“You are the only man for me, Flit.”
Chapter 14
Hours after returning home, Elijah was still awake. Though he had retired to his bed, he had given up on it long ago and took to sitting in an armchair beside the library fireplace when he finally heard the front door opening, alerting him to the return of his cousin.
He had been sitting there for a long time, gazing into the crackling flames, barely paying any attention to the glass of whisky cupped in his hand. It had done little to ease his thoughts or stop him from thinking of Lady Belmont and the utterly inappropriate way he kissed her. Whenever he closed his eyes, he could still see her startled face when they had pulled apart. He remembered how she had rushed inside as though she couldn’t wait to be away from him. But more than that, he could remember how it had felt when she kissed him back. It had been like a bolt of lightning running right through his lips and down into his chest, making his heart swell with energy.
Moving from his seat was exceptionally difficult, but he had been sitting there, thinking, for far too long. A glance at the grandfather clock across the room told him it was early morning.
Rising languidly, he drained the last of his drink and placed the glass on the side table on his way out of the room. Meeting his cousin right at the bottom of the staircase, he caught Harold holding onto the bannister, one foot already on the bottom step.
“Oh, Elijah!” he exclaimed when he heard him coming. He spun around, still holding onto the bannister for support, even as his foot slipped off the step. “I wasn’t expecting you to still be up.”
“Nor was I,” Elijah admitted with a shake of his head. “Sleep has eluded me.” Before his cousin could question whether something was wrong, Elijah quickly asked, “How was the ball?”
At that, Harold smirked and gave an exaggerated nod. “It was wonderful. The most fun I have had in ages, though I suspect it would have been even more so were you to remain.”
Elijah scoffed at that. Once, maybe, he would have been the life of the party, but of late, he was finding it harder and harder to keep up.
“I’m sure you had quite enough fun without me,” Elijah stated, rolling his eyes. “You seemed quite popular with the ladies when I left.”
The look on his cousin’s face immediately made him wish he had never said such a thing. Harold’s expression twisted and became suspicious. “I could say the same of you, with one lady in particular.”
“I do not know what you mean,” Elijah protested, shaking his head. He leaned against the bannister pommel in an attempt to appear nonchalant even though Harold’s words immediately conjured an image of Lady Belmont. Her beautiful smiling face and her grey-blue eyes shone back at him when he so much as blinked.
“Do not think I did not see you upon the dance floor with Lady Belmont,” Harold said, his tone more than a little scolding. “Everybody noticed.”
Elijah’s stomach clenched at that, and he had to grit his teeth to stop snapping back at his cousin before really thinking about how it might look for him to get so defensive over such things.
Taking in a calming breath, he said coolly, “Lady Belmont was not the only lady I danced with tonight.”
Harold scoffed. He shook his head and said, “She was the only lady of note you danced with this evening.”
Frustration building deep within him, Elijah asked, “Should I have danced with every single lady there? Would that have pleased you?”
For just a second, Harold looked startled, and Elijah feared he might have taken things too far. The gentleman stepped out from the staircase so that he could stand directly before Elijah, and, meeting his gaze, he stated, “She is a most dangerous woman to get involved with, cousin. She is not well-liked in London by any medical professionals or by many of the men of thetonin general.”
Strong women have always threatened the men of the ton,Elijah thought begrudging. The way he saw it, Lady Belmont was a perfectly respectable woman with a passion for healing that went far past the care any other doctor had ever shown him. Perhaps it was her womanly touch, but he was actually feeling far less ill than he had been in months.
“Maybe she is not well-liked in London, but cousin, as you can see, we are not in London,” Elijah pointed out, holding his head high and not daring to blink. He would not give his cousin any inkling that he was taking his warning on board. Unlike many men of theton,Elijah had always been determined to judge people for himself rather than trusting everyone else’s impression of them.
That was not about to change simply because Lady Belmont was disliked by so many in her field. Elijah suspected that many of the men of thetonwould not even admit that she wasa member of their field at all.
Harold raised an eyebrow, looking even more suspicious. “You aren’t seriously getting involved withthatwoman, are you?”
Elijah cringed at the tone of his cousin’s voice. It was not unlike that of his parents over the years whenever he did something they did not entirely approve of.
“Who I seek to get involved with is none of your concern,” Elijah assured his cousin, straightening himself to his full height and towering over Harold. “A dance with a lady is nothing to go getting all twisted up about. I merely felt sorry for her.”
Harold scoffed again, looking more and more amused. And it only made Elijah feel even more frustrated. He had known men like his cousin many times over, the kind who liked to judge all others for their mistakes while acting as though they had made none of their own. Though Elijah wasn’t sure Harold had made any of late, even his cousin could not be entirely squeaky clean of sin.
“If she has your concern, then she already has your ear, and that is a very silly situation to have put yourself in, Elijah,” Harold warned. His words caused Elijah’s skin to crawl, and he had to clench his jaw to stop saying something he might regret. “She is eccentric, and her practises are dangerous. You would be wise to stay well away from her.”
“I shall take it under consideration,” Elijah promised, feeling as though he had heard quite enough of Harold’s warnings, especially concerning Lady Belmont.
Harold nodded and half-turned as though he meant to leave, clearly having said his piece. Then, at the last moment, he stopped and turned back to Elijah. “I almost forgot,” he said as he reached into the inner breast pocket of his jacket and produced an envelope. “This arrived for you earlier, but with your being late from wherever you had been out walking, I entirely forgot to give it to you.”
Elijah grumbled a curse under his breath as he took the envelope from his cousin. Though he could see immediately that it was a letter from his mother and likely nothing all too important, he didn’t like the thought of keeping his mother waiting for a response, not when she would likely be worrying every second until she heard from him again.
