He’d lied to her. He’d allowed her to go on believing Jonathon was dead. If he truly loved her, how could he have let her go on like that? A bewildering sense of loss weighed on her chest, pressed on her heart, despite her joy at having her brother back.
Rand still had not returned hours later, when Winters announced a caller.
This ought to be interesting.
Cecily checked her reflection and went down to see Lavinia.
“I suppose you’ve heard,” said Lavinia without preamble. “The news of it will get out soon enough.”
“The news of what, pray?” said Cecily. Good God, she’d borne quite enough startling revelations for one day.
“Your brother! Back from the dead,” said Lavinia. “He had the effrontery to let himself into our house last night and warn Bertram of his imminent return.”
Effrontery? Foolhardiness, more like it. Why on earth would Jonathon do such a thing? No one was supposed to know about this yet. But she knew why. His sense of honor dictated that he must do the right thing by his cousin, regardless of the possible danger to himself.
Lavinia glanced about her. “Might I possibly sit down? Or do you mean to keep me standing about?”
“I mean to keep you standing about,” said Cecily. “You will not be here long enough to sit down, dear Cousin.”
“Well! I thought you would have something kind to say to me, now that you know we shall be tossed from our home, dispossessed of everything but the clothes on our backs.”
Cecily snorted. “I should feel sorry for you if I thought that would actually happen. Jonathon will give you a house and a pension, too, and you know it. Besides, I’ve no doubt you managed to feather your nest very nicely—” She broke off at a subtle wariness in Lavinia’s expression.
She narrowed her eyes at Lavinia. “You knew, didn’t you? All along, you sold everything you could, made every penny possible out of your tenure because you knew it wouldn’t last. I hear Bertram won substantial sums from young greenhorns at the gaming tables, too.”
Lavinia gave her a stony look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“My pearls, for one thing,” said Cecily. “That was a desperate gambit, wasn’t it? Difficult to get a fair price for such a well-known piece.”
Reddening, the former countess said, “You’re insulting!”
“That was my intention, Lavinia,” Cecily agreed. And believe me, I could go on all day. That is why I did not ask you to sit down, you see. I am sure you would not wish to remain here another minute!”
Cecily smiled sweetly. “Will you leave now or shall I have my butler escort you from the premises?”
With Lavinia gone amid a storm of furious indignation, Cecily sagged. The shock of seeing Jonathon again, the sheer joy of realizing he was alive after all these years, the pain of Rand’s betrayal—all of this turbulent emotion left her spent.
Yet, she must decide how to deal with the situation in which she now found herself.
She couldn’t do that here. She didn’t think she could face Rand again, not without pouring out a load of recriminations, not without poisoning any hope they might have to put this awful betrayal behind them.
* * *
Rand returned to a quiet house. That was not such an unusual thing, but there was a quality to the quiet that he found disturbing. Or was that just his guilty conscience at play?
“Is the duchess at home, Winters?” Rand, handed the butler his hat and coat.
“Her Grace left you this, Your Grace.” Winters handed him a letter affixed with a seal.
With a terrible clench in his stomach, Rand read. He scanned the missive quickly, noting only that she’d left and it was his fault and she didn’t say where she had gone.
A violent sense of injustice ripped through him. He crushed the letter in his hand. Why had Jon come back now? If only he’d had the leisure to break the news gently, to then work toward Jon’s safe return, Cecily might not have taken it this way.
Ah, but who was he fooling? Rand opened his fingers one by one and slowly smoothed out the single page again.
That one paragraph shouted at him as if it were printed in capitals and underlined three times:
Jonathon said he chose you to clean up after him because he knew you were a man who trusted no one. He chose well, Rand, didn’t he? You did not even trust me.
Especially not me.
That wasn’t true. He did trust her to keep Jonathon’s secret. He simply hadn’t had faith that she’d forgive him if he told her what he’d done. And he’d longed to fix things so that he could present her brother to her all redeemed and safe and reestablished in the world. He’d wanted everything tied up with a neat bow.
As it was, his plan was a gamble. If it didn’t succeed, there would be no second chances. Rand would not convince anyone of Jonathon’s death a second time. Unless he produced Jonathon’s lifeless body, that was.
His first impulse was to chase after Cecily, to justify himself to her and beg her forgiveness. He was fairly certain he knew where she’d gone.
But she had suffered through much in the last week. She needed time to mull over all that had happened. And he needed to put his faith in her love for him. That was all he could do, he realized. There was no way he could persuade or maneuver or manipulate her into forgiving him, into loving him. She needed to arrive at that destination on her own.
In the meantime, he would do all in his power to make her brother a laughingstock as a scientist so he could take up his proper place in the world once more.
Sometimes in life, there were no good choices. Only the lesser of two evils.
Chapter Twenty-one
The first whiff of summer in the air at Harcourt made Cecily more than usually nostalgic for cricket on the lawn, lemonade and tea cakes, picnics and exploratory rambles, practical jokes. And above all, her cousins who had filled this place with their childish pranks and laughter.
She’d been here for weeks now, aimlessly wandering. She’d told herself she wanted to check on her collection of creative protégées in the village.
In truth, she’d come down here to brood over the wrongs of one Duke of Ashburn. And yet, her mind kept shying away from the subject. She didn’t want to relive the awful hurt of discovering he’d kept such an enormous secret from her.
She most particularly didn’t want to let herself blame Jon.
But the Duke of Montford commanded her presence at his annual ball and she must go to that, of course. No one refused an invitation to this event. It was the highlight of every season.
More important, she must come to a decision about how to live this married life.
No, she didn’t want to blame Jon.
Yet, it had been Jonathon’s decision not to inform her of what he meant to do when he’d staged his own death. It had been Jonathon who, in turn, had sworn Rand to secrecy.
Ought she to blame Rand for keeping his word? Her irrational self said, Yes, of course! If their positions had been reversed, she would have told him. Knowing how greatly she’d suffered from losing her brother, how could Rand have kept silent?
Perhaps he would have told her, eventually. Perhaps he was waiting for the right time.
But in not telling her and marrying her anyway, he’d taken away her choice. She would most probably have refused to marry him if she’d known him capable of such a great deceit.
She had come to the Duke of Montford’s country seat to brood and to decide how this marriage of theirs would be. She needed time away from Rand to do that. When she was with him, it was so very easy to give in to whatever he wanted.
That was love for you. You had to be strong to give it and to receive it in return. Even stronger to remain true to yourself when that weaker part of you always longed to give and give everything you had to the other person.
She needed to regain her balance. How could she keep her self-respect when she loved Rand so much, she was prepared to forgive him anything?
S
urely there were some things that were unforgivable, even in someone you loved? Only she didn’t know where the limits of her own capacity to forgive might be.
* * *
She was out, they’d said, waving vaguely toward the lake and beyond. He’d searched for her until the twilight spread over the countryside like a velvet blanket.
He found her, finally, on a small footbridge that arched over a narrow stretch of brook. She had been idly breaking smaller twigs off a stick and throwing them down into the rushing water.
He paused before he got to the bridge itself, watching the way the breeze lifted and toyed with the little tendrils that curled at her temples. He remembered that first night they’d met, when he’d ached to reach out and twist that soft, dark loveliness around his finger.
Desire swept over him in a dizzying rush, but there was a sweet base note of tenderness that wound through that emotion. She looked very sweet and very dear standing up there like a child playing a game. And yet, he suspected her reception of him would be anything but sweet.
At the click of his boots on the wooden planks, she looked up, her face lightening as if she were glad to see him.
“Good evening, Ashburn,” she said cordially.
Rand stopped short, feeling like he’d been kicked in the viscera. He almost expected her to hold out her hand for him to shake it.
He would have preferred her to ignore him or scratch his eyes out. Anything but this affable politeness. He realized he had probably made a mistake, leaving her alone for so long. But at least the business with Jon was wrapped up now.
“I hear my brother is making quite a splash in society,” said Cecily.
Well, there went the element of surprise.
“Yes, I believe so,” said Rand. “His tale of kidnap and memory loss is terribly romantic. The ladies find him pale and interesting.”
“He’ll take up writing poetry next,” Cecily said.
“I shouldn’t be at all surprised.”
Silence lengthened between them.
“Will it answer, do you think? All of those academics discrediting Jon’s ideas?”
“Oh, I think so,” said Rand. “His credibility has been shot to pieces. He has been painted as a wealthy dilettante who dabbled in science and made grandiose claims that were entirely unsubstantiated. Even his mentors at Cambridge seek to distance themselves.”
“Hypocrites!” said Cecily. She stared down into the water. “Poor Jon! It would be utterly galling to have all that said about you.”
“I think, on balance, that he is not displeased. He has his old life back. I suppose he might even think of settling down now.”
“And what of Bertram and Lavinia?” Cecily asked. “Will they keep quiet about Jonathon?”
“They aren’t likely to tell anyone they knew he was alive while they occupied the estate and title. They have been assured a generous pension,” Rand said. “On condition that Lavinia returns everything she misappropriated for her personal use from the estate.”
“I doubt she can fulfill that condition,” said Cecily. “I still wonder what she intended to do with my pearls.”
He had the sudden, powerful memory of kissing those pearls, of trailing them over soft, white skin. Of Cecily, lying pliant and rapturous beneath him.
“I was going to tell you about Jonathon as soon as he gave me leave to do so,” he said.
“That may be so,” she said. “I cannot blame you for keeping a confidence, can I?” Her lips trembled. She pressed them together; then on a gasp, she said, “But I can blame you for marrying me when I was ignorant of the truth.”
He threw up a hand in frustration, knowing she was right and yet so desperate to get her back, he longed for her to say none of it mattered.
“Yes,” he said, “I was a coward. It had taken me so long to win you, and then everything happened at once. You were so … resistant to the idea of marrying me for such a long time. Once you’d finally agreed, I didn’t want to offer you the least excuse to cry off.”
“You made the decision for me, in fact,” said Cecily. “Once again, you gave me no choice.”
“That was wrong. Please forgive me. But whatever I did, I did out of love for you. I hope that counts at least a little in my favor.”
He put his hand on hers. “Cecily, I would like us to start all over again. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll court you as if none of this—Norland, the marriage, Jonathon—as if none of it had happened. Just you and me, Cecily. No more lies.”
“That is quite unnecessary.” She tossed the remainder of her stick into the brook and walked past him to descend to the other side of the bridge. “For better or for worse, we are husband and wife. I do not intend to make you jump through hoops like a trained dog, Ashburn. That would be demeaning for both of us.”
All at once, he recognized this manner. It was the same one she’d used toward Norland. She had decided she would set him at a distance.
“No.”
She stopped in the lee of a huge plane tree and turned her head to look at him sharply.
“No!” he said again. “You are not going to keep me at arm’s length.”
“Arm’s length?” She raised her eyebrows in innocent inquiry, but those dark eyes snapped. She held out her hand, as if to refute this. “What nonsense. You haven’t even tried to kiss me, you know.”
And there it was again, that amused, slightly derisive tone. And he was damned if he’d stand for it.
He took the hand she held out and yanked her into his arms. “A kiss?” he growled. “I’ll give you a kiss.”
And he did. He gave her everything he had in that kiss. “I love you, Cecily.” He groaned out the words. “I made a mistake. I’ll undoubtedly make more and so will you. And we’ll argue and fight and forgive each other because that’s what two strong-willed people who love each other do. But don’t ever leave me. Please.”
In a breathless voice, Cecily said, “Who said anything about leaving you, Rand?”
Not good enough, he thought. And he swept her off her feet and tumbled her down to the grassy verge.
He settled between her legs, effectively trapping her by lying on her gown.
She pushed at his shoulders. “Not here. In a bed, where it’s proper.”
He gave her a wolfish grin. “No, sweet Cecily. There is not going to be anything proper about this.”
She met his gaze and he saw the answering fire flare to life in those dark depths. Though he sensed she’d already surrendered, he pinned her wrists to the ground above her head while he kissed her, until her lips quivered and clung and her mouth opened to his kiss.
When he lifted his head, she gazed up at him, her eyes melting, lips plump with his kisses. The curling tendrils that always escaped her coiffure to frame her face stirred in the light breeze.
“I do love you, Rand,” she said solemnly, clearly. “But if you ever try to ride roughshod over me again like that I will make you sorry.”
“Make me sorry,” he said, dragging his lips over her cheek, down her throat. “Just don’t ever leave me.”
“No,” she whispered, clinging to him so tightly it was as if she squeezed his heart. “Never.”
His chest seized with the relief of hearing her say it. “Oh, God, Cecily. I’ve never known such misery as these last few weeks.”
Her body trembled beneath him, and when he pulled back to look into her face, he saw that her eyes shimmered with tears. “I was hurt and furious that you’d kept Jonathon’s secret. But even when I tried my hardest, I could not stop loving you, longing for you. And now you are here, nothing else matters.”
She framed his face with her hands. “This love is more than either of us can control, Rand. But I’m not afraid of it anymore.”
He knew what she said was true. With an inward sigh of relief and thankfulness, he plundered her mouth, kissed her throat, the swells of her breasts. Rolling on the cool cushion of grass, he brought her on top of him. She pushed up so that her thighs g
ripped his hips. He lay back in the sweet smelling grass and surrendered to her, enjoying her delighted assumption of command.
He looked up at that face, alight with determination and a hint of mischief and he thought he would never grow complacent loving this woman. He would never grow bored.
So he let her do what she wanted with him, groaned when she released him from his breeches and touched him, stroked his aching hard flesh. Felt the rush and the fire as she lowered herself over him, seated herself and clenched triumphantly around him, all wet heat and glorious pull and slide.
She looked down at him as she moved, and the tumble of dark curls fell over her face, caressing her breast. Her cheeks were flushed, her cherry lips parted.
Eyes glazed with passion met his gaze. “I love you, Rand,” she breathed. “Come what may.”
She gripped his hands, palm to palm, her fingers locked in between his, and he steadied her as she rode him the way he’d taught her all those weeks ago. When she threw her head back and reached for the moon and the stars in the velvet-soft darkness, he let go of any sense of control.
And trusted her to take him with her, too.
Epilogue
“This many Westruthers in one place at one time? The party ought to be declared a public nuisance,” murmured the Duke of Ashburn in his duchess’s ear.
“Nonsense,” said Cecily, leaning her fragrant and deliciously feminine form against his chest. “You adore these big family gatherings and you know it.”
She was right, of course. He smiled, because she knew him so well and because with her back to him like this, her glossy curls tickled his chin. They behaved scandalously in standing so close together, but no one at this intimate gathering seemed to mind. Indeed, Rosamund, Lady Tregarth, beamed upon them with approval.
A full reunion of the Westruther cousins, including the long lost Lord Davenport, had been delayed until the summer. This was principally due to the late arrival the Honorable Miss Margaret Black, daughter of Jane and Constantine, Lord and Lady Roxdale.
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