As the Devil Dares (Capturing the Carlisles #3)(71)

“Not at midnight,” he countered gently. “The children aren’t there.” She drew her strength from those children. That school was her heart.

But this office…this was her soul.

She turned away to stare at the coals glowing in the stove. “You must think me a goose to come here.”

“Not at all,” he answered softly.

She sent him a disbelieving glance over her shoulder, but for once, she didn’t argue. Instead, she drew her knees to her chest and admitted, “I love it here, you know. Papa doesn’t understand that. He thinks this place is just an office like any other, but it’s not. It’s so much more.”

He said nothing, afraid to break the fragile trust she was placing in him. But when she reached up to remove the pins from her hair, he nearly groaned.

Tonight had left him aggravated and aching, from the moment he first saw her when he arrived at her house to escort her to the ball. The tension inside him wasn’t helped by that heated encounter in the garden, or by having to lie to his mother to explain her disappearance afterward. Somehow he’d managed to convince her that Mariah had taken ill and, not wanting to cut her sister’s evening short, had asked him to send her home alone in the carriage, only to then have to think up an excuse for himself to leave, so that he could go after her.

Now she sat there on the floor in front of him, the sight of her knotting the frustration inside him even tighter. How was it possible that she could appear both so inviting yet untouchable? That she could twist his insides and anger him to the point of desire? When he saw her dance with those other men and give them the beautiful smiles she kept from him, that had nearly undone him.

No wonder he’d lost his mind in the garden. She simply inverted his world.

“When I was a little girl, whenever something happened to upset me,” she shared as she carefully removed her hairpins, “I always came here. This place comforted me. All those familiar scents and sounds, all the possibilities of what the ships carried from around the world. Because they didn’t carry only goods.” She set the pins aside on the floor. “They carried dreams. And if they could bring such exotic promises from the far corners of the world, then I could believe that anything was possible.”

She ran her fingers through her hair, and his gut squeezed. Hard. She had no idea what she did to him, the flames she fanned inside him even now as she shook free her hair until it fell in loose waves down her back.

“I came here when Mama died,” she admitted in a whisper. “I ran away from the house and didn’t stop running until I reached the office. I stayed here all day and night, refusing to go home. Papa finally had to carry me out to the carriage. But as soon as we arrived home, I came right back.”

He smiled faintly, easily imagining her doing just that. Based on how obstinate she could be as an adult, he had no doubt that she was willful as a child. Just another part of the strong, independent woman she’d become.

“This business has been my life,” she explained softly. “It’s been here as long as I can remember—my first memory, in fact, is of Papa coming home from work with a Chinese marionette.” She gave a melancholy smile. “One of the captains had brought it back as a gift for Evie and me. It was the funniest thing, watching Papa sitting there on the nursery floor with us, trying to make it dance by jiggling all those strings.” Her smile faded, and her eyes grew intense. “This business is all I’ve ever known, Robert. I would never do anything to harm it.”

“Neither would I,” he promised.

“But it’s not part of you.” She shook her head, closing her eyes. “You don’t love it.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” he murmured, trailing his gaze affectionately over her and noticing everything about her…from the graceful curve of her neck to the way she tucked her knees to her chest, from the delicate way she parted her lips to the long lashes lying beneath eyes softly closed in this moment of vulnerability.

She was so much more than only the Hellion, and he was a damned fool for not seeing it sooner. Just like her father, he’d convinced himself that she had no business running the company. That a harridan with a tongue as sharp as a dagger and a personality as prickly as a cactus deserved whatever clodpole of a husband fate thrust upon her.

But that was before he’d discovered what she was truly like. Before he’d come to realize exactly how brilliant she was, how much she cared for the sailors and longshoremen and their families. Before he learned of her work with the school.

Before he’d come to care about her.

Her slender shoulders sagged wearily, and she whispered, “I don’t want to fight with you anymore, Robert.”

“That’s too bad,” he said quietly, knowing how the spirit inside Mariah drew him the way no other woman ever had. All the others simply paled in comparison to her fire. “Because I like the fight in you.”

She opened her eyes and quirked a disbelieving brow. “You like kissing me when I make you angry.”

He nodded, deadpan. “That, too.”

She laughed faintly, then tilted her head as she studied him, as if finally seeing him as the man he was instead of as her enemy.

“You chased after me all the way from Mayfair when you could have let me go.” She shook her head. “When you should have let me go.” Her eyes glistened in the light from the coals. “Why?”