She pushed back her chair, feeling the vigor of renewed resolve.
“Cecily!” Aunt Beatrice called out before she had taken two steps. “Did you still need me to help you alter that gown?”
Cecily hesitated, wavering between pity and a desire for revenge on all parents who rushed their daughters into choosing husbands. She looked at the Cunninghams, whom her aunt had invited of her own free will, and considered the prospect of Amelia married to either one of their insipid sons. Really, pity didn’t have a chance.
“Oh! Right,” she said. “Thank you, but I’ve already taken care of it.” She smiled sweetly and left the room feeling like she had returned balance to the world.
The house sounded quite full of the older members of the party, though there were only about half a dozen of them. Cecily suspected that all their plotting and planning to get their children married off gave them the appearance of taking up more space than they really did. If that was the case, though, she required a good deal of extra space too. She wondered idly if there had ever before been a house so full of plotters and schemers—royal residences excluded, of course.
This thought took Cecily into the garden and occupied her mind to such a degree that she didn’t see her father before he saw her, at which point it was too late to hide behind a tree.
“Cecily, my girl!” He gestured for her to join him where he stood with Perry under the ancient oak tree. “Such a grand morning. It makes me feel ten years younger.”
“Good morning, Papa. Good morning, Mr. Munk.”
Perry smiled and inclined his head.
“Why aren’t you out with the other equestrians?” Cecily asked him.
“I may be many things, Miss Bettencourt, but nobody who knows me would accuse me of being an equestrian. Besides,” he added with a shudder, “I can’t bear the thought of what a cross-country jaunt on horseback would do to my clothes. I’m sure they’d never be the same again.”
“You’re quite right to be concerned about them. The fresh air and sunlight might fade them,” Cecily said, squinting her eyes against the sight of his bright green-and-yellow stripes.
“Heaven forbid!”
Cecily laughed and threw her father a quick glance, but instead of the discomfort she expected to see as a result of her flirting with a fop, he was practically beaming. It was a good thing she still had the Italian prince up her sleeve. It seemed that Mr. Munk wasn’t going to serve her purpose after all.
“Oh to be young again!” Henry said, stretching his arms out in front of him.
Cecily transferred her squinting attention from Perry to her father.
“What on earth are you talking about?” she asked with a degree of testiness she had not intended.
Henry smiled benignly and said, “Let’s take a turn around the garden, shall we?” And before Cecily could invent a previous engagement, he was off across the lawn, heading toward the path that led to the ornamental lake.
“Nothing like a little exercise to warm one up in the morning,” he said over his shoulder as Perry and Cecily hurried to catch up with him.
“Did you know Mr. Munk is interested in sheep?” Henry asked Cecily when she was alongside him. “Damn! Here comes my sister with those Cunningham women.”
Before Cecily could reply to either his question or the comment that followed, Henry veered off the path and headed back across the lawn, leaving Cecily and Perry looking at each other and wondering what to do. They didn’t have long to consider the matter.
“Mr. Munk! Mr. Munk!” Lady Weldon called out across the garden.
Cecily stood next to Perry as they watched the three ladies. She wished she had something clever to say to him, but she could not think of a thing that would not sound as though she were trying very hard to be clever. It was far better, she thought, not to be clever at all than to be known to have to work at it.
“I’m so glad I found you, Mr. Munk,” Lady Weldon said when she was within several paces of them. “I need your assistance.”
Perry raised his eyebrows. “Always glad to be of service to my hostess.”
“I’m planning a little entertainment for this evening and I could use some advice.” She took Perry’s arm and smiled at Cecily. “I’m sure you can spare him, my dear. Run along and catch up with your father. I can’t imagine what sent him running off like that. Come along, Mr. Munk.”
She would have dragged Perry away without another word, but he stood his ground.
“Perhaps we can continue our walk later, Miss Bettencourt. Our hostess needs me.” His mouth twitched, as though he were fighting back a bigger smile than the bland social one he was wearing.
“Yes, of course. That would be lovely,” Cecily said, feeling that she had missed something.
“Come along, now,” Lady Weldon commanded. “We have much to do.”
Cecily watched them all stroll back toward the house and sighed with heartfelt relief when the sound of their voices faded away. She turned back down the path her father had led them to and strolled toward the lake. The sun had just cleared the tops of the trees and the morning chill still lingered in the shade. Cecily pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders and, after standing a moment to watch a pair of swans feeding in the shallows, began walking along the path that skirted the lake.
The quiet under the trees was calming after the socializing of the past twenty-four hours. Six years of living quietly in Yorkshire had not completely destroyed her social skills, but they certainly didn’t come as easily as they had when she was eighteen and in love with every attractive young man who came her way. She had not expected it to be so exhausting to spend hours being pleasant to strangers. Dinner next to that ogling dandy had been especially tiresome. She had not known how to respond to his leering style of flirtation. Almost everything he’d said had left her struggling to think of a reply and feeling more and more dull-witted. By the end of the meal she was angry at him and uncertain of herself, not because of what he said but because of her inability to react in kind.
When she reached the far side of the lake, Cecily heard the sounds of horses and the laughing voices of Amelia’s riding party returning. After a moment’s hesitation, she retreated into the trees in case they should be coming down the path that led from the fields to the lake. It was bad enough that they should disturb the quiet of a fine morning. She didn’t want to have to force that social smile back onto her tired face just yet, especially not in front of Amelia, who knew her well enough to spot her cranky mood and would interrogate her about it at the earliest opportunity.
So she lurked behind a tree, feeling both pleased and foolish, as the horses and their riders continued through the fields that bounded the tree-lined lake on three sides. She listened to the indistinct voices and the laughter that sounded actually genuine. Amelia’s voice was easy to recognize, her laughter ringing out clear and bright. Amelia always laughed when she was on a horse, out of sheer, simple joy. Wilfred’s voice was easy to pick out too, for it seemed never to stop. He chatted on to somebody, or quite possibly to nobody, in a ceaseless, cheerful monologue. The voices of the bachelors and the two young matrons, whose husbands had stayed behind to gather in Lord Weldon’s study and who had no doubt been invited to make the party look like something it was not, all sounded the same to Cecily.
It didn’t matter why Cecily was running through the moonlit woods wearing nothing but her night shift. It didn’t matter whether she was running away from something or searching for something. It only mattered that she was lost and alone and frightened.
The white horse seemed to appear out of nowhere, as if it had stepped straight out of the world of faerie and into the woods. The rider dismounted gracefully and walked up to Cecily, putting his arms around her shoulders and pulling her against him so that she felt enveloped in his warmth and strength.
“You’re safe now,” he said.
Then he led her to the horse and lifted her onto its back. There was no ungraceful scramble to climb on. One
moment she was on her feet and the next, she was on the horse, her shift hiked up above her knees so she could sit astride. Instead of a saddle, the horse wore a heavy blanket, so that when her rescuer mounted behind her, his body locked against hers. He reached around her to pick up the reins and the horse started walking.
Cecily had no idea where he was taking her and she didn’t care. All she could think about was his proximity—his arms on either side of her and his body pressed against her back. The movement of the horse made their bodies rub together and soon Cecily felt that familiar longing. Touch me! she wanted to beg him. Touch me!
She was sure she had not said it out loud, but one of his hands dropped from the reins and came to rest on her leg. A moment later the hand moved to untie the ribbon at the neck of her shift. He ran his fingertips across her collarbone and along the tops of her breasts. Cecily moved her hands, which had been gripping the horse’s mane, to rest on the man’s legs.
“I know what you need,” he whispered against her hair.
“Yes,” was the only response Cecily could manage as her rescuer’s fingers traced a circle around her nipple.
He let go of the reins so he could touch her with both hands. Her shift had fallen open to her navel but she didn’t feel the cold night air. His touch seemed to protect her from that as his hands covered her breasts and he lowered his head to kiss her neck. The heat of his mouth shot through her body and she pushed back against him, wanting to feel him everywhere on her.
Then one of his hands was on her leg again, pushing her shift up until it was nearly to her waist. She felt that strange ache between her legs, like she felt when she read Aunt Alice’s books.
Touch me! she screamed inside her head.
And he did. His fingers found the aching center of her longing and began to stroke up and down and around, drawing a quavering moan out of her.
Had she really made that sound? Cecily felt suddenly foolish hiding in the trees, dreaming about something that could never happen, while people were busy living their lives around her. She thrust aside a low branch that blocked her way and stepped back onto the path to come face-to-face with the most beautiful man she had ever seen, walking down the path toward her not a dozen feet from her hiding place.
“Oh!” they both said, though he said it with an accent and seemed to be the more surprised of the two.
After that brief exclamation, Cecily could not force any words through her mouth. She stood and stared at him, one hand resting over her racing heart, partly from surprise and partly from the lingering effects of her daydream. What kind angel had chosen to drop this man in her path and why? Whatever angel it was, it was an angel who knew her well. The man standing in front of her surely had been plucked directly out of her fantasies. A squarish but not angular face, a solid body, not too tall, slender and wide in all the appropriate places, dark, untamed curls too long for fashion and brown eyes that were melting her on the spot—all were the stuff of her dreams.
He smiled slowly, seductively almost, and bowed low in a very un-English manner.
“I thought I heard a kitten in the bushes,” she blurted out, suddenly desperate to explain her presence in the shrubs. “I followed the sound, but I couldn’t find it.”
“A kind-hearted maiden seeking to help a tiny creature in distress. How enchanting.”
His voice was low and rich, like a caress. Cecily’s nipples tingled and she would have sworn his eyes flickered down in their direction.
“Shall I go find it for you?” he asked.
“Oh no! Thank you, but I suspect it doesn’t want to be found. These country cats so often want to be left alone.”
“Of course.” Another vocal caress, then more briskly, “Let me introduce myself. I am Franco Comestibili.”
Cecily gasped and curtsied. “The Prince of Persepoli!”
“Alas, no,” he said with a smile so sad it would have broken Cecily’s heart if it hadn’t already melted into a puddle. “My grandfather was a prince of Persepoli and I would be as well, but Persepoli is no more. I am simply Mr. Comestibili. And you, perhaps, are Miss Bettencourt?”
“Yes, but how do you know that?”
“Your aunt sent me to find you. Shall we walk?” He offered Cecily his arm, which she accepted with an increasing sense of befuddlement. The only thing that was quite clear in her mind was that her hand was resting on a very nice, solid-feeling arm that reminded her uncomfortably of the arms that had lifted her onto the horse in her fantasy.
“You said my aunt sent you for me,” she said to bring some sense of reality back to the moment. “Did she need me for anything?”
“Only to amuse me, I believe. I’ve spent the morning listening to the gentlemen argue politics and I’m sadly ignorant of English politics, I’m ashamed to admit. I think your aunt took pity on me and sent me to find more pleasant company. You suspect her of ulterior motives?”
“I’m afraid I suspect everybody of ulterior motives these days.”
“Lady Weldon’s command did have a curious effect on a gentleman who I believe to be your father.”
“My guess is that he turned red and stopped breathing.”
Franco raised his dark eyebrows and waited for an explanation.
“My father doesn’t much care for Italians,” Cecily said, understating the fact. “And Aunt Beatrice knows it.”
The eyebrows furrowed together. “But is not the tall Italian lady I met your mother?”
“She’s the only exception,” Cecily explained. “Everything else even remotely Italian he loathes. You see, he believes my mother’s father tricked him into the marriage and even though he adored my mother from the moment he first saw her, he resents being tricked and I’m afraid he blames the whole country for it.”
“And so your aunt sent me to you to spite him.”
“No, not for spite, I think. For fun. She merely has a wicked streak. They generally get along quite well.”
Franco was silent for a moment as they walked through the dappled sunlight under the trees, no doubt pondering the idiocies of the Bettencourt family, which Cecily very much regretted having revealed. Until yesterday, she had been too long away from handsome men and the presence of this one was making it hard to think straight.
“You speak excellent English,” she said to divert his thoughts.
“I’m a product of your public schools. Born in France, schooled in England. I didn’t set foot in Italy until I was twenty.”
It sounded to Cecily like a shopping list. She suspected he had to give a brief history of himself to everyone he met.
“What an excellent view of the house!” he exclaimed.
They had just emerged from the trees and had an unimpeded view of the house at an angle that showed them the back and one side of it, with all its numerous chimneys and terraces and the tall windows that lined the two lower floors.
They stood looking at it for a moment. Then Franco said, “I do believe everything in England is built to impress rather than to please the eye.”
“It is something of a monstrosity, isn’t it?” Cecily said, looking at the house for the first time with the eyes of someone who had not spent long summer holidays there. “My uncle’s ancestor built it in the hopes that Queen Elizabeth would visit on one of her processions through the country.”
“And did she?”
Cecily looked up at him. “No, and the expense of the house nearly broke him. If I remember correctly, he died a short time later.”
“How tragic.”
Cecily wanted to kick herself. Where did one take a conversation from that low point?
“You know,” Franco said, leading her not back toward the house, but across to the garden, “your father was not the only one who appeared displeased when Lady Weldon sent me out to find you.”
“Oh?”
“A young gentleman whose name I don’t recall tried to tell your aunt some tale about you wanting to be alone. At least, I think he was young. It was difficult seein
g through the glare of his stripes.”
Cecily laughed. “You must mean Mr. Munk.”
“Yes, that’s the name. Does he also dislike Italians?”
“No, not that I know of.”
“He dislikes competition, then,” Franco said with a decisive nod.
“What? Oh don’t be absurd, sir. Mr. Munk only just met me yesterday. We barely know each other.”
Franco bent his head closer to hers and whispered, “Then why are you blushing?”
“Because a gentleman should not speak of such things to a lady he hardly knows,” she improvised.
Franco studied her for a moment. “I don’t think such indignation suits you, Miss Bettencourt. That I can tell, even on such a short acquaintance.”
“Besides,” Cecily added to put the matter to rest, “Mr. Munk is not here to find a wife, or so he led me to believe.”
Franco appeared to be mulling over this information as they walked along the winding garden path. Once again she had told him more than she’d meant to and she decided that any other topic would be better than the one they had just left.
“I know you’re not here to find a wife,” she said with a coy look that she knew probably looked ridiculous. She really had to spend more time practicing in front of a mirror.
Franco shrugged.
“Ha! I thought not. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve come to engage in a transaction.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him give her a brief, hard glance. She went on heedlessly.
“You’re here to make a purchase. No! You’re here to sell something.” She was remembering that her uncle had met Franco at the racecourse, so she guessed that money and horses would be changing hands. And if she knew anything about deposed royalty, it was that they were always looking for buyers for their family treasures so they could live in high style for a few more months. The no-longer-reigning family of Persepoli was probably selling off its stable one horse at a time.
Cecily smiled smugly, certain she’d won her little guessing game, and waited for verification.
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