by Julia Quinn
To Cecilia.
Who wasn’t his wife.
He’d long since stopped drinking, so he was sober, or nearly so. He’d had plenty of time to tell himself that he wasn’t going to think about her today. Today was about Thomas. It had to be. If Edward’s life was going to fall apart in a single day, he was damn well going to deal with his disasters one at a time.
He wasn’t going to stew over what Cecilia had done or what she had said, and he definitely wasn’t going to devote his energy to what she hadn’t said. He wasn’t going to think about that. He wasn’t thinking about it.
He wasn’t.
He wanted to scream at her. He wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her and then beg her to tell him why.
He wanted to wash his hands of her forever.
He wanted to bind her to him for eternity.
He wanted to bloody not think about this today.
Today he was going to mourn his friend. And he was going to help the woman who wasn’t his wife mourn her brother. Because that was the kind of man he was.
Damn it.
He reached room twelve, took a breath, and wrapped his fingers around the door handle.
Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to comfort Cecilia the way he ought, but at least he could give her the gift of a few days before he questioned her about her lies. He had never lost anyone so close to him; Thomas was a dear friend, but they weren’t brothers, and Edward knew his grief could not possibly compare to Cecilia’s. But he could imagine. If something happened to Andrew . . . or Mary . . . or even George or Nicholas to whom he was not nearly so close . . .
He’d be decimated.
Besides, he had a lot to figure out. Cecilia wasn’t going anywhere; nothing but foolishness lay in the path of rash decisions.
He opened the door, blinking against the sunlight that streamed out into the dim hall. Every time, he thought stupidly. Every time he opened this damned door he was surprised by the sunlight.
“You’re back,” Cecilia said. She was sitting on the bed, propped up against the headboard with her legs stretched in front of her. She was still wearing her blue frock, which he supposed made sense, since it wasn’t even yet time for dinner.
He’d have to leave the room when she decided to change into that nunnish white cotton nightgown of hers. Surely she’d prefer privacy to disrobe.
Since she wasn’t really his wife.
There had been no proxy wedding ceremony. He had signed no papers. Cecilia was the sister of a dear friend and nothing more.
But what did she have to gain by claiming that she was his wife? It made no sense. She couldn’t have known that he would lose his memory. She could tell the world she was married to an unconscious man, but she had to have been aware that when he woke up her lies would be exposed.
Unless she’d been taking a gamble . . . betting her future on the likelihood that he wouldn’t wake up. If he died while all the world thought they were married . . .
It wasn’t such a bad thing to be a Rokesby wife.
His parents would have welcomed her when she returned to England. They knew of his friendship with Thomas. Hell, they’d met Thomas. Had him for Christmas supper, even. They would have no reason to doubt Cecilia’s word if she showed up claiming to have married their son.
But all of that was so calculating. It wasn’t like her to be that way.
Was it?
He shut the door behind him, giving her a small nod before sitting down in their one chair so that he could remove his boots.
“Do you need help?” she asked.
“No,” he said, then looked down before he could see her swallow. That was what she did at times like these, when she wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. He used to love watching her, the delicate line of her throat, the graceful curve of her shoulder. Her lips pressed together when she swallowed—not quite like a kiss, but close enough that he always wanted to lean forward and transform it into one.
He didn’t want to watch this tonight.
“I—”
He looked up sharply at the sound of her voice. “What is it?”
But she just shook her head. “Never mind.”
He held her gaze, and he was glad that the light had gone flat with the approach of nightfall. If it was too dark to see her eyes, he couldn’t lose himself in them. He could pretend they weren’t the color of a shallow sea, or—when the light was still tinged with the orange stripes of dawn—of the first unfurled leaf of spring.
He worked off his boots, then rose to place them neatly in the space next to his trunk. The room was heavy with silence, and he could feel Cecilia watching him as he went about his usual movements. Normally, he would be chatting with her, asking idle questions about her afternoon, or, if they had spent the day together, commenting about what they’d seen and done. She might recall something that had amused her, and he would laugh, and then, when he turned away to hang his coat in the wardrobe, he’d wonder about the odd tingle that fluttered through his body.
But he’d only wonder for a moment. Because it was obvious what it was.
Happiness.
Love.
Thank God he’d never told her.
“I—”
He looked up. There she was again, starting a sentence with a halting pronoun. “What is it, Cecilia?”
She blinked at his tone. He had not been unkind, but he had been brusque. “I don’t know what to do with Thomas’s ring,” she said quietly.
Ah. So that was what she’d been about to say. He shrugged. “You could put it on a chain, wear it as a necklace.”
She fingered the threadbare blanket beneath her. “I suppose.”
“You could save it for your children.”
Your children, he realized he’d said. Not our children.
Had she noticed the slip of his tongue? He didn’t think so. Her expression had not changed. She still looked pale, and numb, and exactly how one would expect a woman who’d just been informed of a beloved brother’s death would look.
Whatever Cecilia had lied about, it had not included her devotion to Thomas. That he knew was true.
All of a sudden he felt like the worst kind of heel. She was grieving. She hurt.
He wanted to hate her. And maybe he would in time. But for now, he could do nothing but try to absorb her pain.
With a soul-weary sigh, he walked over to the bed and sat beside her. “I’m sorry,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders.
Her body did not soften right away. She was stiff with grief and probably with confusion, too. He had not been playing the part of a loving husband, and Lord knew, that was what he’d been until his meeting with Colonel Stubbs that morning.
He tried to think of what might have happened if the news of Thomas’s death had not been accompanied by the revelation of Cecilia’s deception.
What would he have done? How would he have reacted?
He would have put his own grief aside.
He would have comforted her, soothed her.
He would have held her until she slept, until all her tears were gone, and then he would have laid a whispered kiss on her brow before pulling the blankets over her.
“How can I help you?” he asked roughly. It took everything in him to form the words, and at the same time, it was the only thing he knew how to say.
“I don’t know.” Her voice was muffled; she’d turned her face into the crook of his shoulder. “Can you just . . . stay here? Sit next to me?”
He nodded. He could do that. It hurt somewhere deep in his heart, but he could do that.
They sat that way for hours. Edward had a tray brought up for supper, but neither of them ate. He left the room so she could change for bed, and she turned to face the wall when he did the same.
It was as if their single night of passion had never happened.
All the fire, all the wonder . . . it was gone.
Suddenly he thought about how much he hated opening the door to the room, how he nev
er seemed to be prepared for the burst of light.
What a fool he’d been. What a damned fool.
Chapter 18
This letter is for both of you. I am so glad you have each other. The world is a kinder place when one’s burdens can be shared.
—from Cecilia Harcourt to Thomas Harcourt and Edward Rokesby
The next morning, Edward woke first.
He always woke first, but he’d never been quite so grateful for it before. It was past dawn, although not much, based on the hint of light filtering in around the curtains. Outside the window, New York was already coming to life, but the sounds of daily living were still intermittent and muted. A wagon creaked by, a rooster crowed. Every now and then, someone let out a shout of greeting.
It was enough to pass through the thick walls of the inn, but not enough to wake a sound sleeper like Cecilia.
For most of his life Edward had used his sparsely populated mornings to get up and attack the day. He had always found it remarkable how much more one could achieve without so many other people around.
But more recently—or more specifically, in the brief time since Cecilia had entered his life—he found himself taking advantage of the early morning quiet to settle into his thoughts. It helped that the bed was so comfortable. And warm.
And that Cecilia was there.
She gravitated to him in the night, and he loved taking a few minutes to enjoy her soft presence before sliding quietly out of bed to don his clothes. Sometimes it was her arm, thrown over his chest and shoulders. Sometimes it was her foot, tucked curiously under his calf.
But he always left the bed before she awakened. He wasn’t entirely certain why. Maybe it had been because he wasn’t prepared for her to see just how much he adored the closeness. Maybe he wasn’t willing to admit just how much peace he found in these stolen moments.
And then there had been the day before, when he’d been so eager to hop out and buy her some treats at the bakery.
That had worked out well.
This morning, though, he was the one with the wandering limbs. She was curled up against him, her face burrowed near his chest. His arm held her in her place, close enough so that he could feel her breath against his skin.
He’d been stroking her hair in his sleep.
His hand stilled when he realized what he’d been doing, but he did not pull away from her. He couldn’t bring himself to. If he lay perfectly still, he could almost imagine that the day before had not happened. If he did not open his eyes, he could pretend that Thomas was alive. And his marriage to Cecilia . . . It was real. She belonged here in his arms, the delicate scent of her hair tickling his nose. If he rolled her over and took comfort in her body it would be more than his right, it would be a blessing and a sacrament.
Instead, he was the man who’d seduced an innocent gentlewoman.
And she was the woman who’d made him that way.
He wanted to hate her. Sometimes he thought he did. Most of the time he wasn’t sure.
Next to him, Cecilia began to stir. “Edward?” she whispered. “Are you awake?”
Was it a lie if he pretended to be asleep? Probably. But in the lexicon of recent falsehoods, it was pretty damned small.
He didn’t make a conscious decision to feign slumber. It was nothing so calculating as that. But when her whispered words blew softly across his ear, something resentful woke up inside of him, and he didn’t want to answer her.
He just didn’t.
And then, after she made a sound of mild surprise and scooted herself into a more upright position, he started to feel an odd sense of power. She thought he was asleep.
She thought he was something he wasn’t.
It was the same thing she’d done to him, albeit on a much smaller scale. She had withheld the truth, and in doing so, she had possessed all the power.
And maybe he was feeling vengeful. Maybe he was feeling wronged. There was nothing particularly noble about his reaction, but he liked pulling one over on her, just as she had done to him.
“What am I going to do?” he heard her murmur. She rolled onto her side, facing away from him. But her body remained close.
And he still wanted her.
What would happen if he didn’t tell her he’d regained his memory? Eventually he’d have to reveal the truth, but there was no reason he had to do so immediately. Most of what he remembered had nothing to do with her, anyway. There was the journey to Connecticut, made on horseback in a miserable cold rain. The heart-stopping moment when a farmer by the name of McClellan had caught him skulking around the Norwalk waterfront. Edward had reached for his weapon, but when two more men emerged from the shadows—McClellan’s sons, as it happened—he quickly realized the futility of resistance. He’d been marched at gunpoint and pitchfork to the McClellans’ barn, where he’d been tied up and held for weeks.
That was where he’d found the cat—the one he’d told Cecilia he thought he remembered. The bedraggled little mop had been his only companion for about twenty-three hours of each day. The poor thing had been forced to listen to Edward’s complete life history.
Multiple times.
But the cat must have enjoyed Edward’s storytelling prowess, because it’d rewarded him with a multitude of dead birds and mice. Edward tried to appreciate the gifts in the spirit they were given, and he always waited until the little fur ball wasn’t watching before he kicked the dead animals toward the barn door.
That Farmer McClellan stepped on no fewer than six mangled rodents was an added bonus. He’d proved oddly squeamish for a man who worked with animals all day, and indeed, his yelps and shrieks every time the tiny bones crunched under his boots were some of Edward’s few sources of entertainment.
But McClellan didn’t bother to check on him in the barn very often. Indeed, Edward never did figure out what he’d thought to do with him. Ransom, probably. McClellan and his sons didn’t seem overly devoted to Washington’s cause. And they certainly weren’t Loyalists.
War could make mercenaries of men, especially those who were greedy to begin with.
In the end it had been McClellan’s wife who had let Edward go. Not because of any great charm on Edward’s part, although he had gone out of his way to be courtly and polite to the females of the family. No, Mrs. McClellan told him she was sick and tired of sharing her family’s food. She’d borne nine children and not a one had bothered to die in infancy. It was too many mouths to feed.
Edward had not pointed out that not a whole lot of food had gone into his mouth during his stay. Not when she was loosening the ropes that bound his ankles.
“Wait until dark before you go,” she’d warned him. “And head east. The boys will all be in town.”
She didn’t tell him why they were all heading to the village center, and he didn’t ask. He’d done as she’d instructed, and he’d gone east, even though it was the exact opposite direction he needed to go. Traveling on foot and by night, the journey had taken a week. He’d crossed the sound to the Long Island and made it all the way to Williamsburg without incident. And then . . .
Edward frowned until he remembered he was still feigning sleep. But Cecilia didn’t notice; she was still facing away from him.
What had happened in Williamsburg? That was where his memory was still hazy. He’d traded his coat to a fisherman for passage across the river. He’d got into the boat . . .
The fisherman must have clobbered him over the head. To what end, Edward wasn’t sure. He’d had nothing worth stealing.
Not even a coat.
He supposed he should be grateful he’d been left on the shores of Kip’s Bay. The fisherman could have easily slid him over the edge of the dinghy and into a watery grave. No one would have ever known what had happened to him.
He wondered how long his family would have waited to declare him dead.
Then he berated himself for being so morbid. He was alive. He ought to be happy.
He would be, he decided. But probably not th
is morning. He’d earned that right.
“Edward?”
Damn. His face must have been echoing the twisting journey of his thoughts. He opened his eyes.
“Good morning,” Cecilia said. But there was something slightly cautious about her tone. It wasn’t shyness, or at least he didn’t think so. He supposed it might stand to reason that she’d feel self-conscious and awkward now that they had slept together. By all rights she should have felt self-conscious and awkward the morning before. She probably would have done if he hadn’t left before she woke up.
“You were still asleep,” she said. She smiled, although just a little. “You never wake up after I do.”
He gave a little shrug. “I was tired.”
“I expect so,” she said softly. She looked down, and then away, and then she sighed and said, “I should get up.”
“Why?”
Her eyes made a few startled blinks, then she said, “I have things to do.”
“Do you?”
“I—” She swallowed. “I must. I can’t . . . not.”
But what did she have to do if she wasn’t searching for Thomas? He was the only reason she’d come to New York.
Edward waited, and it cut his heart to watch her face begin to crumple as she realized that all the things she’d been doing, all the errands and tasks—they’d all been for the purpose of finding her brother.
And now that purpose was gone.
But, Edward reminded himself, she had also spent a great deal of time caring for him. Whatever her misdeeds, she had nursed him faithfully, both in hospital and out.
He probably owed her his life.
He couldn’t hate her. He wanted to, though.
Cecilia’s brow puckered. “Are you all right?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. You had a funny expression.”
He didn’t doubt it.
Once it became obvious that he wasn’t going to comment, Cecilia let out a little sigh. It seemed to deflate her. “I should still get up. Even though I have nothing to do.”
Not nothing, he thought.