FOURTEEN #2
“Aye. Most definitely.”
“We can train her to a regular saddle.”
“Aye, but she would be striking with a lady aloft. Indira seems more suited to it.”
“Probably why she was trained to sidesaddle in the first place.”
Something flashed in the corner of Matt’s eye—Mrs. Armstrong walking toward the paddock. Matt couldn’t think of her as Cecily anymore. That way lay madness.
He took in a slow breath.
The housekeeper waited patiently beside Forbes as Matt urged Indira over to them both.
“Good morning, my lord,” she smiled, reaching out to rub Indira’s forelock. “She is looking right bonnie.”
Matt nodded and swung out of the saddle, not trusting himself to speak just yet. Mrs. Armstrong wouldn’t be seeking him out unless she had reason, but it was difficult to look into her bright blue eyes and quash the ache of yearning they induced.
“Might I have a word with yourself, my lord?” Mrs. Armstrong darted a glance at Forbes. “Alone, perhaps?”
Matt studiously ignored the interested lift of Forbes’s eyebrows. The canny Scot would suss out the situation if Matt wasn’t careful. “Is anything amiss, Mrs. Armstrong?”
“There is a sensitive matter to discuss.”
A sensitive matter could be anything from the butcher shortchanging them on beef to a maid being found in a family way.
But Matt suspected Mrs. Armstrong wished to continue their discussion from yesterday.
Perhaps deliver the scolding he anticipated from Isla.
Most likely, Mrs. Armstrong worried she would be dismissed over her refusal of their friendship.
And with some justification. Hadn’t he contemplated replacing her not six hours before?
A stone settled in his belly. He didn’t have to speak with her. He could simply order her to leave. But he wasn’t so churlish. He had behaved like an unschooled buffoon, and now he would pay the piper.
“Of course.” Matt handed Indira’s reins over to Forbes and motioned Mrs. Armstrong to accompany him to the castle.
They walked in silence, accompanied by the soft swish of her skirts and the crunch of gravel underfoot.
Mrs. Armstrong took in breath several times as if to speak, but never did.
Finally, as they crossed through the castle’s main door and into the small entrance hall, she asked, “Who is Isla?”
Matt frowned. Of all of the things she might have said—
“Pardon?”
“You mentioned Isla yesterday.”
“I did. This is the important question you wished to ask privately?” He turned for the stairs, leading them upwards.
“No,” she said at his back. “But I admit to being curious.”
Matt continued through a corner of the great hall and up another spiral staircase to a small study.
It was a more accepted space than the library for speaking with a member of staff.
He was quite sure it had once been the steward’s chamber where the laird received rents.
Now, it was a tidy room with a heavy oak desk, tapestries on the wall for warmth, a roaring fire in the grate, and weak light trailing through a lone window.
He crossed to sit behind the desk, wishing to maintain a sense of separation and hierarchy between them—employer and employee, nothing more.
“Lady Isla Balfour is my younger sister.” He motioned for Mrs. Armstrong to sit in the wooden chair opposite.
“I was unaware you had additional siblings.”
Matt straightened a pencil and some papers on his desk. Anything to avoid having to look at Mrs. Armstrong’s lovely face. “Just the one. Lady Isla is married to Mr. Tavish Balfour, a son of Lord Northcairn. They have a toddler, Fletcher, and—”
“Wee Fletch, you called him.”
“Yes. He is adorable. Isla is in a family way again and has entered her confinement, so I am hopeful Balfour will write of the happy event soon. Perhaps another boy as a companion for Wee Fletch.”
“I pray all goes well.”
“Myself, as well. Thank you.”
He stared at his hand atop the desk, hating that he didn’t know how to deal with the imbalance—the wanting, his wanting—between them. He hated that it had set him to blundering yesterday. That it had caused her alarm. That he had provided proof, yet again, of his failure as a human being.
“I need to apologize, my lord, for—”
“Please, Mrs. Armstrong,” he winced. “Please do not apologize.”
Truly, she must be terrified for her position.
Damnation. This situation kept sinking to new lows.
He opened a drawer and retrieved the folded piece of paper he had composed first thing upon waking. Anything to bolster her sense of security and safety.
“I prepared this for you.” He extended it to her.
She took it with a trembling hand. “What is it?”
He nodded for her to read, then stood and paced to the window, eschewing the temptation to study the emotions dancing across her face.
Instead, he gazed over the landscape, green grass pushing skyward. There was even a hint of yellow in some of the gorse along the lane. As ever, clouds gathered along the horizon, promising rain before nightfall.
Mrs. Armstrong stirred at his back. “You have given me a letter of recommendation.” A long pause. “Why?”
“Do you find it lacking?” He braced himself, preparing for a blow as he turned around. The sun from the window bathed her like a heaven-kissed angel fallen to earth.
Bloody hell, he was pathetic.
“It’s . . . it’s astounding. Dazzling.” She read a few lines. “A housekeeper of incomparable expertise. Meticulous in every detail.” She lifted her head. “’Tis everything a housekeeper could ever want in a letter of recommendation. But . . . why?”
“I don’t wish you to feel trapped or beholden to accommodate my eccentricities for fear of reprisals.”
“My lord, this is too kind.” She darted a glance at the open door before continuing in a hush. “I feel the need to—”
“Mrs. Armstrong, let’s put the incident yesterday behind us. I placed you in an uncomfortable position and should never have—”
“Cecily,” she murmured, standing and crossing to him. “Please, call me Cecily.”
Matt blinked.
“Cecily,” he repeated on a shocked whisper.
“Yes.” She peered up at him. How had he never noticed the extravagant length of her eyelashes?
Or how the pale freckles dotting her cheekbones resembled flecks of autumn leaves?
“You have been apologizing, but sincerely, you have nothing for which to apologize. I requested to see your arm yesterday. Before that, I suggested a less formal arrangement between ourselves. I have been confusing our relationship from the very start.”
There were seven freckles on her right cheek, eight on the left. He felt it necessary to catalog them, as at the moment, his brain was too stunned to do anything else.
“I fear you will have to spell out your meaning.” A pause. “Cecily.”
“I want us to be friends, assuming the offer still stands. I should like to call you Matthias when we are not in the company of others. And I would like to continue to help you with your list, if I may.” Her eyes dropped to the letter in her hand.
“Thank you for the recommendation. It is the act of a true friend.”
“Why the change of heart?”
She sighed and looked past his shoulder to the window at his back, shifting on her feet. “It was less a change of heart and more a calming of nerve. Your revelations and request yesterday caught me unawares, and I reacted in haste . . .” She drifted off.
“And?” he prompted.
“And . . . as a housekeeper, my future sits on a knife’s edge.
” She met his gaze. “Yes, I was once a lady. I have carried the burden of this double-life for six years, and it was overwhelming to realize that someone else knows my secret. Moreover, my good reputation is my best—truly my only—protection. The wrong rumor in the wrong corner will spell disaster. One misstep and I could easily find myself begging on the street . . . or worse.”
She was correct. Of course, she was.
Still . . .
“I should hate to jeopardize your life in any way, you must know this. I didn’t intend to unnerve you yesterday with my revelation of remembering you as Miss Moulton.
My hope was the precise opposite—to help you understand that you are known and accepted as you are, that you are safe here .
. . with me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything, but I deeply disliked lying to you, even if only through omission. I want honesty between us.”
He wanted to ask her about her safety, about the events that put such bleak terror in her eyes, but he stayed his tongue.
Pushing too hard was the source of this conflict in the first place.
But it was difficult with her standing scarcely two feet in front of him, her lovely face filling his vision.
“That is precisely the problem.” She gave a wan smile. “I have dwelt so long in caution and fear that I wonder if I have forgotten how to live. How to have a friend with whom I have no secrets, and how to be one in return.”
That kinship rose within Matt again. She had forgotten what it meant to live, and he had never attempted it in the first place.