Rupert, though, had already turned away, looking with interest at a couple alighting from a carriage ahead of them.
“I do believe that is the Chertsey Littletons. Do you see what she is wearing, Margaret? And he?” Rupert scoffed, looking the couple up and down.
Margaret smirked, nodding her agreement. Cecilia resolved not to look, not wanting to join in with her aunt and uncle’s shallow sniping. Dwelling on Arthur inevitably made her think of the man whose house this was. The Duke. Lionel Grisham. She wondered what her aunt and uncle would say if they knew he had once given her leave to use his first name. She licked her lips and smoothed her skirts. The man had been a revelation. She had not known that such giants existed. And with such handsome features. He was not a brute, but rather, a god. That idea brought on a blush and Aunt Margaret raised an eyebrow when she saw.
“Do you judge us, child?” she whispered, dangerously.
“Merely stuffy,” Cecilia said quietly, fanning herself with her hand.
“Well, this place will air you out. Never have I set foot in such a drafty pile. Ridiculous that a man should wish to live in such a place. It might have been well for the Middle Ages but we are considerably more civilized now. Quite why the Duke would not adapt the place to the style of the Renaissance, I cannot think.”
“It shows a deplorable lack of taste,” Margaret nodded.
The carriage was coming to a halt and Rupert rapped on the roof with his cane.
“Further forward man!” he roared, “I will not alight behind the Littletons. Take us to the door!”
“We must get rid of the foolish man,” Margaret tutted, “he has no concept of etiquette.”
“He is extremely knowledgeable about horses and an expert driver of a number of conveyances. You could not ask for a finer coachman,” Cecilia put in, unable to hold her tongue.
George, the driver, had a family of four to support and a sweet and gentle nature. Cecilia felt lucky to consider the man and his wife as friends and had spent many happy hours with his family in their little cottage on the Hamilton estate. But the look that her aunt directed at her would have frozen water to ice.
“And what,precisely,would you know about it?” she asked lowly.
Cecilia swallowed her first response and tried to look meek. She lived on the charity of her aunt and uncle, trying to avoid their ire because she depended on them. She had been left with nothing in Arthur’s will, a fact that had shocked her at the time. If Rupert and Margaret decided so, she would be without a home.
“Nothing, Aunt Margaret,” she said, folding her hands in her lap.
“Exactly. We shall fire the man after all and you will know that you are the reason. Dwell on that, young lady.”
Rupert harrumphed his approval as the carriage moved to a position opposite the entrance to the castle. A footman opened the door and Margaret alighted, followed by Rupert. Cecilia followed, smiling her thanks at the young servant. She looked up at George Preston, the driver, who winked at her when her aunt and uncle weren’t looking. He didn’t know that his livelihood was about to be snatched away. Cecilia resolved to help him, somehow. She followed her aunt and uncle through the grand entrance of the castle and into the daunting hall. It was as majestic and awe-inspiring as she remembered. This time the guests were not confined to the partitioned section beyond the painted screen. There looked to be far too many of them. They milled about the hall and a wave of noise flowed from them. Cecilia felt even more under-dressed as she looked around. Rupert and Margaret were greeting another couple, equally as resplendent as themselves. Cecilia quietly moved away, knowing that they would not wish to introduce her or even be associated with her. She allowed the crowd to hide her from them.
That brought a measure of relief but she still felt self-conscious about her dress. There was no one here that she knew. Indeed, most of her friends were not the kind of people who would be invited to soirees such as this. At Hamilton Hall, she lived among the servants and counted them among her most trusted friends. The tenants of the Hamilton estate were also good friends to her and most of them were either farmers or weavers. She tried to avoid attention but felt that eyes were upon her unceasingly.
Finally, she reached the edge of the milling throng of guests. A cool, shadowed alcove appeared and she stepped back into it. It was then that she saw him.
Lionel Grisham…
He was moving through the crowd which parted before him like the waves of the Red Sea. Head and shoulders above most other men at the gathering, he had the same coal-black hair that she remembered. It wasn’t as short as it had been but flowed back to the nape of his neck. It gave him an exotic look, like an Eastern prince or an Indian rajah.
Emerald green eyes stabbed into the throng around him as he greeted his guests. He did not look like a host who was enjoying his ball, but rather that he would prefer to be anywhere else but here. She felt a pang of empathy at that moment. She too would rather be almost anywhere else. Unable to look away from him, she watched him move through the crowd, bending his head to speak to people, greeting them. She became hypnotized by him. His movements were careful and controlled with an underlyingsense of power but with grace. As though he had learned through painful practice an awareness of his body that went beyond most people. It was as though he had total control over his musculature. It increased the sense of physical power that had been so attractive to her on their first meeting. As she watched, a man approached him from behind, greeting him and forcing him to turn suddenly.
Cecilia saw a sudden stiffness in the movement and a quickly controlled flinch of pain on his carefully controlled features. Then he was smiling politely, greeting the man, and inclining his head towards him in courteous acknowledgment. Cecilia wondered if she were the only one to have seen the pain that had clearly gripped Lionel at that moment. She wondered at its source. Was he ailing? Or suffering the ill effects of an injury? Did it have something to do with that fateful afternoon when the spring mist had brought about such a terrible accident? Brought about the death of her brother at the hands of the man she now watched. For the longest time, she had tried to forget it, to tell herself that a hunt was a dangerous place and accidents of this sort did happen. It was in God’s hands. But she could not rid herself of the belief that her brother had been killed and this man walked free. Accident or not, if there had been no hunt, then Arthur would still be alive and she would not have spent the last five years living as a servant in the house of her aunt and uncle.
She wanted to be angry with him.Wantedto hate him. But something about him drew her. He was magnetic in his charisma. Looking at him made her heart quicken and her breath release in short gasps. She knew that she was blushing and willed herself to stop. But the sight of him brought onlyillicit thoughts of what he must look like beneath his clothes. It was a scandalous thought, but it would not be dislodged. His body would be ridged and hard as steel. Muscles like smooth-sided boulders bulging beneath skin, itself covered in a fine layer of dark hair. The body of a barbarian prince, a descendant of the warrior nomads who had terrorized the Romans and scourged the continent of Europe.
Savage and prideful. Fierce and passionate.
Cecilia almost gasped aloud when Lionel’s head turned and their eyes met. For a moment, there was no one else in the room. The echoing babble of conversation faded to silence. The crowd melted into the stone, leaving only Cecilia and Lionel. The space between them became charged. Cecilia felt she could reach out and touch the air, that it must be tangible with the energy that thrummed between them.
Her blush deepened and her eyes widened as he took a step towards her. But another guest stepped in front of him, escorting a matronly lady with silver hair piled atop her head. The contact was broken as Lionel directed his attention to them and began again the charade of greeting and mingling. Cecilia was left with a hot but empty sensation in her stomach. A feeling of loss and of need. She wanted those eyes on her again. Wanted his hands on her. His lips.
“My dear lady, are you quite well?” inquired a voice.
Cecilia looked to see a young man with brown hair combed forward in the popular Roman style. He held a wine glass and asmile of concern and… something else. His gray eyes were direct, never leaving her face.
“I am… feeling somewhat… hot… I mean, it is crowded in here. I feel the need for a breath of fresh air,” Cecilia stammered her reply.
