The Baronet's Bride (Midnight Quill #1.5)(14)

“Ned wouldn’t leave until I could, too. He’ll find your friend, I’m sure of it. Once he sets his mind to something, he won’t be turned from it. He’s . . . steadfast.”

Cecy wondered whether Mattie wanted Mr. Kane to find her or not.

“How would you describe Miss Chapple?” Gareth asked, and she realized that he probably felt as protective of Mr. Kane as she did of Mattie.

“I would have gone mad at Creed Hall without Mattie,” Cecy told him. “She made it bearable.”

Gareth rubbed his thumb across her skin meditatively. “Those stories she was writing . . .”

“Are they very lewd?”

He gave a laugh. “Yes. Very lewd.”

Cecy considered this for a moment, and then said, “I don’t care. She’s still my best friend.”

His thumb moved on her skin, stroking tiny circles, rhythmic and soothing. “I hope Ned finds her.”

“So do I.”

A comfortable silence fell between them. The shutters rattled slightly. Coals shifted in the grate. The bedchamber was cozy. Cecy’s eyelids drooped. She felt sleepy and happy. Deeply happy. Joy hummed quietly in her veins. She pressed her face into Gareth’s shoulder and inhaled his scent. My husband.

“I’m glad you came to Creed Hall,” she told him.

“So am I. Although, my God, the food.”

Cecy stifled a giggle against his shoulder. “The worst food in England.”

“So Toby always said.” He gave a sigh. “I miss him.”

Cecy had only met Tobias Strickland twice, but she’d liked the man. He’d been full of joie de vivre, nothing at all like his aunt, Lady Marchbank. “I’m sorry he died.”

“So am I,” Gareth said quietly.

They didn’t talk after that. Gareth’s thumb stopped whispering over her skin. After a while, she realized that he’d fallen asleep.

Cecy almost slid into sleep herself, but although it was marvelous to lie on Gareth like this, she thought it would become rather uncomfortable for them both if she did it all night.

Regretfully, she eased herself off him. Gareth stirred and muttered, but didn’t wake.

Cecy knelt for a moment alongside him, gazing at him. Her husband, with his long, lean body and that amputated arm. He looked vulnerable lying there with his eyes closed, his muscles relaxed, the tidy white bandage on his arm. Emotion closed her throat for a moment. I love you, Gareth. I won’t let anything bad happen to you ever again.

Cecy reached to pull the bedclothes over them, and realized that a number of candles were still burning in the room. She climbed carefully off the bed, tiptoed across to the mantelpiece and blew out the candle there, tiptoed to the dressing table . . . and saw her closed journal lying in the candlelight. She didn’t need to open it to remember what she’d written.

We are formed so that men enjoy copulation and women do not.

Dear Lord, how wrong she’d been.

Cecy hesitated, torn between blowing out the candle and returning to the bed, and correcting the mistake she’d made. She glanced at Gareth, glanced at the journal, glanced back at Gareth.

Why did it seem so important to erase those words now?

Because to leave those words written, even overnight, felt like a betrayal of everything that she and Gareth had experienced tonight. Not just the pleasure, but the connection they’d forged.

Cecy opened the journal. She reread what she’d written. Some of it—the parts about shyness and embarrassment and nervousness—were still true. The rest of it wasn’t.

Very, very quietly, she tore out the pages and fed them to the fire. She tiptoed back to the bed and carefully drew the covers up over Gareth, then she pulled on her wrap, returned to the dressing table, and sat down. As she dipped the quill in the inkpot she heard a clock distantly strike the hour. Midnight.





Chapter Eight





Gareth blinked his eyes open. He saw candlelight and shadows and unfamiliar bedhangings. Where was he? He turned his head and found Cecily, seated at the dressing table, writing, and memory returned: this was his wedding night.

A wedding night that had been far, far worse than he’d imagined it could be—and also far, far better.

He watched Cecily for several minutes. Candlelight gilded her tousled hair and played across her cheek. My wife. He felt drowsy, and contented, and more than that, he felt whole. Not in the way he’d been before Waterloo, but in the way he was now. And Cecily had given him that.

The luckiest day of his life, the day that he’d met her.

He watched her write, watched the candlelight and shadows move across her face, watched her frown slightly, purse her lips, dip the quill in ink, write another sentence.

He’d fallen halfway in love with Cecily the afternoon he’d met her, captivated by her slender figure, her blonde hair, her face. And then he’d fallen wholly in love with her the morning they’d talked and he’d realized that beneath the delicate, golden-haired prettiness was a strong and intelligent woman.

It had been an interesting conversation, that one. Perhaps the most interesting conversation of his life. Certainly the most important, because he’d gone into it a bachelor, and come away from it as a man about to be married. Cecily hadn’t simpered or flirted. She’d spoken matter-of-factly, laid out her background, told him of her feelings for him, and he had fallen so hard in love with her that there had been no going back. Not then, not now, not ever.