But, of course, the man currently sitting in her parlor would likely be nothing like the charming, earnest youth she had met two decades ago. Time had surely altered him, as well.
And yet, Leah’s hand still hesitated on the knob.
Turning it felt akin to opening the door on her own past. To receive a slapping reminder of the foolish choices that had rendered her future so very bleak.
She certainly hoped she would not be reliving the next few minutesad nauseamlike her previous encounter with Fox Carnegie. The giddy pleasure of basking in his attention, no matter how brief, resonated down the years. Heaven knew she was loath to suffer it again.
But Leah had never shrunk from painful things.
She squared her shoulders, pasted a polite smile between her flushed cheeks, and opened the door.
A man stood before the bow-window, facing away—dark beaver hat, leather gloves, and walking stick clasped in both hands behind his back. Broad shoulders filled out his superfine green coat while his fawn buckskins clung to well-formed thighs before disappearing into the tops of expensive riding boots.
He’s larger than I remember, was Leah’s first thought.
His hair is darker, was her second.
Then he turned around, and all of Leah’s circling raven thoughts plummeted into one sharp mass—
What happened to ye?
The man before her was still Fox Carnegie and yet . . . not.
Gone were the soft angles of his youth. His jaw and brow bones had become sharp slashes pushing out his skin. Wrinkles fanned out from his eyes and bracketed his mouth, as if he had spent too many years grimacing into the sun. His eyes were still the same intense blue, but they held none of the gentleness she remembered. Now they were more akin to glacial ice—unnerving and distant.
Her gaze traced a purple, puckered scar that ran from his left ear and disappeared into his coat collar. She shuddered to think of the wound that had left such an aftermath. Had his injury put the bleak chill in his gaze?
“Miss Leah Penn-Leith, I presume?” he asked.
Her eyes snapped to his. A sharp knowing shone there. Her perusal of his battle wounds had not gone unnoticed.
“Captain Carnegie.” Leah dropped an elegant curtsy. Her time with Aunt Leith had not been entirely without benefit. “Ye wished tae speak with me?”
“Yes. May we . . . ?” He darted a glance at the chairs across from the door.
She motioned them toward the cushioned seats before the fireplace, the open door providing a nod to propriety. Was it her imagination, or did his gaze flicker up and down her person as she turned to sit? Surely, there was no recognition in his glance, right?
Her heart was a drumbeat in her throat.
Captain Carnegie set his hat and gloves atop a sideboard, but he kept the walking stick close at hand. Leaning it against the side of Malcolm’s favorite wingback chair, he sat opposite her, Hessian boots angling toward the unlit hearth. The day had been too sunny and warm to waste coal on a fire, but now the empty fireplace seemed another symbol of the vast social distance between them. Even dressed in her finest day gown, Leah still paled before the captain’s London-society elegance.
The man she had met all those years ago had been a lowly foot soldier without independent means. But somehow, somewhere, that had changed.
She waited for him to speak, feeling herself unequal to quizzing him as to the purpose of his call.
Clearing his throat, he looked around the room with perhaps more interest than Leah would have supposed. “This parlor is . . .”
She braced herself for his opinion.
“. . . charming,” he finished.
Leah stilled. Was he being serious? Or . . . sardonic? His tone made it difficult to tell.
She followed his gaze, seeing the room as he likely did—a space that had been elegant thirty-five years ago when her refined mother had initially furnished it but now showed its age. The Aubusson rug had lost its nap in places. The red fabric of the sofa on which Leah sat had faded unevenly, and the left leg of the French sideboard had clearly been broken and repaired.
But there was a lived-in, well-loved homeyness to the room. It shone in the rubbed patina of the writing desk before the window to the right of the fireplace. In the well-worn leather of a footstool before the hearth. In the scattered copies of journals and books that Malcolm adored reading aloud on a gray winter’s night.
“Thank ye,” Leah replied.
