“It’s imperative that he be found. He’s a danger to everyone.”
“Who’s my mission partner? Claire?”
“Yes…” Milly said the word slowly.
Cecelia watched Milly closely, narrowing her eyes at the gnome in warning. “What do you know that I don’t?”
“Nothing,” Milly clipped out. She held her hands up as though in surrender. “Not a thing, I swear.” She probably had her toes crossed. Garden gnomes could do mad things with their toes.
Cecelia shrugged. She didn’t mind spending the day with Claire. “This mission will be dangerous?”
Milly nodded. “Very.”
“I’m surprised they’re not sending a man with us.”
“They are.”
Cecelia’s head spun to look at the gnome. “Who?” she asked.
Milly ignored her and kicked at the floor with the toe of her wooden slipper. “You haven’t heard word that Ronald is about, have you?” she asked without looking up at Cecelia. Her voice was quiet. For some reason, she didn’t want Cecelia to know that the answer to her question mattered.
“If the Thornes are about, Ronald is about, I guarantee. Why? Did you need him for something?”
Milly scoffed, looking down at her fingernails as though they held the secrets of the fae. “I don’t need him for anything,” she said, her tone flippant.
Either Milly had more than a passing interest in Ronald or she wanted to distract Cecelia from her questions. Cecelia narrowed her eyes at the gnome. “Tell me who the man is who’s going on the mission with us.”
But Milly threw herself out the window. Cecelia supposed she would find out who it was tomorrow.
Three
Cecelia filled a plate for herself at the sideboard in the big breakfast room and sat down at the big empty table. She lifted a fork full of boiled eggs to her mouth and had just taken a bite when Allen breezed into the room. “Good morning, Miss Hewitt,” he said with a quick nod of his head.
His hair was damp and he smelled like the soap his valet had used to shave him. “Good morning,” she chirped after she forced herself to swallow.
“I trust you slept well?” he asked as he began to fill a plate for himself.
She hadn’t slept well. Not at all. But she smiled and said, “Quite well, thank you.”
“It must be a bit off-putting to be so far from home,” he said.
She shrugged. “It’s nothing I’m not used to.” She looked around the room. “Although my normal lodgings in this world don’t typically involve breakfast with the family. I’m usually with the children. Or the servants.”
As a faerie, she was often installed with the servants to give herself the most access possible to the children or the others she was there to help. Her accommodations were adequate, but nothing nearly as nice as Ramsdale House. “Do you live here as well?” she asked.
His brow furrowed. Had she just made a mistake? “I do not live here, actually. I share bachelor’s lodgings with Marcus in town.” He leaned close as though he wanted to impart a secret. “There’s only so long one can stand living with one’s parents and younger siblings.”
“Marcus doesn’t live here, either?” she asked. She wanted to smack herself in the forehead with the heel of her hand when she realized what she’d just revealed. “Not that it matters,” she went on to ramble.
He chuckled and covered her hand with his. He opened his mouth to speak, his eyes dancing with playfulness. But just as he did, Marcus walked into the room. Cecelia jerked her hand from beneath Allen’s, and her face became hotter than the fire in the grate. Marcus stopped and arched a brow at them. He tugged his jacket closer to his body and said flippantly, “Don’t let me interrupt. I merely wanted to break my fast.”
“Interrupt what?” Cecelia asked.
He motioned toward them. “That,” he stopped to grit his teeth, “hand-holding thing you were doing.”
“We weren’t holding hands,” Cecelia corrected.
Allen covered his mouth with his hand and pretended to cough. He murmured, “Pardon me,” when she shot him a look. He looked over his shoulder at Marcus finally. “Yes, brother dear, there was no hand holding.” He chuckled out loud. “It was simply a hand cover. Entirely my fault. She looked as though she needed covering.”
Marcus’s gaze rose quickly to meet his brother’s. His brow furrowed. “Beg your pardon?” Marcus growled.
“Her hand, that is,” Allen stumbled on. He was enjoying this. She was sure of it. “Her hand needed covering. Not her, per se. Just her hand.” He looked down at her hand, which was now clutched into a tight fist in her lap. “Such lovely hands they are,” he said absently. He looked back at Marcus again. “But I’m sure you’re already aware of how lovely Cecelia is.”
“Lovely,” Marcus grunted, as he came to the table and sat down across from them. He took a bite of toast. “So, just what was it about her that made you think her hands needed covering, Allen? You were overcome by the sheer beauty of them?” He took another bite. “Because I could see it if her hands were cold. Or if she was injured and you needed to squeeze her hand to stop the flow of blood.” He leaned over and looked at Cecelia’s hands. “But they don’t appear to be injured.”
“Stop it, Marcus,” Cecelia warned as she tossed her napkin into her plate. “You’re being ridiculous.”
His brows rose so far she feared they would blend with his hairline. “Me? Ridiculous? Because I want to understand why he was holding your hand?”
“Marcus,” she warned.
Allen got to his feet. “Oh, I can clear this up for you, Marcus,” Allen said. He crossed to stand behind Marcus and put his hands on his shoulders. “I was holding her hand because she’s bloody beautiful.” He shook Marcus roughly in his grip.
“Bloody beautiful,” he breathed. He stopped shaking Marcus, who appeared stiff as a board, and winked at Cecelia, grinned broadly so only she could see it, and then stole a piece of bacon off Marcus’s plate and shoved it in his mouth. Then he quit the room.
***
It took all of Marcus’s self-control not to jump from his chair and throttle his younger brother. How dare he? When Marcus walked into the room, he felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach by a mule. The sight of her hand beneath Allen’s as she looked up into his brother’s eyes was like a kick to the gut. And to his lungs, because he suddenly found it hard to take a deep breath.
It had taken all of his composure not to toss Allen from the room and kick his arse all the way out the front door. But, if he did that, he’d only have to deal with his father’s, his mother’s, and his four sisters’ wrath.
“You are an idiot, Marcus Thorne,” Cecelia said, jerking him from his misery. Then she shoved her napkin to the side and picked up a half-eaten piece of toast. She threw it at his head. “How dare you do that?” She picked up a berry and threw that at him, too. A handful of them, apparently, because one hit above his eye. And yet more hit his shirt.
“Cece,” he began, covering his head with his hands as he ducked the flying food. “Would you stop it?”
“No, I won’t stop it.” This time, she turned to the sideboard, and a slack-jawed servant made a move to place lids on all the dishes there. She pointed a finger at him and he blanched. The poor man had no idea what he was up against. But he held firm and kept his hands on top of the silver domes.
“Damn it all, Cece,” Marcus said as he jumped from his chair, hoping to save the poor servant from her wrath when she ran out of things to throw. He took her by the shoulders and spun her around. “Stop it,” he warned quietly as he pulled her closer to him. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly. If he held her arms, she couldn’t throw more food, could she? Definitely not.
“Don’t ever do that again,” she warned. But she stilled in his arms and her angry little breaths tickled his freshly shaven chi
n. The feel of her in his arms shot straight to his groin, and he turned to the side to keep from showing her how very much he wanted to hold her in his arms forever. Preferably when they were in a bed.
“Don’t do what?” he taunted. He motioned toward the servant, nodding him toward the door. The man quietly left the room and pulled the door shut behind him. “Don’t stop my brother from touching the woman I love?” He set her infinitesimally back from him. “You think I’m going to just sit back and watch my brother try to win your heart?”
“All he did was touch my hand,” she murmured against his shirt. Her eyes were wet when she raised her gaze to meet his, and he felt that punch to his gut again, only this time, his heart clenched as well. “And don’t tell me you love me.”
She shoved his chest until he let her go. She turned to stare out the window. “I find I can’t quite live without telling you, you ninny. So, if you don’t want to hear it, you had better stay far, far away from me.”
“Don’t promise me things I can’t have, Marcus,” she said, her voice heavy, as if she needed to swallow. She didn’t turn back to face him.
“I have given it a lot of thought, Cecelia, ever since that night I left the land of the fae.” He cleared his throat. But there was a lump there that wouldn’t go away. “I shouldn’t have ended things. Because I’m not certain I can live without you, damn it all.”
She spun quickly to face him. Instead of the sincere relief he expected to see, her cheeks were flushed and she was apparently livid, if the crease between her brows was an indication. “You see me with another man and you suddenly can’t live without me? Is that it, Marcus? You’re jealous?”
She stormed past him and walked around the other end of the table where he couldn’t grab her as she walked past. She tilted her nose up in the air and said, “You’re going to have to stay jealous, Marcus. Because I don’t want a man who threw me over to become a viscount. I want one who will choose me over all things. And he very well may be a member of this world.” She stuck a finger out at him, and it was as though she waved a sword at him.
“I, unlike you, would like to have someone who loves me and wants to hold me and have children with me. I want someone who will share a home with me, whether it be here or there, and someone who will cherish me and choose me over all things.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “And that person isn’t you. So, don’t interject yourself into my life, Marcus. You manage yours. And I’ll manage mine. And never the two shall meet.”
With that, she stomped out the door, slamming it loudly behind her.
Marcus flopped into his chair and buried his face in his hands. But then the door opened again. Marcus’s heart leaped at the thought that Cecelia had come back. But his mother stepped into the room instead. “Goodness, you’ve gotten yourself into a bit of trouble, haven’t you?” she asked. She began to whistle a tune beneath her breath.
“Why are you so happy?” Marcus grunted.
She shrugged and smiled even more broadly. “No particular reason.” She retrieved a piece of toast and bit a corner off it. She pointed to the spot above his eye. “You have a bit of blueberry here.” He lifted a napkin to swipe at the area. “Matter of fact, you might want to go and change clothes. You’re a frightful mess.”
“Yes, Mother,” he groused.
“I do like that girl,” she said, her voice chipper.
So did he. That was the problem.
Four
Cecelia stormed down the corridor toward the stairwell, intent upon flinging herself down on her bed and having a full-out temper fit, provided that she could ever find her blasted room. Ramsdale House was a maze of corridors, and Cecelia quickly found herself lost. She turned corner after corner and went down corridor after corridor, until she finally heard voices from a nearby chamber. With a house this big, there had to be some servants about, didn’t there? It was only logical.
She walked toward the voices and stopped when she got to the sunny morning room and stood in the doorway. She cleared her throat gently to get their attention. Lady Ramsdale looked up. “Cecelia,” she said as she got to her feet. “I thought you were in your chambers.”
“I would be if I could find them, I assure you,” Cecelia said, fluttering her hand nervously in front of her.
“But you stormed out of the breakfast room a little more than an hour ago.” Lady Ramsdale’s brow arched delicately. “Have you been lost for that long?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Cecelia admitted. “And I’m very sorry that you saw me storming about at all. It wasn’t my intention to upheave your household.”
Lady Ramsdale bustled her two younger daughters quickly from the room. Then she motioned for Cecelia to have a seat. “Life’s not worth living without a little upheaval, dear,” she said. She regarded Cecelia with warm eyes. “Do you want to talk about what’s bothering you?”
Not at all. She couldn’t possibly discuss the fact that the lady’s own son had taken her heart and squashed it like a bug under his shoe. “Nothing is bothering me,” she said, forcing herself to smile. “Thank you for letting me stay until the moonful,” she added.
“Thank you for lending us some of your magic. I know it’s not easy for you being here.”
“Life does go on, doesn’t it?” Cecelia said with a heavy sigh.
“Does it?” Lady Ramsdale asked. “Does it go on? Really?”
Cecelia stuttered. “I’m certain I don’t know what you mean, Lady Ramsdale.”
Marcus’s mother waved a breezy hand in the air. “Oh, posh. You’re in love with one of my sons, and the other is using you shamelessly to needle him.” She took a sip of her tea and offered Cecelia a cup. She waved it away. “Not very sporting of Allen to pick you as a way to get back at his brother. But it might be what Marcus needs to do the right thing.”
“The right thing?” Cecelia reached for a cup of tea after all, because she suddenly couldn’t swallow the lump in her throat.
“My son is an idiot if he thinks he can follow society rather than his heart. I think he’s regretting his decision. And he regrets it even more every time you step away from him.”
“Marcus has no regrets. Sometimes I think he wishes he’d been born human rather than half fae.” She murmured the last.
“Marcus is chasing a dream he’s had since he was a small lad. Since he was taken from us, he never knew what it was like to have parents, and he’s dead set on pleasing his human father.” She set her teacup down. “What he doesn’t realize is that his father doesn’t care if he takes over his title. He just wants him to be happy.”
“He’s happy now, from what I understand,” Cecelia said quietly.
Lady Ramsdale laughed loudly. “Happy? That young man is miserable without you.”
Cecelia set her own cup down. “Did you call me here because you needed my magic? Or so that you could toss the two of us back together?”
Lady Ramsdale tilted her head from side to side as though weighing the value of her response. “A little of both, perhaps.”
“I wish you hadn’t,” Cecelia said clearly. “I wish you’d just left me be. It was just starting to get easier without him.” Things weren’t getting any easier with her father. But that was neither here nor there.
“Oh, you poor darling,” Lady Ramsdale cooed. “I would never have sent for you with the intention of making you miserable.”
“Yet, you have,” Cecelia said as she got to her feet.
Lady Ramsdale stood up just as quickly. “What can I do to make it better?”
“I don’t think you understand, Lady Ramsdale.” She heaved a sigh and pinched her eyes closed tightly.
“Help me understand,” Lady Ramsdale pleaded.
“All I’ve ever wanted to be was Marcus’s wife. That was our plan. We’ve talked about it since we were young. We would go hunting for frogs when we were young, and we talked about
how we would teach our children to do the same. And when we got a little older, we talked about how we would go on missions together, even into our old age. And we planned our future. We used to sit out under the stars and talk about it all. He’d put his head in my lap and everything felt right. Until he decided that he didn’t want the life we’d planned.”
“I had no idea Marcus had made such a muddle of things,” Lady Ramsdale said, scratching her head.
“Our dreams were gone. And he had new ones. But I didn’t. I had nothing. So forgive me if I’m a little bitter about the whole situation.”
“No need to forgive you, dear,” she said quietly.
“I just wanted you to know. He threw me away. And it has taken me over six months to pull myself back up to stand on my feet. And just when I thought I could, you summoned me here. So, I came. But don’t expect me to act as though things are all fine and good between us, because they’re not. He doesn’t love me anymore. And I am too angry to love him.”
Lady Ramsdale wrung her hands.
“And if you’ll point me toward my chambers, I’ll go and have a good cry, and then I’ll be ready to go for a ride in the park with your other son.” She turned toward the door and waited, blinking back tears. She refused to look at Lady Ramsdale. If she did, she might break. And she just didn’t want to do that. Not now.
“To the right, up the stairs, and then take a left,” Lady Ramsdale said quietly.
“Thank you,” Cecelia said.
***
Cecelia rushed past Marcus in the corridor. He reached out a hand to stop her, but she pushed her shoulder closer to the wall and stepped around him. “Not now, Marcus,” she spat at him. “Mind your own matters,” she snapped, and she continued on past him. Marcus stood in the corridor and watched the sway of her hips as she stormed away from him.
He was minding his own matters. She was his matter, for God’s sake.
“Marcus,” a voice called from the morning room. His mother stuck her auburn head out the doorway and pointed a finger at him. “I’ll see you for a moment.”