And I couldn’t love him anymore, for I had left him and done the worst.
He caught my hand before I punched the roof to signal the carriage to stop. “What’s the matter? The Stilton?”
“The Felton.”
“Cilia, what?”
Didn’t have any words to say aloud that I was a fool.
CHAPTER43
FELTON—OFF TOKILL THECOUSIN
In the carriage, Cecilia looked stunned. Her hands within Felton’s were ice blocks, but he kept them. If he had his druthers, he’d never let go. He kissed one and blew on the other. “Cold, my little blueberry?”
She didn’t respond and stared at the door as if she’d run.
Felton couldn’t allow it. So he drew her back and put her hands to his chest, bundling them into his coat. “Your hands are chilled.”
“Always cold, Felton, and you need to stop trying to sway me.”
Ignoring the failure of his obvious tactics, he decided to focus on warming her up, rubbing her palms as he used to rub the soles of her feet. Slow and steady along the curves of each digit made her sigh.
“Tsk. How are you going to target Gladstone if you have to sit outside for hours?”
“You will truly teach me?”
He nodded. “I’ve left you so many times for missions. I think this is quite a fun husband-wife activity.”
“Pity the thing that bonds is killing.”
He shrugged. “It’s how we met. You saved my life. Perhaps cloak-and-dagger is a coupling activity.”
Felton stretched to offer her a blanket, and she jumped.
“Cecilia Lance, what is it? I’ve never brought a hand to you. Why act like I have?”
She pulled her arms tighter about her. “Bad dreams. That’s all.”
He thought of witnesses who’d survived Aponte’s rebellion in Cuba, witnesses who’d gone through trauma. Getting the British planters out of harm’s way, before the four-hundred-man freedom force began their fight, was hard. Yet, Felton was left changed by the Spanish forces’ brutal reprisals on colonists or anyone who supported José Antonio Aponte movement to end enslavement. He was lucky to get his team out alive.
“Felton. You went away. That’s usually me.”
“Sorry, Cecilia.” He hung his head. “I can’t believe I’m joking about teaching you to kill.”
Tentatively, she reached for him, putting her palm atop his wrist. “When I teach Agatha and Amelia art, I do it step by step. Explain each piece. Is there a method?”
He sat back, easing from her touch. “To kill, it can’t be emotional.”
“That makes no sense.” She pulled the blanket up against her chest. “Why else would you kill someone?”
“If you feel too much, you make mistakes.” He pulled the slipping blanket back to her shoulder. “First, I’ll teach you how to be in the room with Gladstone and ignore him, so he’ll not see you coming for him.”
“The fool didn’t see me at the King’s Theatre and he’s not dead.”
“Was that why you were there?”
“Was that why you, who don’t like the theatre, were there—to stop me?”
