Chapter 12
White Horses or Blue Water
Damian nodded at Howard, who greeted him with a smile as he handed over his hat and gloves.
Eyeing the fellow suspiciously, Damian wondered when he had stopped being a pariah and why.
“Lady Cecilia is in the—”
“No, she isn’t,” Celia called, hurrying down the stairs towards him.
Damian glanced up. She wore a dress of sunshine yellow with a deeper gold spencer and a charming bonnet trimmed with gold ribbons. The sight of her lifted his heart, as if she were the cure for all that ailed him. If only.
The morning was a bright one, as if summer had blessed them with one last hurrah before it left for good, and to Damian she appeared to be the embodiment of the day.
The brooch he had bought her sat at the base of her throat amongst a little froth of lace.
His heart gave an erratic thump, and he told the stupid thing to pack it in and stop behaving like an idiot.
She was pulling on her gloves as she hurried towards him and, before he could speak, she grasped his arm and turned him back towards the door. Howard thrust his hat and gloves at him and Damian grabbed them before he was propelled outside.
“Well, good day to you too, Celia, are we going somewhere?”
“Yes, we have an urgent appointment to be somewhere,” she said, practically marching him down the driveway.
“Where and with whom?” he demanded, recalling no such appointment.
“I don’t know nor care,” she shot back, letting out a breath of relief. “Oh, thank heavens. I feared you might not appear for hours yet and wondered what on earth I should do.”
“Heavens, have you missed me so much?” he asked with a smirk, though he had no notion what she was going on about.
“Yes, actually, but that aside, it was more that I feared murdering my grandmother, or that she might murder my father, or that I might have done with it and thrown myself out of the window.”
“Ah,” he said, comprehension dawning as he fought down delight at her admission of having missed him. “Your father is still trying to blackmail you.”
“No,” she replied, glancing up and gifting him with a mischievous smile that did terrible things to his peace of mind.
“He’s given up on that since this morning.
I’ve convinced him I’m wildly in love with you and shall cause the worst scenes he’s ever witnessed in his life before if he makes a fuss.
Grandmama promised to help me too, which was rather marvellous.
He’s packing as we speak, having washed his hands of me. ”
Her tone was light and careless, but Damian understood the depth of her regret and wished things might be otherwise. “I’m sorry, Celia. I can’t blame the man for wanting better for you, but he’s a fool if he thinks cutting you out of his life is the answer.”
She sent him a remarkably direct look, her lovely eyes compassionate and amused all at once. “I am glad you think so.”
Damian snorted, realising she was turning his own words back at him.
“Anyway, it’s not that. I had expected nothing else from him, and to be honest, he’s taken it better than I expected.
At least he’s leaving me be. It’s just that we are to be married in five days, and I had it all in hand, a small affair as we preferred, but now my father has said spiteful things about it being a ‘shabby hole-in-the-wall affair, Grandmama wishes it to be grand and ostentatious. I am having the devil’s own job keeping her from undoing everything we agreed.
If you hadn’t arrived when you did, I might have run screaming for the hills. ”
“I am glad to be of service,” he remarked dryly, though despite his cynical tone, he was glad. He had once remarked upon being neither of use nor ornament, but if Celia needed his support, the least he could do was provide it. “Would you like me to speak with her?”
Celia’s head came up, the glance she sent him so surprised he almost laughed. “You would do that?”
Damian looked away, wondering why she was so startled by his offer.
“Why not? She ought not be bothering you when you have already explained your wishes. It cannot come as a shock to her that you do not wish the world to come and gawk at us out of curiosity. I shall make my first stand as your husband and tell her I am putting my foot down. I will not allow it. How’s that? ”
“Oh, yes, please, Damian. I should be very grateful. The poor darling means well, but she cannot accept that I am happy and that I only want a small affair with only the people I love in attendance, not a grand circus where everyone comes to gawk at us.”
Only the people I love.
And him, he amended silently, for she didn’t mean it that way. He wasn’t included among that select number. He told himself he was glad of it, but he had the unhappy suspicion that wasn’t true.
“Very well. When we return, I shall have a quiet word and inform her that my lady’s wishes are not to be questioned, and I am not to be disobeyed…
not that I expect her to take much notice of that.
I have a strong suspicion that the women of your family are not easily managed.
However, in the meantime, what shall we do? ”
She considered this in silence for a little while before darting him a provocative smile. “A shame it’s too cold to swim.”
Damian frowned at her and then remembered she had been on the beach when her sister and the Dowager Duchess of Hawkney had caught him and Gideon skinny dipping in the sea.
With an inward wince, he realised he had stood on top of the bloody rocks like cock of the walk and taken a bow, shameless creature that he was.
“Ah,” he said, his tone rueful.
Celia grinned at him, waggling her eyebrows provocatively.
“Stop that,” he said, the uneasy notion that he had not entirely lost the ability to blush even after a decade or more of wickedness making him scowl.
“Stop what?” she asked, all innocence, the wretch. “I promise you the events—and especially the images—of that day have been indelibly printed upon my brain. I shall never forget them so long as I live.”
Damian said nothing, desire and embarrassment warring within him, the longing to allow her the teasing closeness she offered at complete odds with his need to keep a distance between them. In the end, there was nothing he could do; he had lost this particular battle some time ago.
He sent her a dark look. “You told me you were unimpressed, as I remember, that your little boy cousins delighted in waving their privates about and you had seen it all before.”
She met his gaze, those remarkable golden eyes glowing with such heat he felt it lick at his flesh, inviting him to burn. “I lied,” she whispered.
He wanted to shake her, to demand she stop, and yet he didn’t want her to stop at all.
He wanted to burn, he wanted everything she was so willing to offer him, and it scared him out of his mind because all the methods he used to prevent a child with his previous lovers would be impossible to stick to with Celia.
It wouldn’t be enough to feel her hands on him, her mouth, he would go too far, be unable to stop and then — Everything would go to hell.
Yet she was to be his wife, she was his friend, and if he could not bed her, he could at least enjoy her company. That was what friendship was, wasn’t it?
“Well, as you said, it is too cold despite the sunshine. So what—”
“Oh, ices at The Mermaid. It’s not too cold for that,” she said, with such childlike eagerness he could not help but laugh.
“Very well, if that is what my lady wants, ices is what she will have,” he replied with a smile, and escorted her to the hotel.
Cilly sat opposite Damian, very aware he had seated her so she could admire the view over the sea, whereas he sat with his back to it. She lowered her menu an inch, watching him surreptitiously over the top of it. He was contemplating his choice too, and Cilly took a moment to drink him in.
Lord, but he was handsome.
Her heart ached with longing as she regarded his high cheekbones and those grey-blue eyes.
They could be so cold and devoid of emotion, but she knew now that was simply an act.
He had spent a lifetime building barriers so no one could get close to him, no one could hurt him as his mother had hurt him.
She could not imagine the depths of the ordeal he had endured as a child, and longed for the opportunity to make it better, even though she knew it was hopeless.
He was not hers to mend, even if such a thing were possible. But she wanted to do all in her power to make him see that the future need not be so bleak. The urge to wrap him up in her arms and declare herself was one she had to fight every day, and it was only getting harder to do.
Her feelings towards him had been easy enough to manage at first. She had desired him and found him fascinating, wanted to know more.
Now she knew more, she wanted to know everything, and those first stirrings of desire had deepened and expanded, filling her heart and her body, until she could no longer pretend she did not know what the name of the feeling was.
Frustration gnawed at her. She could imagine the shape their lives could take so clearly and felt certain they could be happy together, if only he would allow it. She knew he wouldn’t. Not now. Not yet, but she wasn’t about to stop trying.
Though she could not see the future, she wished to trust in Dr Grantham’s judgement. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking, but he must have reasons for believing Damian would not inherit his mother’s malady. If only she could get Damian to listen to him, to open his mind to the possibility.