FOURTEEN
The snick of the door shutting echoed in the library.
Matt leaned his head against the window pane, closing his eyes and concentrating on the cold glass under his forehead. Anything to distract from the ragged thump of his pulse.
When he was fifteen, his father had deemed Matt skilled enough to join in the annual fox hunt. The chase had been exhilarating—dogs braying, horns blaring, men shouting. The muscles of Matt’s horse had rippled beneath his thighs as they soared over hedges and stone fences.
But when the hounds caught the fox, it all went wrong. The dogs tore into the poor beast, ripping it to shreds in a frenzied melee of—
Matt shook off the gruesome memory. Needless to say, he hadn’t participated in a fox hunt since.
However, at this moment, his heart resembled the aftermath of that hunt—bloody and torn to pieces. Melodramatic, certainly, but true.
What an idiotic fool he had been.
Of course, Cecily Armstrong had refused his offer of friendship.
No need, yet again, to recount the reasons—his awkward manner, her fear of men, the unevenness of their situation, et cetera.
No wonder she had reacted like a cornered animal when faced with his request—biting his hand and drawing blood, so to speak.
But the wound stung. He had finally confessed his knowledge of her past. She knew that he knew they had been born social equals. And still—out of surprise or horror or what have you—she refused to consider him a friend.
The healer in him wanted to press her. To engage in the same push and pull he used with his horses. But who was to say those tactics worked with emotionally-injured people? And even if they did, Cecily wasn’t his mistreated mare to heal.
On a wince, Matt stepped away from the window and returned to his seat before the fire.
He tried to lose himself in an indifferent book on the fauna of the American Appalachian mountains, with minimal success.
Cecily’s voice, hoarse and cracking—I will not be harassed into friendship! —rang too loud in his ears.
Rawkin found him staring into the fire.
“Dinner will be served shortly, my lord.” The butler gave a small bow.
“Excellent. Please inform Hansen that I won’t be changing for dinner.” There hardly seemed a point. All Matt wanted was the quiet of his library and a good brood.
“As ye wish, my lord.” There ensued a lengthy pause. “If I may inquire, my lord, how go the plans for hosting a dinner party? Ye were speaking for a long while with Mrs. Armstrong.”
Ah. There it was, just as Matt predicted—the household set aflutter by Cecily’s words in the stable.
He barely suppressed a sigh.
Despite Cecily’s assurances, the servants had noticed the coziness of their tête-à-tête this afternoon.
“Mrs. Armstrong was kind to introduce the notion, and I agree with her logic—I am new to Avoch and hold some degree of position within the community. But I realized that I do not feel quite up to the challenge, at present,” Matt amended. “Mrs. Armstrong was kind to entertain the notion.”
“I see,” Rawkin said, and given the intensity of his gaze, Matt rather feared the man did. He likely saw the way Matt’s breathing rose and fell on Mrs. Armstrong’s presence.
With a faint grimace, he returned his attention to his reading.
Cecily tossed and turned through the night, blankets snaking and coiling until her legs sparked with panic.
That moment in the library earlier played on a never-ending loop of surprise, fear, and guilt.
How unfathomable that Lord Matthias, of all people, should know her secret.
That he had always known her identity. That the Duke of Grayburn—a duke!
—had ordered him to sack her because she was too young and comely.
And Lord Matthias had heeded her pleas for clemency, even knowing she was lying about her identity.
He had protected her without saying a word.
No wonder he had asked after her Christian name that first day. She had merely assumed the question to be odd. But no. He had wanted confirmation of her former life, and she had unwittingly delivered it.
Like two ships in a storm, her worlds had collided—that of the lady, Miss Moulton, and the humble housekeeper, Mrs. Armstrong—and now she was supposed to somehow assess the wreckage while actively drowning.
Miss Moulton made quite the impression, he had said.
What exactly did he mean by impression? Was it a good or a bad one?
And then, when he pressed his bid for friendship, she had snapped in fear. He had taken a tentative step toward trusting her—and had sheltered her even knowing she was a liar—and she had all but placed two hands on his chest and pushed him away.
But . . . how could they be friends? And to what end? Even the faintest whiff of familiarity between them would be catastrophic. Her fragile reputation was all that stood between her and the poor house.
Yet, the more she recited her reasons for refusal, the more hollow they sounded.
Sometime after the hall clock chimed two, she accepted the truth—
She liked Lord Matthias. She wanted to be his friend. Her rejection had been cruel, particularly as he had only ever shown her kindness and understanding.
Her mind drifted to the letter she had retrieved from Mrs. Campbell’s farmhouse two days before. Thank goodness Lord Matthias hadn’t asked why Cecily was on that road.
Her uncle’s latest missive had neither resolved nor escalated her current fears.
As for your questions, I cannot say what Lord D’s aims are. He disappeared from my doorstep a month past, and all has been silent. I pray that, perhaps, he has realized he has no true power, as I roundly informed him.
You may not be able to reclaim a place in Polite Society, my dear, but now that George is dead, maybe we could find a post for you as a lady’s companion. Perhaps someone we know, so that we might see you from time to time.
It wasn’t much, but Cecily placed hope in her uncle’s words.
George was dead. Drempton, unfortunately, remained . . . but perhaps he had finally abandoned his efforts. If Cecily could seek work as a lady’s companion, she would improve her position and step back into her own world in the gentry class.
As the gray morning dawned, light weakly seeping through cracks in the shutters, Cecily accepted that she wanted to take tentative steps toward that life.
Maybe.
Perhaps.
If she could find the bravery.
Lord Matthias wasn’t the only one who felt helpless to alter his behavior.
The incident in the stables—as well as her fear to ride atop Zephyrus with Lord Matthias—had shown a bright light on the true extent of the wreckage George and Drempton had inflicted on her psyche.
It felt simply intolerable. Unbearable that she would let those men—absent in their physical forms—continue to guide her life.
Like the lengthening days as spring melted into summer, sunlight lingering in the sky, Cecily could feel that wee bit of hope expanding.
Regardless of what her future held, she wanted to be free of this fear.
There.
She admitted it.
Lord Matthias Kinsey would make a remarkable friend. More to the point, she had intended to help him, not cause him more harm.
She stared up at the ceiling above her bed, mind churning, until she settled on a course of action.
Matthias sat atop Indira in the paddock, letting her adjust to the feel of his body.
He and Forbes had been gradually working their way through the stages of training with the mare.
She finally appeared comfortable with the saddle.
This morning, Matthias had swung atop her for the first time.
She had flinched at his weight but hadn’t attempted to unseat him.
However, her ears had laid back against her head, and he could feel the tension in her body.
Initially, he had supposed it to be the saddle and weight of him in general. But now as he applied pressure with his knees, gently coaxing her into a walk, her gait remained stiff and—he hunted for the right word—confused.
He tried a few more basic commands. Indira struggled to understand them.
Well.
Her lack of understanding could stem from many things, but the more he worked with her, the more one specific conclusion stood out—
Perhaps Indira had been trained to a sidesaddle and had been ridden by a lady, not a gentleman. Horses were rarely trained to both; it was typically one or the other.
It could explain her unsure reactions to his cues. When riding sidesaddle, a lady only had her left foot to give commands. She used a riding crop to provide gentle taps on the horse’s right side. The signals were not the same as ones given by a gentleman astride.
Which now posed the question—if Indira were accustomed to being ridden by a lady, did he reacclimate her to a sidesaddle? Or retrain her to prefer a regular saddle and a male rider?
Mulling the positives and negatives of each choice, he nudged the mare to a walk, strolling the perimeter of the paddock.
She remained stiff underneath him, muscles bunched and tight in a way they hadn’t been in weeks now.
Granted, Indira was a sensitive creature, and her stiffness could merely be a reflection of Matt’s own agitation after a long, sleepless night.
As he stared into the dark, the mantle clock bonging the late hour, he had arrived at an ungenerous thought—
Perhaps Gray had been right. Matt likely should replace Mrs. Armstrong as housekeeper. It would be easier than enduring the unceasing pain of her rejection.
Of course, he immediately discarded the notion. It wasn’t Mrs. Armstrong’s fault that she found Matt unpalatable. And her position represented safety, as well as employment.
Matt would have to confess the whole to Isla in a letter and ask for her advice. And after enduring her scolding reply, perhaps she would offer a reasonable solution.
With that in mind, he pushed Indira to a canter, loping around the paddock. Forbes stood on the lowest railing of the fence, watching Indira as she moved, cataloging idiosyncrasies in her gait.
“What say you, Forbes?” Matt asked. “Sidesaddle?”