There’s nothing so precious as secret love. It’s tucked close to the heart, protected from the scrutiny of the world, ready to be presented like a rare gift when the moment is right.
~A scientist’s observations on love
Gabe Gresham preferred the shadows. He felt most comfortable there, where he could observe life without being seen. He leaned back in the stiff parlor chair hidden under the balcony and let the tea warm his insides. When soft footsteps approached, he stiffened, barely daring to breathe.
It was her, at last. Willa Duvall moved through the silent hallways like a wraith, her boots soft against carpet. He had idled here for another glimpse of her before he returned to his own cottage at the edge of the property. He simply couldn’t wrap his mind around what she’d become. She paused in the gallery, looking about at the tall paintings, and he watched for her dimples. It had become a game, trying to draw them out. They appeared now as she pursed her lips, making him wish desperately to kiss her one day. He’d give half his savings for a single sweet taste of those laughing, quick-witted lips. She turned toward the stairs, and her candle warmed the shadows of this murky old space as she climbed, taking her glow with her.
Willa Duvall had flitted in and out of his life for years, and though most people made him uncomfortable, he was inexplicably drawn to her flame. A startling collection of opposites, childhood Willa had captured his attention with her little-girl voice speaking grown-up thoughts, the bold recklessness paired with loyalty, the long hair that loved to be unruly, while under it resided a meticulously logical mind.
Through the death of her mother and her father’s remarriage, such strength, such passion was evident in her heart, pouring out with every sharply intelligent word. It surprised him every time he looked at her tiny frame that it could contain such depth of thought, such largeness of life. Now that she was grown, it had multiplied and it overflowed through her smile, her sparkling face, that huge, wholehearted laugh.
He’d observed her with amused interest for years, but nothing—nothing—had prepared him for the return of grown-up Willa. The sight of her had hit him like a steam engine he couldn’t sidestep.
It had become his habit over the years as he lay struggling to fall asleep to picture those elusive dimples tucked just beside her pert little mouth when he earned her smile. It began there, and then it reached her eyes—oh, those eyes! They glowed warm and bright, piercing the sullen darkness of his room. She both calmed and excited him, enjoying him like no one else did, yet still nudging him out of his cocoon of quiet and privacy. Her presence unsettled and compelled him at the same time.
He adored every minute of it—adored her.
It all began the moment she had punched one of the local boys and followed it up with a string of impassioned threats that only a naïve young girl could make. The boy ran off wailing about his broken nose, which in truth she’d only bloodied.
Then she marched into the stable where Gabe had hidden himself to lick the wounds of his pride. She perched up on the stacked bales of hay, swinging her legs. “What a wretched fool he was. There’s nothing the matter with your voice. At least there isn’t a whine in it like his.” She wrinkled her freckled nose.
He scowled and turned away from this scrap of a girl who thought she needed to rescue him. Thankfully she didn’t pepper him with questions and force him to talk like everyone else. That’s how they’d set out to cure his quietness, a deep flaw in their eyes, but that only made it worse. In those moments, it felt his hands would forever be clammy, his ears always ringing with the echo of his stuck voice, as if someone had stolen his box of words and he had nothing from which to draw when he opened his mouth.
She scrambled to stand on the hay bales, arms out to balance. “I hope he runs home to tell his mother so he has to answer for his crimes. What a sorry excuse for an heir. I suppose it’s evil to wish him pain though, isn’t it?” She spun around and looked down at him quite suddenly. “I’ll wish him justice, then. There, that seems fair of me, doesn’t it?” She flailed. “Oh!”
On instinct, he lurched forward as she tumbled, her bony limbs jabbing his chest as she landed. He grimaced at the pain, but it evened the score of his pride.
She scrambled up, brushing off straw. “Thank you kindly.”
He blinked down at her, wondering if she’d done it on purpose, sensing even as a child that he’d needed to be in the position of rescuer rather than rescued.
She looked up at him with that frank, open little face as he steadied her on the ground. “He’s probably only jealous of how strong you are. I saw you rein in that wild horse in the corral, and he probably did too.” She picked straw from her hair, then went to lay beside his abandoned spot on the lower bales. He sat beside her, intrigued. “Pity for him, his only strength is his ability to spot weakness and poke at it. You needn’t say anything to me if you don’t want. Your silence is far nicer than his voice.”
Besides that, she had enough to say for the both of them. It tickled him, this little sprite of a thing who filled his constant silence with chatter. Nothing she said was memorized or repeated, and all of it was slightly unsettling. In a good way. “He didn’t mean any harm.”
“There, you see? You speak perfectly well.”
He shrugged. Only with her, in this aura of cheerful chatter that was free of expectations. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t get his words out with her, so he suddenly found he could.
And it was delightful.
She never did face punishment for the bloodied nose, for when the simpering little heir had dragged his governess back to the stables and pointed out his attacker, the disgruntled woman had boxed her charge’s ears—for lying.
He looked forward to Dr. Duvall’s visits because he always brought his adventurous sprite of a girl. Then on one trip Gabe heard it whispered that the girl’s mother had died, and help flowed the other direction. It ebbed back and forth like that between them, even though they saw each other so seldom, a bond forming as they leaned on one another.
Helping her left him feeling unbelievably strong and able, yet helplessly captivated by her too. Such an odd mix it was, but powerful.
Gabe found himself hungry for her company and greedily stealing as much of it as possible whenever she was there, for it was the one bright spot in his otherwise bleak days. He spoke to few others and was close to no one, but she’d managed to break through. Whenever she rode up to Crestwicke with her father to attend some member of the family, Gabe basked in her bright personality, coming alive and feeling normal for a precious few hours.
She had an uncanny ability to both talk and listen, thus drawing out his reluctant voice, and eventually teaching him how to slow down and ease his thoughts out rather than allowing a collision of the chaotic overflow in his head. She’d talk until her playful little voice replaced the silence of his existence.
And he cherished it like one starved.
Then she’d returned, a fully grown woman, with poise and dimples and laughing eyes . . .
Whap.
He jerked, tea sloshing over his thighs, and glanced around in the dark.
“You missed your chance.” Aunt Maisie stepped out of the shadows behind his chair with a rolled-up serial, her ancient mouth drawn tight. “Out alone with you, and she comes back without a romantic notion in her head. I can only imagine what didn’t happen out there.”
“Only you, Gabe Gresham, could muck up a moonlit walk. Why, you practically have all the work done for you, if you’d only put in a hair’s breadth of effort. Did you tell her anything about the feelings written all over your face?”
He slunk down in the chair. No point in denying anything to Maisie, even though he couldn’t lay his own finger on the nebulous thoughts swirling around. “Words have never come easy for me.”
“They come easy as flowing water for her. Simply turn on the spigot with a few questions and let her go.”
Maybe he didn’t want to hear what she’d say. He firmed his jaw, looking up at the landing where her slender little figure had stood. Her presence here seemed a delicate thing, and he didn’t want to risk losing it. Yet perhaps . . . perhaps he’d finally tell her the truth about himself. The big truth. Even as a good friend, she deserved that much.
If he could work up the courage.
He blotted his trousers with a linen napkin Maisie dropped in his lap before hobbling off and wondered if he ever would. Meanwhile he’d handle the great ache of desire as he did everything else—in silence.