by Diane Gaston
Cecilia picked up her cloak and gloves and quickly put them on. She hurried out of the room, locking it behind her and putting the key in her pocket. She ran down the stairs and out the hotel door.
Even in this short period of time, the snow had deepened. She wanted to rush, but the snow impeded her. It fell so thick now she could hardly see two feet in front of her. Her half-boots quickly became caked with snow and her feet felt like icicles. Only a short walk, a couple of streets. The wind picked up and blew the hood of her cloak from her head. She reached Bury Street and tried to walk faster, but it was too hard.
It was Christmas day and she needed to give Oliver his gift.
* * *
After leaving Cecilia at the hotel and returning home, Oliver had gone straight to his bedchamber and closed the door.
He imagined he’d figure out a way to put one foot in front of the other again, but for the moment all he could think to do was stand in front of his window and watch the snow fall. He watched it accelerate and thicken, watched the wind toss the flakes into erratic swirls. The pavement was covered with snow and growing deeper. A carriage drove by and was nearly silent. Everything was quiet.
He tried to empty his mind and was fairly successful, except for one thought.
Cecilia was gone. The world was empty. Bleached white.
Something moved at the end of the street. He watched a figure emerge from the white curtain. A woman. In a cloak. Barely visible in the falling snow.
He ran out of the room, down the stairs. He flung open the door as the snowy figure faced the house.
He ran to her and she flew into his arms.
‘You came back!’ he rasped.
She was weeping into his shoulder and she clung to him.
Finally, she looked up and brushed snowflakes from his hair. ‘You do not have a hat or coat.’
‘I do not care. You came back.’ He held her tighter.
He lifted her into his arms and carried her inside, putting her down and removing her snow-caked cloak.
‘I need to go upstairs,’ she said. ‘I forgot something.’
He released her. He’d got it wrong. She’d merely forgotten something.
He would have to endure her leaving all over again.
He followed her upstairs but stood in the hall while she went into what he would always think of as her room. She emerged as quickly.
‘This is for you.’ She handed him a package tied with a ribbon.
He opened it and discovered a silver-backed tortoiseshell comb.
‘It is a silly gift, I know,’ she said. ‘But I wanted something you would use every day so you would not forget me.’
He met her gaze. ‘I will never forget you, Cecilia.’
Her breathing accelerated. ‘I—I learned something. Or rather, I finally put pieces of a puzzle together the correct way.’
He had no idea what she was talking about. ‘What is that?’
‘You protect; you don’t hurt. You give; you don’t take. You release who you love; you don’t confine them.’
Why was she speaking so? ‘I love you, Cecilia. I want you to be safe and happy.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I am so sorry. I was wrong.’
‘Wrong?’ His insides twisted. This felt riskier than a carriage race on a twisting country road.
‘I was wrong to believe I cannot trust anyone. I can trust you.’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘Be clear, Cecilia. I will be. I love you. I still want to marry you. I will never hurt you and I will not control you. I’ll protect you and the baby with my life.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Do you mean it? You are not angry with me after—after all I’ve said and done?’
‘I am not angry with you.’ Wounded, not angry. ‘Marry me.’
She flew into his arms once again. ‘Yes! Oliver, yes! I’ve been afraid to love you, but I do. I do.’
He swung her around in a circle, laughing, the knot inside him loosening and releasing joy. He took her face in his hands and kissed her, a kiss full of the promises he’d made to her.
She kissed him back.
He held her tightly against him, but suddenly released her. ‘I felt it!’ he cried. ‘I felt the baby move.’
‘Yes. The baby moved.’
He hugged her again. ‘A family,’ he murmured.
Epilogue
May 1819
Oliver stood in the hallway of his town house while behind the closed door of Cecilia’s room, the doctor, Mrs Irwin and Mary attended Cecilia.
His wife.
Her labour had started three hours before, but in the last few minutes her cries of pain grew louder and longer. Each one reached into him with a mirroring pain.
He paced back and forth.
Princess Charlotte died in childbirth. Both her and the baby. Lots of women died in childbirth.
Cecilia cried again and he could not bear it. He entered the room.
‘Sir!’ Mrs Irwin scolded. ‘You should not be in here!’
‘I’m not leaving,’ he growled.
The doctor did not take notice of him. Neither did Cecilia.
‘Push!’ the doctor cried.
Cecilia cried again, her face red with strain.
‘The baby’s coming!’ Mary cried. ‘I see the head!’
‘When the next pain comes, push again,’ the doctor said.
The pain came immediately. Cecilia cried and pushed.
Oliver was riveted to the scene. He could see the top of the baby’s head.
All of a sudden the baby’s whole head emerged and the baby slipped out into the doctor’s hands.
‘A boy!’ the doctor cried.
A boy?
The baby looked so tiny, but it let out a cry of its own and Oliver exhaled a relieved breath.
* * *
Half an hour later the baby and Cecilia were cleaned up and resting on clean bed linens. Cecilia gazed adoringly at her baby boy and Oliver gazed in wonder at both of them.
‘Little Nicholas,’ she murmured.
There’d been no other name to consider for a boy. Oliver wanted to honour his friend.
Cecilia examined every finger and toe on little Nicholas and rewrapped him in his blanket. She traced her finger over the baby’s cheek and forehead.
She laughed. ‘Look, Oliver!’
He came closer.
She traced her finger over the baby’s ear. ‘His ear is just like yours.’ The ear came to a tiny point, hardly noticeable. ‘Look in the mirror. Your ear is the same.’
Oliver walked over to the mirror. She was right! His ear was the exact same shape.
She sobered for a moment. ‘Now do you believe me? You are Nicholas’s father.’
He walked over to her and kissed the top of her head. ‘It has not mattered for a long time,’ he told her. ‘I belong to both of you. We are a family. I am content.’
She pulled him down into a kiss.
* * * * *
If you missed the first and second books in
THE SOCIETY OF WICKED GENTLEMEN quartet check out
A CONVENIENT BRIDE FOR THE SOLDIER
by Christine Merrill
AN INNOCENT MAID FOR THE DUKE
by Ann Lethbridge
And look out for the final novel in the quartet
A SECRET CONSEQUENCE FOR THE VISCOUNT
by Sophia James
Coming in December 2017
Keep reading for an excerpt from LORD HUNTER’S CINDERELLA HEIRESS by Lara Temple.
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Lord Hunter's Cinderella Heiress
by Lara Temple
Prologue
Leicestershire—1816
‘You’re wanted, Miss Nell. The master has some viscount or other wanting to take Petra through her paces. Lord Hunter, I think his name was. Knowing fellow.’
‘Another one? I hope she takes him head first through a hedge, Elkins,’ Nell replied, her voice muffled as she bent to examine Pluck’s fetlock.
‘She’ll have to go to someone and he seems a fair choice—no bluster about him.’ The elderly groom smiled.
‘I don’t know why Father insists I escort his guests anyway. As head groom you are far more qualified than I.’
‘It’s simple, miss. You’ve got the best seat in the county and that gives them fellows the idea their wives or daughters might look the same if they took home one of these prime bits of blood. They won’t, no how, but there’s no harm in it. Your father’s a hard man, I know, but he’s right proud of the way you are with horses. You’re like him there, see you.’
Nell wrinkled her nose—she didn’t want to be like the brutish sot in any way whatsoever. She secured the stall door, but Pluck shoved her arched neck over the side and shook her mane. Nell relented and came back for one more stroke.
‘No, you can’t go to your mama yet. And, yes, I will go and see if he is worthy of her and if he isn’t I’ll have her toss him into a pond. You like that idea, don’t you, you little rogue? Father and Aunt Hester will skin me, but for Petra I just might find the nerve. Now I must go or I will be late and Father will be furious and then Aunt Hester will be furious, too.’
There was no way the filly could understand how serious that was, but Pluck’s head ducked back into the stall.
Her father was already in the stable yard. He was hard to miss—even braced on his cane and his face lined with pain and puffy from years of hard drinking, his height and booming voice intimidated everyone around him. However, this time he was diminished by the man who stood by his side. Not in inches—they were probably of a height and the stranger certainly hadn’t her father’s massive and blustering look. In fact, the first thing that struck her was that he was very quiet.
They hadn’t seen her yet and she watched as the stranger approached Petra. His movements were economical and smooth, and his hands, though they looked large and strong, were calm and travelled slowly over the mare as he examined her. It was just the right way to approach a high-spirited horse.
It was only when her father called her over that she looked at the man’s face. He was probably close in age to Charles Welbeck, who had just turned twenty-five the week before she and her father had gone to Wilton, but he seemed older. There were creases of weariness about his eyes and a bruised look beneath them as if he had not slept well for a long time.
She couldn’t imagine such an expression in Charles’s cheerful blue eyes. But other than that she had to admit he was almost as handsome as Charles, though in a completely different manner. She wondered if he was perhaps part-foreigner and that might account for the dark chestnut hair and the warm earth tones of his skin and the sunken golden brown of his eyes. It wasn’t a comforting face—its sharp sculpted lines didn’t make her think of princes and dancing through the night at the village fête in Wilton; it was an arrogant face more suited to the weighty matters of a beleaguered king and she doubted a glance from his tired eyes would make her think of dancing.
Not that Charles had ever asked her to dance. He hardly even looked at her for more than a kind greeting. Except for just once, when she had been fourteen. Her father had been furious at her for cramming one of his horses at the Welbeck jumping course and she had stood, humiliated and wilting under his wrath until Charles put his arm around her and said something which made the men around them laugh, but the smile in his eyes as he glanced down at her told her it wasn’t unkind. It had calmed her father and filled her with a peaceful warmth she had begun to forget existed. At that moment she had known there would never be anyone else for her but Charles.
She had no illusions her love would ever be reciprocated. Charles was perfect and she...she was a beanpole, almost as tall as he but painfully scrawny. The village boys would snigger and call her Master Neil behind her back and she was accustomed to the dismay in young men’s eyes when she was partnered with them at the informal dances held at her best friend Anna’s home in Keswick. It was only when she was on a horse that her height didn’t bother her. In fact, very little bothered her when she was on a horse.
So as she watched Lord Hunter mount Petra she hadn’t in the least thought about him as a man, or herself as an unattractive and overly tall seventeen-year-old. She was Miss Nell and she could ride a horse better than anyone—man, woman, boy or girl—in the county.
She tensed as Petra sidled at the man’s unfamiliar hand and weight and was immediately checked, but so gently that the motion was almost invisible. She couldn’t decide if his calm was innate or assumed, but she met Elkins’s gaze and shrugged. He would do.
‘Fells Pasture or Bridely field, then, Miss Nell?’ Elkins asked.
‘Fell’s Pasture, I think,’ she replied and turned to the man. He was watching them with a slight smile, clearly aware he was being weighed and judged. His eyes gleamed gold at the centre, or perhaps that was a trick of the sun, which was just catching at the edges of the trees behind her. She herself preferred light-haired men, like Charles, but Anna would probably think him very handsome.
‘Is that good or bad?’ he asked.
‘It means we presume you can stop Petra from throwing you, Lord Hunter,’ she replied, surprising herself. She was not usually so direct. ‘But if you aren’t comfortable with her yet, we can start with some easy riding. It’s just that Fell’s Pasture has a few miles of open runs and safe jumps. Alternately once you ride her I can show you her paces myself. She is probably our fastest mare and it would be a pity if you didn’t see just how beautifully she gallops.’
He cocked his head to one side with a glimmering smile that turned the lines of tension she had noticed into laugh lines. She had probably been wrong about the signs of strain; his smile didn’t allow for the presence of the darkness she had sensed.
‘I don’t think you meant any of that as an insult, did you?’
Nell stared at him, running through her words in her mind.
‘Not at all, my lord. You appear to handle her well enough, but I just want to do justice to Petra. Father must have told you she can be a little resistant at first, but she knows me and will open up more easily with me i
n the saddle. I merely thought you would want to see her at her best.’
‘We won’t have time to switch to side saddle anyway, so let’s just see how I manage, shall we?’
She shrugged and turned to Hilda, her mare, allowing Elkins to help her mount.
‘We don’t put a side saddle on Petra; she’s trained for a man’s saddle and weight. But as you said, we’ll see how you do.’
This time she heard the condescension in her voice and almost smiled at it.
‘I’m almost tempted to do an abysmal job of it just to see what you mean, Miss Tilney.’
He didn’t, of course, and as she watched him gallop across the field she didn’t know whether to be relieved that Petra was being delivered into the capable hands of a man who would treat her right, or disappointed that she hadn’t been given the opportunity to show him her mettle. In this one corner of the universe where she was completely capable, she rarely wished to show off, but today she felt that urge. She watched as the man stopped just short of where she and Elkins waited. There was gold in his eyes, she realised, and the colour was heightened by the clear enjoyment on his face, making him look younger.
‘Can you match that?’ he demanded, bending forward to stroke Petra’s damp neck.
Elkins chuckled and Nell didn’t need further prodding. She tossed her reins to Elkins and slipped off Hilda.
Clearly Lord Hunter hadn’t expected her to actually accept his dare because he looked disconcerted, but she just laid her hand on Petra’s muzzle and raised her brows, waiting.
‘Are you serious?’ he asked. ‘Now? But she’s probably winded and you can’t ride her in skirts...’
Nell unhooked the fastening that held the wide train of her skirt and hooked it over her arm.
‘These skirts work as well on a regular saddle. I made them myself. And far from being winded, Petra is just warming up, so instead of sitting there while she cools down, you can dismount and I’ll show you what she can do and then you will probably ask Father to buy Pluck, her filly, as well. Now, down you go.’