“And?”
“Patience, brother. There is someone blocking my view.”
Peter thrust his hands in his pockets and turned away, sighing out a deep breath.
“Wait, now they’re moving. Oh…oh.”
Peter spun back toward her. “Oh? What does ‘oh’ mean?”Ohwas not the sound he was expecting. Nor was it one he wanted to hear. He gripped the handrail. “Do you know her? Is sheton? Who is she?”
Winnie and Andrew exchanged looks, both grimacing.
“She’s not Lady Cecilia, is she?” That couldn’t be. It was impossible. He didn’t doubt Cecilia’s intelligence, but she was cunning, not curious. She wasn’t at all kind.
“It is not Lady Cecilia. No.”
The relief was short-lived, replaced with frustration. He took the steps two at a time until he was at his sister’s shoulder. “Apologies,” he said to the footman who still held the door.
He didn’t need to scan the room like his sister had. His gaze went straight to her. His body knew exactly where she was, even if his brain didn’t know who it was he was looking for. All breath escaped him.
“It’s Miss Eleanor Wright,” Winnie whispered, watching as he absorbed the news.
Miss Eleanor Wright, the shrewish, combative bane of his existence. Miss Eleanor Wright, who had made it clear over and over just how much she loathed him. Miss Eleanor Wright, to whom he was heartless, soulless, and nothing but his title.
Eleanor was adjusting her book and rose, experimenting with different positions, no doubt trying to make them look just so. As ridiculous as he’d thought Winnie’s questions had been, he had an answer now—Booklover was wearing rainy-morning yellow. She was unsettlingly mesmerizing, just like those hours after a night of rain when the sky was clear and the sun was rising, andenough moisture hung in the air to fracture the light, casting the city in an otherworldly glow.
There must have been countless such mornings over his lifetime, but he’d only recently stopped to notice them, and the memories were entangled with the thought of her. Here she was in a dress shot through with thread that shimmered, that puffed at the shoulders and was trimmed with ruffles at the collar that looked like alyssum in the summer. Her dark hair swooped in intricate braids and was adorned with beads intentionally placed.
Booklover appreciated form and design as much as she did color—colors like those he’d seen Eleanor wear repeatedly. Even visiting his warehouse, she’d eschewed the blacks and grays that would be sensible when working with ink and opted for green, with a rose-colored pin that he hadn’t marked at the time but had apparently stuck in the back of his mind.
Damn. How could he not have seen the parallels? Or had he, but his conscious mind had been so consumed with anger at Miss Wright that his subconscious hadn’t dared to address the thought that she and Booklover might be one and the same?
She was beautiful. Her eyes snapped with intelligence, her dimples betrayed her mischievousness, and he’d dreamed of those lips night after night. His body thrummed at the memory of her in his arms and the fire he’d felt as his hand had grazed her waist. Damn it, she was everything he’d hoped Booklover would be.
Volcanoes. Vesuvius. Cholera.
How had he not made the connection? He could have ended things right then, never let their friendship deepen, and saved himself the heartbreak of falling for a woman whodidactually see who he truly was—and didn’t like him.
He watched her take a deep breath and scan the room. She could look to the door at any moment and see him. He spun on his heel. “We’re going.”
“Wait.What?” Winnie was almost through the doorway and into the restaurant when Andrew grabbed her by the waist and carried her down the stairs kicking.
“You cannot be serious,” she said, scowling as Andrew put her back on her feet. She turned to Peter. “Brother, aren’t you going in?”
“No. I’m not. And none of you are to mention her again.”
“But she’swaitingfor you.”
“She is waiting for someone else. Someone who doesn’t exist.” He tried to ignore the fading half of himself as he imagined her tossing his letters in the fireplace the moment she returned home. He’d been foolish to think his words had been anything more than ink on a page—the Captain was fiction, just like the novels he’d wasted time reading.
Winnie looked at him, nostrils flaring. “And you’re going to leave her waitingall night? You’ll let her sit alone at that table until she realizes that she’s been stood up? That is badly done of you, brother. It is unkind and so very disappointing.”
There was the reason he’d kept Booklover from her in the first place. On top of it all, he’d disappointed his sisters. He pushed aside the feeling and hardened his heart. “My failing to meet her barely registers on the tally of the things I’ve done to that woman. I doubt she will even notice it.” Except that she would, because the duke might have done terrible things, but the Captain hadn’t, and the Captain was who she was there to see.
But the Captain didn’t exist outside of the world they’d created, and the person he’d become on those pages would flutter away the moment reality gusted across them.
There was hot fury in Winnie’s narrowed eyes. “You could go and have a conversation. Miss Wright deserves that much, at least.” She made to climb the stairs again.
“Edwina Abigail Montgomery, you are out of line.” It was as harsh a tone as he’d ever used with her, and her mouth dropped open. “I have tolerated your interference in this matter thus far,” he continued, “but the limit has been reached. This matter is over. Resolved. Never to be spoken of again, is that clear?”
