Chapter Four
Cecily felt as though she couldn’t breathe.
She’d thought things could not get worse.
It was bad enough to be running from Bartwell and her mother’s schemes.
But to do so and run directly into her past and the one man who had not simply broken her heart but destroyed her in ways she could not even fully identify.
Memories of that night had plagued her so terribly.
For months afterward, she’d woken up sobbing.
For years afterward, she’d found herself hoping against hope that it was all some awful dream and she’d awaken to the life she’d once hoped for—planned for even.
Married to a man she loved, and who she’d thought loved her.
Perhaps with children and a home of her own to manage.
But no. The reality of it had collapsed in on her daily, burying her under the weight of misery, until she’d finally hardened her heart to all of it.
Taking on a guise of coldness, of aloof and icy disdain for all things related to marriage—to love and romance—she’d managed to make that mask so convincing that she’d even begun to believe it herself.
It hadn’t been so bad before, really. Until her stepfather, Jonathan Rivers, had died.
When that had occurred, and the nature of their tenuous financial straits had been revealed, well then her mother had become unreasonable.
She’d insisted that Cecily had to marry so the marriage portion left to her by her father would finally be accessible to them.
And there had been little time to waste as Cecily was approaching the age of twenty-five, the point where she could take control of the fortune herself—or as much control as any woman was permitted to have given that her every move would be subject to the approval of trustees.
Still, that was a preferable option to the idea of being married to someone as odious as Lord Bartwell.
But there was one truth she couldn’t escape.
The girl who’d once dreamed of being the wife of Malcolm Winthrop—not the Duchess of Sedgewick—was a mere ghost in her memory.
The ensuing heartbreak and bitter disappointment which followed his very public rejection of her had altered her irrevocably.
So much so that she was no longer certain she wished to be any man’s wife at all.
Her dream in fleeing her mother’s schemes and Bartwell’s lascivious glances had been simple.
A small cottage, perhaps with a hired companion if one was manageable on whatever stipend the trustees permitted her.
A simple, country life with a garden and perhaps a view of the sea.
Nowhere in the imaginings of her grand escape to a modest life had she accounted for the possibility of running directly into the most painful part of her past.
If, she thought, it were only the hurt she remembered, then it might be easier.
But she remembered the hope. She remembered the excitement that hummed beneath her skin whenever he was near.
She recalled how it felt to be in his arms during every single stolen moment they had eked out during their courtship.
And she remembered the afternoon they’d spent in that very same hunting box all those years ago.
The memory of that day, and of the fact that she would have given herself to him entirely had he agreed, had alternately tormented and comforted her in the years since.
A soft knock on the door halted her reverie.
“Cecily?”
“Please, Malcolm, leave me be,” she implored him. If she could simply survive till the morning, then they could part ways and never have to be reminded of one another again.
“I fear that I cannot… I have stayed silent for far too long. I’ve allowed convention to dictate that I give my allegiance to a dead woman while breaking my silence might prevent the suffering of a living one.”
“Oh, dear heavens. What does that even mean?” she snapped. “If you’ve only come to vex me with more riddles and questions, you may take yourself back downstairs. Promptly!”
“I haven’t… I simply meant to tell you that I did not know.
When I went to the study that night, I had presumed it was to sign marriage contracts for us.
When I found Elspeth there, I intended to leave instantly.
But the door was locked from the outside.
Always thorough, my father had issued orders to servants earlier to nail the windows shut.
Short of breaking the glass and fleeing into the night—which I might have done had there been time—I had no other way to exit. ”
“You were trapped,” she said, not at all surprised by the fact.
She’d never imagined anything else. But the next bit, the admission that poured out of her was one that left her feeling so vulnerable, laid bare and stripped of all dignity, that her voice was little more than a whisper.
“I know that, Malcolm. I’ve known that for years.
And perhaps the worst part of it all was that you never seemed to mind very much at all. ”
“I minded. Every day. From my first waking thought to my last… and even in my dreams, Cecily. Even in my dreams, you plagued me. But I—”
When he stopped, she wanted to pound her fist on the door and demand that he answer for everything that had passed between them. And everything that had not.
“Must we do this with a closed door between us?” he asked. “If I am to confess my most painful secrets to you, I’d very much like to see your face while I do so.”
*
For several minutes, he waited. He heard nothing from the room within. No indication that she was moving around, considering his request or dismissing it out of hand. Then, when he’d all but given up hope, he heard the scrape of iron as the bolt shifted free.
“I never intended to hurt you,” he said.
“What we intend and what we commit are often very different things,” she said.
“That is true… I thought keeping my distance from you—after—was the kindest thing I could do. That it would quell further gossip and speculation. That it would allow you to move on more freely if the two of us were not commonly being discussed in conjunction with you.”
“That is your excuse?”
He shook his head, smiling slightly. She would not make it easy.
Nor should she. He’d been taking the easy way out all along and that had suddenly become very clear to him.
“No. That was the reason I told myself, the reason that I could live with. But it was not the truth—at least not in its entirety. I convinced myself you had moved on, that you were forever on the cusp of making some sort of announcement. Every letter your mother sent to my aunt seemed to indicate it.”
She rolled her eyes, her lashes still darkened by tears. “My mother says many things. Clearly, a great number of them are untrue or I would not have been required to flee like a thief in the night.”
“Yes,” he concurred. “So I am beginning to realize. And given that you have every reason to have lost all patience with liars, I will tell you the whole truth and not only the parts of it I am comfortable with.”
Her arms crossed over her chest, a telling movement. It wasn’t anger or impatience. It was something far worse. As though she were trying to shield herself from something. “Go on then.”
Exhaling, as if that would somehow release the tension he felt at the admission he was about to make, he said, “If you had moved on with another—and with every right to do so—then you were out of my reach. If you had not, and still refused me… It was easier to believe that I could not have you because of previous commitments than to know, without question, that you simply no longer cared.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because you deserve to know… and because if you still feel enough anger and resentment to want to hurl things at my head, then perhaps you still feel other things for me as well. Because I feel them for you. And have all along. Every day spent with Elspeth was a reminder that she was not the wife I chose. She was not you.”
With those words now hovering between them, he waited. Waited to see if by some strange twist of fate and a flooded river he’d been given a second chance to have the one thing he wanted most. A life with Cecily by his side.