She nodded as she pushed herself upright, tucking the bedclothes primly around her.
“I haven’t seen them in—ow!” Edward let out a stream of invective as his big toe slammed into the side of his trunk. He’d been so eager to hide the evidence of his lovesick foolishness that he had not been paying attention to where he was going.
“Are you all right?” she asked, sounding frankly surprised by his reaction.
Edward swore again, then immediately begged her pardon. It had been so long since he’d been in the presence of a lady. His manners were rusty.
“Do not apologize,” she said. “There is nothing so awful as a stubbed toe. I only wish I could say the same when I stub mine.”
“Billie does,” he said.
“Who?”
“Oh, sorry. Billie Bridgerton. My neighbor.” She was still in his thoughts, it seemed. Probably because he’d been looking through those letters from home.
“Oh yes. You’ve mentioned her.”
“Have I?” he asked absently. He and Billie were the best of friends—truly, they’d grown up together. A bigger tomboy had never walked this earth, though, and he wasn’t sure he’d even realized she was a girl until he was eight.
He chuckled at the memory.
Cecilia looked away.
“I can’t imagine why I would have written to you about her,” Edward said.
“You didn’t,” she explained. “Thomas did.”
“Thomas?” That seemed odd.
She gave an unconcerned shrug. “You must have talked to him about her.”
“I suppose.” He reached back into the trunk to pull out a clean shirt. It was why he’d opened the bloody thing in the first place. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said before whipping his shirt over his head and pulling on the fresh one.
“Oh!” Cecilia exclaimed. “You have a scar.”
He glanced back at her over his shoulder. “What?”
“There is a scar on your back. I never noticed it before.” She frowned. “I suppose I wouldn’t have done. While I was caring for you I never . . . Well, never mind.” A moment passed and then she asked, “How did you get it?”
He reached around and pointed toward his left scapula. “This one?”
“Yes.”
“I fell out of a tree.”
“Recently?”
He gave her a look. Honestly. “I was nine.”
This seemed to interest her, and she shifted position, sitting cross-legged under the covers. “What happened?”
“I fell out of a tree.”
She groaned. “Surely there is more to the story than that.”
“Not really,” he said with a shrug. “For about two years I lied and said my brother pushed me, but in truth I just lost my balance. I hit a branch on the way down. Tore right through my shirt.”
She chuckled at that. “You must have been the bane of your mother’s existence.”
“My mother and whoever was doing the mending. Although I imagine that shirt was irredeemable.”
“Better a shirt than an arm or a leg.”
“Oh, we ruined those as well.”
“Good heavens!”
He grinned at her. “Billie broke both of her arms.”
Cecilia’s eyes bugged out. “At the same time?”
“Thankfully not, but Andrew and I had great fun imagining what it would have been like if she had. When she broke the second one, we tied the good one up in a sling, just to see how she managed.”
“And she let you?”
“Let us? She was the one who suggested it.”
“She sounds most singular,” Cecilia said politely.
“Billie?” He shook his head. “There’s no one else like her, that is for certain.”
Cecilia looked down at the bed, picking idly at the covers. She seemed to be making some sort of pattern in her mind. “What is she doing now?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” he said regretfully. It pained him that he was so cut off from his family. He’d had no news of them in over four months. And they likely thought he was dead.
“I’m sorry,” Cecilia said. “I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t think.”
“It’s all right,” he replied. It certainly wasn’t her fault. “Although I do wonder—might I have received correspondence during my absence? It seems likely that my family would have written to me before receiving notice that I’d gone missing.”
“I don’t know. We can certainly inquire.”
Edward saw to his cuffs, fastening first the left and then right.
“Did they write to you often?” She smiled, but it looked forced. Or maybe she was just tired.
“My family?”
She nodded. “And your friends.”
“None so often as you wrote to Thomas,” he said ruefully. “I was forever jealous of that. We all were.”
“Really?” Her smile lit her eyes this time.
“Really,” he confirmed. “Thomas received more mail than I did, and you were his only correspondent.”
“That can’t be true.”
“I assure you it is. Well, perhaps not if I count my mother,” he admitted. “But that hardly seems fair.”
She laughed at that. “What do you mean?”
“Mothers have to write to their sons, don’t you think? But siblings and friends . . . well, they hardly need be so diligent.”
“Our father never wrote to Thomas,” Cecilia said. “Sometimes he asked me to pass along his greetings, but that is all.” She didn’t sound upset by this, or even resigned. Edward had a sudden recollection of his friend, idly whittling a stick at one of their shared camps. Thomas often spouted aphorisms, and one of his favorites had been: “Change what you can and accept what you can’t.”
That seemed to sum up Thomas’s sister quite well.
He looked over at her, studying her for a moment. She was a woman of remarkable strength and grace. He wondered if she realized that.
He went back to fussing with his cuffs, even though they were fully fastened and straight. The urge to keep looking at her was too strong. He would embarrass her, or more likely, himself. But he wanted to watch her. He wanted to learn her. He wanted all of her secrets and desires, and he wanted her mundane stories, the little bits of her past that had fit into her like pieces of a puzzle.
How odd it was to want to know another person, inside and out. He could not recall ever wanting to do so before.
“I told you about my childhood,” he said. He reached into his trunk for a fresh cravat and got to work tying it. “Tell me about yours.”
“What do you wish to know?” she asked. She sounded vaguely surprised, perhaps a little amused.
“Did you play outside a great deal?”
“I did not break any arms, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It wasn’t, but I’m relieved to hear it.”
“We can’t all be Billies,” she quipped.
He felt his chin draw back and he turned to her, certain he’d misheard. “What did you say?”
“Nothing,” she said, giving her head a little shake that said it wasn’t worth talking about. “I was being silly. And no, I did not play outside a great deal. Not like you, at least. I much preferred to sit inside and read.”
“Poetry? Prose?”
“Anything I could get my hands on. Thomas liked to call me a bookworm.”
“More of a book dragon, I should think.”
She laughed. “Why would you say that?”
“You are far too fierce to be a lowly worm.”
Her eyes flicked up to the ceiling and she looked vaguely embarrassed. And perhaps a little proud as well. “I am quite sure you are the only person who has ever judged me to be fierce.”
“You crossed an ocean to save your brother. That seems the very definition of fierceness to me.”
“Perhaps.” But the spark had left her voice.
He regarded her curiously. “Why so somber all of a sudden?”
“Just th
at . . .” She thought for a moment and sighed. “When I made for Liverpool—that was where I sailed from—I don’t know that it was my love for Thomas that spurred me into action.”
Edward walked to the bed and sat down on the edge, offering his silent support.
“I think . . . I think it was desperation.” She tipped her face toward his, and he knew he would be forever haunted by the look in her eyes. It was not sorrow, nor was it fear. It was something much worse—resignation, as if she’d looked within herself and found something hollow. “I felt very alone,” she admitted. “And scared. I don’t know if . . .”
She did not finish her sentence right away. Edward held still, allowing his silence to be his encouragement.
“I don’t know if I would have come if I had not felt so alone,” she finally finished. “I’d like to think that I was thinking only of Thomas, and how much he needed my help, but I wonder if I needed to leave even more.”
“There is no shame in that.”
She looked up. “Isn’t there?”
“No,” he said fervently, taking hold of both her hands. “You are brave, and you have a true and beautiful heart. There is no shame in having fears and worries.”
But her eyes would not meet his.
“And you are not alone,” he vowed. “I promise. You will never be alone.”
He waited for her to say something, to acknowledge the depth of his statement, but she did not. He could see that she was working to regain her composure. Her breathing slowly took on a more regular tenor, and she delicately pulled one of her hands from his to wipe away the moisture that clung to her lashes.
Then she said, “I would like to get dressed.”
It was clearly a request for him to leave.
“Of course,” he said, trying to ignore the pang of disappointment that bounced against his heart.
She gave a little nod and murmured her gratitude as he stood and walked to the door.
“Edward,” she called out.
He turned, a ridiculous flare of hope rising within him.
“Your boots,” she reminded him.
He looked down. He was still in his stockinged feet. He gave a curt nod—not that that would camouflage the deep flush racing up his neck—and grabbed his boots before heading out into the hall.
He could put on the damned things on the stairs.
Chapter 10
An uneventful life sounds marvelous just now. Our date of departure looms, and I do not look forward to the crossing. Did you know that it will take at least five weeks to reach North America? I’m told the journey is shorter coming home—the winds blow predominantly west to east and thus push the ships along. This is small comfort, though. We are not given an anticipated date of return.
Edward bids me to say hello and not to tell you that he is a miserable sailor.
—from Thomas Harcourt to his sister Cecilia
By the time Cecilia found Edward in the main dining room of the Devil’s Head, he was eating breakfast. And wearing his boots.
“Oh, do not rise,” she said, when he pushed his chair back to stand. “Please.”
He went still for the barest of moments, then gave a nod. It cost him, she realized, to forsake his manners as a gentleman. But he was ill. Mending, but ill. Surely he had the right to conserve his energy wherever possible.
And she had a duty to make sure that he did. It was her debt to pay. He might not realize that she owed it, but she did. She was taking advantage of his good nature and his good name. The very least she could do was restore his good health.
She sat across from him, pleased to see that he seemed to be eating more than he had the day before. She was convinced that his lingering weakness was due less to his head injury than it was to his not having eaten for a week.
Goal for today: Make sure that Edward ate properly.
Certainly easier than the previous day’s goal, which was to stop lying so much.
“Are you enjoying your meal?” she asked politely. She did not know him well enough to know his moods, but he’d left their room in a strange rush, without even having put on his boots. Granted, she’d told him she wished to get dressed—which she supposed implied that she hoped for privacy—but surely that had not been an unreasonable request.
He folded the newspaper he’d been perusing, pushed a plate of bacon and eggs toward her, and said, “It’s quite good, thank you.”
“Is there tea?” Cecilia asked hopefully.
“Not this morning, I’m afraid. But”—he tilted his head toward a piece of paper near his plate—“we did receive an invitation.”
It took Cecilia a few moments to understand what should have been a simple statement. “An invitation?” she echoed. “To what?”
And more to the point, from whom? As far as she was aware, the only people who knew she and Edward were married were a few army officers, the doctor, and the man who swept the floor in the church-hospital.
Or rather, they were the only people who thought they knew.
She tried to feign a smile. Her web was growing more tangled by the moment.
“Are you unwell?” Edward asked.
“No,” she said, her voice emerging too suddenly from her throat. “I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
“You have a very odd expression on your face,” he explained.
She cleared her throat. “Just hungry, I expect.” Dear heavens, she was a terrible liar.
“It is from Governor Tryon,” Edward said, sliding the invitation across the table. “He is hosting a ball.”
“A ball. Now?” Cecilia shook her head in wonder. The lady at the bakery had said that there was still a bustling social scene in New York, but it seemed bizarre, what with battles being fought so close by.
“His daughter turns eighteen. I’m told he refused to allow the occasion to go unmarked.”
Cecilia picked up the vellum—good heavens, where did one get vellum in New York?—and finally took the time to read the words. Sure enough, Captain the Honorable and Mrs. Rokesby had been invited to a celebration in three days’ time.
She said the first thing that came into her mind: “I have nothing to wear.”
Edward shrugged. “We’ll find something.”
She rolled her eyes. He was such a man. “In three days?”
“There is no shortage of seamstresses in need of coin.”
“Which I don’t have.”
He looked up at her as if a small chunk of her brain had just flown out her ear. “But I do. And hence, so do you.”
There was no way Cecilia could argue with that, no matter how mercenary it made her feel inside, so instead she mumbled, “You’d think they might have given us more notice.”
Edward’s head tipped thoughtfully to the side. “I imagine the invitations went out some time ago. I’ve only recently come back from the missing.”
“Of course,” she said hastily. Oh dear heavens, what was she to do about this? She could not go to a ball hosted by the Royal Governor of New York. She had told herself that the only reason she could get away with this charade was because no one would ever know.
She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. No one but the governor, his wife, and every other leading Loyalist in the city.
Who might eventually return to England.
Where they might see Edward’s family.
And ask them about his bride.
Good God.
“What is it?” Edward asked.
She looked up.
“You’re frowning.”
“Am I?” She was frankly surprised she had not burst into hysterical laughter.
He gave no reply in the affirmative, but his overly patient expression said quite clearly: Yes, you are.
Cecilia traced the elegant script of the invitation with her finger. “You don’t find it surprising that I am included on the invitation?”
One of his hands flipped over in a what-on-earth-are-you-talking-about motion. “You are my wife.”
&n
bsp; “Yes, but how would the governor know?”
Edward cut a small piece of his slab of bacon. “I expect he’s known for months.”
She stared at him blankly.
He stared right back. “Is there any reason I wouldn’t have told him we are married?”
“You know the governor?” she said, really wishing her voice had not squeaked on the third-to-last syllable.
He popped his bacon into his mouth and chewed before answering, “My mother is friends with his wife.”
“Your mother,” she repeated dumbly.
“I believe they made their bows in London together,” he said. He frowned for a moment. “She was an extraordinary heiress.”
“Your mother?”
“Mrs. Tryon.”
“Oh.”
“My mother as well, actually, but nothing so close to Aunt Margaret.”
Cecilia froze. “Aunt . . . Margaret?”
He made a little wave with his hand, as if that would reassure her. “She is my godmother.”
Cecilia realized that she had been holding a serving spoon full of eggs aloft for several seconds. Her wrist wobbled, and the yellow lump plopped onto her plate.
“The governor’s wife is your godmother?” she eked out.
He nodded. “My sister’s as well. She’s not really our aunt, but we’ve called her that for as long as I can remember.”
Cecilia’s head bobbed in something resembling a nod, and although she realized that her lips were somewhat ajar, she could not seem to close them.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, clueless man that he was.
She took a moment to piece a sentence together. “You did not think to tell me that your godmother is married to the Royal Governor of New York?”
“It did not really come up in conversation.”
“Good God.” Cecilia sank back into her chair. That tangled web of hers? It was growing more wretchedly complex by the second. And if there was one thing she was certain of, she could not go to that ball and meet Edward’s godmother. A godmother knew things. She would know, for example, that Edward had been “almost” engaged, and not to Cecilia.
She might even know the fiancée. And she would certainly want to know why Edward had forfeited an alliance with the Bridgerton family to marry a nobody like Cecilia.