I closed my eyes and leaned against the bookcase. I couldn’t look at him, not when his eyes burned like a sunrise breaking through the dim light of dawn.
“Evelyn.”
I shook my head. “Stop.”
He was silent.
“I’m only here to tell you Hattie would like you to wait until at least the end of the house party to propose.”
“To you?”
My eyes flew open and my hand went to my heart. “No,” I said breathlessly. “To her.”
Captain Calder tipped his head to one side and studied me again. “That cannot be right.”
“Lieutenant Davis told me about the glove you carried into every battle. You’ve been practically engaged for six years.”
“That was a mistake.”
“A mistake?” I stepped closer to him. A part of me had worried for him. I saw heartache in his eyes tonight. Even though I knew it made no sense, and that I was vain for even considering his heartache had anything to do with me, I assumed he felt torn between this ...forcebetween us and his duty and love for Harriet. I could understand that. I could have wept over the anguish it caused and might continue to cause us, but calling Harriet a mistake? Impossible. “My cousin is one of the best and kindest humans in England.”
He stood his ground so calmly I had to fight the urge to shove him away. “I will not argue over that with you. She was kind to me when I desperately needed it.”
“And this is how you repay her?”
“Miss Pryor has no designs on me and I have none on her.”
“You don’t think Hattie wants to marry you?”
“I know she doesn’t.”
“Why do you say that? Because of Lieutenant Brookhouse? Perhaps she is simply trying not to make her preference for you obvious.”
“But she doesn’t prefer me. And while I don’t know her heart, I do know I never made her smile the way Brookhouse does.”
“Then why are we here, Captain?”
His eyes dropped to my mouth. “I think it safe for me to assume it is not so I could have the opportunity of kissing you when I was certain to remember it.”
The room was silent ... distractingly so.
When he spoke again, his voice rolled over me. “It is rather unfair, isn’t it? That you know what my mouth feels like, and I’ve had to muddle through with only my imagination.”
There was the softest of touches on the tip of my smallest finger. I inhaled sharply. He’d inched closer, his head bent down, examining the place our fingers touched.
His thumb journeyed across my tiny nail before he looked into my eyes again. “Has your memory been as relentless as my imagination?”
Yes.
I swallowed and those warm eyes of his followed the movement. Was he toying with me? I thought our war was over. I told him it was over. I apologized for locking him in his room and stealing his key. He shouldn’t be trying to fluster me like this.
I raised my chin in an effort to regain some kind of control, but it only brought my face closer to his. No matter, I simply needed to straighten him out. “If Hattie doesn’t love you, why would she send me here? I would never throw myself at the man my cousin is in love with.”
His lips quirked and he reached for a second finger. Why hadn’t I pulled away? “She isn’t.”
He was trying to take revenge—he had to be or he wouldn’t be lying. “She is. We spoke of it only this afternoon.”
He shook his head softly. “And I spoke to her after dinner. So one of us is mistaken, and I’m quite positive it isn’t me.”
