Good God.
“What is it?” Edward asked.
She looked up.
“You’re frowning.”
“Am I?” She was frankly surprised she had not burst into hysterical laughter.
He gave no reply in the affirmative, but his overly patient expression said quite clearly: Yes, you are.
Cecilia traced the elegant script of the invitation with her finger. “You don’t find it surprising that I am included on the invitation?”
One of his hands flipped over in a what-on-earth-are-you-talking-about motion. “You are my wife.”
“Yes, but how would the governor know?”
Edward cut a small piece of his slab of bacon. “I expect he’s known for months.”
She stared at him blankly.
He stared right back. “Is there any reason I wouldn’t have told him we are married?”
“You know the governor?” she said, really wishing her voice had not squeaked on the third-to-last syllable.
He popped his bacon into his mouth and chewed before answering, “My mother is friends with his wife.”
“Your mother,” she repeated dumbly.
“I believe they made their bows in London together,” he said. He frowned for a moment. “She was an extraordinary heiress.”
“Your mother?”
“Mrs. Tryon.”
“Oh.”
“My mother as well, actually, but nothing so close to Aunt Margaret.”
Cecilia froze. “Aunt . . . Margaret?”
He made a little wave with his hand, as if that would reassure her. “She is my godmother.”
Cecilia realized that she had been holding a serving spoon full of eggs aloft for several seconds. Her wrist wobbled, and the yellow lump plopped onto her plate.
“The governor’s wife is your godmother?” she eked out.
He nodded. “My sister’s as well. She’s not really our aunt, but we’ve called her that for as long as I can remember.”
Cecilia’s head bobbed in something resembling a nod, and although she realized that her lips were somewhat ajar, she could not seem to close them.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, clueless man that he was.
She took a moment to piece a sentence together. “You did not think to tell me that your godmother is married to the Royal Governor of New York?”
“It did not really come up in conversation.”
“Good God.” Cecilia sank back into her chair. That tangled web of hers? It was growing more wretchedly complex by the second. And if there was one thing she was certain of, she could not go to that ball and meet Edward’s godmother. A godmother knew things. She would know, for example, that Edward had been “almost” engaged, and not to Cecilia.
She might even know the fiancée. And she would certainly want to know why Edward had forfeited an alliance with the Bridgerton family to marry a nobody like Cecilia.
“The governor,” Cecilia repeated, just barely resisting the urge to let her head fall in her hands.
“He’s just a man,” Edward said unhelpfully.
“Says the son of an earl.”
“What a snob you are,” he said with a good-natured chuckle.
She drew back in affront. She was not perfect, and these days she was not even honest, but she was not a snob. “What do you mean by that?”
“Holding his position against him,” he said with a continued grin.
“I’m not. Good heavens, no. It’s quite the opposite. I’m holding my position against me.”
He reached for more food. “Don’t be silly.”
“I’m a nobody.”
“That,” Edward said firmly, “is categorically untrue.”
“Edward . . .”
“You’re my wife.”
That was categorically untrue. Cecilia had to slap a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. Or crying.
Or both.
“Even if we were not married, you would be a cherished guest at the festivities.”
“As the governor would have no knowledge of my existence, I would not be invited to the festivities.”
“I expect he would know who you are. He’s fiendishly good with names, and I’m sure at some point Thomas mentioned that he had a sister.”
Cecilia nearly choked on her eggs. “Thomas knows the governor?”
“He dined with me there a few times,” Edward said offhandedly.
“Of course,” Cecilia said. Because . . . of course.
She had to put a stop to this. It was spiraling out of control. It was . . . It was . . .
“Actually,” Edward mused, “he might be of help.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.” He looked up, his brow coming together over his blue, blue eyes. “We should apply to Governor Tryon for help in locating Thomas.”
“Do you think he will know anything?”
“Almost assuredly not, but he knows how to apply pressure on the correct people.”
Cecilia swallowed, trying to hold back tears of frustration. There it was again. That simple, inescapable truth. When it came to the search for her brother, all that really mattered was that one knew the correct people.
Her unease must have shown on her face, because Edward reached out and gave her hand a reassuring pat. “You should not feel uncomfortable,” he told her. “You are a gentleman’s daughter and now the daughter-in-law of the Earl of Manston. You have every right to attend that ball.”
“It’s not that,” Cecilia said, although it was, a little. She had no experience hobnobbing with high-ranking officials. Then again, she had no experience hobnobbing with sons of earls either, but she seemed to be fake-married to one.
“Can you dance?” Edward asked.
“Of course I can dance,” she practically snapped.
“Then you’ll be fine.”
She stared at him. “You have no clue, do you?”
He sat back in his chair, his left cheek bulging out as he pressed his tongue against the inside of it. He did that a fair bit, she realized. She wasn’t quite sure yet what it meant.
“There are a lot of things about which I have no clue,” he said in a voice that was far too patient to ever be mistaken for benign. “The events of the last three months, for example. How I came to have a lump the size of a robin’s egg on my head. How I came to be married to you.”
Cecilia stopped breathing.
“But what I do know,” he went on, “is that it will give me great pleasure to buy you a pretty gown and attend a frivolous entertainment with you on my arm.” He leaned forward, his eyes glittering with a strange, indecipherable ferocity. “It will be blessedly, inoffensively normal. Do you have any idea how much I crave the blessed, the inoffensive, and the normal?”
Cecilia didn’t say a word.
“I thought not,” he murmured. “So let’s buy you a dress, shall we?”
She nodded. What else could she do?
As it turned out, it was not so easy to have an evening gown made for a woman in three days. One seamstress actually wept when she heard the amount of money Edward was willing to spend. She couldn’t do it, she’d tearfully told him. Not without forty more pairs of hands.
“Will you take her measurements?” Edward asked.