Three more days of steady travel allowed Watson to make good time. It also gave Felton the luxury to instruct Cecilia on the art of war.
It was odd telling these secrets to a woman, but she seemed pleased and grasped concepts more quickly than some of Liverpool’s recruits.
“Cecilia, you’re sitting very pretty in your pale yellow carriage gown, but you’re regrettably quiet, too quiet.”
She hid a little more beneath her cream shawl—another muted color. “You have declared my redingote quite dead. Bad Moomoo.”
The calf didn’t seem to pay her any attention. Watson made sure the beast was well fed and cleaned at each stop. That seemed to tame its ravenous tendencies.
“I shall have to have another one made for you. Purple again, or something else bright and bold. Except for your coat, I noticed you dress in soft colors.”
“Lady Jane was right that bright colors and figure-hugging gowns do attract attention. I didn’t need attention in Covent Garden, particularly the hours I worked.”
He glanced at this glorious creature who couldn’t hide her loveliness in anything. Their platonic-not-platonic sharing of rooms and beds these past days made him realize he liked her with color and without—well, the anticipation of without.
Bare toes were all she’d worked up to, and that was after a great deal of convincing and kissing. Kissed her socks off.
“What are you laughing at, my lord?”
Sitting back upon the seat, he couldn’t grin at her. “Thinking of darning socks. Such a necessary task.”
She offered a shrug and began her sketching again.
It was good to see her drawing, even if it was the Ballard Cliffs and fog. Was she happy or merely content that they were getting along?
Was he winning, or would Tramel always be larger-than-life? He craned his head onto the seatback. The duke should be glad that he was putting that other foot in the grave. Felton was helping to plot his cousin’s murder. It wouldn’t be hard to eliminate the duke too.
“What if I can’t do it, Felton?”
“Do what, Cecilia?”Please say ‘go through with separation.’ No separation. Be with me. Now!
He ran a hand through a lock of his hair that loosed from his onyx ribbon. “What is it you think you can’t do?”
“What if I look at Gladstone and can’t fire the gun?”
“Then he’ll kill you and be justified.”
She deflated in the seat.
He moved beside her, took his pistol from his pocket, and set it into her hand. “That is why we are going over the planning, step by step. You’ll know if you can do it, well before you ever confront Gladstone.”
Wrapping their fingers about the handle, he wanted her to be comfortable with the power, but her hand shook. He set the pistol to the side. “You don’t have to go through with this at all.”
“What, Felton?”
“Maybe you need to focus on the future. Not the past. When I broach the subject of us, you devour bread. If butter and rolls were aphrodisiacs, I wouldn’t have a problem.”
“What are you saying, my lord?”
Anytime she became so formal, it was her way of hiding. He sighed and kissed her hand. “Nothing. Nothing more than we’re almost to our next training.”
The carriage headed up Amesbury Road. Dark green pastures lay on each side. These fields were massive, endless.
“What do you see when you look out the window?”
She stretched over Moomoo, who seemed content with Watson’s bucket of hay, and peered out the glass. “Wonderful meadows, so very green. Autumn has not turned it all brown. It’s escaped.”
“That’s a pretty dismal way to think of meadows. What about the natural course of things? Of time making things grow and change.”
