Page 3 of The Lover’s Eye

Giles Trevelyan settled into his favorite chair with a sigh of contentment. All was as it should be—blazing fire, his spaniel curled at his feet, a book in hand, and a quill pen at the ready.

His nighttime library ritual was undoubtedly the finest part of his day. A time devoid of disruption and unmarred by estate affairs. It was also an exquisite distraction from the worst part of his day yet to come: sleep.

Or, rather, the attempt at it.

He opened a volume he’d been itching all day to read: the works of an emerging poet, Mr. John Keats. No sooner had he read the first line than a knock sounded on the door.

Giles didn’t even have time to feel vexed. He sat bolt upright. “Yes?”

The door creaked open, and his butler, Finch, walked in. He clasped his wrinkled hands in front of him, his mouth drawn to a grim line. “Forgive me, my lord, I am terribly sorry to interrupt you—”

Giles waved a hand. “What’s happened?”

“There’s a coach of travelers outside, sir.”

“ What ?” Giles drew a slow breath, forcing himself back into his chair. He raised a hand to his chin. “In this weather?”

“Yes, my lord. It would seem they became stuck, and have been on the road many hours.” The old butler wet his lips. “It is a young lady and her servants. She claims to be an acquaintance of Lord Pemberton.”

A young lady? This tale was growing stranger by the second. Giles tapped his pen pensively. “And I am, no doubt, expected to take the whole lot of them in.”

“If you would prefer them escorted to the Three Hens, sir, I have no doubt that would be acceptable.”

“Come now, they can’t make it all the way to the village.” Giles dropped his pen with a thwack, running a coarse palm over his face. “Dash it all.”

He appraised his surroundings, as though he didn’t know where every sheet of parchment and every book were in this room. That was just the issue—the library and his own chambers were the only rooms kept warm and functional in recent months.

“There’s nothing to be done for it. Have them shown up. Try to make the damn place look as presentable as you can.” Giles had already started to rise, tucking the book under his arm and calling for Smooch to join him. The spaniel rose, bowing into a deep stretch.

“And, pardon me, sir, will you require anything else tonight?” Finch asked, his obsidian eyes inscrutable.

Finally, a question that could be easily answered. “Absolutely not. Treat her to whatever you like, but I want no hand in the business.”

Giles headed straight for his chambers while the sedate household awakened with activity, the servants attempting to air out rooms long closed and give them some pretense of comfortability and warmth.

What foul luck he had. Or, perhaps, it was the universe’s way of telling him his hermitage had lasted too long.

He rubbed his eyes. Finch said the young lady had travelled a fair distance to reach Northumberland. Perhaps she wouldn’t know, then?

Unlikely, Giles thought, a scowl framing his mouth as he drifted to the windows of his bedchamber.

Word travelled fast in polite society, and distance was unlikely to be an impediment.

His mind conjured an image of his bride’s face, unbidden.

It was growing difficult to recall a time when that name and countenance symbolized his future, and not an unsavory past.

It had been six months since Aurelia vanished, just a week before their wedding was to take place.

When Finch’s knock sounded at the library door tonight, Giles had almost thought himself thrust back to that terrible day.

He could still see Aurelia’s face, beautiful, twisted features as she’d argued with him, until she wasn’t speaking anymore, but turning her back and leaving, never to be seen again.

There had been no trace of her, no tangible indicators as to what might have become of her. According to popular opinion, she was dead. That was the one and only point on which Giles agreed with them. The speculative theories that spun out from that original thread drove him near to madness.

Holing himself up at home for half a year was proof enough of that.

He watched as the faint ochre glow of coach lanterns crawled up the drive below. He didn’t want guests; he wasn’t even ready to walk down High Street in the tiny village, for God’s sake. So why was the approach of those wavering lamps prickling his long-quieted curiosity?

?

With several manservants coming to aid, Lord Ridgeway’s mud-bespattered coach was dislodged from its filthy bed and made able to deliver its passengers to the doors of Cambo House.

Isobel strained to see the structure amidst the night and the falling snow.

It was a looming shadow; a tall, flat sandstone face, filled with windows that betrayed not a hint of light.

She stepped down from the coach, and it crawled away, Betsey and the others proceeding to the back of the house for their own rest and sustenance.

The wind whistled somewhere high in the hills. There was nothing for sound but the insistent thump, thump of Isobel’s hem thrashing around her legs. Exhaustion consumed her, and now she faced relief—right?

She couldn’t seem to move toward the door, until finally, it opened to her. A footman waited on the other side, unsmiling, and the light from the vestibule graced the threshold, revealing two yawning gargoyles guarding the door.

“Good evening,” Isobel said quietly, relinquishing her outer garments into his waiting hands. If he replied, she didn’t hear it.

The draft of indoors seemed to affect her more than the harshness of the storm, and gooseflesh swept over her body as the footman led her down a corridor. Aside from their footsteps echoing against the tiles, the house was still. Perfect in its quiet, an undisrupted illusion of abandonment.

The interior was aged, defying fashionable standards, but every room had been maintained to perfection—especially the earl’s library.

Isobel felt a morsel of true comfort at last. It was the first room to seem lived in, populated by recently disturbed books and slouching furniture.

A fire burned bright and clean in the hearth, its glowing flames illuminating a carved marble mantelpiece.

She was compelled to its warmth like a famished moth.

“I will return with some dinner for you, miss,” the footman said.

Isobel turned to thank him, but he had already vanished. She sat in one of the chairs positioned before the hearth. Her hand fell to the well-worn arm, its leather supple and faded from years of use. It was warm beneath her touch.

The heat could well be owed to the proximity of the fire, but she had a distinctly different impression. As if her host had just vacated this very spot.

My unwilling host , she thought bitterly.

It had been disappointing enough to learn that the lodge gates were those of Cambo House, and to resign herself to passing another night apart from her sister. But shame rippled through her now. She had unintentionally thrown herself at Lord Trevelyan’s doorstep.

The fact she had been shown into his library, and not some well-kept drawing room, was the first evidence he did not want guests. The impression only grew stronger as she worked over a tray of tea and refreshments brought in by a servant, and the earl had yet to come and greet her.

Isobel’s mind began to race as she thawed by the fire. The circumstances of her visit were strange, and she had not expected an immediate introduction from Lord Trevelyan, but a good deal of time had passed now.

She looked at the oak cased grandfather clock, and then at her plate of crumbs. No, it did not appear he was going to acknowledge her presence at all.

“Miss Ridgeway?”

A petite maid appeared at the door. She spoke Isobel’s name with hesitance, treating the words like a curiosity. Isobel was beginning to believe an outsider entering Cambo House was a curiosity. Was the earl’s grief so vast that he wished to cast himself off from society forever?

“Yes?”

“A room has been prepared for you, miss, if you are ready to retire?”

Isobel’s eyes caught on the empty chair adjacent. With an unsteady breath, she rose and followed the young woman into the long corridor, their footsteps amplified by the stillness.

A grand staircase split in opposite directions, and the pair went left into the shadows.

Isobel was hardly able to see as they walked a dark corridor, the occasional window affording better light than the maid’s candle.

Dim moonlight reflected off the snowy parkland below, spilling some of its pearlescent brilliance inside.

The housemaid paused before a door and pushed it open. “Your lady’s maid is waiting for you, miss.”

Isobel smiled and thanked her, but her gaze was drawn into the unfamiliar space, the sight of Betsey and her own nightdress laid upon the bed inducing instant comfort.

“Have you been helping all this time?” she asked, as Betsey helped her out of her gown.

“Oh, no, miss, they’ve fed us well, and carried up all your trunks. I’ve only just come up to lay out your things.”

Isobel sighed relief when her heavy travelling dress came off. Now, if she could just get to that basin of warm water on the dressing table. This house was unconscionably cold.

“Have you met the earl?” Betsey asked in a half-whisper, as if she expected the man to be hiding in the armoire.

Isobel ducked her chin. “No.”

Betsey did not say more, but her hands momentarily stilled over the laces of Isobel’s stays.

The weight of shame increased a measure.

She could only hope the sun would shine in the morning and make the remainder of their passage possible.

It was detestable, knowing she was imposing herself on anyone, much less a stranger.

Years of living with her irritable widower of a father, and mingling with the snuffish Sempills, had trained Isobel to be quiet.

One breath shy of invisible. Anything she could accomplish for herself, she did without complaint.

And any tactic she could employ to avoid troubling other people, she used.

The more at ease they were, the sooner she could escape to her books and her moorland walks.

Books. She thought of the library she’d just vacated.

Shelf after shelf of titles, their spines dusted clean but softened from years of attention.

She had fought the impulse to walk the room and peruse the beautiful collection, because some part of her had been holding out hope that Lord Trevelyan might walk in at any moment.

How wrong she had been.

Isobel stayed awake long after Betsey left. The exhaustion that weighted her limbs didn’t extend to her active imagination.

She hated to think of what tomorrow might hold. Her earlier curiosity about this man seemed ludicrous, now that she was in his home—and worse, in one of his beds.

Isobel’s cheeks stung with embarrassment, and she wished for the thousandth time that she knew more. More about Marriane’s condition, more about whatever connection existed between her sister and this strange Lord Trevelyan.

For a brief second, she did indulge herself and imagine what Lady Sempill would make of this turn of events. A young woman, travelling alone, hurtled into a bachelor’s house.

It was the singular spot of humor in an otherwise unamusing predicament.