by Gayle Callen
“I know.”
She seemed almost relieved when Talbot announced the first guests. Mrs. Webster arrived with her son and his wife, Miss Webster’s parents, and Michael saw the way they doted on Appertan as if he’d long been a part of their family. What was it about the young man that made everyone treat him that way? Michael wondered irritably.
And then Cecilia turned toward him expectantly, her smile pleasant and proud. For the next half hour, he was introduced to two dozen neighbors and friends. He knew many had been eager to meet him and felt uncomfortable as their avid gazes looked him over. His family had never socialized much once the estate had gobbled up his mother’s dowry. But he was surprised how much his military experiences assisted him on such an evening since he’d often attended events in Bombay with Lord Appertan. He answered questions and appeared interested; little more was required of him as the center attraction that evening.
To his surprise, several of Appertan’s friends arrived, including Rowlandson. Cecilia did not make much of this though she quietly spoke to Talbot about the dinner seating when she had the chance. Michael didn’t glare at Rowlandson but kept his gaze cool and narrowed, and was surprised by the man’s confusion.
Eventually, he and Cecilia were separated, and he made it a point to thread his way through the chattering crowd right for Rowlandson.
The other man eyed him nervously. “My lord?”
“I’m surprised you attended, sir,” Michael said in a low, barely restrained voice.
“I was sure the absence of my invitation had been accidental.” Rowlandson’s gaze searched the crowd, then landed on Appertan with confusion.
Michael frowned. “Do you not remember what happened at the taproom a few days ago?”
“I was deep in my cups,” Rowlandson said with a wince. “I remember your being there, but little else. I hope I did not . . . offend you.”
“Offend me? You terrorized a maid, and we had words about the subject. I threatened you.”
Rowlandson blanched. “Truly? Forgive me for not remembering.” He looked down at his hands as if desperate for alcohol.
“Perhaps you need to drink less,” Michael said sarcastically.
Or perhaps Rowlandson remembered it all and was pretending not to. Could he and his cronies still hold a grudge against Cecilia because she’d practically banished them from Appertan Hall? Inebriation could make some men lose the last of their inhibitions. Perhaps Rowlandson’s fondling a maid wasn’t that far removed from trying to incapacitate Cecilia, if not kill her.
“You are correct, my lord.” Rowlandson shrugged. “I allow drink to consume me when I shouldn’t.”
He seemed pliable, so Michael decided to use that to his advantage. “I imagine it’s difficult to avoid alcohol when Lord Appertan and all your other friends are imbibing at great speeds.”
Rowlandson nodded ruefully. “It is true. I can’t seem to deny myself when others aren’t.”
“Does that include gambling? There was a bit of that going on the other night, but I wasn’t certain if Lord Appertan approved.”
“Approved?” Rowlandson echoed, then laughed. “He indulges his betting instincts like the rest of us.”
“So it’s common among your set?”
“As common as among any group of men.”
“I imagine you all must go through your allowances quickly.”
Rowlandson reddened and couldn’t meet Michael’s gaze. “Occasionally, yes, but Appertan is always the one with the cool head about such things.”
Cool head? Not a term Michael would have used to describe his brother-in-law. “Appertan doesn’t gamble?”
“Not to excess, unlike . . . some of us.”
Michael didn’t think Rowlandson’s face could get any redder. He lowered his voice as if in confidence. “There were ladies expected the night your crowd played billiards here, a different kind of excess for someone like Appertan.”
Rowlandson showed the first signs of confused unease. “The women were for others, not Appertan. He’s surprisingly dull where the fair sex are concerned. Loyalty to his fiancée and all that. Seems before marriage should be the time for a last fling, eh?”
First coolheaded, and now twenty years of age and not chasing wild young women? Why did this not seem like the Appertan Michael had known these last few days?
Michael looked around the room. “I don’t see many of your other friends here. Are they back in London?”
“Some, but most live within an hour’s ride or so. We used to stay at Appertan Hall, but recently . . .” He let his words trail off, then shrugged, as if he didn’t want to disparage Cecilia to her husband’s face. “I mean no disrespect to Lady Blackthorne,” he quickly added, his expression striving for sincerity. “A few even considered courting her, and I heard one had even gone so far as to make his intentions known, but Appertan wouldn’t tell me who it was.” He slowly smiled and gestured with his chin. “Could be any one of those fools flocking around her, yes?”
Michael turned his head sharply, and there was Cecilia, bathed in golden light from the chandelier overhead, several “fools” too close. They gazed with varying degrees of admiration and regret, but how to know what they were truly thinking?
She smiled at them all with a soft, pretty sweetness, as if she had forgotten what such attention was like. Suddenly, from somewhere deep inside Michael’s brain, he found himself thinking, Not again.
Whoa, he told himself, as if he were a racehorse off on the wrong course. Cecilia was not like his mother, except for beauty and wealth. His mother might have been an heiress, but she’d been known to have loose standards of fidelity, and his fortune-hunting father had taken her off her family’s hands.
It was an ugly story, and Michael’s father had only let it slip once, when he’d had too much to drink. He’d even implied that perhaps Michael’s brother Allen wasn’t truly his son. Michael had always believed his mother made the best of their situation. Never had she complained, as their status was lowered, along with their money, and her family would have nothing to do with her. She’d been a caring, loving mother.
Michael had successfully pushed those old, ugly accusations from his mind until he saw Cecilia surrounded by adoring young men. He now realized why he’d been relieved when he’d thought her plain, and the sight of her true beauty had surprised him—he’d felt the shock and recognition of possibly repeating his father’s life.
Though he’d vowed to marry on his own terms, instead he’d married a ravishing heiress. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t accepted her money. He knew what it looked like—as if he’d tricked her into marrying him from halfway around the world.
The guests’ gazes he’d thought simply intrigued now seemed to have a dark edge, and it took him a moment to call himself away from such foolishness. He knew who he was, and it wasn’t an imitation of his father. What Cecilia thought was all that mattered.
“Lady Cecilia!” called a young man’s voice from near the doorway.
Michael couldn’t see who it was, but he heard several gasps, saw people whispering together. The crowd parted before the quick strides of a young man, with longish blond hair disarrayed, as if he’d traveled there in haste. His face practically beamed with happiness.
“Lady Cecilia!” he said again, taking both her gloved hands in his. “I just returned from the Continent yesterday, and traveled to Enfield just to see you. I haven’t even had a chance to speak with my parents—”
“Roger,” began an older woman nervously, touching his arm, the feather in her gray hair bobbing forward. “I didn’t even know the date of your arrival.”
“I know, Mother,” he said, his gaze obviously entranced by Cecilia. “The housekeeper told me where you were. How fortunate!”
“We really must talk,” his mother said, looking around as if for support, but if her husband was in the room, he didn’t step forward.
“Lady Cecilia, you look lovely,” Roger continued, never taking his eyes fr
om her, “no longer in mourning, I see.”
Michael limped toward them, taking his time, wondering how the tableau would play out. Cecilia glanced at him with bewildered blue eyes, and in that moment, he realized she didn’t quite understand Roger’s enthusiasm.
She began to say, “Mr. Nash—”
“Surely you’ll allow me to call upon you again,” Roger Nash interrupted. “I could take you driving, and oh, the picnics we used to have.” He smiled at his wide-eyed mother. “Of course, you can chaperone us, Mother. I’d never subject Lady Cecilia to improprieties.”
Michael gave a bow as he reached them, twining his arm with his wife’s, surprised to feel possessive. “Cecilia, may I be introduced to your friend?”
Nash looked at him at last, and his brilliant smile faded at the edges, as if Michael’s familiar use of her Christian name had at last penetrated.
“Mr. Nash, allow me to present my husband, Lord Blackthorne.”
Chapter 15
Cecilia felt almost nauseous with fatigue and sadness as she watched Mr. Nash’s happy expression fade into confusion and disbelief. He hadn’t known she was married, that much was evident. He’d been an ardent suitor, but had dutifully gone to travel the Continent because his parents thought him too young to pursue a wife.
He must have heard she’d gone into mourning and just assumed he had plenty of time to return and pick up where he had left off courting her.
And there was Michael, one hand on his cane, the other tucked behind his back, his posture proud with military bearing, his expression cool and sober, his very maturity making Mr. Nash look like an exuberant boy. If Michael cracked a smile, maybe this would be easier on the young man—or maybe worse, she suddenly realized. Michael’s very look seemed challenging, as if Mr. Nash could compete for Cecilia’s hand, and Michael would have to accept the challenge.
None of that was true. Mr. Nash was a distant memory of her youth, when young men pursued her, and she was half-flattered, half-exasperated. Michael now seemed all that was dangerous and threatening, not to her person but to her ability to remain aloof, to be herself. He was drawing her in, luring her to risk everything for the chance to be . . . intimate with him.
“Forgive me, my lady,” Mr. Nash now said stiffly. He gave a cool nod to Michael. “I ask the same if I have offended you, Lord Blackthorne. I did not know that Lady Blackthorne had married.”
“Understandable,” Michael said. “I was in India when the marriage was performed there.”
Cecilia wanted to wince at the confused look on Mr. Nash’s face, as if he couldn’t understand why she’d marry that way when there were so many local young men to choose from. Several of her former suitors were in attendance. They’d all been neighbors—she could hardly invite their parents and not them.
Mr. Nash gave a clipped bow to Cecilia. “My felicitations, Lady Blackthorne.” And then he escorted his mortified mother away.
“Are you well?” Michael murmured.
“I am.” Cecilia stifled a sigh.
He leaned over her almost protectively—or possessively. It might look many ways to her guests. But she heard the concern, felt the steadiness of his solid arm within hers. She remembered with a flash looking up from that muddy pit just that morning, and seeing his wet face staring down at hers with determination. She’d never been so happy and grateful to see anyone in her life.
“There are several men here who seem to regret our marriage,” he said, frowning.
She attempted a smile for the benefit of their curious guests. “Perhaps. But there are also many women here, who upon meeting you, now think our marriage makes sense.”
He looked truly baffled, and she found herself shaking her head ruefully.
“My lord, you are a handsome man—and a viscount. I am the daughter of an earl, an heiress. Both of us could have married far more conventionally than we did.”
“I am handsome?” His brow wrinkled.
“Are you looking for a compliment?” she asked. “It is simply that now that they’ve seen you, my neighbors think I am not so . . . eccentric.”
Again, he offered the faint smile that hinted at more. “It was eccentricity that brought us together?”
“No, it was about control,” she whispered, looking away and blinking at the sudden moisture in her eyes. “I thought I could control a husband from halfway around the world, just like I guess I control Oliver, even though I never meant that to happen.”
He said nothing, only watched her with intensity, as if she were a laboratory experiment.
“But I’m not in control of anything, am I?” she asked, pasting a bright, practiced smile on her face.
“That’s not true,” he answered solemnly. “You are the master of an entire earldom. I wonder how many men here realize that.”
She shrugged, but something inside her felt a touch of pride.
“But as for this mystery that has upset the household, we will solve it, so that you’ll no longer feel so unsettled.”
“ ‘Unsettled,’ ” she echoed. “What an understatement.” Then she stiffened as she saw someone approach. She held Michael’s arm even closer as she murmured, “Now here is a suitor who often wouldn’t accept no. Perhaps you will be handy to have around tonight.”
Michael’s dark eyes glinted. “I don’t mind being used by a beautiful woman.”
She arched a brow. “ ‘Used’? What a wicked word.”
“And it has very many meanings of which I will be pleased to show you.”
She didn’t quite understand what he meant, but it felt decidedly wicked, and to her surprise, that felt decidedly . . . good. Heavens, she didn’t even understand her own thoughts on that crazy day.
For the half hour before dinner, she treated Michael’s arm as if she needed it to stand, drawing Oliver’s tipsy, amused regard and Penelope’s curious smile. Michael was large and threatening, but under a very civilized veneer that seemed a touch thin. She felt glad of his dangerous air, surrounded by all these people she no longer knew if she could trust.
These were her neighbors—was one of them trying to kill her? Perhaps she should hope they were, so it wouldn’t be her brother. Oh please, God, not my brother.
Oliver was standing near his guardian, Lord Doddridge, who still had the same bewildered, concerned look on his face he’d worn from the moment he’d heard about her rescue. He was speaking in low tones to her brother, who kept nodding absently, while staring down into his drink. Was Lord Doddridge concerned about what would happen if she no longer had control of the estate? Surely, that would make things worse for him if he had to oversee Oliver closely.
Unless he and Oliver already had some sort of furtive agreement. Oh, she wished she could just shut off her mind.
At last, Talbot announced that dinner was served. She tried to concentrate on her food and not look at Michael, who, although seated with Penelope on one side, seemed to be talking intently across her to Lord Carrington, another man who’d once fancied himself Cecilia’s suitor.
Last year, she would have seated Hannah at Michael’s side, the better to ease his transition into their small society. She’d never imagined how easily Penelope would fill her sister’s role in their parish, in Cecilia’s heart. Sometimes, she could almost pretend the worst hadn’t happened.
But Cecilia couldn’t hear their conversation. Instead, she listened to two of her father’s old friends, who might have thought they were speaking in controlled tones but who were really talking loudly about the letters her father used to send.
“He’s not what I imagined,” Sir Eustace Venn was saying, his voice tremulous with age, along with his jowls.
Then Cecilia realized that he glanced at Michael, and she tried to pretend she was studying the menu as the footmen began to ladle soup into a bowl before each guest.
“He seems so young,” answered Mr. Garnett, his muttonchop sideburns emphasizing the lean boniness of his face. “Not at all the seasoned, talented soldier Appertan proc
laimed him.”
More than one nearby guest glanced at her, but no one stopped the old men from conversing, and she wasn’t about to embarrass them. Frankly, she wanted to hear what they had to say.
Sir Eustace slurped a spoonful of soup, then thankfully used a napkin. “Ruthless, that’s what Appertan called him. Said he always went beyond anything asked of him. Deadly with a gun and sword.”
“Not afraid to use them,” Mr. Garnett answered. “Once, when his gun had been discharged, he used his bayonet on one man, his sword on another almost simultaneously. Not a scratch on him, eh? Wonder how he got the limp.”
She winced at their vivid descriptions, then stared again at her husband, who although dressed in elegant evening clothes, seemed as sober as a magistrate. There might be some who did not want to hear of their husbands’ having to kill—but part of her was satisfied that he would never give up until he knew who was trying to harm her.
Then he glanced at her with eyes that seemed briefly warm with understanding.
For just a moment, she felt almost . . . safe.
But she wasn’t safe, she reminded herself, gazing again at all her dearest neighbors and wondering if one of them was a killer.
All through dinner, Michael did his best to get an understanding about Lord Carrington, seated on the other side of Miss Webster. She eagerly attempted to facilitate a conversation between both men, but he could hardly tell her to be quiet so that he could get a measure of the man who’d once courted Cecilia. After dinner, he made sure to play cards at the same table as the man, understanding his very arrogance, as if he could have anything within his grasp.
But Carrington hadn’t won Cecilia, Michael thought with satisfaction, then almost had to smile at himself. He hadn’t won Cecilia either—she’d come to him in desperation.
But he ruled Carrington out as a suspect when someone else told him his lordship had already proposed to a girl he’d spent a year pursuing.
At one point, he heard Cecilia explaining the rumors neighbors had heard, about her falling into the poaching hole. She made it sound so amusing, as if she were in no danger at all. If the villain were in attendance he would surely believe he was as yet undiscovered.