Chapter Three
Hours had passed and the rain had not stopped.
As the river outside had swelled, so had the tension between them.
They sat in almost complete silence, speaking only when necessary.
And as night began to fall, the temperature dropping just enough to have Cecily shivering, Malcom’s gaze drifted toward her. She’d die before asking for help.
The small fire in the hearth was not enough to propel any warmth into the room, but merely enough to heat the kettle of water they’d used for tea earlier. Without a word, he rose and moved toward the hearth, adding another few pieces of wood to it.
Then he moved across the room to a small chest in the corner and retrieved a blanket from inside it. Closing the distance, he handed it off to her. “It wouldn’t do to have you catch a chill,” he said.
“Your concern is heartwarming,” she replied. “You needn’t worry I’ll hold you responsible. I learned long ago that you were not one to respond well to feeling obliged.”
He wanted to protest. He wanted to shout that he’d have never abandoned her had he been given any other choice.
But the time for such protestations was long passed.
And while there had no great love between himself and his late wife, it seemed wrong to speak ill of her.
And yet there was no way to explain the circumstances that had forced him to abandon Cecily and marry her instead—not without maligning the reputation of a woman no longer there to defend herself.
Whatever actions Elspeth had taken, she had surely paid for them above and beyond with the way she had suffered at the end.
“Whatever your belief about how things ended those many years ago, you should know that I always had the best of intentions where you were concerned… honorable intentions. Nothing occurred in the way that it should have and those are regrets that I will always live with.”
“Do not!” she whispered hotly. “Do not.”
“Do not what? Address the accusation that I played you false?”
“Do not make me forgive you when hating you has been all that has held the broken pieces of me together.”
Her words were shocking. Perhaps more so was the raw agony he heard in her voice.
It cut him to the quick because it ripped away the veil of lies he’d told himself.
She would be fine. She would find someone else.
Life would move on and so would she and eventually he would be naught but a memory to her.
Those were the things he’d clung to because they’d made his own agony bearable.
“Cecily—” But he was speaking to an empty room. She’d already fled, the blanket he’d given her trailing behind her like a train as she fled up the narrow stairs once more to the bedchamber above.
Malcolm sank to the worn upholstery of the rickety chair placed near the hearth.
And thousands of memories rushed him—quiet moments, passionate moments, the feeling of completeness that he’d only ever known with her.
And then other memories came. Memories of Elspeth and plots and schemes of her social climbing mother.
Six years earlier…
The ball was in full swing, revelers moving to and fro about the room. And across the expanse of it, he could see her. Cecily. Before the night was through, their betrothal would be announced and the entire world would know that she was his.
His father, unwell for some time, was even in attendance for the momentous occasion. It was rather surprising as he’d never approved of his courtship of Cecily.
They were distantly connected. Her mother was sister to the second wife of his uncle. Not quite cousins. It was how they’d crossed paths so often, how that spark of attraction had grown into what he currently felt—consumed by her.
“Your father has requested to meet with you in the study, my lord,” a footman informed him. “He stated there are documents to be signed before… your announcement.”
It was odd that such a thing would be brought to his attention in the middle of the ball, but then matters had been hurried along after—well, after. One afternoon in a hunting lodge had changed their lives forever. Indeed, the feeling of her body pressed to his had marked him straight to his soul.
“Thank you,” he replied to the footman and exited the ballroom immediately. Making his way to the study, he entered and was instantly surprised to find it dark inside. Perhaps the footman had been mistaken about the room?
But when Malcolm turned to exit, he found the door securely locked.
“My mother has the key. Your father gave it to her.”
He knew that voice. Elspeth Daniels. The girl who’d set her cap for him at the beginning of the season. Or, if he was to be entirely accurate, the girl whose mother had set that cap for her.
“What is the meaning of this?”
“My mother and your father have come to an agreement. While you are a second son, it is still a connection to a powerful dukedom and mother—well, she has ambitions. As for your father, he deems me to be a more appropriate choice of bride for you than the hoyden you have aligned yourself with,” she stated.
It was clear from her tone that she was parroting what she’d heard others say.
“Do not. Do not speak of her. You call her a hoyden and yet you have laid a trap for me here like the most cutthroat predator,” he pointed out. “You—and your mother—are hardly entitled to criticize the behavior and morals of another.”
“You may hate me for it now, but eventually you will come to see that our parents have made better choices for both of us than we might have made on our own,” she answered dismissively.
“You may be content to await the judgment of whatever gossips your mother drags in here to witness our downfall, but I am not… There are windows enough to escape through.”
“Not really. Your father had them sealed shut earlier today. Nailed, I think. It was mother’s idea… I know that I am not what you have chosen for yourself, my lord, but I am not a bad choice for you in the least. I have been trained from the cradle to be a duchess. I can be everything you need.”
“No, you cannot. Because I need Cecily. I need the woman I have fallen in love with to be my wife… and I need her to not be injured by your selfish schemes and plots!”
She moved toward him then, closing the distance with an expression of true confusion on her face. “You actually believe yourself to be in love with her?”
“It is not belief, Miss Daniels. It is fact. I love Cecily Upshaw. And I will marry her.”
Behind him, a noise caught his attention.
Before he could turn to look, Miss Daniels threw herself into his arms, plastering her body against his.
And the door opened, revealing his father and Mrs. Clara Upshaw-Rivers, Cecily’s mother.
Behind them was Lady Brayerton, the Ton’s most vicious gossip.
But his gaze wasn’t drawn to any of them.
It was drawn only to Cecily. Cecily who looked at him as though the entire world had tilted beneath her feet.
The trap had been well laid, and like a too trusting rabbit, he’d walked directly into it—too blind by happiness to see the threat.