Her heart aching for him, Cecily said nothing. Only held him.
“I loved him.” His voice was quiet now, as if saying the words aloud would somehow bring more pain. “And now he’s gone.”
She tried not to feel the guilt that lanced through her at his words. Though he had whispered words of love to her in the heat of passion, she still had not been able to say the same to him. Now, knowing how vulnerable he was, she wanted to assure him that she returned his affection, but part of her still held back. In part because she knew that giving him her heart might in some way bring her to the same sort of grief he endured now.
He buried his face in the curve of her shoulder. Cecily felt the wetness of tears against her skin.
“Why couldn’t I,” he whispered, his voice breaking a little, “just have let him ride that damned pony?”
Cecily turned and kissed him. Not a kiss of passion, but one of comfort. She hoped it was enough.
For now, it was all she had to give him.
* * *
The next week passed in a blur of activity, from the notification of Bow Street about how they suspected Will had died, to informing his mother and Will’s wife, to traveling to the Winterson estate in Kent for the funeral services and subsequent burial.
Since the night they’d found Will’s body, when he’d broken down and revealed the true extent of his grief to her, Lucas had returned to the polite but distant demeanor of the days leading up to their awful discovery. He rose before dawn to ride over the estate with his steward, and did not return home until nearly suppertime.
One morning, a week after William’s funeral, she looked up from a translation of Herodotus to find him watching her from the doorway of her private sitting room.
Dressed for the country in buckskin breeches and a loose-fitting coat, he was every inch the country gentleman. His leg had grown stronger since that first day outside the Egyptian Club and he walked with little trace of the limp that had kept him from waltzing with her at the Bewle ball. And he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen.
“I did not mean to disturb you,” he said, thrusting one hand into the pocket of his coat and looking just as ill at ease as she felt. “But I thought perhaps you’d like to see what I found in the barn.”
Her heart racing, she stood quickly, knocking her book to the floor in the process. “Oh, bother,” she cried, stooping to pick it up.
He stepped closer to help, but she was already crouched on the floor beside the desk when he reached her. When she looked up, she was at eye level with his coat pocket. Which, oddly, had begun to undulate.
“Good Lord!” she said, staring at his moving jacket. “What in the world have you got in there?”
This startled a laugh from her husband, which quickly turned into a cough.
“Don’t be lewd,” she said quickly, knowing from the gleam in his eye that the direction of his thoughts was decidedly improper.
“Oh, all right,” he huffed, though his grin dispelled any real pique.
Reaching into his pocket, he grasped hold of something inside and carefully drew it back out.
“Mew,” said the tiny ginger kitten blinking in the bright glare of the afternoon sun.
“Oh.” Cecily stared at the fuzzy little cat that barely fit in the palm of Lucas’s hand. “What a little darling.”
“I think its mother abandonded it,” Lucas said, sending a silent apology to the tabby mama cat and her brood from whom he’d appropriated this little fellow. “Thought maybe you might want to have him for a pet.”
She still hadn’t even touched the kitten, just stood staring at the tiny creature.
“If you don’t want him I might ask one of the tenants if he needs a mouser,” he said, suddenly uneasy. He had thought all women liked baby animals. Though he knew Cecily hadn’t reacted like all women with regard to anything else, so maybe he shouldn’t have presumed.
“Don’t you dare!” she said, grabbing him by the arm with such ferocity, he suspected she’d left a mark. “Don’t you dare give my kitten away!”
Lucas suppressed a smile at her words. “Then why don’t you pick him up?”
Cecily swallowed. “I … I’ve never had a pet,” she said. “I’m not sure what to do.”
Her expression was such a mix of awe and chagrin that he wanted to hold her. He had decided not long after they arrived in Kent that if his marriage was to have any chance at success, he would need to woo her with every bit as much finesse as he would have used had they not been compromised into marriage. Though there was no doubt that the hard shell Cecily customarily wore around her heart had grown weaker in the past weeks, she was still too intent upon self-preservation to let him in.
So now, remembering his plan to draw her to him in stages, he kept his hands to himself. Instead, showing her how to cup her hands, he carefully placed the mewling kitten into her keeping.
“Oh,” she said softly. “He’s so soft. And light.”
The look in her eyes was something Lucas would never forget as long as he lived. And he made a vow that he’d do whatever it took to make sure he put that look in them as often as possible.
After the look she made when he was buried inside her, of course.
Suddenly feeling like a lecherous brute for thinking about sex while his wife held a kitten, he cleared his throat. Which made the kitten jump.
“Oh, you’ve frightened him,” Cecily chided. “It’s all right, little one,” she crooned to the kitten.
Excellent, Lucas thought, they’ve joined forces against me.
“Lucas,” Cecily said quietly. “Thank you. No one has ever given me a better gift.”
Unable to speak around the lump in his throat, Lucas merely nodded.
They stood there looking down at the kitten for a few minutes before Cecily spoke again.
“If,” she began, “if you would like to come to my bedchamber this evening…”
They were the words he’d been desperate to hear for weeks now. And it took every ounce of resolve he had to keep from shouting his assent to the rooftops. Instead, he shook his head.
“I thank you, my dear,” he said carefully, not wanting to let on how much he hated to deny her, but utterly committed to telling her the truth, “but I’m afraid that I’ve discovered I want something more from you than just affection.”
He saw her wince at his use of the term she’d fobbed him off with before. He hadn’t meant to throw her words up in her face, but it was as good a name as any for the easy relationship they shared. It was only after the discovery of his brother’s body, when he’d realized just how fleeting their time together might be, that he had known exactly what it was he wanted from Cecily.
It wasn’t affection.
It wasn’t camaraderie.
“Love, Cecily,” he told her now. “I want your love. And until you are ready to give it to me, I won’t be coming to your bedchamber.”
He left her staring openmouthed after him, the kitten curled up in the cradle of her hands, blissfully unaware of the human drama unfolding around him.
* * *
In the days that followed, true to his word, Lucas stayed out of Cecily’s bedchamber. When he had made his declaration that day in the library, she had wanted nothing more than to give him exactly what he asked for. It would be so easy to let herself fall in love with him. She was already halfway there, she knew. But the memory of how much she had hurt when David left her kept her from succumbing. She had wanted nothing more than to offer him the sort of comfort that he himself had offered her from the beginning of their association with one another. And she knew that with very little coaxing on her part, she’d have been able to persuade him.
But instead, out of respect for his wishes, she had held herself back. Most days she didn’t see him until the dinner hour anyway, since he spent much of his time laboring over estate business, like repairs to the tenants’ cottages. And at night, they each retired to their separate beds. If she wished for someone more
substantial to curl up with besides little Ginger? Well, she would endeavor to forget the passion she’d felt beneath her husband’s hands and would instead concentrate on figuring out who had killed Will Dalton.
Thus it was that she found herself standing on the steps of Winterhaven with her husband, Ginger curled up in his basket that was draped over her arm.
“I will send for you at once if I learn anything more about the cat,” she told him, both of them staring out at the parkland beyond, not daring to make eye contact. “The blue cat, I mean.”
“Cecily,” he said, turning to face her, “while I am here, I wish to have your promise that you will not proceed with any sort of investigation into Will’s death.”
She frowned. “Yes, of course, but you must know that—”
“Promise me, Cecily,” he said sternly, his eyes shadowed from lack of sleep and fatigue. She wished that he would allow her to take care of him through this miserable time. It weighed on her conscience that she might have eased his burden in one respect, but in the end she knew that it would be kinder not to offer him false hope.
Aloud she said, “I promise. And you must promise me to look after yourself, Your Grace.”
But he waved off her concern. “I am well enough. Once I can convince my mama to go to her sister in Bath, and the repairs to the tenant cottages are completed, I will return to London with all haste.”
She knew that his mother was uncomfortable in the opulence of Winterhaven, especially given her past residence in the modest parsonage that served the nearby village of Snowden. It had taken no persuasion at all to ensure that William’s wife, Clarissa, had gone back to live with her family, but it seemed that Lucas’s mama had taken it into her head that she owed it to her son to stay with him at the country estate. Even after Cecily had announced her intention of going back to London.
“After all, my dear,” she had told her newest daughter-in-law, “you must surely be missing your own family. And since Lucas is forced to remain here, I will see to it that he is made comfortable.”
If Cecily had not known better, she would have thought her mother-in-law was trying to make her son choose between his wife and his mother. She knew, however, that such a consideration had never crossed Lady Michael’s mind. Instead, she was simply clinging to the one man in her life that was still living. With both her husband and her younger son gone, she was feeling vulnerable to the capricious nature of fate. And having experienced such worries herself, especially given her mother’s death when she was a child, Cecily could not blame her for it.
“Please do return to us in London as soon as you wish,” she told the older woman as she accepted a heartfelt hug. “If you find anything at all unpleasant about your sister’s household in Bath I will be only too glad to welcome you back to Winterson House.”
Lady Michael laughed at that. “I shall manage my sister, my dear. Do not mind that. Besides, I must leave the two of you alone so that I may hold a grandchild before too much longer has passed.”
Cecily gave a brisk laugh and hurried downstairs. Where she currently stood in her husband’s arms. She inhaled the scent of him and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, which made him smile. Keeping his arms around her, he lowered his mouth to hers and took her lips with a tenderness and longing that had her eyes welling up.
“I will see you soon,” he said, letting her out of his arms as he handed her into the carriage.
From the carriage window, Cecily watched him there—a tall figure dressed in unrelieved black, dwarfed by the enormous Doric columns that flanked the front door of the neoclassically designed estate. The image stayed with her; visible in her mind’s eye as she closed her eyes and let the exhaustion that had threatened to overtake her earlier finally claim her.
And she slept.
* * *
Lucas pulled the collar of his drab greatcoat higher and the hat he’d borrowed from his groom lower as he pushed into the Sergeant’s Arms, a dark, dank tavern on the edge of Whitechapel. The clientele of the establishment was made up of the impoverished, desperate people who lived in the surrounding neighborhood, but the owner had been one of his men at Waterloo and given an arm in service to his country. Sam had been more than ready to offer his former commanding officer a room and a pint, and needing a place to stay while he conducted his investigation, Lucas had taken him up on it.
He had been back in London for three days now, and being so close to Cecily without being able to see or hold her was maddening. But it was for her sake that he had embarked on this solitary quest. Now that he knew Will had been murdered to protect the thief’s identity, Lucas had no doubt that such a person would have little compunction about killing anyone who got in his way. And, though she would be loath to admit it, Cecily was more vulnerable than he was to an attack. Just the thought of anything untoward happening to her sent a chill through him, and though he knew she would not thank him for it, he was determined to keep her out of harm’s way until this murderer was caught.
Thus it was that he found himself hurrying through the taproom of Sam’s tavern, his eyes skimming the tables for one face in particular. In the corner table, his back to the wall, he finally saw him.
Plunking down his mug of ale, Christian looked up and offered a slight wave to him.
As Lucas took the seat opposite, he felt his friend’s scrutiny. “What?” he asked, after he had told the scrawny little barmaid he’d also have ale.
“Just wondering what would make a peer of the realm hide out like a common criminal when he has a nice comfy bed and a sweet little wife to keep him warm in it.”
“Who says I’m not going back to that warm bed every night?”
“Well, your sweet little wife, for starters,” Christian said, raising one blond brow in mimicry of Lucas’s. “She says that you have been detained in the country on estate business.”
“Yes, I disliked telling that bouncer, but you know how she is. Too smart for her own good.”
“Ah, then you are hiding from her?”
“Not precisely,” he began, but then with a noise of impatience, he added, “Yes, I am hiding from her. Though again it’s for her own damn good. Do you know how difficult it is to keep any secrets from a clever woman?”
Christian laughed. “Well, yes, that is why I only offer my favors to silly ones. Though they’re devilishly bright when they need to be at times.”
“You have no idea what a bright woman can do until you’ve crossed wits with Cecily,” Lucas said with a frown. “It’s as if the woman has some sort of sixth sense and can read my bloody mind. It makes it dashed difficult to do anything on one’s own.”
“And what are you doing on your own? You who have only been married a month or so?” Christian demanded. “And do not tell me that you’ve got some other woman on hand for I will not believe you. You’re not the type.”
“Nothing like that,” Lucas said dismissively. “Cecily is more than … well, just no, there is no other woman.”
His friend smothered a laugh. “Then what?”
“I am looking for Will’s killer.” He watched as all the humor fled from his friend’s expression. “And I do not want to put Cecily in any danger. If something were to happen to her, I’d never forgive myself.”
The other man nodded. He sat back as the barmaid brought them more ale.
“I’m getting close, Christian,” Lucas continued, grateful for the noise in the room that kept their conversation relatively private. “Whoever this bastard is, he’s been damned smart, but I am smarter, and more determined.”
Christian listened as Lucas explained what he and Cecily had learned up until this point. Ending with the discovery of Will’s body and the blue cat.
“So you’re looking for this blue cat. But you don’t even know what it is?”
Lucas nodded. “It’s got to be some sort of statue or hollow box or something that will allow one to hide papers inside. At least that is my guess. I have been to every secondhand and antiquities s
hop in London and none of them has any record of a blue cat ever passing through their hands.”
“I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that the blue cat is in storage at the Egyptian Club,” Christian said, his brow furrowed in thought. “Which you cannot possibly have access to given that you are not a member.”
“Yes,” Lucas said. “But it’s not there either. Or, it wasn’t a few weeks ago. Cecily and I … ahem … well, I just know, that’s all.”
His friend’s eyes brightened with mischief. “Winterson, you do lead such an exciting life, I must say.”
Turning serious, he continued. “So, what is your next move? While you are away from your wife, I suppose you had best do all that you can to unravel this puzzle. You cannot pretend to be in the country forever, you know.”
“Yes, and that is why I need you, Christian. I need you to distract Mr. David Lawrence while I search his office for the blue cat.”
“What? You mean the fellow at the British Museum?”
“Yes, that’s the one. I got the feeling when Cecily and I were questioning him that he knows more than he’s telling about this business. He was already lying to his employers at the museum. What’s to stop him from lying to me or Cecily?”
“Are you sure this has nothing to do with the fact that he jilted your wife?”
“Certainly not. I am grateful to him for doing it, else I’d not be married to her myself.” Lucas smiled. “But I will not deny that I would like very much to catch him out in a lie, just on the off chance that she still harbors any sort of feelings for the man. And if he should discover me searching his rooms and become violent? Well, let us just say that I would not be sorry if my fist were to accidentally smash into his smug face a few times.”
Christian shook his head in wonder. “I had no idea you were capable of all this … this passion, Winterson. You were always the most levelheaded of us all. I don’t know what’s come over you!”
But Lucas had a suspicion about that. And it had everything to do with his love for a certain dark-haired Amazon with a sharp tongue and a tendency to high-handedness. He was well and truly hooked. He only hoped that she was not the sort of angler to throw her biggest catch back into the pond.
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