“Did you find what you were looking for?” Justin asked, his voice soft, inquiring. He still stared at the tombstone.
“Yes,” she replied. It was all Cordelia could manage, though she knew it was woefully inadequate.
He turned around then and smiled. “Good. I’m glad,” he said.
Cordelia nodded, looking to her hand, where Bea’s handiwork was stuffed in a sweaty palm. She held it up to him, her throat catching. “I didn’t realize my little sister had it in her to finish a piece of embroidery,” she remarked.
Justin plucked it out of her hand, chuckling to himself as he regarded it. “She’d come and visit me in the afternoons when I was laid up in bed. She’s very bright, your Bea. She is going to hold me to that promise to show her my drawings of the pyramids.”
Cordelia smiled at that, but then she glanced at the headstone and back to him. A stone sank in her stomach as she remembered him telling her about the abuse he’d suffered at his father’s hands and how Hollyhead had reminded him terribly of that abuse.
“I’m sorry,” she said, finally.
Justin sucked in a deep breath. “For what exactly this time? For seducing me and then running away? For solving the family riddle without me?”
His tone was more teasing than patronizing, but there was an edge behind it.
“I understand why it pains you to be here, Justin. I’m… I’m so sorry you were dragged here against your will and have had to put up with my family… and all of its accompanying eccentricities,” she said. Reaching for his arm, she tucked hers in the crook of his elbow. They started to walk out of the cemetery and onto the main path toward Hollyhead.
He took a moment before responding, as though he were choosing his next words very carefully.
“Thank you, Lia,” he said, finally. “I think a part of myself has always been running from this place. Whether because of my father or because of my adoptive father… only to become the one thing I never dreamed I’d become.”
Cordelia nodded. “It may sound strange, but I completely understand that. It’s… it’s as though there’ve been two people inside of me. One always wants things to be prim and proper and in control, while the other…”
“The other scolds local busybodies with aplomb and rejects marriage proposals with gusto,” Justin finished for her.
They both laughed at that.
“You’d be able to make a pretty penny of one Lady Prudence if you set her up with that story. I think you’re the one person in Hertfordshire that’s seen every side of Cordelia Nichols,” she said, shaking her head.
Justin sighed, “Indeed. With and without clothes on.”
Cordelia’s cheeks flamed as she playfully pushed against him. “Gentlemen do not insinuate when they’ve seen a lady without her clothes on.”
“I never claimed to be a gentleman, or good at it,” he replied.
They paused, looking at Hollyhead House in the late afternoon sunlight. Guests were beginning to pull up the drive to attend the ball. Cordelia glanced down at her dress, which was caked in dust and dirt. Glancing over at Justin, she saw that he had cobwebs stuck in his dark waves and dotted all over his darkjacket. With a little dirt under his left cheek and at least a day or two of stubble, she wasn’t sure he’d ever looked more handsome.
Well, it would be difficult to beat the time he’d come out of the sheep-dip in a white shirt. Or that time he’d saved her from the abandoned abbey, when his hair was falling in his eyes. Then there was the time in the vicarage… and then the other day…
Cordelia placed the back of her hand on her cheek to cool her skin as she turned her head back to the manor house.
“Why did you let me have it?” she whispered.
“It was always yours to begin with,” he replied, squeezing her arm. “Besides, my lesson was to learn to love this place again, and to confront my own history.”
Cordelia swiped at her eyes again, feeling her chest tighten.
“I’ll also be nicer to high-born toffs,” he added, dulling her intense emotion with a joke. “I know now what it takes to run an estate.”
“Many are not very good at it. But I promise I’ll take good care of it for you,” Cordelia replied.
“Oh, I know you will. Perhaps you’ll let me visit from time to time?”
She smirked, not answering him immediately. “We make quite the pair, dressed like this,” she remarked. “What will our guests think?”
“I’m not sure I rightly care,” he replied, giving her a half smile that made her heart stutter. “I won’t be Hollyhead’s master after today.”
