Chapter Three
William knocked. The townhouse stood on a street outside the most fashionable part of London. The neighborhood was safe, maintained, and known for housing the mistresses of London’s most wealthy men. He waited, not begrudging the time it took for Lady Cecilia’s maid to open the door. The girl could be anywhere in the house. He would give Cecilia more servants, but that would only increase the chance the marquess would find her.
“My lord,” the maid said as the door swung open.
“Is Miss Chastity at home?”
“She’s always at home to you, my lord.” The girl gave him a knowing smirk.
William offered a look somewhere between amused and bored. The girl backed inside, leaning forward as she curtsied. It would take a better man than William not to avail himself of the view her low neckline offered, but he was eager to see the lady of the house. He brushed past the maid and jogged up the steps to Cecilia’s private chambers. Once there, he looked up and down the hall and knocked softly. It was a courtesy no man would pay his mistress.
“Enter,” she called.
William entered to find his stepmother, Lady Cecilia Greydrake, third wife to the marquess, seated near the window. She stood, and smiled. He closed the door and offered a bow.
“You’re early,” Cecilia said.
“Please, sit.” William crossed the thick carpet to take the chair opposite hers as she sat. “I have news.”
“Good news?” she asked brightly.
Four years his junior, Cecilia had an effervescent quality that matched her spritely features and build. William could only thank God he’d removed her from the marquess before that joy was beaten out of her. She smiled at him now, her look expectant.
When William’s first stepmother, his sister Madelina’s mother, had mysteriously fallen to her death after her forth miscarriage, William had hoped the marquess wouldn’t remarry. He’d done all in his power to appear the perfect son, to give the old man no reason to want a third wife. Apparently, his powers were limited. In William’s twentieth year, the marquess brought a sixteen-year-old Cecilia into their home, and the nightmare began again. William had been too young to save Madelina’s mother or his own, but, so far, he hadn’t failed Cecilia.
He stretched out his legs. A smile crept over his face, despite his dark thoughts. “The marquess is dying.”
Cecilia’s mouth dropped open. She shut it. “Are you certain?”
He nodded. “Lethbridge is.”
She leaned forward, eager. “Is he very ill?”
“We can only hope so. I haven’t been to see him, but I will.”
Her expression shifted to concern. “You don’t need to. Not on my account. I’ve waited six years. A bit more won’t hurt.”
“I want to see him for myself.” William grimaced. “Maybe I can get out of the new torment he’s devised for me.”
“You mean, beyond demanding you conduct yourself as the most pompous, destructively wealthy rake in London?”
He grinned. “That was never his exact order. He said I must prove I’m not soft like my mother. No caring for anyone beneath me, no charity, no compassion. I added in the rake business.” He affected a bored tone. “He left me few avenues for happiness.”
Cecilia wrinkled her nose. “Ply your act somewhere else, William. I know you aren’t a rake. You use those clubs and private rooms just as you do this house, as cover.”
He shrugged. He did. Sometimes, it grew difficult to give up the act, even with Cecilia. He’d played a bounder for over a decade. “I won’t need to for much longer.”
She gave him a happy smile. “And I won’t need to hide in this house. Do you know how long it’s been since I stepped outside these walls?” She turned her face toward the window, leaning into the streaks of orange light from the setting sun.
William clamped his mouth shut over a reprimand. He didn’t like her to get too close to the windows. Even after so many years, the marquess routinely set men to follow him. Though William never provided any evidence, the old man seemed to sense his son wasn’t who he wished. William unclenched his hands from the arms of the chair. Cecilia’s rooms were on the back side of the house. He was being overcautious.
Or was he? She had only a week in the marquess’s clutches to go by. His mother survived seven years before fleeing with William. After they disappeared, the marquess had her declared a murderess, mad, and then dead. Later, when he had William back, he invented the fiction of Egypt to cover William’s decade-long disappearance, and paid Darington to help sell the tale. A man that devoted to his reputation, that ruthless, might do anything to Cecilia should he find her.
“What will you do once he’s gone?” Cecilia turned back to him. The sunlight reddened her white-blonde hair.
“I shall set you up in the Greydrake home, for a start, or in your own, if you prefer. You’ll be the dowager marchioness.”
She laughed. “A dowager at twenty-two. I shall feel so old.”
