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Before she could complete her sentence, Tobias started clipping commands. “Carry her ladyship’s cases upstairs to her rooms and send her maid to the kitchen to have a hot drink and supper.”
“Very well, my lord,” the butler answered.
“Let us retire to the parlor,” she said, hope beating in her chest with such vigor she felt faint.
He grabbed her hand, and he fairly ran down the hallway as she hurried her steps to keep pace. Tobias opened the door and ushered her inside. She turned around and he was leaning against the closed door, torment in his eyes, before he wiped all expression from his face.
“You’ve returned,” he said mildly.
“Yes.”
“You’ve been missing for several weeks,” he said hoarsely. “I am most relieved to see you are well.”
“I anticipated that you might send me away, so I ran, for I could not endure my heart to break again.” She got right to the heart of the matter before she lost her will and launched herself at him. “You wrote these?” She held up the several slim leather volumes carefully tied together.
The dratted man’s inscrutable expression became even more closed. “Do not shy away from me.”
An eyebrow arched in outrage. “I am not shy, countess.”
“Then—”
“I wrote them.”
Though the evidence had been overwhelming, delight and disbelief filled her. She tugged out one of the book from the small pile and held it forward with hands that trembled. “You wrote these. You, the Earl of Blade, are Theodore Aikens?”
“Yes.”
Livvie’s heart started to jerk an erratic rhythm. “Aikens…writes romance—passion and secret trysts and dueling,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“But…but you would never do anything like that in reality. Your hero, Wrotham, is brilliant, wild, and unpredictable. He revels in his temper…”
“Wrotham is everything that I am that is not possible to show to society, that I cannot allow myself to feel,” he said, his voice rough with unnamed emotions.
The silence throbbed between them with intensity. The awareness of how much he would have worked to ensure his book found her ahead of his schedule bloomed. It would have taken such dedication and an atrocious amount of money. The knowledge filled her with tenderness. “The rumors said you bought a printing shop.”
He smiled. “Two. I wanted thousands of copies to flood the bookstores in London, Scotland, Paris, and Vienna. I’d hoped the fascination of the ton and readers of the series would spread across borders and countries to find you wherever you were.”
Oh!
“Writing has always been an escape for whenever life seemed turbulent. It has been most private and I want to share everything about me with you, as you have showed me without restraint who you are.”
In that moment, she realized her aloof earl was sharing a part of him he had never revealed to anyone else. It humbled her. She grabbed the latest copy and thumbed through the pages. “Lady O…that is truly me?” The idea seemed so farfetched, but Lady O and Wrotham’s courtship and romance was so similar to Livvie and Tobias’s, so fiery and passionate, so everything she wanted them to be and more.
“Yes.”
Her heart went wild. He had modeled the lady who his hero had fallen in love with on her, and she was not shy, demur, or the very picture of female respectability and correctness. In fact, his Lady O was fierce, bold, a delight to read and learn, and the passages showed how much the hero had fallen in love with his Lady O. Livvie’s throat tightened and she could only stare at Tobias in mute delight. He willingly went through such lengths to have her back at his side, sacrificing their reputation to scandal and scrutiny. “You truly love me,” she breathed in sheer shock.
Before he could respond, she thumbed the pages furiously and started to read, “‘Death had almost claimed his mysterious Lady O. Never had Wrotham felt such passion for a woman and such need. He loved her and it petrified him, for he could not lose her. She was an elite assassin who had dedicated her life to the order after the terrible way in which society had abandoned her. Could he truly risk his heart by asking her to flee this life with him, to abandon intrigue and danger, for love and happiness?’”
A smile tugged his lips and he slowly pushed from the door. “Is there a reason you are reading my words to me, countess?”
Her throat worked. “I…I was going to read the part when he confessed his love to Lady O.”
“Hmmm,” he said, prowling even closer, his eyes intent. “I already know what they say, I wrote it, but if you will recall, that volume ended without his intriguing Lady O answering his declaration.”
Livvie nodded happily. “So you love me?”
