Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

A lyssa had not attended Dora's and Barr's Christmas balls for the past three years. Unwilling to appear in public after Lord Talbot had decided not to marry her, Dora had constantly urged her to attend. Insisted even. Only last year had she given in. Tonight she had a different challenge. Earlier in the evening, she had taken Gabe's hand in a set of country dances and now she had to stand by and appear unfazed by him dancing with every sweet thing in the shire.

"I've never been to such a ball." The new governess whom Dora had hired today confided in Alyssa. "I do feel out of place."

The young woman had appeared after noon when the family coachman had brought her from the village carriage inn. Dora had interviewed her and hired her, then insisted she attend tonight's gala.

"Please enjoy the evening, Miss Harlan. Lady Barrington means only to welcome you to the house and the neighbors. Everyone here knows Lady Barrington's Christmas parties include all her staff who come for as long as they wish. Most stay for a few minutes, then return below stairs."

"I have no ambitions to capture a beau here." She cast a covetous glance at Gabe, belying her intentions. "I want only to work for a good and proper family."

Alyssa smiled at her, understanding how Gabe could appeal to her, so well turned out was he in formal black coat and trousers with blinding white stock. "You will have a very happy family to work with here at Lord and Lady Barrington's."

Miss Harlan licked her lips and tore her gaze from Gabe as he ended the latest dance and took his partner to her parents. "I wonder how often Lord Darby visits here."

Alyssa's heart squeezed in want. "Often, I would wager. He is very good friends with your employers."

"Do you visit often?"

Was Miss Harlan gauging Alyssa as her competition?

"Not in the future, no." I cannot bear the torture of watching him dance with another, let alone watching how other women will pursue him. "I have plans to open my own shop. That will keep me quite busy."

"How lovely that you can find means to do that," Miss Harlan said with envy and a bright twinkle in her pretty blue eyes. "What kind of shop?"

"Books," said Gabe who suddenly appeared at their side and had eyes only for Alyssa. "Isn't that right, Miss Waring?"

"Indeed. A wonderful little place where patrons will find Gulliver and Pamela and Childe Harold ." She had to keep reminding herself of her goals when he stood so close and remained so very far out of her reach.

"A lending library too," he added for the governess's sake. "But that is for the future. For now, Miss Waring, come dance with me."

She considered his hand out before her. A second dance with him would inspire tongues to wag. The daring Miss Waring who'd once been found in a butler's wine cellar kissing the very man who now stood before her. "Of course," she said because she could never refuse the chance to be held in his arms. "A second time they will have to accept."

"Who are ‘they'," he asked with a grin on his face as he led her out, "to deny us the pleasure of each other's company? Unimportant."

She took to the chalked floor like one in a trance. This would be the last time she could stand beside him and bow. The last time he'd put his hand to hers, lead her around the square, and put the flat of his hands to hers as he smiled at her. Never again would she sashay down a column of dancers and meet him, face to face, and admire the breadth of his shoulders and the grace of his form. No more would she call him the fellow she had first loved when she was eighteen and he had caught her hand and hid with her in a broom closet to escape one persistent beau. Nor was he the one who had rescued her from a life of subservience to a self-righteous cad by running with her to the butler's wine cellar and showing her that his kisses were more intoxicating than any other man's could ever be.

As the music died and Gabe took her toward Dora and Miss Harlan, Alyssa could not bear the despair that welled in her chest.

"Excuse me please," she choked out to them. "I feel unwell. Good night to all of you." And she turned away, skirts high, to escape the lure of the man she could never claim for her own.

She made the second landing of the stairs on her way to the next floor when he caught her by the wrist. "Why do you leave?"

She flinched away from his grasp, yanked her skirts higher and continued her climb. "I'm tired."

"How could you be?" He followed, his long legs eating up the steps two at a time to her one.

"Go back." She stopped for a moment to face him. "I'm coming down with some malady you do not want to catch." Then she raced onward.

"What is it?" He caught her at the top of the floor and turned her to him, back to the wall. "Nerves?"

"Don't be silly." She pushed him away and tried to go round him.

He cut her off. "Don't want to watch the ton gossip about us together?"

"Absurd." She tried to go the other way round him.

"Exactly my thought." He let her go.

But she'd gone only a step before he circled his arm around her waist and pulled her backward. Then in a thrice, he had some door open, slammed closed, and they were in darkness. With the smell of soap and starch drifting up to her nostrils complemented by the fragrance of his sandalwood and lime cologne, she noted she could not see him. A good thing. But oh, my. She could smell him and…

When he cupped her face and put his lips to hers, she could taste him and savor him and swoon in the aromas and textures of his embrace.

"You mustn't kiss me," she objected even as he took her mouth between his chuckles.

"Of course, I must. You are the woman who keeps escaping my grasp." He pecked at her lips. "I won't have it any longer."

"I won't, either," she said as she wrapped her arms around his broad, sleek wool-clad shoulders and kissed him back at her leisure. After all, no one was here to see them or hear them. To badger them or banish them. She could, with impunity, kiss him all she liked, for one last luscious time.

"I want you to marry me," he said with that mellifluous baritone that soothed her soul and lit her heart on fire.

"Oh, Gabe. They'd never allow it." She ran her fingers up through the satin waves of his hair. She'd fantasized about doing that, touching him so, and here in the dark, where no one would ever know, she could enjoy herself.

" They have never done anything for me. Nor for you, either. They do not matter, my darling. Only you and I. And I ask you to marry me. Soon. Will you?"

"My…shop. I must have it." Wonderful, Al. The man wants a wife. You want a shop.

"Have one everywhere."

"What?"

"Have a shop. Have one in Ripon. One in York. London. Rome! Wherever you are, there am I and there should be your book shop."

In the windowless room, her heart picked up a lively tempo. But she frowned at him. "You are quite mad, you know."

"For you. Yes." He gave a bright laugh. In the close confines of wherever the hell they were, his joy filled the tiny space and jolted her awareness. "I am."

"And you want to marry me?" Could that be true?

"I do. I want to be the one who kisses you at every Christmas, every birthday, every harvest dance, for all my days to come. I have always wanted you. For years and years. Since first we found ourselves surrounded by a collection of brooms."

"Hmmm." She liked this conversation. The darkness. And his sentiments.

"And later," he said and nuzzled her neck, his kisses little tickles along her skin, "when we inhaled an angel's share and found ourselves kissing in the butler's cellar. I loved you more then. But I loved you most the next day when you did not marry that foolish man. I loved you every day since then and today, I love you most of all."

He lifted her chin and pushed tendrils of her hair around her ears. His lips nibbled along hers. "I love you, my darling. And I think you love me, too. So it is only right you marry me and let me love you forever. Don't you think, hmmm?" He took her mouth in a kiss that robbed her of breath and gave her hope. "What do you say?"

"Oh, Gabe. I do love you!"

"That is the woman I adore!" he crowed. "Shall we go tell them?"

"No!"

"No?"

She snuggled up to his warm muscular goodness, and held him tight. "First, I want more kisses."

"Thank god." He gave her one long lingering example.

She tore her lips from his. "But I do have one question."

"What?" He huffed, sounding impatient and miffed.

"Where are we?"

He was silent. Finally, he ventured, "Do you care?"

"Actually, yes, I do. I'd like to tell our children that brooms and wine and…whatever this is, have something wonderful in common."

"I see. Sounds logical. Do you wish me to open the door and find candles?"

She ran her hands up his throat to frame his marvelous jaw and said, "No. Not just yet."

Long minutes later, after he helped her rearrange her bodice and she helped him do some justice to his cravat, they emerged. Gabe found a candle in the hall and lit up the room. Shelves floor to ceiling were filled with milled soaps and bundles of dried lavender, ironed sheets, towels and cotton furniture drapes.

They gazed at each other and chuckled, "The linen closet."