Chapter Four

Liza strode to the library with a frantic pace that threatened to wear a path in the carpet’s thick pile. She hadn’t slept the night before and could find no ease today. Lord Thomas did remember their kiss. Yet, he’d said he would bring her a list of marriageable gentlemen.

If he remembered and yet agreed to aid her hunt for a husband, that was proof of how little affection he held for her. She’d spent the past three years remembering the anguish in his voice when he spoke of his wife. Still, a small part of her hoped there was some feeling between them. That hope was now dead, and the loss of it made her ill.

A light tread sounded in the hall. Halting, Liza wrapped her arms about her middle in the vain hope the action would hold in her pain. When he arrived, she must not weep. He must never know how she longed for him.

The footfalls in the hall didn’t slow. Lord Thomas burst through the library door. For once, he wasn’t in any way disarrayed. He was perfection.

He strode to her. His strong hands settled on her shoulders. A spark of madness lurked in his eyes. Liza looked up at him in confusion. This was not the Lord Thomas she knew.

“I will not compose your damn list, Liza.”

“I-I don’t understand,” she stammered.

“There’s only one name I would put on it. Mine.”

His words ricocheted through her. “Yours?”

“For three years I’ve thought on it, thought of our kiss.” His intensity stole her breath. “I will not pass you into the arms of another man.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“You don’t want me to?” he repeated.

She shook her head.

“You asked me to…” His confusion made the words a question.

“Because I didn’t think there was a chance that…That is, I hoped maybe you…” What had she hoped? For exactly what was happening. She smiled, filled with a joy equal to her earlier pain. “I hoped you might care for me.”

The hands on her shoulders slid across her back and he lowered his mouth to hers. His fierce, possessive kiss fulfilled the promise of that earlier one, and yet offered more. When his hands at last returned to her shoulders and set her away from him, this time Liza was sure she was the one who swayed. He stroked her cheek with gentle fingers.

“Tell your father I will return.” He strode from the room as rapidly as he’d entered.

Liza all but toppled to the couch. Her whole body trembled. She pressed both hands to her lips, enveloped in a haze of joy. It took long moments for her mind to recover the ability for thought.

She dropped her hands and hugged herself, alight with happiness. Of their own volition, her lips curved into a broad smile. Why wouldn’t they? They’d just been kissed by Lord Thomas. A giggle escaped her. Maybe Lord Thomas was a bit like a pirate after all, stealing her kisses.

Her joy carried her through the evening. She existed in a fog of delight, barely aware of her father’s confused complaints over Lord Thomas’s absence. In her delirium, she floated through the following day. Her happiness didn’t dim until the next evening, when she returned to the front parlor to watch for Lord Thomas.

He didn’t appear. He didn’t step from his front door, or jog down his steps, nor stride across the street toward her. Most of all he didn’t, for once, look up, see her at the window, and smile, as she’d dreamed all through the previous night and all day that he would.

Her resolve wavered more the day after that, and the next, his absence chipping away first at her joy, then her sanity. She began to sit in the front parlor nearly all day. She no longer hid behind the curtain, but pulled up a chair and sat there, waiting to catch even a glimpse of him. On the far side of the house, her father grumbled alone in his library.

Liza stared holes in the door of Lord Thomas’s London home. She watched for hours, for days that stretched into weeks, but never caught sight of him. Occasionally, men in rough garb would appear. Lord Thomas’s butler directed them around the back. Liza grew desperate. Had the window a latch, she would have thrown it wide and called across the street to the liveried servant, demanding the whereabouts of his master.

Her father didn’t ask why she now chose the front parlor over the library. Her mother only shrugged when she cried off dances, the theater and dinner parties. Liza was misery itself, and no one seemed to notice, let alone care. It seemed as if Lord Thomas’s abandonment signaled to the world that they should cast her aside, leave her alone.

Finally, no longer able to bear the strange limbo Lord Thomas had created, Liza returned to the library to seek her father. She found him at the same table he and Lord Thomas always used. He was attempting to draw a perfect heptadecagon with only a compass and a straightedge. He was calm, composed, and looked up with a cheerful smile to greet her. How she wanted to snatch his work from him and tear it into a thousand little pieces.

“Papa,” she greeted in as normal a tone as she could muster. She closed the library door behind her.

“Liza, I think I have it.” He grinned at her. “This will show Thomas.”

She started at Lord Thomas’s name. She rushed across the room to her father. “Where is Lord Thomas? He hasn’t been to see you in ages.”

Her father shrugged. “Said he’s working on a project.”

“A project?” How could some project be more important than her? Her stomach roiled at the realization that his so-called project must be an excuse to stay away. She grasped the back of a chair, her knees weak.

Her father returned his attention to the page before him. “A project.”

“I see,” she whispered. Tears burned her eyes. She whirled and walked to the shelves on shaky legs. If her father saw her tears, he would demand to know what had upset her, and Liza couldn’t tell him the truth. If Papa knew she’d kissed Lord Thomas, he would force them to wed. Liza didn’t want a man forced to have her, especially not one whose happiness she cared about more than her own. She pressed her knuckles to her mouth, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

Behind her, the library door opened. Liza tried to stem her tears.

“Ah, there you are,” her father said. “It is time?”

“It is,” Lord Thomas said.

Liza spun at the sound of his voice. He strode across the room toward her. He stopped inches from her, his expression stunned. Behind him, her father wore a ridiculous grin.

“You’re crying.” Worry draped his beloved face.

“No,” she lied. Tears slid down her cheeks.

He brushed her tears away, looking at her with warm, concerned eyes. “Why are you crying?”

“You said… and we… and then you never came back.” Her voice was thick with grief.

Lord Thomas captured her hand in his, but turned to her father. “You didn’t tell her?” he asked, incredulous.

“Wanted it to be a surprise.” Her father’s foolish grin didn’t waver, despite her tears.

“But she’s crying.”

Lord Thomas put enough reprimand into those words to make Liza’s eyes go wide. No one spoke to her papa like that.

Her father’s affable expression didn’t falter. “She’ll stop soon enough. Go on now.”

“I don’t understand.” Liza made the words a plea. Why was her father so cheerful? What hadn’t he told her, and where had Lord Thomas been?

“Come with me.” Lord Thomas exerted gentle pressure on the hand he held.

Baffled, but bolstered by the warmth of his hand and her father’s cheer, Liza let Lord Thomas lead her from the library. He didn’t relinquish her hand, nor did she wish him to. He took her through the house, to the foyer, and out the door.

He kept up the pace across the street, where his butler waited, door already open. Liza was aware of gawking passersby, but then they crossed the threshold and entered Lord Thomas’s home. It was brightly lit, as lovely as she remembered from her few brief visits, and he was headed toward the ballroom.

“What are we doing?” she asked, breathless from his rapid pace.

“You will see.”

Liza couldn’t recall the exact layout of Lord Thomas’s home, but as they neared the ballroom, the hall took a turn she was sure hadn’t been there. It ended at a set of double doors, thrown wide. He led her through them, and into a grand, two-story-tall library.

She craned her neck, looking up, and around. Book-lined shelves soared toward the ceiling. The second level was ringed with a walkway. Evening sunlight filtered through tall windows. Soft carpets covered the floor. Plush couches and chairs were arranged in small groups, candlelight on every table.

There had not been a library there before, that much she knew. This was, “Impossible,” she breathed.

“Not impossible,” Lord Thomas said. “If you ask it, I’ll turn the entire house into a library.”

Her eyes sought his as he dropped to one knee before her. Tears threatened once more, this time from joy. Lord Thomas clasped her hands in his.

“Liza Milton, will you marry me?”