Yes. Yes, he had.
He dragged the pillow over his face with a soft groan. There was no reasonthatsong, inhervoice should still be echoing as clearly in his head as it had since the first notes left her lips. He’d heard dozens of voices sweeter than hers sing dozens of songs much prettierthan that one.
Gideon listened to the soft scrape of the brush against the hearth, the chink of coal, then the strike of flint against steel as Amy lay the fire. At least, he assumed it was Amy, as the business was concluded tidily, with no deafening crashes.
Once she’d left him alone in his bedchamber he sat up, plunged a fist into his pillow, and fell back against it with groan. Every night for the past four days, he’d dreamed about Cecilia Gilchrist. If it wasn’t her voice, it was her wide, dark eyes. If not that, then it was her affection for Isabella, or her seemingly endless supply of inappropriate ballads.
He was preoccupied with her, and he didn’t like it one bit.
Only the worst sort of scoundrel lusted after his servants. He was a man with potent physical urges, but never in his life had he cast a lascivious glance at any of them—not before his wife’s death, when there’d been dozens of housemaids roaming about the castle—and not afterward. He’d confined his masculine attentions to his wife, and he’d do the same again when he and Fanny Honeywellwere married.
He needed to banish Cecilia from his mind and put his attention where it belonged.
Onhisbetrothed.
She’d be here in a matter of days. A week after that she’d become his marchioness, and this strange fixation he had on Cecilia would wither like blighted fruit on the vine.
Itwould, because he wouldn’t allow it to be otherwise.
Until then, he’d simply make a point of keeping away from Cecilia. There was no reason for her to remain in Isabella’s bedchamber when he spent time with his niece. He was perfectly capable of tending to her on his own. He’d always done so before, and there was no reason to change his habits now, even if his masculine urges reared up in violent protest at the thought.
Especiallythen.
And reared up theyhad, damn them.
This morning’s protest was more violent than usual, and it took longer than it should have for Gideon to wrestle his body into submission. So long when he crawled from his bed at last, he found the water in the basin had gone freezing cold. He splashed a handful on his face anyway, hoping it would douse the flames in his belly and knock some sense into him, then he donned hisriding clothes.
He and Haslemere had agreed to have a ride this morning, and Gideon fancied a good, hard one before the sky released the snow that had been threatening for days, and they all found themselves trapped inside the castle.
Haslemere offered no objection, and so the two of them rode for hours, until Gideon’s heart was pounding with exertion, his thighs ached, and sweat poured off him, plastering his shirt to his chest and back. If he hadn’t quite managed to silence the lingering notes of “The Irish Girl,” it echoed less insistently now, allowing other thoughts to drift into the places Cecilia had seized inside his head.
When he arrived back at the castle, he took the stairs two at a time, stripping off his coat and cravat as he went. He discarded both along with his riding crop and hat, a smile hovering on his lips as he strode toward the connecting door. It was nearly teatime, and there was nothing Isabella adored more than being permitted to have tea in the drawing roomwith her uncle.
“Good afternoon.” Gideon forced a smile as he paused beside the door, ignoring the sinking feeling in his chest when he saw it was Amy, not Cecilia with Isabella. “Do you fancy having tea with me downstairs today, Isabella?”
“Oh yes, Uncle!” Isabella climbed down from Amy’s lap, excited at the rare treat. “But we have to wait for Miss Cecilia, so she may comewith us, too.”
“Where is Cecilia?” Gideon asked, on Isabella’s behalf only, of course. It wasn’t as ifhewanted to knowwhere she was.
Amy was sitting in the rocking chair with a storybook open in her lap, but she leapt up, a guilty flush rising in her cheeks. “She, ah, had an errand to run, my lord. I daresay she’ll be back soon. May I send her down to the drawing room when—”
“She’s in the attics!” Isabella cried, clearly taken with the novelty of anyone venturing into such an exotic place.
“The attics?” What the devil was she doingthere? Gideon raised an eyebrow at Amy, who was looking more uneasy with every passing moment. “I can’t think why. She does know that part of the castle is closed, doesn’t she?”
She did, of course. Mrs. Briggs made certain all the servants did. To Gideon’s knowledge, none of them had ever ventured up there, but then Cecilia wasn’t anything like his other servants, with her talent for poking her nose into places it had nobusiness being.
Amy was biting her lip. “Mrs. Briggs said she might go up to the old schoolroom to search out some storybooks for Isabella, my lord.”
“She said she’d look for some pretty paper to make me a crown, and a stick, too!” Isabella jumped up and down with excitement. “A stick with jewels, like a king has.”
“Did she? How…resourceful of her.” Gideon gave one of Isabella’s curls a playful tug, but his eyes narrowed on Amy, who was shifting from one foot to the other, and looking very much as if she’d rather be anywhere but here.
Somehow, he doubted Cecilia was only looking for storybooks and paper. “Please see Isabella is readied for tea in the drawing room, Amy.” Gideon turned on his heel and strode to the door. “I’ll fetch Cecilia myself.”
* * * *
It began innocently enough. Or at least as innocently as anything else at Darlington Castle did, which is to say, not innocently at all.
