Chapter 10
Hawk glared at the lark perched on the armory’s window.
The bird kept twitching his head, unperturbed and unafraid of him.
Hawk could not blame the creature, could he?
He was, after all, a bloody fairy godfather.
He pushed away the ridiculous list she had made for him in her flourishing handwriting.
From now on, he would forbid Shakespeare in the house.
Captain Graves stood at attention in the doorway, face carved from granite.
“Lady Cecilia missed reveille, sir.”
Hawk stopped.
“And her history lesson. Mr. Croft waited an hour, sir. He returned to the vicarage looking like he’d been outmaneuvered by Napoleon himself.”
Hawk exhaled through his nose. So much for structure. He rose and buttoned his coat. “I’ll deal with it.”
Graves offered a salute. “Godspeed.”
The hallway stretched before him like a parade ground before the charge.
His boots thudded on the polished floorboards.
When he arrived at her door, he lifted his hand to knock, but a burst of laughter made him halt.
There it was again. Female voices. He hadn’t heard such noises since… God, since before the Peninsula.
Another peal, silvery and crystal. And unmistakable.
Celeste. His pulse sped, and he told himself it was a guardian’s rightful displeasure.
So she had evaded orders to make merry. Breaches of discipline were like wound poisoning.
If they were not treated at once, they could contaminate the whole regiment.
Before he could formulate a complete strategy, his hand reached for the knob and opened the door.
Sometimes, in the heat of a battle, a soldier spotted a single foe among lines upon lines of cavalry. All the rest blurred. That happened now. The room was a disorder of ribbons, cloths, and strange women, but he only saw her, perched atop the tea table, a queen preparing to be painted.
The curtains behind her were gray. The furniture, a blur. The world—monochrome.
But she was radiant. Hair like flame-spun gold.
Skin like champagne silk. Even the flush blooming in her cheeks seemed vivid enough to stain the air.
His ward was in dishabille, bare arms and half-laced corset, the soft linen of her chemise clinging to curves a blasted fairy godfather had no business noticing.
And yet he noticed everything.
The arch of her neck. The shadowed dip of her collarbone. The absurd little bow tied beneath her breasts.
His mouth went dry. His hands, clenched at his sides, suddenly felt like they belonged to someone else—someone dangerously close to reaching.
She was still laughing. The sound reached his ears as if in a dream.
Then she saw him. Her chin tipped a fraction, eyes finding his with a steadiness that should have read bold.
But the way her shoulders tucked told him it was not boldness at all.
He’d seen that kind of stillness before—raw recruits freezing in the face of a battery, muscles locked, hoping to be overlooked. A surrender turned into a skill.
It lasted only a heartbeat. But the impression stayed with him—the fleeting sense that this was not a woman who liked to be seen, only one who had learned how to survive it.
Then she reached for the nearest swath of fabric to cover herself. Tulle. Of course it was tulle.
Hawk stood there, a man outflanked, trapped in a parlor ambush of his own making.
An insolent bark shattered the room’s breathless silence. Othello had taken a stand among the pillows and was now showing his teeth, as if Hawk had trespassed in his seraglio.
Gasps fluttered from the ladies. One of the maids tripped over a petticoat. The other snapped upright, smoothing her skirts with a sheepish rustle. He inspected his surroundings and understood that he had invaded the fitting for her new wardrobe.
In the field, when a soldier stumbled into the wrong line of fire, there were only two choices: retreat under fire or hold the position and claim the ground. He could excuse himself now and leave the room of wide-eyed women.
Or—
He could advance. Deliver his orders. Do his duty as her guardian, even as the battlefield around him was cluttered not with corpses but with petticoats and pins.
Well, a general did not flinch at lace.
“Th-there you are, my lord,” the seamstress stammered. “Would you care to see my designs for Lady Cecilia’s new wardrobe?”
Hawk’s eyes cut to the sketches on the side table. “Indeed. The garments are to be conservative. Sensible fabrics, demure colors. No frills. No bows.” His gaze flicked to Celeste. “No tulle.”
God help him. He had barked orders across cannon smoke, commanded men through mud and musket fire—and now he stood in his own house forbidding lace and gauze.
The word tasted ridiculous, but the fabric itself was worse.
Tulle had no function, save to shimmer and distract.
If he meant to turn her from a sugared bonbon into a proper English lady, the tulle must go first. Strip her of that gauze and he could strip away the fantasy with it, and leave something that could stand a line.
Celeste gasped, clutching the fabric to her chest as though he’d threatened her firstborn child. “No tulle? You might as well ask me to renounce breath.”
She said it with such wide-eyed sincerity, he almost missed the smile tugging at her lips.
Then she stepped down from the table, bare feet sinking into the carpet. She had beautiful arches. Could a man be envious of a rug? It must be one of the prerogatives of a Fairy Godfather. Bloody hell, he was losing his mind.
“My Lord, if Juliet had worn gray bombazine, I doubt Romeo would have scaled the wall.”
She advanced. Not with the direct line of a soldier, but in small turns, a shift of weight here, a half-step there, never letting him fix her in place.
He knew she was unarmed. He also knew he was losing ground.
“This is not Verona,” Hawk said stiffly.
“Clearly.” She gave a dramatic glance toward the window. “If it were, there’d be balconies. And roses. And a great deal more forbidden kissing.”
Forbidden. Kissing. The words slipped his guard like saboteurs in the dark. His chest mutinied before he could post guards. Pictures assaulted him—arches heavy with roses, air thick with their perfume, the curve of her lips close to his own.
He opened his mouth to object, but she was already off again, circling him as if choreographing her own romantic farce.
On campaign, everything had its name—the ground, the weather, the angle of a charge.
But this—her laughter that darted ahead of sense, her glances that struck without warning—there was no field manual for it.
Her audience stirred—the maid covered her cheeks, the seamstress gave a helpless little chuckle, even the stern chaperone let out the ghost of a laugh.
The room tilted toward her, caught in her orbit as if she were some bright lantern in a camp of weary soldiers.
He’d spent decades learning how to hold men steady with clipped orders and iron routine, to rally spirits through sheer will and example.
Yet here she was, luring his household into surrender with nothing but wit and Shakespearean heroines.
And if he was not careful, he would soon fall in line behind her.
She held a perfectly acceptable wool gown with two fingers, like it might infect her. “If Cleopatra had dressed to please her advisers, she’d have died married to some Reginald in a cravat.”
Hawk crossed his arms across his chest. “Are you comparing yourself to Cleopatra?”
“Not yet,” she said, curtsying. “I’ve only just arrived.”
Indeed, she had just arrived, and already she had brought disruption, disorder, and a dangerous sort of allure with her. But he was no Antony. He would not let chaos seduce him into surrender.
“Are you convinced yet?” she asked sweetly. “I could always break out in song.”
Hawk crossed his arms. “Is there any situation you won’t turn into a comedy?”
She grinned, unfazed. “No, my lord. Life is a comedy… at least it should be.”
“Not for sensible Englishwomen, it isn’t.”
She lifted her chin and gazed at him with an insolence that could have gotten her court-martialed. “Then I shall never be sensible.”
Hawk gritted his teeth. It was one thing for her to perform and try to charm him into submission. It was another entirely for her to challenge him openly in front of witnesses. “Enough. You will dress as befits your station.”
Her chin quivered, and she folded her hands. “Please, a woman’s figurine is essential to her role. If I want a suitor to fall in love with me by Act Three, I need—”
“Lady Cecilia, you are not living in a play.” He took a step forward and looked down at her. “And you will understand that my orders in this house are not up for discussion.”
Silence rippled through the room. Her eyes widened, lashes fluttering down like a wounded banner. For half a second, guilt whispered that he had been too harsh, but he crushed it. Coddled men died in their first skirmish. He would not send her unarmed into the battleground that was society.
Hawk addressed the seamstress, voice crisp, final. “Wool and cotton. No frills.”
“Your Lordship,” the seamstress called, lifting two lengths of fabric in each hand. “The regiment ball at the end of summer. Which do you prefer for the lady’s gown?”
Two bolts of silk. One marginally lighter. Or darker. Hawk couldn’t tell. His gut tightened—he had ordered the rest of his life with absolute clarity, and here was one more reminder that beauty would always be forbidden to him.
He nodded to the one on the right. “That. It’s more conservative.”
He turned on his heels, ready to leave, but before he could reach the door, Celeste blocked his path.
“What color is this, my lord?” She asked, lifting the fabric he had chosen between them.
He froze. How did she know? How could she possibly know? He had trained himself to navigate a world drained of color, save for that one flaming lock Philip had left with him. A lock with the same impossible hue as the strands slipping loose now from her crown.
The only color he could see—was her.
And for the first time since the Peninsula, Alexander de Warenne found himself dangerously exposed. In his own home. In a room full of tulle and temptation.
She tilted her head and dared to point her slender finger at his chest. “A dove-gray gown, my lord? Do you truly believe this color would complement me at all?”
Heat crawled up his collar. His jaw locked so tight a vein throbbed at his temple. She was glaring at him, finger stabbing the air between them as if she could pierce his armor with one touch. His blood thundered in his ears.
He moved before he could stop himself. His hand shot out, closing around her wrist. The fragile bones fit too easily in his grasp, her pulse hammering against his palm. She gasped, but he was already tearing the scrap of silk from her fingers.
“The gown doesn’t matter, Celeste. You’d undo a battalion wearing a bloody sackcloth.” The words came rasping out of his throat with the grimness of a twelve-pounder ripping through a cavalry line.
Her lips parted. A flush climbed her cheeks. For a fleeting second, she looked as stunned as he felt. Panting, Hawk turned sharply and strode to the door before he could make a bigger fool of himself.
Outside in the corridor, he braced a hand against the wall and buried his face in the offending cloth.
Bloody hell.
He had come to enforce discipline, to set boundaries.
Instead, he’d left with her scent in his lungs, her image in his mind, and the taste of her name in his mouth like a half-swallowed sin.
The Hawk hadn’t won. He hadn’t even held his ground.
And now her colors—skin, hair, heat, that blasted dove-gray—were scorched onto the inside of his lids, and he didn’t know if he’d ever see straight again.