And then she departed.
Working in her garden nearly always raised Cressida’s spirits, but today was different.
She despised feeling like this, awash in paranoia and suspicion. Everywhere she went she felt all eyes upon her, and not in the usual, necessary way. It was hateful.
And yet…
Yet she did not wish to annul her involvement with Dr. Collier. Even as she’d come to the obvious decision to do so that night as she stared into the fire’s dying embers, after he’d all but confirmed his involvement with this unsavory man who’d come to her door. But he’d not exploded into a fit of rage, as Bartholomew might have, as he once did when Cressida had made a thinly veiled comment referring to his mistress. Her husband had railed at her for the better part of an hour, breakingvases and tiny porcelain figurines, shattering a crystal decanter against the mantelpiece as he spewed hatred and spittle.
But Dr. Collier had told her not to worry. To allow him to sort out whatever was afoot. And then he’d looked at her with those sad, pleading eyes, desperate for any grace she deigned to offer him.
Instead of ending it all, she wished to give him far more. Everything that was unsaid, everything that was at stake had raised the tension, made even the thought of another clandestine meeting send a thrill through to her core.
Strange, that.
She had dropped her first paramour after Bartholomew’s death at the first whiff of suspicion. Bartholomew had been gone a year, and some foolish young lady had seen fit to make a pointed comment about Cressida’s apparent interest in her new lover. Cressida hadn’t even bothered to end things with him in person; she’d merely sent a bland, oblique missive instead.
And now she could barely recall the gentleman’s face, or his voice.
The lady, though, she’d very nearly thrown in the path of Frederick.
But not even Cressida was so cruel as to do that. Or was she? It seemed she was no longer an accurate judge of her own behavior, nor her own character.
She’d always considered herself canny and, yes, a bit heartless—necessary traits if one were to survive a marriage to an even more heartless man who delighted in calling her “Cresto” and forced himself upon her whether she wished him to or not. She’d always been indifferent to her Machiavellian streak, an essential requirement if she were to have her cake and eat it as well. For she meant to enjoy life. She’d sworn it on Bartholomew’s grave.
But now that cavalier attitude could very well destroy Arthur’s reputation. And Henry’s. The only two things she cared about more than her vast list of social engagements.
And if she were being honest…
Matthew’s face was ever-present in her mind; the gentle, soothing tones of his voice echoed in her memory throughout each day. She allowed that it was quite a nice situation; they were deliciously compatible between the sheets, and she never found him boring and off-putting in the way that most men were. He had a middle-class sort of humility and curiosity that she’d at first found darling, but now appreciated fully.
She stabbed her trowel into the open sack of soil, thrusting it as one might a dagger. The small act of aggression did little to quell her anxiety.
“When are we to Cumbria?” Henry asked from his perch upon a low, sturdy arm of a nearby oak tree. He had a small book in his hands, but Cressida could not see the title.
“Why do you ask?” Cressida brushed her gloved hands off before standing.
“Dunno. Arthur’s gone,” he added, a touch of ambivalence in his voice.
“Only for the day. He’s with that Middlemiss boy, doing heaven knows what,” Cressida said, not wishing to consider what sort of trouble young Oxonians got up to in London as they waited for the start of Michaelmas term in October.
“I thought he’d headed to Birchover Abbey. That’s what he told me,” Henry whined.
“Arthur may come and go as he pleases,” Cressida said, surveying the crocus bulbs lined up on a strip of burlap to her side. “The Abbey is his. He is Viscount Caplin, after all.”
Henry made a derisive snort.
“Oh?” Cressida turned, one brow raised. “Are you not pleased? You’ve never expressed any fondness for the old pile. Quite the contrary, in fact.”
If anyone loathed the Caplin family seat more than herself, it was Henry. He’d claimed the freezing, ancient place was haunted, but she dare not bring that up anymore, for he was at quite the touchy age.
“I’ve not got a title. I’ve not got a house,” he muttered, plucking a green leaf from the canopy above him and twisting it with his fingers.
She strolled closer to the tree, with the hint of a smile. “But both of those are to your advantage, are they not? For while Arthur must suffer the expectations and obligations of his role, and the indignities of medieval ecclesiastical architecture in Cumbria, you may take your living and go wherever, do whatever you please. Go to the devil, if you must.”
Henry sighed, a drawn-out, exasperated sound.
“Why must I wait? Why must I be off to Eton when it’s all Wormleigh’s fault, not mine? I hate school,” he groused. “I’d much rather buy a nice house and stay there and do nothing.”
