PROLOGUE
NOVEMBER 1815, SUMMERWORTH PARK, KENT
“My dearest wife, what are you about?”
James’s voice, laced with affectionate laughter, sent the rust-and-black tabby kitten Cecilia had been attempting to befriend scurrying away.
“Now see what you’ve done?” she said, looking up at him standing in the stable doorway, a dark, back-lit image against the streaming sunlight trying to enter the stable. He looked like one of her Aunt Jessamine’s silhouettes. “I have been enticing the creature to come to me for the past fifteen minutes, and she was nearly at my fingertips when you scared her off.”
“Her?” He walked toward her, and the dark silhouette resolved into James, clothed in riding attire.
Cecilia shrugged. “Or he, makes no matter.” She held out her hand.
James obligingly stepped forward to draw her to her feet.
She brushed the dust and straw from the front of her twilight-blue figured muslin gown. “I thought I should like a cat in the house.”
“A cat?”
“Yes. I had one as a young girl, and seeing the barn cat’s kittens brought back memories.”
James nodded, understanding more than Cecilia would say. While her mother lived, there had been joy in her life. The kitten represented old joyous memories. He believed—hoped—that in the six months they’d been wed he’d brought joy back to her. “Memories of when your mother was alive?”
“Yes,” she said shortly. She twisted around to brush off the back of her skirts.
So, it wasn’t just memories, he thought, though they might have served as gestation. He pulled a piece of errant straw from her pale blonde hair. “Keep working on her—or him. I don’t see how they could resist you. I know I can’t,” he whispered, as he pulled her into the circle of his arms.
“James! The servants!” she protested half-heartedly as he lowered his head to kiss her, and she put her arms around his neck.
When he broke off the kiss and lifted his head, Cecilia sighed.
He tucked her arm into the crook of his as he led her back to the manor house. He walked slowly, for they were in no hurry. There was no one waiting for them, nothing they needed to be doing. He looked up at the Summerworth Park manor, and beyond as far as he could see, and felt content. He’d purchased the estate last spring from his cousin, Gideon Tallavest, the Earl of Monteith. They had transformed the estate over the last six months they had been in residence. Gone was the shabby old lady, past its prime. In its place, they’d resurrected a welcoming grand dame. Even now, with the leaves and flowers gone to sleep for winter, there was an elegance in the estate.
He and Cecilia had much to be proud of for their efforts over the past six months. They had certainly been busy. But now, with winter’s approach, was the quiet time, a time for reflection and planning for the new year. Quiet times did not sit well with his Cecilia.
And that, he knew, was behind the interest in the cat.
“You’re feeling restless,” he said, as they walked up the stone steps of the terrace to enter the house through the glass doors of the morning parlor, named for the morning sunlight that streamed through its long windows.
He felt her shoulders slump.
“Yes, I suppose I am,” she admitted. “With our investigations last spring and all the work on the estate over the summer, it has been a full year. A delightful year,” she added.
“The investigations we could have done without. I do not consider you almost getting killed ‘delightful,’” he drily observed.
“But James, we would not have met if it weren’t for my investigations.”
“My love, I think I would have been drawn to you however we met.”
She smirked up at him. “So you say now.”
“And so I know. We would have met one way or another, and I was drawn to you like a moth to a flame.”
“Oh, listen to you! Outrageous! I shall not heed you. But I am restless. Life is too quiet, and that concerns me.”
“I trust you are not wishing for another investigation like our spring adventure?”
She looked sideways at him. “We did well,” she said.
