It was a lie. They both knew it.
“I’m going back now,” she said, motioning needlessly to the door. “I think I would like to lie down.”
He nodded. “If you do not mind, I will stay here.”
She gestured faintly toward his empty glass. “Maybe you shouldn’t . . .”
His brows rose, daring her to finish that statement.
“Never mind.”
Smart girl.
She took a step away, then paused. “Do you—”
This was it. She was going to tell him. She was going to explain it all, and it would be fine, and he would not hate himself and he would not hate her, and . . .
He did not realize that he’d started to rise until his legs hit the table. “What?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Tell me.”
She gave him an odd look, then said, “I was just going to ask if you want me to get you something at the bakery. But I don’t think I wish to see anyone right now, so . . . Well, I’d rather just go straight back to the inn.”
The bakery.
Edward fell back into his seat, and then before he could contain himself, a harsh, angry laugh burst forth from his throat.
Cecilia’s eyes went very wide. “I can still go, if you wish. If you’re hungry, I can—”
“No,” he cut her off. “Go home.”
“Home,” she echoed.
He felt one corner of his mouth squeezing into a humorless smile. “Satan’s Abbey.”
She nodded, her lips trembling as if they weren’t sure if they were supposed to smile in return. “Home,” she echoed. She looked to the door, then back at him. “Right.”
But she hesitated. Her eyes flicked to his, waiting for something. Hoping for something.
He gave nothing. He had nothing to give.
So she left.
And Edward had another drink.
Chapter 17
We have finally arrived in New York! And not a moment too soon. We traveled via ship from Rhode Island, and once again Edward proved himself a ghastly sailor. I have told him it is only fair; he is appallingly good at everything else he does.
Ah, he glares at me now. I have the bad habit of saying my words aloud as I write them, and he does not appreciate my description. But do not fret. He is also appallingly good-natured, and he does not hold a grudge.
But he glares! He glares!
I might kill your brother.
—from Thomas Harcourt (and Edward Rokesby) to Cecilia Harcourt
Cecilia walked back to the Devil’s Head in a daze.
Thomas was dead.
He was dead.
She’d thought she’d prepared herself for this. As the weeks had passed without a word, she had known that the chances of Thomas being found alive were growing slim. And yet, now . . . with the proof of his signet ring in her pocket . . .
She was wrecked.
She could not even visit his grave. Edward had said that it was too far outside of Manhattan, too close to General Washington and his colonial forces.
A braver woman might go. A more reckless spirit might toss her hair and stamp her foot and insist that she must lay flowers at her brother’s final resting place.
Billie Bridgerton would do it.
Cecilia closed her eyes for a moment and cursed under her breath. She had to stop thinking about bloody Billie Bridgerton. It was becoming an obsession.
But who could blame her? Edward talked about her all the time.
Very well, maybe not all the time, but more than twice. More than . . . Well, enough that Cecilia felt she knew quite enough about Lord Bridgerton’s eldest daughter, thank you very much. Edward probably didn’t realize it but she came up in almost every story he told of growing up in Kent. Billie Bridgerton managed her father’s lands. She hunted with the men. And when Cecilia had asked Edward what she looked like, he’d replied, “She’s actually rather pretty. Not that I noticed for so many years. I don’t think I even realized she was a girl until I was eight.”
And Cecilia’s reply?
“Oh.”
Paragon of everything articulate and insightful she was. That was her eloquent response. But Cecilia could hardly tell him that after all of his tales of the amazing, superhuman Billie I-Can-Ride-a-Horse-Backwards Bridgerton, she’d pictured her as a six-foot Amazon with large hands, a mannish neck, and crooked teeth.
Not that the crooked teeth were in any way relevant to Edward’s descriptions, but Cecilia had long since accepted that a little portion of her heart was petty and vengeful, and, blast it all, she wanted to imagine Billie Bridgerton with crooked teeth.
And a mannish neck.
But no, Billie Bridgerton was pretty, and Billie Bridgerton was strong, and if Billie Bridgerton’s brother had died, she would have traveled into enemy lands to make sure his grave had a proper marker.
But not Cecilia. Whatever courage she possessed had been all used up when she’d stepped on the Lady Miranda and watched England disappear over the eastern horizon. And if there was one thing she’d learned about herself over the past few months, it was that she was not the sort of woman to venture into a nonmetaphorical foreign territory unless someone’s very life hung in the balance.
All there was to do now was . . .
Go home.
She didn’t belong here in New York, that much she knew. And she didn’t belong to Edward, either. Nor he to her. There was only one thing that might truly bind them together . . .
She went still, and her hand went to the flat plane of her belly, just over her womb.
She could be with child. It was unlikely, but it was possible.
And suddenly it felt real. She knew she probably wasn’t pregnant, but her heart seemed to recognize this new person—a miraculous miniature of Edward, and maybe of her, too, but in her imagination the baby was all him, with a dusting of dark hair, and eyes so blue they rivaled the sky.
“Miss?”
Cecilia looked up and blinked, only then realizing that she had come to a stop in the middle of the street. An older woman in a starched white bonnet was looking at her with a kind, concerned expression.
“Are you all right, miss?”
Cecilia nodded as she lurched into motion. “I beg your pardon,” she said, moving to the side of the street. Her mind was foggish, and she couldn’t quite focus properly on the Good Samaritan in front of her. “I just . . . I had some bad news.”
The woman looked down to where Cecilia’s hand rested on her abdomen. Her ringless hand. When she met Cecilia’s eyes again, her own were filled with a hideous blend of compassion and pity.
“I have to go,” Cecilia blurted out, and she practically ran the rest of the way back to the Devil’s Head and up the stairs to her room. She threw herself onto the bed, and this time when she cried, her tears were equal parts frustration and grief.
That woman had thought that Cecilia was pregnant. Unmarried and pregnant. She’d looked at Cecilia’s bare finger and made a judgment, and oh God, there had to be some sort of irony there.
Edward had wanted to get her a ring. A ring for a marriage that didn’t exist.