Trinidad West

by Cecily’s Secret

  Cecily’s Secret

  Trinidad West

  Cecily has no desire for a husband. Instead, she plans to follow the example of her spinster aunt—refusing to marry, supporting herself with a modest inheritance and entertaining herself with a stream of lovers and a collection of naughty books. She’s already acquired a taste for sex through her secret stock of books, and she can’t wait to make her vivid fantasies come true.

  Forced into attending a house party, Cecily decides to make the best of it—which means taking up with a fop her parents are certain to disapprove of. Perry is no mere fop, though. He’s attending the house party to investigate rumors of espionage…and is definitely not there to find himself a wife.

  Cecily and Perry seem like an unlikely pair, but together they’ll learn much about spying, exhilarating passion and true love.

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Cecily’s Secret

  ISBN 9781419934797

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Cecily’s Secret Copyright© 2012 Trinidad West Edited by Meghan Conrad

  Cover design by Dar Albert

  Electronic book Publication January 2012

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

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  Cecily’s Secret

  Trinidad West

  Chapter One

  Cecily closed the book on Childe Harold and clasped the worn volume to her chest. She never tired of reading Lord Byron’s words or dreaming of the day she would go to London and cross his path in Hyde Park or Vauxhall. She would wear high heels and pile her hair high on her head to make herself taller. Perhaps a skilled modiste could make her look almost willowy. She would call herself Sophia—it was her middle name, after all, so not even her father could object—and cast mysterious, wistful looks at all the handsome men. That was certain to capture even the most celebrated poet’s attention. She would have Lord Byron intrigued so fast that foolish Caroline Lamb would be left standing in her silly page’s costume with her mouth hanging open. Now that would be a sight.

  If she got to London. The only thing that might induce her father to take her would be if they started breeding sheep, and prize-winning sheep at that, in Hyde Park.

  “Oh Yorkshire, Yorkshire, why must you be so full of farmers?” Cecily asked the familiar landscape. “Why don’t the poets ever come here?” Were rolling green hills too mundane for poetic sightseeing, or was it just too far from London?

  The sheep had no answers for her as she passed them on her way back to the house. “Stupid creatures with no mystery,” Cecily grumbled as she had a thousand times before. The lambs were darling, of course. And lambing season was Cecily’s favorite time of year. She knew it was mostly to provoke her mother that her father let her help with the lambing but that didn’t stop her from enjoying it. She loved the sense of adventure she felt when she and her father left the house at night, lanterns in hand, to wander the dales listening for the bleating of a sheep in distress.

  The sound coming from the little dell where she sometimes hid from her family was more interesting than the bleating of a sheep. She recognized Lucy the scullery maid’s giggle and she could guess at the owner of the male voice that set off the giggle. Lucy and the footman never seemed to take much care about hiding their activities when they were beyond the immediate area of the house. Cecily crept along until she was almost close enough to be seen and then she got down on the ground and crawled on her belly, the way her brother had taught her when they used to play soldier together. It simply wasn’t true that brothers were good for nothing.

  The sight that met Cecily’s eyes when she reached the edge of the dell brought a satisfied smile to her face. At least something interesting was happening for somebody today. She was only sorry she had arrived in the middle of the show. Of course, she couldn’t see much. Lucy’s skirts hid the most interesting parts from view as she rocked up and down on top of her lover. Cecily conjured up a remembered image of one of the illustrations from her Great-Aunt Alice’s books. She knew that hidden under those yards of worn fabric, Lucy’s lover’s cock slid in and out of her body. She knew what it looked like. She knew how it worked in a scientific sense. She just didn’t know what it felt like and she was dying to find out—if only an interesting man would come along and show her.

  Cecily’s lips parted as she watched the man tug at Lucy’s bodice and expose her bouncing breasts. He spread his hands over them and squeezed. Cecily could imagine what that would feel like. That, at least, was something she could do to herself during the long hours it took her to fall asleep at night after her eyes grew too tired for reading. She rolled onto her back and gazed up at a single cloud that was sweeping across the sky. The lovers’ panting and moaning became a backdrop to the daydream forming in her head.

  The man strode over the crest of a hill, walking stick in one hand, book in the other. His hair was long and unruly. His shirt was open at the collar and the skin that showed there had just the slightest sheen of sweat—manly but not unpleasant.

  He smiled when he saw her and stretched out on his side next to her.

  “It’s not safe for young ladies to wander the countryside on their own,” he said.

  The wicked gleam in his eyes made Cecily’s heart race but she wasn’t afraid.

  “I think perhaps I should show you what can happen to young ladies who go about unprotected.”

  Cecily didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. The man knew she wanted him to show her exactly what could happen.

  “It starts like this,” he said, leaning down to touch his lips to hers in a light kiss. “Then a little of this,” he continued, kissing her neck.

  Cecily cautiously raised her hand to touch his hair. It was curly, like Lord Byron’s, and warmed by the sun.

  “And definitely some of this.”

  His kisses had moved down from her neck to the edge of her bodice, which fell away cooperatively at the slightest tug.

  “This is what will happen if you’re not careful.”

  His tongue flicked across her nipple and Cecily’s fingers closed on a handful of hair. She couldn’t risk letting him get away now, not when one of his hands was making a foray under her skirts and she could feel the warmth of his skin through her stocking.

  Lying there in the sun, Cecily arched up, her body seeking the mouth that closed over h
er nipple in her imagination.

  “Oh God!”

  The exclamation roused Cecily out of her daydream and she rolled back onto her stomach to watch the couple in the dell, almost sorry to abandon her imaginary stranger. She felt certain that if he appeared in the flesh she would tear her bodice open herself so he could have no doubt about what she wanted from him.

  Down the slope from Cecily, the man’s hands had disappeared under Lucy’s skirts. This was something else Cecily had seen illustrated in Great-Aunt Alice’s books, something she had tried for a long time not to think about because of the way it left her feeling flushed and out of sorts. Even now, she tried not to think too hard about what those hidden hands were doing to Lucy, how they were probing and caressing. She distracted herself from the thought by wondering how Lucy managed to stay locked onto her lover as he thrust and bucked beneath her with such enthusiasm. It struck Cecily as quite an impressive feat of athleticism on Lucy’s part.

  Whatever was happening under Lucy’s skirts, Cecily could see that she was enjoying it. Her head was thrown back and she was whimpering with pleasure. Or at least Cecily thought it was pleasure. It had to be pleasure, didn’t it? That was the whole point, if Cecily understood it correctly, but sometimes the expressions on people’s faces looked almost pained. Great-Aunt Alice’s books certainly spoke enough of pleasure but they spoke of pain sometimes too, a paradox Cecily had spent many hours trying to work out.

  Cecily crept away from the edge of the dell. No matter how many times she spied on lovers, she didn’t think she could ever watch that final moment. They always looked so unaware of their surroundings—so vulnerable. It would be a violation that even Cecily’s curiosity could not persuade her to commit.

  Besides, she was afraid it might be more than she could bear. Just from the few moments she had watched, her body was suffused with a pleasant ache. All she wanted now was to return to the house, sneak upstairs to her room and pull the curtains around her bed. That was another thing she had learned from Aunt Alice’s books—how to dispel that unsettled feeling. Unfortunately, that remedy was becoming less and less satisfying. Cecily knew there was only one solution to her problem. She needed a man and it had to be a man who knew about the things described in Aunt Alice’s books. The only problem was where to find such a man—and how to find out if he possessed the requisite knowledge.

  *

  The sound of rapid Italian punctuated by frequent choice curses in English distracted Cecily from her plans when she returned to the house. That much Italian meant somebody was in trouble. Cecily hoped it wasn’t her. After depositing her book on a table, Cecily deposited herself in a straight-backed chair outside the open door of her father’s study and settled in to wait until her mother wore herself out with shouting and Cecily’s father had a chance to speak.

  “How could he sully the family name this way? What can he have been thinking?” Henry Bettencourt asked his wife after her tirade subsided with a final string of muttered Italian. His voice sounded a little hollow and Cecily wondered if he had finally decided to give up on her misbehaving brother.

  “He wasn’t thinking,” Cecily’s mother answered, returning to English. “He never does. At least you think about your sheep. Our son doesn’t think at all.”

  “Because you spoiled him.” Now he sounded a bit bored. What’s wrong with him? Cecily wondered. He usually threw himself full force into fights with his wife.

  “Because every time I tried to discipline him, you accused me of being hard-hearted and sent him off with a sweet. Look at how well-behaved Cecily is. You gave me free rein with her.”

  Outside the door, Cecily tried to restrain a smug smile. If her mother only knew…

  “Cecily was born good,” Henry said.

  Cecily’s smiled drooped a bit. She was pretty sure sneaking around and spying on lovers’ trysts wasn’t generally considered good behavior.

  “This is all beside the point, Henry. Our son is a—um—a Luddite. What do you propose we do about it?”

  Cecily leaned closer to the doorway. Had she misheard? Sebastian a Luddite? Her mother must have used the wrong word. It was impossible that a squire’s son belonged to a workers’ movement. Besides, what did Sebastian know or care about the plight of the common people? All he ever talked about was horse races and boxing matches and the trouble he and his friends managed to avoid.

  “Hush, Claudia, you don’t want the servants to hear,” Cecily’s father said.

  “The servants be damned!”

  Cecily recognized the rising pitch of her mother’s voice. It was one step away from the point at which she started throwing things. Cecily jumped up and made her entrance to distract her mother.

  “What on earth is going on? Sebastian can’t possibly be a Luddite. Remember how he raved about the new machines that time he visited Mr. Watkins’ factory? Do try to calm down, Mama. It must all be a mistake.”

  Cecily pushed her mother gently onto a sofa but Claudia’s posture remained rigid. There would be no calming her down if she didn’t want to be calmed down.

  “Papa,” Cecily said, standing next to her mother. “What kind of muddle has Sebastian gotten himself into this time?”

  “His worst one yet, I’m afraid.” Henry Bettencourt rubbed the bald spot at the back of his head and dropped into the chair behind his desk.

  “When Sebastian was raving about Watkins’ machines,” Henry explained, fiddling with some papers on the desk, “he failed to mention a certain young woman who caught his eye. An employee of Watkins, wasn’t it, my dear?”

  Claudia nodded.

  “And we all know what happens when your brother falls in love.”

  “Just wait, Papa. He’ll be in love with somebody more suitable before the month is out. That’s the other thing that happens when Sebastian falls in love, you know. He falls right back out soon enough.”

  “The thing is, my dear,” Claudia said. “Your brother has gotten himself arrested.”

  Cecily shook her head and walked to the window. “For being a Luddite? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “For associating with Luddites, actually,” her father explained. “Apparently he was sitting down to Sunday dinner with this girl’s family when the magistrate burst into the house and arrested the father for machine breaking. Unfortunately, they took away all the men present.”

  Cecily sat down next to her mother. Her father was on his feet now, pacing, and it was making her queasy.

  “I’ve written to our man Bingham in York, of course. I’m confident he’ll be able to get Sebastian out of jail. I just don’t know if we’ll be able to keep it quiet.”

  “Wild oats, Papa.” Cecily dismissed the possibility of scandal with a wave of her hand. “Nobody cares about the scrapes boys Sebastian’s age get themselves into.”

  “Well, your mother cares.”

  “He can carry on with all the wealthy widows and unhappily married ladies he wants, for all I care,” Claudia explained. “But a common factory worker? I won’t stand for it. I’ll see that at least one of my children is respectably married before I’m in my grave and, since Sebastian is too young, that means you, Cecily.”

  Cecily blinked. Had she missed something? And why was her mother pressing the back of her hand against her forehead? Claudia Bettencourt gave people headaches. She didn’t get them.

  “But you always say the women in your family live long enough to wear out their welcome,” Cecily said.

  “It’s all a matter of balance within the family,” Claudia explained, ignoring Cecily’s comment. “If your brother refuses to behave even a little bit respectably, then you must be that much more respectable. And that means not moldering out here in the country until you become a spinster.”

  Cecily opened her mouth to object but she could not exactly inform her mother of her plans. She intended to become a spinster—a very happy spinster like Aunt Alice had been in her youth, with lots of lovers. In two more years Cecily would be twenty-six and s
he would come into her inheritance from her grandmother. She would lease a little house in London and launch herself in the world. But her parents didn’t know that Cecily knew the way Alice had lived her life behind the doors of her little house in a respectable but unglamorous part of London. They probably didn’t even know about the lurid books hidden behind out-of-date scientific tomes in Aunt Alice’s library.

  “I’ve received a letter from Beatrice today,” Claudia continued, pulling a tightly folded piece of paper from her sleeve and brandishing it at Cecily. “As you both know, little Julia will be coming out next season. Poor Beatrice dreads the prospect of having two daughters to chaperone about town, so she’s determined to have Amelia settled, engaged if not wed, by the new year.”

  “That’s easy,” Cecily declared. “All they have to do is sell off a few of Uncle Reggie’s horses. Amelia would find herself a husband immediately.”

  “What have horses to do with husbands?” Claudia wanted to know.

  “Everything, where Amelia’s concerned.” Cecily let out an impatient sigh. “Really, Mama, how can you not know this about Amelia? She lives for two things. Clothes and horses. She has more clothes than I could wear in a lifetime and Uncle Reggie spends a fortune on his stable. How could she improve on that?”

  “But she doesn’t have a husband. Every girl wants a husband,” Claudia insisted.

  “Not every girl, Mama. Believe me. Amelia received three offers last season, correct?”

  “Irresistible offers, I would have thought,” Claudia added.

  “But not to Amelia. I believe the complaints were ‘no appreciation of excellent horseflesh,’ ‘can’t tell a gelding from a stallion,’ and something about a ‘poor seat’.”

  “I’ll never understand you English girls. You make a mother’s job so difficult. But I will be certain to advise Beatrice to invite young men with impressive stables.”