EIGHTEEN
Cecily swallowed and stepped back, hands dropping.
“Am I so transparent to you?”
“No.” A pause. “But I understand . . . emotional injury.”
The image of a small, brown-eyed boy locked in a wardrobe rose in her mind. It was, she suspected, as close as he would come to admitting the depth of his own wounds.
Crossing to the window behind her, she hugged her waist, surveying the landscape outside. The world burst with life. Leaves unfurled on tree branches, and bluebells cheerily reached skyward.
Cecily scarcely saw them. She had mentally joined Matthias in that wardrobe, both of them crouched and hiding—longing for the light, yet dreading the terrors it might expose.
“I don’t wish to speak of it . . .” she began.
An unspoken but . . . trailed off the end of her sentence.
Matthias said nothing. Drat him for his patience.
“If I wish a different future, then I must be brave.” She turned around.
He stood in the center of the room, left arm tucked behind his back. Tell me, then, his eyes said.
She forced words through lips gone numb with fear. “Mine isn’t much of a story. As you know, I was raised by my grandparents. They were good and kindly people, and so I grew up assuming the whole world to be similarly good and kind.”
“That is not a terrible way to be raised.”
“No.” She took a step forward and ran a finger along the edge of a map table. “But it meant that I knew nothing of cruelty. I was impossibly naive.”
Cecily studied the wall, trying not to dwell on the follies of her past self. The fanciful dreams and hopes of that green girl.
“My grandparents ensured I had a splendid coming out in London. At age twenty, I was presented to the Queen and received a voucher for Almack’s and participated in every merriment that a débutante in her first Season enjoys. It was . . . exhilarating.”
“You were the brightest star in the heavens,” he said, voice quiet. “You walked into a room, and the entire world filled with light.”
The library went blurry, Matthias standing tall and strong in the middle of it. Cecily blink, blink, blinked back the emotion clogging her throat.
“That is a lovely thing to say,” she whispered.
“’Tis only the truth.”
“Thank you. Despite my modest dowry, I had no lack of suitors.” She had an overabundance, actually.
Her poor grandfather fielded offers for her hand weekly, sometimes daily.
“I knew I needed to marry. It is the only true option for young ladies of small fortune and genteel breeding. I didn’t wish to be a burden on my family.
And I did want to marry and have children of my own.
Wee hellions who whooped and laughed and ran to me with scraped knees and sticky hands.
” She paused, allowing the sadness of those missing children to flow through her.
“As you know, Mr. George Miller was one of my most ardent suitors. My grandparents had their reservations, but I let myself be persuaded by his dashing looks and charming personality. I felt a certain excitement when I thought of him . . . a draw to his person that I assumed must be love. And I had to marry. That was nonnegotiable. So . . . why not him?”
“You are not the first young lady to see stars and make that calculation.”
“No, I am not.” She leaned a hip into the map table.
“I was too young and inexperienced to understand my grandparents’ warnings for what they were.
When Grandpappa voiced concern about George’s excessive drinking, I assumed he was afraid of public drunkenness.
Or when Grandmamma said she worried about George’s occasional cruel remark, I thought she feared he would be tactless in company.
I didn’t realize that they were concerned for my own safety and well-being. ”
The tears fell then. It was impossible to relive the foolish girl she had been and not surrender to some degree of emotional overflow.
Matthias crossed and gently led her to one of the armchairs before the fire, pressing a handkerchief into her hands. Cecily murmured her thanks, dabbing at her cheeks. He sat in the other chair, waiting patiently.
“You can imagine the rest,” she said when she could continue.
“George and I married, and at first, all seemed well. Yes, George could be short-tempered, and he had a predilection for the bottle. But for months, I considered myself the very luckiest of women.” She drifted off, remembering that short period of time.
It had been colored by what came after, but in those early moments, she had thought herself fortunate.
“And then?” Matthias prompted.
“And then Lord Drempton arrived.” She stared into the flames.
“Obviously, I had met Drempton prior. As George’s cousin and closest friend, he had stood as best man at our wedding, and we dined together when in Town.
Drempton always paid me fawning attention, which I found uncomfortable.
However, he didn’t lurk around George and myself much.
Well, not at first. Lady Drempton’s health was poor, and she often demanded his presence at her side in the country.
His lordship felt the pinch of it—the restriction of his movements.
I didn’t realize how much until Lady Drempton passed away six months after George and I married. ”
“Drempton was bereaved by her death?”
Cecily couldn’t stop a snort. “More like overjoyed. His wife brought a healthy dowry to their marriage, but the marriage contracts didn’t grant Drempton control of it.
He had to petition his father-in-law anytime he wished for funds beyond his basic allowance.
Upon her death, he came into possession of the whole. ”
“Why did Drempton visit you, then?”
“He claimed he was too distraught over losing his wife to tolerate being alone. I assumed he would quickly take himself off to London to find another, more amenable bride. I never in a thousand moons could have imagined that he envisioned a life with me. But I quickly realized that, yes, I was his true target.” She twisted Matthias’s handkerchief around her fingers.
“George was oblivious to his cousin’s aims initially—distracted by a new mistress and only occasionally unleashing his general dissatisfaction on me.
Drempton saw an opportunity. He cornered me one afternoon in the garden and—” Deep breath.
“—attempted to force his attentions on me.”
Matthias hissed.
“I fought him off and soundly rejected him, but his lordship took my behavior as something to be punished.” Cecily swallowed a shuddering breath, fighting through a wave of helplessness at remembering those days.
“He set about sowing discord between George and myself. Drempton knew George was a jealous man, and easily planted seeds of doubt in my husband’s mind as to my own loyalty and virtue. ”
Matthias shook his head, jaw clenched. “A tactic as old as Time itself.”
“An effective one, though. George went from occasionally to consistently cruel. Drempton convinced him that I preferred Drempton himself. It didn’t take much.
His lordship would make an insidious observation and then quickly deny he meant anything by it.
I would nod at Drempton while passing on the stairs, and later discover he had told George, and I quote, ‘Cecily pressed herself against me as I attempted to go up the stairs. You need to take her in hand, old chap. This behavior can’t continue.
’ Of course, George scoffed at my denials.
I begged him to cast Drempton out or take us away, but George refused to leave his cousin in his ‘time of great need.’”
“And so you were trapped.”
“Yes. Between the jealous rage of one man and the lecherous, vindictive whims of another. George controlled where I went and who I saw until he decided I couldn’t leave his sight.
He put about the neighborhood that I was unwell.
I wasn’t permitted visitors. I was a prisoner in my own home.
Matters escalated.” She dropped her eyes to the floor, dabbing at her cheeks.
It was easier to speak the rest without watching Matthias’s reaction.
“As you can imagine, George was not content to leave his chastisement to words alone. I came to know his more . . .”
She drifted off, unsure if Matthias wished to hear the rest.
He motioned for her to continue.
Cecily cleared her throat. “As you have certainly surmised, George could be a violent man. I became adept at hiding bruises, but still, his fists resulted in me losing not one babe, but two. George was convinced that each time I fell pregnant, the child wasn’t his.
Never mind that he dragged me to his bed each night.
Never mind that he rarely left my side and insisted I lavish him with affection.
Several times, George said that if I wouldn’t remain his alone, then no one else could have me. I became fearful for my life.”
The words felt like an excuse, as they always did. George had blamed her for his moods and jealousy, and though she knew he alone bore responsibility for his own emotions, the guilt lingered.
She forced herself to meet Matthias’s gaze, expecting to see turmoil or concern or, heaven forbid, judgment. Instead, his eyes brimmed with compassion and understanding.
“What led you to leave George?” he asked.
“My grandparents died, one after the other, a few weeks before my fourth wedding anniversary. I begged to visit my family and grieve with them, but George was adamantly against it. He refused to let me out of his sight. However, Fate intervened. My uncle inherited my grandfather’s estate, but Grandpappa left me several valuable items in his will—jewelry and such.
My uncle insisted that I come to retrieve the items myself.
George was unwell and couldn’t accompany me.
Drempton was away at a house party. I seized the chance to visit my uncle and aunt with only a maid for company.