“Might I remind you that youalsothought Whitmore was good for me, and how did that spin out again?” Cecilia muttered pointedly while reaching for her trusty novel,Cecilia,ignoring the glare shot her way from the opposite seat by her brother for talking back.
Anger and injustice tangled inside her. If anything was for certain, she would not allow anyone, much less her family, to make a decision on her behalf again.
She pulled the book open and jolted when she found it empty of her annotations. She spun back to the cover to notice this was nothercopy of Cecilia at all, but a new, recent purchase.
Before she could ponder the meaning of this—whereon earth was her own copy?—a slip of paper fell out.
Curious, she plucked it up quickly before Margaret or Marcus could notice, and read.
My dearest Cecilia,
There are words I should have said. Words I was too much a coward to speak aloud.
I told myself it was enough to show you through touch, through presence, through the way I looked at you when you weren't watching. But it wasn't enough, was it?
I should have told you that these weeks with you have been the most honest of my life. That waking beside you felt like finally coming home after years of wandering. That when you smiled at me, really smiled, I forgot every reason I'd ever had for running.
You asked me whether going away was something I wanted or I needed last night. I am sorry, but I lied. Truthfully, it was neither. I choose to leave as I’m afraid. Afraid that you might someday see me for the broken man I am, and you would want me no more. So I would sooner let you go. A return to yourself. I could never bear to trap you in something you didn't choose freely. But if I'm wrong... if there was ever a moment where you felt what I felt… I need you to know that it was real for me, too.
All of it.
You were real. And you changed everything. I don't know how to be the man who stays, Cece. I never learned that. But God help me, I wanted to learn it with you.
If you did as I asked and went to find the folio, and you happen to read this before I board my ship, perhaps you could say what I have lacked the courage to. I will be waiting.
Perhaps forever.
C.
Cecilia reread the note again. Then again. For a third time.
The words blurred as tears filled her eyes, each line breaking her heart and mending it simultaneously. He had loved her. Hedidlove her. And he had left because he thought he was setting her free, because he believed staying would have been imposing, would have been trapping her in a life with a man who was undeserving.
He didn’t know that every morning she woke beside him felt like a gift. That his presence had become as necessary to her as breathing. That she had fallen so completely, soirrevocablyin love with him too…
“Turn the carriage around…” she whispered, her voice on the verge of breaking.
For a moment, she didn’t think she was heard, but then Marcus asked, “Pardon?”
Looking up from the letter, she ordered, “I said, turn the carriage around. I am going back to Hertfordshire, to my home.”
Her mother’s lips tightened. “That place is not your home anymore.”
“Yes. Yes, it is!” Cecilia snapped in a tidal wave of emotion. Pulling the folio out of her satchel near her side, she spun it open for them to see that the agreement was not signed. “Do you see this annulment?”
“Cecilia, you cannot go back on—” Margaret looked down and promptly went apoplectic. “Why haven’t you signed it? It could have been sent offweeks ago!”
“That’s simple,” Cecilia answered as she held the paper out. “Because I don’t want to.”
“You cannot mean… never say you have fooled yourself into believing that you are in love with Tressingham…” her mother said sharply.
She gave a small yet firm nod.
“You foolish,foolishgirl,” her mother bemoaned. “How can you do something so madcap? Was it not just a few weeks ago that his old lover had come to Wiltshire, and he ran after her? Is thatnot an account that he is still back to his philandering ways? Do you not feel shame anymore, Cecilia? Why can you possibly think this is rational behavior?”
“Because I know Cassian and you do not,” Cecilia bit back. “He is a good man beneath the façade you think you see.”
“He has ruined innumerable ladies—”
