleb stopped as well, looking at her in curiosity.
“What is it?” he asked, and then his smile turned sly. “Are you backing out?”
“Hardly, my lord.”
“Caleb,” he gently reminded her.
“Caleb,” she repeated, flushing slightly. “I want to know why you’re doing this for me.”
“Why?” He tugged her on, and they resumed their walk through the trees.
“Yes, why? Why are you helping me? What are you getting out of this?”
He was silent for so long she thought he would not answer. And then, just as she was about to ask again, he finally spoke up.
“You ground me,” he said, his voice so low she had to strain to hear him.
“I’m sorry?”
“You ground me,” he repeated. “For so many years I’ve been living an existence of excitement and stimulation and excess. Then I met you.”
“Why does this sound more like an insult?” she grumbled.
“No!” He stopped and turned her to face him. “You don’t understand, Imogen. I was not living that life because I wanted to. I did it because I felt I had to.”
“Had to? But why?”
His features immediately shuttered. A muscle worked in his jaw for a moment before he replied. “The ‘whys’ are not important. What is important is I found you. Or rather, you found me in that garden at the Morledges’.”
Imogen blushed, fighting to make sense of his speech. “Me? What is so important about me?”
He gripped her hands tightly. Imogen nearly gasped at the contact, at the heat of him through her kid-skin gloves.
“There is everything important about you,” he said, his voice so intense, so certain that she was struck mute. “You have brought a peace to me that I have not felt in ten long years.”
She looked deeply into his pale gray eyes and was shocked at the very real pain there. What had this man been through? What had hurt him to such a degree that he suffered because of it even now?
