Chapter 7
The candle guttered, its flame stooped under the weight of midnight.
Hawk didn’t bother trimming the wick. He didn’t need more light.
The map before him was already memorized.
Rivers like veins across the spine of Spain.
The roads to Burgos, to Vitoria. Places he’d ridden through, bled over, buried men in.
Sleep had abandoned him. He told himself it was habit, the campaigner’s instinct. A general kept watch while others rested. But the truth pressed heavier—she was under his roof. His shoulders stiffened, and he bent closer to the map, as if the neat ink lines might bar her from his thoughts.
Hawk pulled the pencil from his pocket, and his thumb circled the place where lips had been when she chewed the wood.
He shut his eyes, jaw clenching. This was absurd.
He could discipline men, horses, entire regiments.
He could march without food, endure nights in mud.
Yet one memory of a girl’s mouth was trying to turn his flank.
The door creaked softly. As if he had conjured her, the robber of his sleep stood at the library’s threshold, skirts brushing the frame.
“Are you lost?” He kept his voice clipped, his body still.
Her eyes darted to him. “No. Not lost,” she whispered. “Just lonely.”
The word struck deeper than he expected, lodging under his ribs.
“Your chaperone?”
A wry smile tugged at her mouth. “She sleeps when the lark goes to sleep, so she tells me.”
“And you?”
A sigh, barely audible. “I prefer to rise with the nightingale.”
Of course, she did. Theater folk and their nocturnal habits. The night for them was performance, masquerade, applause. He told himself it was nothing but indiscipline. Yet the way she said it—like poetry, not excuse—rippled through him in ways he should not allow.
“Is everything to your liking, Lady Cecilia?”
The name did something to her. Her chin tipped higher, and she straightened, just as she had done when he had presented her to the household. For a moment there, he had thought she would bolt, but she had stood her ground better than many a green officer in their first skirmish.
She drifted closer, slippers treading silently on the carpet. Her hair caught the lamp’s light. Or was it the fiery strands that lent the fire a new brilliance? Either way, the room was no longer gray.
Frowning, she traced the Tagus River as though she could feel the current in the paper. Hawk’s hand twitched, absurdly—as if the river, the page, the desk, all might register her touch and pass it to him. He curled his fist tight, nails biting his palm.
Her eyes lifted to his. “This is where he—my father…”
“Yes. I was with him that day,” Hawk said, the words quiet, stripped of ceremony.
“Why?”
He cleared his throat. “He was a great officer. Did his duty.”
The words should have rung like praise, yet they scraped raw. Hawk kept from her that duty had sent Philip to India when his wife was heavy with child. Duty had buried him before he could ever see that child’s face.
And for a heartbeat, Hawk could not help but think of another loss, his own wife, the newborn son, and the names he had rehearsed for him—strong, proud names—dissolved into silence.
His jaw locked. He pushed the thought aside, forcing his gaze back to the map as if neat borders and inked rivers could shield him. Grief was an indulgence. Everyone carried absences, some heavier than his. Everyone kept to their post. Everyone did their duty.
“Lady Cecilia, I—”
“Please,” she cut in softly. “Call me Celeste.”
His brows drew together. “That would not be proper. Your name is—”
“I know what my name is now,” she whispered. “But I grew up as Celeste. And everything is changing so fast. If everyone calls me Cecilia all the time, I fear I’ll go mad. I have to know that at least you know who I really am.”
Tears brimmed in her expressive eyes. To give in to such demands was not in a general’s best interests—and yet, he could not refuse her while she looked at him like a soldier begging for mercy.
“Only when there is no company,” he said, and his voice came out hoarse.
She beamed, brushing her tears away. A small sound escaped her, half laugh, half sigh, and lodged itself under his ribs like shrapnel.
Still smiling, she stepped back, skirts whispering against the floorboards, and drifted to the shelves.
“May I?” she asked.
“Of course.” His reply was crisp.
Distance restored, Hawk told himself. She had her tulle. He had his maps.
She turned her face to the books, humming, fingertip grazing the leather spines. It was a wonder that the old tomes did not blush at such a tender caress.
He bent again over the peninsula, pen poised. Lines of rivers, ridges, troop movements. He forced his attention on them, demanding discipline of his own hand. But the figures swam. Her hair had caught the lantern once, and now it burned behind his eyelids.
She tugged a folio from the shelf. “Perfect. Just what we need.”
Hawk glanced up from his maps. We? How in the world could his needs ever coincide with hers?
“Whenever I’m sad—”
“I am not sad,” Hawk said. “A general has preoccupations.”
Her lips quirked. “And when I’m not sad but preoccupied… do you know what I do?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “I am certain I am about to find out.”
A bright smile. “I turn to my dearest confidante.”
Confidant? A man, then. Some intrigue from London? His gut tightened.
“And who is this fortunate gentleman?” he asked, his tone as dry as the desert.
“Why, Shakespeare, of course.”
Shakespeare. She gave her devotion to a dead playwright. At least the man could not answer her back.
Her brows lifted when he scoffed. “You don’t believe me?”
She placed her fists on her hips and stared at him. “The Swan of Avon has taught me to make fun of difficult situations and lighten the heavy ones. Even in the darkest hours, he finds laughter. Always, there is some light.”
Hawk studied her—the quiet curve of her mouth, the way her words rang with conviction. What darkness had she known, to cling to borrowed humor? Whatever it was, he had not been there. He had failed in his duty.
Still, he could not help but admire her resilience and creativity, but this lightness, this whimsy, had served her so far, but not anymore. She would have to grow out of them. A sensible English wife could not live in a romantic comedy.
He leaned back in the chair. “And what will you do when life does not follow a playwright’s cues?”
She shrugged one shapely shoulder. The kind of shoulder that could send a battalion into rebellion. “Then I shall improvise.”
He arched a brow. “Improvise?”
“A heroine must,” she declared, chin tilted in theatrical pride. “When scripts fail, one must rely on instinct. Wit. Courage. Timing. A little confusion only makes the love story better.”
Confusion lost battles, got men killed. Yet she spoke of it like a virtue, as though surrender to whimsy were strength instead of folly. Hawk said nothing, too caught by how her lips curved around each word, shaping chaos into something perilously compelling.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “But you digress, sir. I promised I would make you stop brooding.”
Before he could answer, she plopped the folio open as if it were holy writ, smoothing the worn page with reverent fingers. “Do you know A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”
He crossed his arms. “When one is busy fighting a war, there is no time for dreaming.”
“How terrible. But don’t fret, I will mend this now.
” Her voice lowered conspiratorially. “Midsummer is a tale of foolish mortals who wander into an enchanted forest and fall in love with the wrong people, thanks to a mischievous fairy with poor aim and no sense of consequence. There are potions, and disguises, and declarations that make no sense… until they suddenly do.”
“That sounds chaotic,” he said dryly.
“Utterly.” She glanced at him, her smile softening. “It’s also ridiculous and magical, but in the end, everything untangles. Lovers are reunited. Fools are forgiven. And even the queen of the fairies learns to laugh at herself.”
She tapped the page lightly. “This scene here, when all the men are enchanted and chasing the wrong girl, is my favorite. Are you ready?”
He set down his pen, wary. For a French invasion? Absolutely. For whatever she meant to do next? He had growing doubts.
But wards, he was discovering, cared not for rules of engagement, and before he could draw a breath, she had started her absurd performance.
One moment girl, the next, some lovesick fool calling on goddesses.
Eyes shining, she swept across the room, skirts and shadows tangling.
She rhapsodized to the rafters, then spun on an invisible rival, hands clutched at her chest, voice breaking in mock despair.
What in God’s name was this? Lovers shrieking at one another in the woods?
Half the words contradicted themselves, and the rest were nonsense about cherries, donkey ears, and flower juice.
It was anarchy disguised as poetry—men and women surrendering to passion, jealousy, and their own foolish whims.
Hawk’s hand tightened on the arm of his chair. Every instinct urged him to halt this madness, restore silence, re-establish order. But another part of him—the same reckless part that had reached for her hair—was perilously close to yielding, just to see what she would do next.
Gathering the hem of her skirt with one hand, the folio in the other, she climbed onto the chair before his desk, and then atop the desk as if it were a stage.
The very definition of madness. And if he sat there spellbound, it was because this might soon turn into disaster.
“Lady Cecilia,” he said with growing unease.
But she mouthed “Oberon” to him, eyes alight, chin high, voice ringing:
“What hast thou done? Thou hast mistaken quite,
And laid the love juice on some true love’s sight!”
Her voice rang out, full of purpose. By God Almighty, she was magnificent.
She held the final note, chin tilted high in triumph, and then looked at him expectantly.
He released all the air from his lungs. “That was—ludicrous.”
She grinned. “Yes, but you are smiling, my lord.”
Indeed, he was…
“I assure you,” he said, adjusting the cuffs of his coat, “it’s a reflex. The sort one has when watching chaos unfold in a perfectly ordered room.”
“Exactly. That’s the whole point.”
He frowned. “The point of what?”
“The madness, the mix-ups, the insults and absurd passion—it’s not about sense, it’s about folly. About how love turns mortals into fools.”
He gave her a dry look, one brow lifting.
“Don’t you see? It is like Puck says, ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be.’”
Her heel snagged on the edge of his ink blotter. A squeak—too high for battle, too low for music—split the air. Her arms flailed, a riot of tulle.
Hawk lurched up from his chair and caught her. The momentum carried her down, across his thighs, so that when the world righted, she was sprawled in his lap, breathless, skirts sliding over his boots.
Silence reigned over everything but his pulse, drumming hard enough to rattle the desk. She was close. Too close. Her nose had no business becoming acquainted with his chin. Her copper hair tumbled forward, brushing his jaw.
Madness indeed. A general felled without a shot fired.
Hawk did not breathe. If he did, he would breathe her in—that faint trace of lilac, soap, and so much red. Better to suffocate than surrender.
Her lip trembled, and she shut her eyes. She looked like a creature who had placed herself in mortal danger, but had no willpower to escape.
“You should not wander the house at night.” His voice came low, roughened by restraint.
“But it is your house,” she whispered. “And you are my fairy godfather.”
The words struck harder than musket shot.
Fairy. Godfather.
A role stripped of desire, stripped of manhood. A safe, neutered guardian fit for storybooks and nursery tales. She had caged him neatly in her fantasy, and she smiled as though she believed it.
He did not smile. Godfather? A godfather did not burn to taste his ward’s mouth. A godfather did not imagine laying her down until she trembled for him. A godfather did not ache with every second she sat on his lap.
“In every story, there’s a character who watches the heroine. He appears just when she is in danger. Then he uses his magic—”
“I have no magic.” Every tool he offered was made of steel, not stardust.
“Don’t you?” She tilted her head, curls spilling over her shoulder. “You plucked me from the theater and turned me into a lady. And now you will help me find love… If that is not magic, I don’t know what it is.”
He set her on her feet, more abruptly than he meant. His hands lingered a fraction too long at her waist.
“Go back to your room, Celeste.”
The words were iron. Inside, he was ash.