Then his gaze flicked to the letter in her hand.
“Am I interrupting something?” he asked. The words were laced with dangerous amusement, but there was a steel thread of something sharper running beneath them. Something that should have felt like suspicion, or anger, but sounded more like…satisfaction.
But that made no sense.
“I—” She pressed her lips together then continued, “I was only beginning my work, Mr. Caradoc. Familiarizing myself with the space.”
His eyes swept across the desk, the open drawer, the scattered letters, the ornate box sitting askew at the corner.
“Familiarizing yourself, indeed.”
He stepped further into the room, slow and deliberate, his limp doing nothing to diminish his sinuous grace. For an instant, pain ghosted his features when his weight shifted.
Isabella’s breath hitched as he drew closer, his eyes fixed on her face with an intensity that made her stomach tighten. She inhaled sharply, the faint scents of lemon and linen coiling around her.
“You rose early this morning, Miss Barrett,” he said, his voice low, each word shaped with precision, the hint of a rasp at the edges. “I would have expected you to sleep late, given your… adventures during the night.”
Her cheeks flamed.
“Tell me.” His voice was softer now. “Was it the light that woke you? Or something else entirely?”
The questions were innocuous enough, but she felt as if he was looking for a depth of reply she was not willing to offer. She swallowed hard, straightening her spine as though it might steel her against his perusal. “The light, I suppose.”
His lips twitched, not quite a smile, more a suggestion of one.
“The light,” he echoed, his gaze dipping briefly back to the letter in her hand before returning to her face. “Yes, I imagine it reveals quite a great deal, doesn’t it?”
Isabella could barely breathe. The game of cat and mouse he played with his words, his proximity, the way he looked at her, it was too much…yet not nearly enough.
With a sharp motion, she tossed the letter onto the desk, breaking the invisible thread strung taut between them.
“Why do you keep these letters, Mr. Caradoc? Why did you keep Papa’s words, when you had already decided to disregard them?”
The air went still, dense with things unsaid.
His dark brows lifted. “I do not disregard the words written by a man as intelligent as your father.”
“But you did. You persisted when he denied you,” she said, her voice rising, anger and fear twining together in her chest. “Why couldn’t you leave us in peace?”
“Peace.” The word came out soft. His jaw tightened, and for a moment, something unreadable flashed in his eyes, something raw and untamed. Then it was gone, replaced by that cold, enigmatic mask he wore so well. “Because there are certain truths one cannot turn away from.” He tilted his head, studying her as if he were measuring something within her, calculating how much she could bear before she broke. “Your father knew it, even if he denied it.”
She blinked against the sharp sting of tears.
“You speak of truths and what my father knew,” she said, her voice low and steady. “You barely knew my father, yet you claim to understand what he did and did not know? All I see is a man who wants something he cannot have.”
Almost did she ask him about St. Jude’s then. That was a truth he could not turn away from. But she could not make herself be so unkind, confronting him with a memory that surely must be terrible for him to revisit.
Silence stretched between them, vibrating with tension.
Mr. Caradoc took one more step forward, and now there was barely a breath of space between them. The light from the window cut across his face, silvering the edges of his hair and painting shadows in the hollows of his cheeks.
His jaw tightened, a muscle twitching beneath his skin, but his voice remained calm, almost lazy as he said, “And yet, here you are. In my library. With my secrets in your hands.”
His gaze dropped to her lips, his pupils dark and dilated, surrounded by only a thin rim of gray. For one breathless instant, Isabella thought he might close the distance, might claim her mouth.
Her breath caught. Her chest rose and fell in sharp, uneven bursts. She ought to step back, step away. She ought to turn and flee. Instead, she stood perfectly still, her own gaze dipping to his lips before jerking back to his eyes.
“And if I were to tell you to leave this library right now, Miss Barrett?” His voice was barely more than a whisper, soft, intimate. “To go back to London. If I were to offer a full year’s wages and pay your way home, would you go?”
