Ten
Cecelia closed the front door behind her and walked into the drafty old manor house. She’d only been gone a few days, yet already it appeared disused. Perhaps it was just because she didn’t want to be there. She wanted to be anywhere but there.
“Father!” she called out as she walked down the corridor toward his study. Before her mother had died, Cecelia would have laughed all the way down the corridor because she knew she’d find her mother perched on the edge of her father’s desk, and her father would be trying to make her laugh. Now her father didn’t laugh at all. Nor did he try to make anyone else do so. She raised a hand to her cheek.
He couldn’t help what he’d become, she supposed, but she didn’t have to like it, did she?
“Father!” she called again. A servant bustled into the corridor with a wet rag in her hand that smelled vaguely of spirits.
“Miss,” the house faerie said, dropping into a curtsy. She pulled the study door shut as Cecelia tried to look around her into the room. “I didn’t expect you to come home today. Is everything all right?” she asked.
The maid took Cecelia’s elbow to guide her from the door. But Cecelia stood firm. “Where is my father?” she asked.
She reached for the door handle, but the maid covered it with her hand. “You don’t need to go in there today, miss,” she warned quietly. She wouldn’t look Cecelia in the eye.
“Is he foxed?” Cecelia asked.
“Well,” the maid began.
“Tell me!” Cecelia snapped.
“Beyond foxed, miss,” the maid admitted. She rushed on to say, “But you need not worry yourself with it. We have it all under control.”
Not worry herself with it? How could she not worry herself with it? It was her father, for goodness’ sake. He seemed to want nothing more than to pickle himself on a regular basis.
“Step to the side,” Cecelia ordered.
The maid danced in her place.
“Now,” Cecelia said succinctly. She didn’t need to raise her voice. Not doing so in this situation was just as powerful. The maid took one small step to the side.
Cecelia turned the knob and opened the door slowly. “I told you to get out!” her father bellowed. Then a glass smashed on the wall right beside her head.
“Father!” Cecelia warned.
The broken man who sat crumpled at the desk wasn’t her father. He wasn’t. His eyes weren’t laughing, and his face was tarnished by days of beard growth. He may as well have died when her mother did. Sometimes Cecelia wished he had.
“Cece?” he asked. “Is that you?” He could barely hold his eyes open.
“Yes, it’s me.”
He reached out a hand to brush a lock of hair from his forehead. He grabbed her hand and pulled it to his cheek, which was wet with tears.
“You left me,” he said softly.
“I’m back now,” Cece whispered, shushing him. “Everything will be fine.”
“Where did you go?” her father asked.
“I had a mission,” she said.
“Did it go well?” he asked. He propped his chin in his hand and spoke to her with his eyes closed. It was all he could do to hold his head up. Apparently, she wasn’t worthy of him even opening his eyes.
“As well as could be expected,” she sighed.
“I thought you left me,” he said softly. His voice broke. “Just like she did.” He swiped at his eyes. Her father was emotional when he was foxed.
“I have to leave from time to time,” she warned. His chin fell off his hand, and she slid beneath his arm to help him to his feet. If she wasn’t mistaken, he would soon fall on the floor and then he’d be there for the rest of the night, since she wouldn’t be able to get him up. Since he had a tendency to get violent, the footmen wouldn’t come to help. Not anymore.
“Did you see your fellow?” he asked, looking down at her as she struggled with his weight toward the door.
“I don’t have a fellow, Father,” she said.
“Marcus? Didn’t you see him?” he asked as she sat him down on the edge of his bed and bent to pull off his boots.
“I saw him,” she said as he fell back onto the bed. “He wants to marry me,” she said more to herself than to her father.
Her father’s eyes were closed, and his head lolled to the side. “Can’t leave me, Cece,” he murmured.
“I know.” Cecelia knew. She knew all too well.
***
Marcus paced across his chambers, trying to figure out what the devil he’d done wrong. She’d been so soft and warm in his arms the night before. What had changed from that perfect moment to the sun’s awakening in the sky? Perhaps she’d had a chance to reconsider. But even if she had, she should have left a note.
A knock on his door jerked him from his pacing. “Enter,” he called absently.
Tatten, his father’s butler, opened the door. “Your father would like to see you in his study, sir,” the man said.
Why would his father want him now? “Did he happen to say what he wanted?”
The butler shook his head. “He did not. He has his steward with him, and they were deliberating over some ledgers.”
The last thing Marcus wanted to do was pore over his father’s books. But now he remembered that he had an appointment with his father to learn more about the running of the estate. “I’ll be there in a moment,” he said to Tatten.
Tatten looked about the room. “Will you be staying at Ramsdale House much longer, sir?” he asked.
Marcus’s head shot up. “Why do you ask?”
The butler arched a brow. “I was inquiring so I can find an appropriate valet for you, sir, if you intend to remain.”
“Did you get one for Allen?”
“The younger Mr. Thorne uses your father’s valet when he’s in residence.” Of course he did. He was at home here after all. He’d grown up here. Marcus had not.
Marcus shook his head. “I won’t be staying long.” Not now that Cecelia was gone. He’d be going back to his bachelor’s quarters. Until then, he could shave himself, couldn’t he? He hadn’t become so high in the instep as to need help with every little thing, had he?
“As you wish,” the butler said.
“Do you know where Miss Hewitt’s room is located, Tatten?” Marcus asked suddenly.
Tatten stood a little taller. “I know where every room is located, sir.”
“Show me,” Marcus said, striding toward the door.
The butler fell into step quietly beside him and motioned toward the guest wing. “She’s not in the household wing?”
“No sir,” Tatten said.
“Well, hurry up about it,” Marcus urged. This was the first remnant of hope he’d grabbed hold of all day. Perhaps if he took a look at her room, he might understand a little more about why she left.
Marcus followed until Tatten stopped at a doorway, and then he knocked softly and pushed the door open. Marcus held up a hand to stay him. “That will be all, Tatten,” he said.
“As you wish,” Tatten said flatly. He bowed and then turned away down the corridor. Marcus closed the door behind him.
“What the devil were you thinking, Cece?” he whispered to himself.
Her brush still lay on the dressing table, along with a neat stack of hairpins and a bottle of perfume. He pulled the stopper and sniffed. It smelled like sunshine. Like her. He put it back on the table. Her trunk lay at the foot of the bed, and the top was still open, her shoes and other odds and ends littering the interior. Her dresses still hung in the wardrobe, several of them in fact.
How odd that Cecelia would go home and leave all of her belongings behind. Perhaps she planned to return? And to return soon, if the status of her belongings was any indication.
The door creaked open and Marcus turned to scold Tatten, but a dark brunette head came through the doorway. “Marcus!” Ainsley cried, laying a hand above her heart.
“Ainsley,” Marcus muttered absently. “What brings you here?” he asked as he picked up a slipper from the trunk and dangled it from his fingers.
“Not molesting Cecelia’s things, that’s for certain.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “You should respect her privacy, Marcus,” she warned.
“Why are you here?” Marcus asked again.
Ainsley sighed heavily. “I just wanted to see if it was true.”
“If what was true?”
She scratched her head. “If she really left,” Ainsley clarified. “I’d hoped the gnomes were wrong. She needed to be here. More than anyone else, she needed to spend some time in this world.”
What the devil did she mean by that? He dropped the slipper back into the trunk. “Did she say anything to you?” he asked. He watched Ainsley’s face closely.
She winced. “It’s what Cecelia doesn’t say that you have to pay attention to.”
“Why would she leave her things here?” he asked.
“That would only happen if there were an emergency and she had to leave,” Ainsley said.
“What could be such an emergency that she would leave without saying good-bye?”
“Only the worst kind,” Ainsley whispered.
“Tell me what you know, Ainsley,” he warned.
But she was already walking out the door. “It’s not my secret to tell.”
“Does she have a fiancé at home?” Marcus blurted out. Perhaps there really was someone in the land of the fae.
“No one at home has her attention the way you do, Marcus,” Ainsley said. She knew something. Marcus could tell.
“Please tell me what you know,” Marcus pleaded. Much more of this and he would be on his knees begging.
“They sent the wind for her.”
Marcus spun around quickly. “Last night?”
“Yes, late.”
The fae only sent the wind to and from the land of the fae in dire emergencies. “What was the emergency?”
“I don’t know,” Ainsley whispered, squeezing her eyes shut.
“But she, specifically, was needed.” It was like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. But too many pieces were missing.
Ainsley nodded. “Apparently.” She met his gaze. “Things have been different at home since her mother died.”
Cecelia’s mother had died? When?
He didn’t even get to ask the question before Ainsley said, “Right after you left six months ago.”
Marcus sank down onto the side of bed, afraid once again that his legs would not support him. Cecelia hadn’t told him that her mother had died. It had been more than six months, and he hadn’t even paid his respects. “How?”
“A carriage accident when she was on a mission in this world.”
“How is her father doing?”
“Poorly.”
“Is that why she had to go back? For him? He’s not ill, is he?”
“He has been ill for a while. But it’s not my story to tell.” She squeezed her lips shut and refused to say more.
“Can you tell me anything?” Marcus was desperate.
“Can you go to the land of the fae? Can you set all this to the side and go to her?”
“I can’t go until the moonful, if then.” He couldn’t walk away from his obligations to find a woman who might or might not want to see him. He had too much to learn here. And he wasn’t at all certain of Cecelia’s feelings toward him.
“Then you don’t deserve her,” Ainsley spit out.
Then she turned on her heel and quit the room.
“Good God,” Marcus breathed. He scrubbed a hand down his face. “What do I do now?”
***
Ainsley barreled directly into a hard chest and threw her hands out to catch herself. But strong arms wrapped tightly around her instead. “Ainsley?” the man asked. “What’s wrong?”
It wasn’t an aging butler who’d caught her. It wasn’t a startled maid. If anyone had to see her upset, she supposed it might as well be Allen. “Nothing,” she squeaked.
He set her back from him momentarily and looked down at her, his dark eyes piercing a little too deeply for comfort. “You lie poorly,” he warned. Then he pulled her back into his arms and didn’t insist she say a word. He didn’t try to coax any thoughts from her. He didn’t try to trick her into baring her soul. But that just made her want to do it more.
He inhaled deeply and held her tightly against him. She fit beneath his chin like he was made for her. Was he? She lifted her chin and looked up at him. “You want to kiss me, don’t you?” she teased.
“No,” he blurted out, setting her back from him. Ainsley felt the loss of him immediately.
“Yes, you do,” she teased.
“Where did you learn to do that?” he asked.
“Do what?” She had no idea to what he was referring.
“You shock people so that they’ll forget what they were trying to wheedle out of you.”
“You were trying to wheedle something out of me?”
“Not yet,” he said, a grin forming on his lips.
“You want to wheedle something out of me.”
He cocked his head to the side as his brows drew together sternly. “I want a lot of things from you,” he said. “But I intend for you to give them to me willingly. Otherwise, I don’t want them.”
Ainsley’s heart leaped. “You have a plan?”
“A rather decisive one,” he admitted.
“Tell me about it,” she whispered.
He lowered his voice, too. “If I did that, I wouldn’t have the element of surprise, would I?” He nodded toward Cecelia’s closed door. “Where were you rushing off from?”
“Marcus,” Ainsley said on a heavy sigh. “He’s a dolt.”
“I won’t argue that.” He grinned. “What did he do that was so doltish?”
“It’s what he won’t do.” She shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me,” he said.
“Well, Cecelia is gone. And I think he should rush off to find her. To help her.”
“Does she need help?”
“More than you could ever know,” Ainsley whispered.
“Is she in danger?” His face grew serious.
“I can’t tell her secrets.” She crossed her arms and glared at him. But he didn’t turn away from her, not like men usually did. He stood his ground.
“If that’s the best you can do, you don’t stand a chance in this relationship,” he warned.
“This is a relationship?” she squeaked.
“It will be,” he said.
Ainsley’s belly dipped into her drawers. “All right,” she replied.
“All right, you’ll tell me what’s wrong?”
“No. All right, this is a relationship.” A grin tugged at her lips. She’d never wanted anything more.
“Good,” he said, slinging an arm around her shoulders as he began to lead her down the corridor.
“Shouldn’t we kiss on it to make it official?” she asked, her cheeks burning.
“Later,” he said. “Right now, we need to help Marcus.”
“How do you propose we do that?”
“We don’t. But Mother and Father will know what to do.”
Allen stopped at the morning room and stuck his head inside. “Could we talk with you for a moment?” he asked his mother. She set her embroidery to the side and motioned for them to sit.
Allen looked at Ainsley quickly.
“First, I plan to court Miss Packard,” Allen said, looking his father in the eye.
Lady Ramsdale’s face glowed as she clasped her hands to her chest.
But he rushed on. “And Marcus is an idiot. He’s in need of an intervention.”
Lady Ramsdale was slightly taken aback. “I assumed he would rush off to the land of the fae to retrieve his lady.”
Allen shook his head. “No, he’s being a bit thickheaded.”
“What else is new?” his mother asked, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger.
“He needs steering.”
“His sisters are good at steering.”
“His sisters could wrap him up in spiderwebs and haul him back to the land of the fae,” Ainsley muttered.
Lady Ramsdale snickered and held up one finger. “I believe we can do better than that.”
“I’d kind of like to see him tied up in”—he looked at Ainsley—“spiderwebs, you say?”
Ainsley nodded. “They’re tremendously sticky.”
“I can imagine,” Allen said, visibly impressed with her knowledge. She grinned.
“So, what would you like to do?” Lady Ramsdale asked her son.
“I have a plan,” Allen began slowly.