Page 52 of The Lady Plays with Fire

Fields flew past, and soon the stone cottage appeared on the horizon. Taking her hands in his once more, he eased the horses to a trot.

“Are they tired?” she asked.

Findlay and Fallon touched noses—laughing together, he imagined. “Nay,” he said as he steered them onto the drive.

“Then why are we stopping?”

“Too many questions. You’ll have to be patient for the answers.”

The answering wrinkle that appeared between her brows revealed that patience was not one of her many virtues—as if he had not already guessed as much.

The horses slowed to a walk as they rounded the corner of the cottage and came to stand in front of the barn. He swung down, then lifted her from the curricle and nodded for her to take a seat on a nearby stump.

“Where are the servants?” she mused as he unhitched the pair and began to wipe the foam from their flanks. The tabby barn cat had emerged from one of its hiding spots, and she was trying to coax it closer, seemingly paying Graham little mind. But when he strode to the well to get fresh water, he knew that her gaze followed, as if she were intrigued by watching him work.

At last, he held out an elbow to escort her inside. As she came to her feet, she tilted her head, still inquisitive. “Aren’t you at least going to tell me whose house this is?”

He laid a hand over hers where it rested against his forearm, pinning her to his side, as much to keep himself steady as to keep her from flight. “I decided it was high time you met Ransom Blackadder.”

He had determined on this course of action a few minutes before the end of yesterday’s rehearsal, when he’d at long last allowed himself to get close enough to truly see Julia. To risk being seen. When he’d discovered that the yearning inside him was matched by the yearning written on her face. The moment when wanting her had overtaken every other thought—even the success of The Poison Pen.

For years, he had built walls: between Castle Dunstane and the London stage, between Perpetua Philpot and Ransom Briggs, around his own heart. But it was time for those walls to come down. And he must be the one to dismantle them.

This play would be the end of Blackadder. And, if Julia were willing, the beginning of something new.

But would she be willing, once she knew the truth?

“Notorious rake and ne’er-do-well Random Blackadder lives in a country cottage?” she demanded, incredulous.

Slipping free, she charged up the pair of oak plank steps, through the back door, and into the kitchen, where they were greeted by well-stocked cupboards and a clean-swept hearth. He shrugged out of his greatcoat and hung it on a peg. Everything was neat as a pin, not because he had left here the last time with any notion of returning with company, but because he wouldn’t have it otherwise.

He’d had enough messiness for a lifetime.

With the sweep of one arm, he waved her through to the sitting room. “I’ll make tea.”

While he lit the spirit lamp to boil the kettle and prepared a plate of bread and butter, he watched out of the corner of one eye as she tossed her bonnet and pelisse over the arm of a chair and began to inspect her surroundings, the questions continuing thick and fast.

“But isn’t he Scottish? Why would he take a place in Surrey? Do you visit him here often? Where is he now? Wasn’t he expecting you today?”

Just before he went in with the tray, she finally fell silent. He found her seated on the horsehair sofa, staring fixedly at the sheaf of notes on the low table in front of her. She might recognize the hand, he supposed; she’d seen the revisions he’d claimed to be delivering on behalf of Blackadder.

But these papers were pinned in place by a crystal paperweight in the design of a thistle, superimposed with the letter D—Dunstane’s seal, and the one ornament he’d brought from the house in Half Moon Street.

“Oh. How silly of me.” She darted a glance in his direction, then focused once more on the paperweight, which magnified the words beneath it. “You’re—”

“Yes.”

“I thought . . . perhaps . . . brothers . . .”

Ah. Like Reginald Briggs and his hapless sibling. But why should he be surprised that she’d worked it out thus? He’d known from the start that she was clever.

“I haven’t any brothers.” He filled a cup with steaming brew and passed it to her. “At least, not anymore.”

The cup rattled in its saucer as she accepted it from him. “Wh-why are you telling me this?”

He couldn’t say what reaction he’d expected to his revelation. Anger, perhaps. But not this. Not something that might too easily be mistaken for . . . fear?

“Because once I’d entrusted you with my play, it seemed a rather pointless secret to go on keeping.”