by Carola Dunn
“To the stables!”
Cecily nodded. She was in no fit state to go in through the front door.
They rode through a stone arch into the deserted stable yard. Cecily walked Dapple over to a mounting block. Iain dismounted and hurried to give her a hand.
As she started to slide down, her soaked skirts tangled around her legs. She lost her balance. In spite of his steadying hand she would have fallen, but he caught her in his arms.
For an immeasurable aeon he held her, while their eyes spoke to each other of dreams and wishes, of passion and tenderness.
Boot-nails sounded on the cobbles. “Coming, m’lady!”
Instantly Iain released Cecily. Scooping up the train of her habit, she fled.
At the archway she paused to glance back. Through the pelting raindrops, with smarting eyes, she saw Iain staring after her. His face was a mask of yearning and despair.
Chapter 6
Cecily sat by the fire in her chamber, her chilled hands wrapped around a hot cup of tea. She was scarcely aware of her abigail moving about, tut-tutting over her sodden habit and ruined hat. Through the rising steam from the tea, in the flickering flames she saw Iain’s face.
All the tea in China could not wash away the lump in her throat.
Her parents would never let her wed a physician, despite his connection to the Duchess of Pembroke and Viscountess Sutton, even if she were not as good as promised to Lord Avon. She could not claim they had not consulted her wishes. Had she expressed the least distaste for the marquis they would have politely declined the invitation to spend Christmas at Felversham.
She did not dislike the marquis, but she had never bargained for falling headlong in love with his cousin!
“Cecy, my love!” Lady Flint bustled into the room. “What is this I hear of your taking a wetting? I was sure you must have returned before the downpour. Wherever have you been?”
“Felversham is very large, Mama. I rode further than I intended. The mare the Duke bought for my use is a darling.”
“So very kind of Pembroke! Well, child, Lord Avon is come back from the hunt and enquiring after you, but you must be sure your hair is quite dry before you come down. It will not do to be falling ill at such a time.”
“No, Mama.”
After a flash of hope, Cecily decided regretfully that illness was no solution. It would postpone Lord Avon’s proposal, but not prevent it.
He was as committed as she was, or more. A gentleman’s honour simply did not allow him to fail to come up to scratch—in the vulgar phrase Mama deplored—after such indications as he had given. Even if she succeeded in giving him a disgust of her, he was honour-bound to request her hand.
What if she simply refused his offer?
She would without a second thought if she saw the slightest chance of being permitted to wed Iain. Failing that, to reject Lord Avon would open both of them to the utmost opprobium. As a gentleman he could not expose her as a jilt. People would assume he had dishonourably failed to propose—and wonder what she had done to cause such a dereliction of duty in one whose honour was hitherto unsmirched.
So many people would be hurt. Cecily herself would have earned her disgrace, but Lord Avon had done nothing to deserve to be made the target of a thousand spiteful tongues. Nor did the Duchess deserve to see her son condemned. Cecily’s own Mama would be cast into the depths of despair, dear, kind Mama who wanted only what was best for her daughter.
And what was best included a titled, wealthy husband.
“Cecy, you are woolgathering, I declare. Have you heard a word I have said?”
“I must be sure to dry my hair?” Cecily hazarded.
“Yes, but since then! Well, no matter, it was nothing of importance and I am sure a girl in your happy position is entitled to a little daydreaming! You had best wear the burgundy red merino when you come down. It is warm as well as elegant.”
“Yes, Mama.”
Cecily’s thoughts twisted and turned and found no way out, and Iain’s expression had made plain his absence of hope. On top of all other obstacles, he must fear being regarded as a fortune-hunter. Their love was doomed.
All that remained was to make sure no one guessed, to conceal their pain and carry on with dignity as if the world had not been rocked to its foundations.
* * * *
In a spirit of gallant self-sacrifice, Cecily went downstairs as soon as her maid declared her hair dry. Lord Avon invited her to go with him to inspect his ancestors in the portrait gallery.
Afraid he meant to propose, she panicked for a moment. Her discovery of her love for Iain was too new to bear such a strain with equanimity. Time—even just a few days—must surely enable her to bear it with decent composure.
Perhaps Elspeth saw her dismay in her face, if not the reason for it, for she said brightly, “It is an age since I admired the first duke. Such a handsome, well-set-up fellow, Cecily, even in the extraordinary clothes Tudor nobles wore. May I go with you, cousin?”
Lord Avon made no demur. Together they went up to the long gallery, where the tall windows along one side admitted enough of the grey, wintery light to view the paintings on the opposite wall.
Elspeth’s irreverent comments on the portraits made Cecily laugh in spite of her broken heart. They moved from the ruffs and pointed beards of the Elizabethans, past the long, curling Jacobean wigs and the last century’s powdered hair (“So aging!” said Elspeth).
Coming unexpectedly face to face with Iain, Cecily gasped.
“Not a bad likeness, is it?” Lord Avon drawled, and she realized he too was in the picture. “At least you can recognize us. Stubbs generally did a better job of horses than of people, which was all Iain and I were concerned about at the time. Those were our first hunters.”
“And this was mine,” said Elspeth, moving on to the next canvas. “Dear old Pegasus. Stubbs was dead by then, much to my fury. What a figure I had in those days,” she sighed.
“And still do, coz. There is a place in this life for the matronly.”
“Wretch! But there, Cecily, you need not fear putting on a pound or two.”
Lord Avon gave her a repressive frown, to which she responded with an irrepressible smile. Cecily felt ready to sink beneath the weight of expectations, but at least she had not given herself and Iain away with her unguarded reaction to his portrait.
She did not see him again until just before dinner, and there were enough other people about to make it unnecessary for them to speak to each other. Seated between Lord Avon and one of his uncles, she was at the opposite end of the table and on the same side as Iain, so she could not even see him. Out of sight, out of mind, she told herself sternly.
It did not work. She was constantly conscious of his unseen presence, breathing the same air, eating the same dishes from the same gold-rimmed porcelain, hearing the same buzz of polite conversation. Did he try to distinguish her voice with the same involuntary eagerness as she listened for his?
Or had she imagined he cared as much as she did?
That horrid possibility struck her as she left the dining room with the other ladies. She almost looked back, but stopped herself just in time. And reminded herself that if he did not love her after all, then at least only she would be hurt.
One thing she was certain of: she could not sit through a game of chess with him this evening with any degree of calm. The prospect of a game with the Duke without Iain’s support was almost equally dismaying. Nor would she be able to keep her mind on cards, or find the right notes if she had to sing or play.
She might retire early with a claim of suffering the ill effects of her wetting, but what if Mama asked Iain to treat her?
The gentlemen came in while Cecily was still dithering. A brief glimpse of Iain’s face before he turned away to speak to his sister was enough to reassure her of his love—and his despair.
As Lord Avon approached her, one of his brothers-in-law caught up with him and challenged him to a game of billiards.<
br />
“I want my revenge for last night’s débâcle,” he said.
“Later, old fellow. Lady Cecily, are you going to give my father a chance for revenge at chess, or will you give us some music?”
The words popped out of Cecily’s mouth: “I should like to learn to play billiards, sir, if you would be so kind as to teach me?”
His well-concealed but perceptible boredom turned to startlement. Billiards was even more of a male province than chess! What would Mama think of her boldness?
But Lord Avon assented with a smile of indulgent amusement. “Intent on setting us all by the ears?” he murmured sardonically.
“No!”
“Ah, just tired of being angelic all the time? Mama tells me you played the angel to the Diver boy again this morning.”
“He is a nice boy, and I am sure he will make your mother an unexceptionable page.”
“No doubt. Garwich,” he said to his brother-in-law, “do join us in the billiard room, and be a good fellow, see if you can prevail upon Sophia to come too. She used to play before she metamorphosed from a schoolroom miss into a proper young lady.”
Cecily managed to quite enjoy the evening, though unceasing heartsickness lurked behind every smile, every cry of triumph at a good shot and groan of disgust at a bad one. She could not but notice that though Lord Avon stood close behind her, his arms around her, his hands on hers as he helped her line up the cue, her senses stirred not at all.
The least touch, a mere look from Iain was enough to set her all a-flutter.
She did not see him again until the next morning when the whole company drove down to the village church for the Christmas morning service. The church was crammed with the nobility, villagers and farm people. Somehow Iain and the Suttons ended up in the pew just behind Cecily and her parents. Throughout the service, she was acutely conscious of his gaze on the back of her neck, to the point where she lost her place in carols she had known by heart since childhood.
At the end, when she followed her parents out of the pew, she and Iain reached the aisle at the same moment. In the crowd, perforce he offered her his arm. The unnatural silence between them quivered with tension as they made their slow way from the church.
If only it were Iain who would escort her down the aisle from the altar a few short weeks hence!
Lord Avon awaited them by the church door. “Ah, you’ve extricated her in one piece, coz! A devilish crush. Come, I’ll drive you both home in my curricle, you won’t be any worse squashed.”
To protest would have looked churlish on Cecily’s part. She looked at Iain at last, watched him lose the battle with temptation. Intimately squeezed between two gentlemen, in love with one, bound to wed the other, she had to call upon every iota of self-discipline and self-respect to preserve a calm, ladylike demeanour.
Having survived that agony, she thought as she went up to take off her pelisse and bonnet, she need no longer seek to avoid Iain. Surely it would not be wrong to take a forlorn pleasure his company—in company, of course—until a formal betrothal forced her to give all her loyalty to Lord Avon.
Perhaps Iain came to the same conclusion. At least, he had no chance to stay aloof, for he was in his element when the children joined the company for Christmas fun. His nieces and nephews and young cousins adored him no less than the village children.
Since even the urbane Lord Avon took part in the games of speculation, charades, lotto, jack-straws, and snap-dragon, Cecily had no qualms about enjoying herself. On Christmas Day, Mama could not frown upon a bit of a romp.
The day ended all too soon. In the days that followed, soberer pastimes returned. Cecily continued to play billiards with Lord Avon occasionally, but she also played chess with the Duke with Iain’s assistance, and sometimes with Iain alone. She asked after his patients, too, and they talked about life in Bath, in London, and at her country home. The weather turning crisp and fine, on hunt days he walked with her and Elspeth in the shrubbery, though they did not ride together again.
They both succeeded in maintaining a front of friendly cordiality. Cecily wondered if he found it as much of a strain as she did.
And constantly she wondered when Lord Avon was going to make his formal request for her hand.
The arrival of a stream of new guests reminded her that the New Year’s ball was tomorrow. Quite likely Lord Avon would consider that a suitable time for a proposal of marriage.
That evening she was unable to evade taking her turn at the spinet. Rebelling against complex sonatas and arias, she chose to play and sing a simple ballad to which she could do more justice—a Scots ballad.
“‘The king sits in Dunfermline town,’“ she warbled,
“‘Drinking the blood-red wine,
“‘Oh where will I get a skilful skipper
“‘To sail this ship of mine?’“
By the time she had drowned Sir Patrick Spens “with the Scots lords at his feet,” she was in a thoroughly mournful mood. When the hearty applause died away, she launched into Come you not from Newcastle?
“‘Come you not there away?
“‘Oh, saw you not my true love,
“‘Riding on a bonny bay?’“
As she sang, she avoided Mama’s eyes, for Mama did not approve of common ballads in company. She avoided Lord Avon’s eyes, for he was not her true love. She avoided....She could not stop herself. Her gaze was drawn to Iain like a weary bird to its nest.
“‘Why should I not love my love?
“‘Why should not my love love me?
“‘Why should I not ride after him
“‘Since love to all is free?’“
Iain watched her, his face stony all but his eyes, where his heart lay vulnerable, exposed for any to see whose attention was not fixed on the fair performer.
At his side, Elspeth whispered, “Lud, to think I thought her singing wooden!” She looked at him and frowned. “Iain?”
He essayed a smile. “She sings well, does she not?”
Elspeth glanced at Cecily, then back at her brother. “Oh, my poor dear! I had not guessed. No hope?”
“She is titled and wealthy.” Softly as he spoke, his voice cracked. “And if she were not, how could I stoop to stealing Jasper’s bride?”
Chapter 7
“Lady Cecily, I had not meant to speak for a few days yet.” Lord Avon’s voice was husky. “But tonight you are so enchanting I cannot delay.”
Cecily moved away from her suitor to one of the gallery’s tall windows. Outside a near full moon sparkled on frosty gardens and, shining through the panes, gleamed on the silver net overskirt of her white satin ball-gown. She shivered. The moment had come, and she had utterly lost sight of the resigned meekness she needed now.
“Sir?” she quavered.
“Cecily, you cannot be unaware of my intention. I own that I formed it in a spirit of dutiful compliance with my parents’ wishes, but in the past week I have come to believe I am lucky beyond my deserts to have chosen you. Will you do me the very great honour of becoming my wife?”
Wife. If he had simply asked for her hand, she might have brought herself to say yes. If he had spoken the word “marriage,” it would not have made her flinch. But wife was so intimate a term! She could not be his wife.
She could not bear it, and—in a flash the realization came to her—she would be cheating him. He did not deserve a wife who loved someone else.
“I cannot!” she wailed. “I meant to say yes, truly I did. I would not for the world have let you imagine I intended to say yes if I had not.”
“Dutiful compliance with your parents’ wishes?” he wryly echoed himself. Hands on her shoulders, he turned her so that the light from the wall sconces fell on her face. “But when it comes to the point, you find the idea so distasteful.... I had thought we might deal very well together. Do you dislike me so much? No.” He laid a finger on her lips. “I shall not press you for an answer.”
“Indeed, sir, I don’t dislike you at all,” Ce
cily assured him. “I would gladly have done my duty, but then....” She faltered, but she owed him an explanation. “You see, quite unexpectedly I fell in love.”
Lord Avon raised his eyebrows, his expression reflective. “I do see. Now who...? Good Lord! Forgive me if I dare hazard a guess. Is it Iain?”
She nodded, with difficulty holding back a flood of tears.
“Then you are quite right, we cannot marry. I find I have no desire whatever to be wed to my cousin’s beloved.” He paused. “Forgive me again, I suppose he does love you?”
“I...I think so. He has not said.”
“No, he wouldn’t, knowing of the understanding between us—between our families, perhaps I should say. I’ll tell him that is at an end.”
“Th-thank you, but it won’t h-help! Mama and Papa will never let me marry a d-doctor.”
“And Iain is too proud to press his suit so far above his rank and fortune,” Lord Avon said thoughtfully. “Now don’t cry, Cecily, I beg of you.” He pressed a handkerchief into her hand. “We must return to the ball room looking well pleased with each other if we are to baffle the gossipmongers.”
“There is b-bound to be the horridest gossip anyway. Everyone believes we are practically b-betrothed.”
He put on his haughtiest air. “You and I, my dear Lady Cecily, are of too exalted a station to care for the bibble-babble of the prattle-boxes.”
Cecily produced a watery giggle, marred by a sniff. “I daresay it will not be half so bad if neither of us appears mortified, but I shall find it very hard to seem ch-cheerful.”
“You shan’t, my dear, because you have my promise I shall find a way out of this maze. I shall make it impossible for Iain not to ask for your hand, and impossible for your father to refuse it.”
“Only...only if he truly loves me.”
“Oh, I believe you may count on that,” said Lord Avon dryly. “Now I come to think of it, it would explain why he has spent the past week looking as if half a dozen of his wealthiest patients just dropped dead. But, if you have no objection, I shall consult Cousin Elspeth. She’s bound to know what’s going on in her brother’s head.”
