Chapter 21
Edmund paced the length of the sitting room, the soles of his boots sinking into the thick Turkish rug. The morning light filtering through the tall sash windows offered no warmth.
In the center of the room, seated in a high-backed damask chair, Lady Margaret Ashford waited, adjusting the black mourning lace at her wrists. She sat with the terrifying, absolute stillness of a woman who had already braced herself for the worst possible blow.
“Sit down, Edmund,” she said quietly.
He stopped pacing but did not sit. “I prefer to stand.”
“As you wish,” she replied, her dark eyes tracking him. “I will not ask you to insult my intelligence with excuses. I will simply ask you to tell me the truth. All of it. From the moment you returned from Italy.”
Edmund looked at his mother, feeling the last remaining threads of his carefully constructed armor disintegrating into dust. He took a slow, jagged breath, and he told her.
He started with Julian. He explained the debt in Naples, the thugs in the alleyway, the life he owed the man who had pulled him out of the gutter. He moved to the contract with Sir Gerald Ashwell, the suffocating weight of the title, and the paralyzing terror of walking into a marriage blind.
He explained the swap. He detailed every deliberate lie, every borrowed coat, every manufactured excuse. He laid bare the entire Season, stacking each deception on top of the last until the sheer, catastrophic height of the structure seemed to sway and buckle in the quiet room.
Lady Margaret listened. When Edmund finally finished, his voice raw and hollowed out, a suffocating silence descended upon the room. The only sound was the ticking of the mahogany grandfather clock in the corner.
He waited for her fury. He braced himself for her to shout, to weep for the disgrace he had brought upon his father’s name.
“Your father,” Lady Margaret finally said, her voice perfectly level, “would not be devastated by the deception itself.”
Edmund flinched. He stared at her, entirely wrong-footed. “Mother, I…”
“Do not interrupt me,” she commanded softly. The softness was infinitely worse than a scream. “Your father understood the necessity of strategy. He was a practical man. But he would be utterly devastated by the reason beneath it.”
She stood up slowly, smoothing the front of her black silk skirts. She walked toward him, stopping just a foot away, looking up into his face with an expression of profound, aching disappointment.
“You trusted so little in your own worth,” she said, each word landing like a physical strike.
“You believed so completely that you possessed nothing of value beyond your title and your ledgers, that you needed a disguise simply to observe a family rather than meet them honestly. The Earl of Ravenswood hid behind a secretary’s coat because he was afraid. ”
“I was protecting our family,” Edmund protested, though the words sounded pathetic even to his own ears.
“You were protecting yourself,” Lady Margaret corrected ruthlessly. “And in doing so, you have placed everyone else directly in the line of fire. Do you understand what you have done to the Ashwell family?”
Edmund looked away, his jaw locking tight. “I know.”
“Do you?” She stepped closer, forcing him to meet her gaze.
“Their reputation. Their good name. Vivienne’s prospects, Corinna’s future.
All of it sits precariously on this lie.
If it breaks in the open, Edmund, it will not only be your disgrace.
You will drag them down with you. You will ruin the daughters of the man your father called a brother. ”
“I will fix it,” Edmund said, his voice trembling slightly.
“You have until tomorrow,” Lady Margaret stated. She did not ask how he planned to do it. She simply delivered the ultimatum. “Tomorrow, the truth must be managed, or I will manage it myself.”
Without another word, she turned and walked out of the sitting room, closing the door softly behind her.
Edmund stood alone in the center of the room, the blood rushing in his ears.
He walked over to the sideboard and poured a glass of brandy, his hands shaking so violently the crystal decanter rattled against the rim of the glass.
He drank it neat, welcoming the burning slide of the liquor down his throat.
He needed to find Corinna. He had sent the note to meet at the Serpentine, but now he realized the absolute cowardice of waiting for her to come to him. He set the glass down and turned toward the door.
“Miss Cecily Vane,” MacAulay announced, stepping onto the threshold.
Before Edmund could issue a harsh refusal, Cecily swept past the butler. She brought a thoroughly intimidated lady’s maid with her, who immediately shrank against the wall near the door.
Cecily, however, moved with the unhurried, predatory grace of a woman who owned the very floorboards beneath her feet. She wore a walking dress of deep claret velvet, the rich fabric amplifying the vibrant copper of her hair.
“Good morning, Edmund,” Cecily purred, stripping off her leather gloves. She did not wait for an invitation. She crossed the room and settled onto the center sofa, arranging her skirts with careless elegance, looking entirely at home.
“You are not welcome here, Cecily,” Edmund growled.
Cecily laughed, a light, musical sound that completely ignored his hostility. “Oh, do not be so terribly dramatic. It does not suit your complexion.”
“I am not in the mood for games,” Edmund snapped, stepping toward her. “You delivered your threat. What exactly do you want?”
Cecily looked up at him, her dark eyes tracing the hard, severe lines of his face. She leaned back against the cushions, tapping her gloves against her palm.
“I know what you must think of me,” she said smoothly, dropping the playful pretense. “You think I am entirely callous. You think I abandoned you when you needed me most.”
“I think you are a mercenary,” Edmund corrected flatly.
“I am a realist,” she countered. “I did not leave the man, Edmund. I left the version of you that came home from your father’s funeral.”
Edmund froze, his chest tightening.
“You were already someone else,” Cecily continued, her voice dropping into a softer, almost intimate register.
“You were grief-shrunk. You were drowning in duty. You were already halfway to becoming the careful, joyless, rigid creature standing in front of me right now. I fell in love with a man who read poetry aloud in Roman cafés, a man who laughed easily and recklessly, a man who did not yet know the crushing weight of what he was going to inherit.”
She tilted her head, her gaze piercing. “That man simply wasn’t there anymore to be loved.”
“So you packed your trunks and left without a word,” Edmund said, his voice entirely dead.
“I am not sorry,” Cecily stated plainly. “I am only mistaken about how long it would take you to come back to yourself.”
“I am myself.”
“You are stubborn,” Cecily corrected, a dazzling smile breaking across her face.
It was the specific, irresistible smile that had once unraveled him completely in the Latin Quarter.
“You are being stubborn out of grief, not out of any genuine lack of feeling. I have been thinking about our last conversation in Paris for months.”
She stood up slowly, closing the distance between them. The intoxicating scent of crushed cloves and vanilla washed over him.
“I have to admit,” Cecily murmured, her dark eyes sparkling with genuine amusement, “the whole theater of this Season has a certain undeniable charm. You playing the impoverished secretary. The handsome friend playing the earl. It is very much like the old days, Edmund. You always did love a brilliant prank.”
Edmund stared at her, a staggering realization washing over his mind.
She didn’t understand. She genuinely believed this entire catastrophic deception was nothing more than a playful rebellion against his title.
She saw the wreckage of his life and thought it was an elaborate joke designed for her entertainment.
“But the joke is old now,” Cecily whispered, taking another step closer. “And it is not funny anymore. The ton is tedious, and this country is entirely too damp. We should go.”
“Go?” Edmund repeated, his voice hollow.
“Paris,” she said, reaching out to trace the lapel of his brown coat. “The continent. The life we had before all this suffocating duty and damage swallowed you whole. I am still here, Edmund. That is what matters.”
Edmund looked down at her. He searched his own chest, waiting for the familiar, agonizing pang of longing, the desperate hunger that had driven him across Europe.
He found absolutely nothing.
The space where she had once lived inside him was empty.
“No,” Edmund said.
Cecily blinked, her smile faltering slightly. She took a small step toward him, her hand sliding up toward his shoulder.
Edmund stepped back, physically removing himself from her reach. “No, Cecily.”
A sharp click sounded behind her.
The drawing room door swung open. The young housemaid stood on the threshold, looking flushed and entirely flustered by the sudden breach of protocol.
“My lord… Mr. Marsh… sir,” the maid stammered. “An unexpected caller…”
Corinna stood in the doorway.
She was wearing her dark wool walking coat, her own maid hovering nervously a few paces behind her. The cold street air still clung to her clothes, her cheeks flushed with a high, brilliant color. She had not gone to the Serpentine. She had marched directly to the lion’s den.
Edmund’s heart stopped dead in his chest.
Corinna did not speak. Her sharp gray eyes swept the room. She took in the intimate proximity. She took in Cecily’s hand, hovering in the space near Edmund’s shoulder. She took in Cecily’s proprietary, familiar stance, and Edmund’s breathless, frozen posture.
The color drained from Corinna’s cheeks, leaving her pale and perfectly composed. The vulnerability that had cracked open in the garden last night snapped shut, locking away the woman he loved behind an impenetrable fortress of quiet dignity.
Without uttering a single word, Corinna turned on her heel and walked out.
“Corinna, wait!” Edmund shouted, the paralysis finally breaking.
He lunged forward to follow her.
Cecily stepped directly into his path, placing a hand firmly against his chest. It was not a forceful touch, but it was anchored and deliberate, completely blocking his forward momentum.
“Let her go, Edmund,” Cecily said, her voice dropping its playful edge, turning sharp and pragmatic.
“Get out of my way,” Edmund snarled, trying to push past her without using physical violence against a woman.
“She will never understand what you are,” Cecily insisted, keeping her hand pressed against his chest. Her dark eyes were entirely serious.
“Look at her. She is a country mouse. This whole Season has been a ridiculous performance, and you know it. Corinna Ashwell is not equipped for the real version of you. She is not equipped for the life you actually lead.”
Edmund stopped fighting her hold. He went perfectly still. He looked down at Cecily Vane, seeing the ruthless, mercenary calculation in her eyes, and he felt a profound sense of absolute clarity.
He reached up and wrapped his large hand around Cecily’s wrist. He did not hurt her, but his grip was unyielding. He slowly removed her hand from his chest, letting her arm drop to her side.
“I am in love with Corinna Ashwell,” Edmund said.
Cecily looked at him. The arrogant, knowing confidence finally fractured. She stared into his face for a long, heavy moment, searching his blue eyes for the boy who had read poetry in Rome. She found only the hardened, resolute man he had become.
Slowly, a laugh slipped past her lips. It was not her usual mocking, brittle sound. It was strangely quiet, tinged with something that looked almost like genuine, sorrowful feeling.
“You are a doomed man, Edmund,” Cecily said softly.
She did not argue further. She turned around, picked up her leather gloves from the sofa, and walked toward the door.
Edmund stood in the silence for exactly two seconds. Then, he bolted for the front door, desperate to catch Corinna before the carriage pulled away.