“Lord Byron said it best,for truth is always strange, stranger than fiction,if it could be told,” Cecilia smiled softly. “And speaking of fictions, I’m afraid I must leave early this evening. The orphanage is taking a trip tomorrow morning, and I still have a few small things to finish at the library before they arrive.”
“Tonight?” Emma looked disappointed. “But we’ve only just sat down.”
“I know, I know, and I’ll make it up to you all next week,” Cecilia said, rising from her seat. “But I promised the children everything would be ready, and I couldn’t bear to disappoint their tiny faces.”
“I’ll go too,” Prudence quickly added. She had been coming by to help whenever Cecilia needed an extra pair of hands with the shelving and sorting.
Rosie squeezed her hand. “You are a good woman, Cece. Go tend to your library.”
It was early the next morning. The lending library smelled of beeswax and musty pages, and if Cecilia stood very still near the old desk, she could almost convince herself she caught the faintest trace of sandalwood.
Almost.
She’d spent the better part of eight weeks transforming the once derelict outbuilding, lining its walls with books from the manor’s collection for the village to borrow. It gave her something to do with her hands, her time, her thoughts. Anything to keep from dwelling on the hollowness that had taken up residence in her chest.
His things remained exactly where he’d left them. The writing desk with its carved initials. The blackboard he’d teased her with in the corner. Stacks of childhood drawings she couldn’t bring herself to move. Sometimes she sat in his old chair and pretended she could still feel his presence.
Thunder growled overhead.
Prudence looked up from sorting primers, her eyes flickering to the window. “Oh dear. The weather is turning rather quickly.”
Cecilia followed her gaze to where dark clouds had gathered like bruises across the sky. Rain began to tap against the glass, tentative at first, then insistent. “Gadz. The orphans won’t come in this.”
The bell above the door chimed. Lord Rothbury ducked inside, already damp. When his gaze found Prudence, his expression softened in a way that made Cecilia’s chest ache.
Crossing to them, he said, “Forgive the intrusion, Your Grace, but Lady Prudence and I ought to leave now if we are to beat the worst of the weather.”
Prudence gathered her things with apologetic glances at Cecilia. “Will you be all right? I can stay if—”
“I’m fine,” Cecilia assured her, mustering her best smile. “Go, before you’re both drenched and give our sleepy town something to talk about for the next month.”
The moment the door closed behind them, the smile fell away. Rain drummed harder against the roof now, a steady percussion that matched the dull ache behind her ribs. She should close early. Return to the manor. But the thought of those empty rooms, that empty bed...
A sound came from behind her. The softest creak of floorboards. Then the bell.
She turned, but the library was empty. Her gaze fell to the desk, and her breath stopped.
A book sat there. One that absolutely had not been there moments ago.
With trembling hands, she crossed to it. The water stain on the lower corner. The loose thread on the binding. Her heart kicked against her ribs.
It washercopy ofCecilia. The very one that had gone missing the night Cassian left.
She opened it with shaking fingers. There were her annotations, scattered throughout in her familiar hand. All her caustic remarks about love and loneliness and impossible men. But beneath them, woven between her words like a conversation across time, fresh blue ink formed responses she’d never seen.
Near the beginning, she found the passage about solitude. Her bitter notation beneath it:If solitude’s appeal fades, I can only assume it is because one has not yet met the Duke of Tressingham.
Below that, in handwriting that made her heart seize:It is not the solitude that terrifies me, sweetheart. It is the absence of you.
She turned more pages, found more annotations in blue ink, and found another passage near the end about courage and second chances.
And his reply:I was a coward. Until I met someone. I’m sorry to her that I didn’t know how to stay. If only there were any part of her that could forgive a coward.
The book slipped from her hands.
For a heartbeat, she stood frozen. Then she was moving, running, crashing through the outside door and into the downpour.
Rain lashed her like a physical force, instantly soaking through her dress. She blinked water from her eyes and saw someone—a distant figure walking away down the path, head bowed against the storm.
