by Julia Quinn
It was a rhetorical question, but the pain in her voice made him answer, anyway. “Colonel Stubbs said he left a cairn.”
It was a lie, but it would give her comfort to think that her brother’s grave had been marked, if only with a small pile of stones.
He picked up his empty glass, fiddling it around in his fingers. There were a few drops left in the slightly rounded bottom, and he watched as they rolled this way and that, always following the same dampened path. How hard would he have to tilt the glass to force a new rivulet? And could he do the same with his life? Could he just tilt things hard enough to change the outcome? What if he threw it all upside down? What then?
But even with all this going on inside, his expression did not change. He could feel the stasis on his face, a steady evenness, devoid of emotion. It was what he had to do. One crack, and God only knew what was going to come pouring out.
“You should take the ring,” he said.
She gave a little nod and picked it up, blinking back tears as she looked down at it. Edward knew what she’d see. The Harcourts had no coat of arms that he knew of, so the flat plane of Thomas’s ring bore only the letter H, elegantly scripted with one flourishing swirl at the base.
But then Cecilia turned it over and looked inside. Edward straightened a bit, curious now. He had not known to look for an inscription. Maybe it wasn’t Thomas’s ring. Maybe Colonel Stubbs had lied. Maybe—
An agonized sob burst from Cecilia’s lips, the sound so sudden and harsh that she almost looked surprised that it had come from her. Her hand formed a fist around the ring, and she seemed to crumple right there in front of him, laying her head on her forearm as she cried.
God help him, he reached out and took her hand.
Whatever she had done, for whatever reason, he could not confront her about it now.
“I knew . . .” she said, gasping for breath. “I knew he was probably dead. But my head and my heart . . . They weren’t in the same place.” She looked up, her eyes luminous in her tear-streaked face. “Do you know what I mean?”
He didn’t trust himself to do anything but nod. He wasn’t sure his head and his heart would ever be in the same place again.
Edward picked up the ring, wondering about the inscription. He turned so that the inside caught a bit of the light.
Thomas Horatio
“All of the men in my family have the same ring,” Cecilia said. “Their given names are engraved on the inside so that they can tell them apart.”
“Horatio,” Edward murmured. “I never knew.”
“My father’s grandfather was called Horace,” she said. She seemed to be calming down. Ordinary conversation could do that for a person. “But my mother hated the name. And now—” She let out a choked laugh, followed by an inelegant swipe of her face with the back of her hand. Edward would have offered her a handkerchief if he’d had one. But he’d rushed out that morning, eager to surprise her with treats. He hadn’t thought he’d be gone above twenty minutes.
“My cousin is named Horace,” she said, almost—but not quite—rolling her eyes. “The one who wanted to marry me.”
Edward looked down at his fingers and realized he’d been rolling the ring around between them. He set it down.
“I hate him,” she said, with enough intensity to compel him to look up. Her eyes were burning. He wouldn’t have thought the pale hue could contain such heat, but then he remembered that when fire burned hot, the color of it turned cold.
“I hate him so much,” she went on. “If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have—” She drew in a loud, sudden sniffle. From the looks of her, she hadn’t felt it coming on.
“You wouldn’t have what?” Edward asked softly.
She didn’t answer right away. Finally, she swallowed and said, “I probably wouldn’t have come here.”
“And you wouldn’t have married me.”
He looked up, caught her gaze directly. If she was going to come clean, now would be the time. According to her story, she had not taken part in her half of the proxy marriage until she was on the ship.
“If you had not sailed to New York,” Edward continued, “when would you have married me?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“So maybe it was for the best.” He wondered if she could hear what he heard in his own voice. It was a little too low, a little too smooth.
He was baiting her. He could not help it.
She gave him an odd look.
“If Cousin Horace had not harassed you,” Edward continued, “we would not be wed. Although I suppose . . .” He let his words trail off deliberately, waiting until she had to prod him to continue.
“You suppose . . .”
“I suppose I would think we were married,” he said. “After all, I went through with the proxy ceremony months ago. Think of it, all this time, I could have been a single man and not realized it.”
He looked up, briefly. Say something.
She didn’t.
Edward picked up his glass and tossed back the last dregs, not that there was really much of anything there.
“What happens now?” she whispered.
He shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“Did he have any things? Beyond the ring?”
Edward thought back to that last day before he and Thomas had left for Connecticut. They had not known how long they would be gone, so the colonel had made arrangements to store their things. “Colonel Stubbs should have his effects,” he said. “I will have them brought to you.”
“Thank you.”
“He had a miniature of you,” Edward blurted out.
“I beg your pardon?”
“A miniature. He always had it. I mean, no, he didn’t carry it with him at all times or anything like that, but when we moved he always made sure it was with him.”
Her lips trembled with the hint of a smile. “I have one of him as well. Didn’t I show it to you?”
Edward shook his head.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I should have done.” She slumped a bit, looking utterly lost and forlorn. “They were painted at the same time. I think I was sixteen.”
“Yes, you look younger in it.”
For a moment she looked confused, then she blinked several times and said, “You’ve seen it. Of course. Thomas said that he’d showed it to you.”
Edward nodded.
“Once or twice,” he lied. There was no need for her to know how many hours he’d spent staring at her image, wondering if she could possibly be as kind and funny as she was in her letters.
“I never thought it was a very good likeness,” she said. “The artist made my hair too bright. And I never smile like that.”
No, she didn’t. But to say so would be to admit he knew the painting far better than “once or twice” would imply.
Cecilia reached out and took the ring. She held it in both hands, pinched between her thumbs and forefingers.
She stared at it. For such a long time, she stared at it. “Do you want to go back to the inn?” she finally asked.
But she didn’t look up.
And because Edward did not trust himself to be alone with her, he said, “I need to be by myself right now.”
“Of course.” She said it too quickly, and she lurched to her feet. The ring disappeared into her fist. “I do too.”
It was a lie. They both knew it.
“I’m going back now,” she said, motioning needlessly to the door. “I think I would like to lie down.”
He nodded. “If you do not mind, I will stay here.”
She gestured faintly toward his empty glass. “Maybe you shouldn’t . . .”
His brows rose, daring her to finish that statement.
“Never mind.”
Smart girl.
She took a step away, then paused. “Do you—”
This was it. She was going to tell him. She was going to explain it all, and it would be fine, and he would not hate himself and he would not hate her,
and . . .
He did not realize that he’d started to rise until his legs hit the table. “What?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Tell me.”
She gave him an odd look, then said, “I was just going to ask if you want me to get you something at the bakery. But I don’t think I wish to see anyone right now, so . . . Well, I’d rather just go straight back to the inn.”
The bakery.
Edward fell back into his seat, and then before he could contain himself, a harsh, angry laugh burst forth from his throat.
Cecilia’s eyes went very wide. “I can still go, if you wish. If you’re hungry, I can—”
“No,” he cut her off. “Go home.”
“Home,” she echoed.
He felt one corner of his mouth squeezing into a humorless smile. “Satan’s Abbey.”
She nodded, her lips trembling as if they weren’t sure if they were supposed to smile in return. “Home,” she echoed. She looked to the door, then back at him. “Right.”
But she hesitated. Her eyes flicked to his, waiting for something. Hoping for something.
He gave nothing. He had nothing to give.
So she left.
And Edward had another drink.
Chapter 17
We have finally arrived in New York! And not a moment too soon. We traveled via ship from Rhode Island, and once again Edward proved himself a ghastly sailor. I have told him it is only fair; he is appallingly good at everything else he does.
Ah, he glares at me now. I have the bad habit of saying my words aloud as I write them, and he does not appreciate my description. But do not fret. He is also appallingly good-natured, and he does not hold a grudge.
But he glares! He glares!
I might kill your brother.
—from Thomas Harcourt (and Edward Rokesby) to Cecilia Harcourt
Cecilia walked back to the Devil’s Head in a daze.
Thomas was dead.
He was dead.
She’d thought she’d prepared herself for this. As the weeks had passed without a word, she had known that the chances of Thomas being found alive were growing slim. And yet, now . . . with the proof of his signet ring in her pocket . . .
She was wrecked.
She could not even visit his grave. Edward had said that it was too far outside of Manhattan, too close to General Washington and his colonial forces.
A braver woman might go. A more reckless spirit might toss her hair and stamp her foot and insist that she must lay flowers at her brother’s final resting place.
Billie Bridgerton would do it.
Cecilia closed her eyes for a moment and cursed under her breath. She had to stop thinking about bloody Billie Bridgerton. It was becoming an obsession.
But who could blame her? Edward talked about her all the time.
Very well, maybe not all the time, but more than twice. More than . . . Well, enough that Cecilia felt she knew quite enough about Lord Bridgerton’s eldest daughter, thank you very much. Edward probably didn’t realize it but she came up in almost every story he told of growing up in Kent. Billie Bridgerton managed her father’s lands. She hunted with the men. And when Cecilia had asked Edward what she looked like, he’d replied, “She’s actually rather pretty. Not that I noticed for so many years. I don’t think I even realized she was a girl until I was eight.”
And Cecilia’s reply?
“Oh.”
Paragon of everything articulate and insightful she was. That was her eloquent response. But Cecilia could hardly tell him that after all of his tales of the amazing, superhuman Billie I-Can-Ride-a-Horse-Backwards Bridgerton, she’d pictured her as a six-foot Amazon with large hands, a mannish neck, and crooked teeth.
Not that the crooked teeth were in any way relevant to Edward’s descriptions, but Cecilia had long since accepted that a little portion of her heart was petty and vengeful, and, blast it all, she wanted to imagine Billie Bridgerton with crooked teeth.
And a mannish neck.
But no, Billie Bridgerton was pretty, and Billie Bridgerton was strong, and if Billie Bridgerton’s brother had died, she would have traveled into enemy lands to make sure his grave had a proper marker.
But not Cecilia. Whatever courage she possessed had been all used up when she’d stepped on the Lady Miranda and watched England disappear over the eastern horizon. And if there was one thing she’d learned about herself over the past few months, it was that she was not the sort of woman to venture into a nonmetaphorical foreign territory unless someone’s very life hung in the balance.
All there was to do now was . . .
Go home.
She didn’t belong here in New York, that much she knew. And she didn’t belong to Edward, either. Nor he to her. There was only one thing that might truly bind them together . . .
She went still, and her hand went to the flat plane of her belly, just over her womb.
She could be with child. It was unlikely, but it was possible.
And suddenly it felt real. She knew she probably wasn’t pregnant, but her heart seemed to recognize this new person—a miraculous miniature of Edward, and maybe of her, too, but in her imagination the baby was all him, with a dusting of dark hair, and eyes so blue they rivaled the sky.
“Miss?”
Cecilia looked up and blinked, only then realizing that she had come to a stop in the middle of the street. An older woman in a starched white bonnet was looking at her with a kind, concerned expression.
“Are you all right, miss?”
Cecilia nodded as she lurched into motion. “I beg your pardon,” she said, moving to the side of the street. Her mind was foggish, and she couldn’t quite focus properly on the Good Samaritan in front of her. “I just . . . I had some bad news.”
The woman looked down to where Cecilia’s hand rested on her abdomen. Her ringless hand. When she met Cecilia’s eyes again, her own were filled with a hideous blend of compassion and pity.
“I have to go,” Cecilia blurted out, and she practically ran the rest of the way back to the Devil’s Head and up the stairs to her room. She threw herself onto the bed, and this time when she cried, her tears were equal parts frustration and grief.
That woman had thought that Cecilia was pregnant. Unmarried and pregnant. She’d looked at Cecilia’s bare finger and made a judgment, and oh God, there had to be some sort of irony there.
Edward had wanted to get her a ring. A ring for a marriage that didn’t exist.
Cecilia laughed. Right there in the middle of her tears, in the middle of her bed, she laughed.
It was an awful sound.
If she was pregnant, at least the baby’s father thought they were married. Everyone did.
Except for that woman on the street.
In an instant Cecilia had gone from a young lady in need of kindness to a fallen harlot who would soon be relegated to the fringes of society.
She supposed that was an awful lot to read into a stranger’s expression, but she knew how the world worked. If she was pregnant, her life would be ruined. She would never be accepted in polite society. If her friends back home wished to remain in contact, they would have to do so clandestinely, lest their own good names be tarnished.
There had been a girl in Matlock a few years earlier who had found herself with child. Her name was Verity Markham, and Cecilia had only known her a little. Not much more than her name, really. No one knew who the father was, but it mattered not. As soon as word of Verity’s condition got out, Cecilia’s father had forbidden her to make contact. Cecilia had been startled by his vehemence; her father never followed local gossip. But this, apparently, was an exception.
She had not defied his order. It had never occurred to her even to question it. But now she had to wonder—if Verity had been a friend, or even something slightly more than an acquaintance—would Cecilia have been brave enough to disobey her father? She’d like to think she would, but she knew in her heart Verity would ha
ve had to have been a very close friend indeed for her to have done so. It wasn’t that Cecilia was unkind; she just wouldn’t have thought to behave differently.
Society had its dictates for a reason, or at least she’d always thought so. Perhaps it was more correct to say that she’d never really thought about the dictates of society. She’d simply followed them.
But now, faced with the specter of being that fallen girl . . .
She wished she had been kinder. She wished she had gone to Verity Markham’s house and held her hand in friendship. She wished she had made a public show of support. Verity had long since left the village; her parents told everyone she was living with her great-aunt in Cornwall, but there wasn’t a soul in Matlock who believed it. Cecilia had no idea where Verity had gone, or even if she’d been allowed to keep her child.
A sob burst from Cecilia’s throat, so surprising and harsh that she had to block her mouth with her fist just to hold it in. She could bear this—maybe—if she were the only one affected. But there would be a child. Her child. She did not know what it was to be a mother. She barely even knew what it was to have one. But she knew one thing: She could not subject her child to a life of illegitimacy if it was within her power to do otherwise.
She had already stolen so much from Edward—his trust, his very name. She could not steal his child, too. It would be the ultimate cruelty. He would be a good father. Nay, he would be a great father. And he would love being one.
If there was a child . . . he must be told.
She made herself a vow. If she was pregnant, she would stay. She would tell Edward everything, and she would accept the consequences for the sake of their child.
But if she was not pregnant—and if her courses followed their usual schedule she would know within a week—then she would leave. Edward deserved to have his life back, the one he had planned for, not the one she’d thrust upon him.
She would tell him everything, but she’d do it in a letter.
If this made her a coward, so be it. She doubted even Billie Bridgerton would be brave enough to deliver such news face-to-face.
It took several hours, but eventually Edward felt in sufficient control of himself to return to the Devil’s Head.
