Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
T hey exited the house, and into the garden, where Ian found them greeted with a lovely candlelit picnic. Cecilia had set out a blanket, and a basket of food. She led him to the blanket, and they both took their seats.
“This is quite the event,” he remarked as she began to unpack the basket, revealing a plethora of delicious-looking food. “What, might I ask, is the occasion?”
“Must I need an excuse to have dinner with my husband?” she asked, handing him a plate. When she caught his eye, she let out a small laugh, and a slight blush rose to her cheeks. “I wish for us to get to know each other better,” she confessed. “Truly know each other. We are married, for heaven’s sake. We have barely talked outside of arguing. I should like very much for that to change.”
“We have not only argued,” he said playfully. “In fact, I can recall one specific occasion only a few nights ago where we did not argue at all.”
She rolled her eyes but smiled. “I mean really talk,” she said. “Properly. There is so much about you I do not know.”
“That is funny to hear. After all, I thought you had quite figured out everything about me upon our first meeting. I am a rake and a libertine, with little else to my character.”
“I did not have very much else to go off of.”
She rolled her eyes. “Would you prefer I continue to think that about you?”
He did not respond.
After a moment of staring at each other, she pulled away and continued busying herself with the food.
“Well,” Ian said, as they began to eat. “What is it you would like to know?”
She looked up at him, surprised. “I may ask anything at all?”
“That is a dangerous question,” he said, narrowing his eyes playfully, before giving her a decisive nod. “But yes. Anything at all.”
“Hm.” She pressed a finger to her lips, eyes lifted to the heavens as she pondered what to ask. “What is your favorite color?”
He laughed. “I give you full permission to ask me anything at all, and that is what you wish to start with?”
“I thought to go easy on you!” she exclaimed, though she joined him in laughter. “And I will even answer first to make things easier still. I am rather partial to blue.”
He nodded but said nothing.
“Well?” she prodded, leaning in closer. “Do you really mean to not answer?”
He leaned in as well. “Green,” he said, looking at her eyes. “I have always loved the color green, but even more as of late.”
It was true, he thought. He had never considered himself a particularly sentimental person—indeed, after the deaths of his parents, he had quite stringently avoided sentiment in any of his affairs. But he could not deny that it was difficult not to get lost in his wife’s eyes.
Particularly when it conjured up so many thoughts of all the ways he could make those eyes fill up with lust and longing.
“Now,” he said, pulling back. “Am I allowed to ask a question about you? Or is that against the rules of your game?”
She tilted her head, considering. “Well,” she said finally, “I suppose it would be unfair of me to say no. So, yes.”
“Excellent.” He clapped his hands, rubbing them together. “In that case…you said you wished to travel. Why have you not?”
“It is more difficult for a young lady,” she said. “You must realize that.”
“Your friend Miss Banfield went. Surely your family would have been able to manage to find a chaperone for you?”
She smiled sadly. “I could not leave my mother,” she finally admitted. “The death of my father nearly destroyed her. I couldn’t bear the thought of her without Zachary or me there. She is much improved now, of course, but…” She shook her head. “It would not be right.”
“I see,” Ian said softly. After a beat, he continued, “Well. Perhaps when we have a bit of free space—between all of your musicale and balls, of course—we could travel, you and I. As husband and wife.”
She looked at him, surprised. “You would do that? For me?”
“It is customary for a couple to travel for a honeymoon after the wedding, is it not? And besides, it would hardly burden me to get to see some of the sights of the world again.”
Cecilia squinted at him. “Are you certain I am your ideal traveling companion, Your Grace? I seem to recall we have very different ideas of what constitutes an interesting sight of the world.”
He leaned in closer, eyes suddenly dark. “I doubt I shall be rather picky with our itinerary,” he said lowly. Lust pooled low in her abdomen at the look on his face, and the memories it conjured up. “Given I shall be traveling with the finest sight of all.”
Even as she made a show of rolling her eyes, she could not help but flush within. “My turn again,” she said, fumbling to sound calm. She looked at him so intensely, it was as though he could feel her gaze penetrating to the very depths of his soul. “Can you tell me more about your family?”
He stiffened. “Surely you have another question.”
“You said I could ask anything you like,” she replied.
“Yes, but I never promised I would answer,” he said, attempting to return to their previous teasing play.
But Cecilia kept her eyes on him. “Mr. Ainsworth said you lost your parents very young.”
“Yes,” he said shortly. “When I was nine.”
Cecilia sucked in a breath. “I am so sorry,” she said gently.
He shrugged. “It has been a long time,” he said quietly, looking down at the picnic blanket below them for a moment before he lifted his gaze back up to meet hers. The amount of gentleness and empathy in her eyes was almost too much for him to bear.
“Yes, but you were old enough to remember them,” she said softly. “Can you tell me what they were like?”
When Ian visibly hesitated, she lowered her voice to an even gentler pitch. “I know it can be difficult,” she said. “But what I have found, in healing from my grief, is that the thing that helps most is—to talk. It makes me feel like a piece of him is living on, for a moment, when I speak to others about my memories of him. It is as though, for a moment, he is still here with me.”
Ian nodded, eyes still fixed on hers. Then he cleared his throat. “My parents were very much in love,” he began. “It was a love match, between them, or so I was told, and no one could have doubted it, to see them together. They were positively besotted with each other. Even from so long ago, I cannot help but remember that.”
She was studying his face, marveling at how his usual demeanor—so often either brooding or arrogant—had so quickly been softened. It was as though, for a moment, she could see a glimpse of the little boy he once had been before all of the grief and weight of responsibility had been thrust upon him so young.
He glanced back up at her and then shook his head. “Do not look at me like that.”
“Like what?” she asked, brow furrowing.
He sighed. “With pity,” he said, the words coming out clipped and strained through his tensed jaw. “I cannot bear it from anyone, but especially not from you.”
“I do not pity you,” she said, sounding surprised. “How could you think such a thing? When I have recently lost a parent of my own? I may not know your exact pain, but I know a pain very similar to it. You are one of the only people in the world who can understand what it is like. I would have thought you might like to share in that understanding.”
When Ian did not respond, she sat up straighter.
“I can go first if you would like,” she said, before taking a large sip of her wine, as if for courage.
After swallowing, she closed her eyes. When she opened them, Ian saw new pain there.
“My father was the most wonderful man I ever knew,” she said finally. “Every young lady thinks that about her father, I am sure, but it is true. He never ignored me to focus on Zachary, his heir, as I have seen many other fathers of the ton do. Instead, he encouraged me to expand my mind. He encouraged me to read. Great novels. Great works of philosophy. He brought in tutors so that I might receive an education equal to that of my brother. He taught me how to play chess.”
“A fine education indeed,” Ian murmured, rapturously engaged in her speech. This explained so much about his wife. Her wit, her passion. The intelligence burned through her eyes like twin pools of jade fire. “He sounds like a remarkable man.”
“He was. The most remarkable.” She stopped and looked down into her wine glass. “When he died,” she finally continued, “it was like my heart had been torn in two.”
“I am so sorry,” Ian said gently, mirroring her apology from before. She shook her head. “Not just for his passing.”
She looked up. “What do you mean?”
“You spoke to me of the promises he made you swear to him,” Ian said slowly. “I…have much regret, for anything I may have done to prevent you from keeping either of those promises.”
Cecilia looked at him for a long time. And then, to his surprise, she smiled.
“Oh, I do not know,” she said. “If things continue well between Zachary and Nancy, I have high hopes for the second promise. And, as to the first…” She paused. Then she looked him more fiercely in the eyes than she ever had before. Her hand turned up and gripped his tightly. “You are a very fine man, Ian Repington,” she said. “A most honorable man, indeed. I am certain that if my father were to have met you, he would have been most proud of me for marrying a man like you.”
Ian had not realized before that moment just how much he had needed to hear that.
Before he could tell as much, he saw a tear slip down her cheek. Without pausing, he reached out and caught it. Cecilia smiled, then pulled back to wipe her tears, looking a tad bit embarrassed.
“Well,” she said. “There. I hope you are not looking upon me with pity, now.”
“I most certainly am not,” he said. “I was only thinking that…” He hesitated. Something in his face intrigued her.
“What?” she asked curiously.
“I was only thinking that I have not complimented you nearly enough.”
She rolled her eyes, laughing lightly. “You and your flattery.”
“Is it flattery if it is the truth?” he asked. When she did not protest any further, he continued, “Because the truth is, you are a passionate and intelligent woman. I am certain your father would be proud of the lady you have grown into, and I am proud to have you as my wife.”
A true, genuine smile rose to Cecilia’s face at that, even as her eyes pooled with fresh tears. She blinked them back. “Perhaps the flattery would be best,” she said, fanning at the tears. “I seem to be a bit too softhearted today for anything sincere.”
“Very well.” Ian made a show of sitting up straighter as he waited for her to collect herself. “How is this, then: I find you to be remarkably beautiful.”
Even though she knew he was surely saying it in jest, Cecilia’s breath caught in her throat, though she tried to put on a facade of being calm and collected.
“I should certainly hope you do,” she said, attempting a playful tone even as her heart thumped in her chest. “I am your wife, after all.”
He chuckled slightly, but for the most part, his eyes remained intensely on hers. “No,” he said, and she was struck by the rawness in his voice. Any and all artifice had vanished, leaving behind pure, unfiltered lust that cut her to her core. “No, Cecilia. I always have.”