Chapter 37

Thirty-Seven

RYCLIFFE PLACE, LONDON - JUNE 28, 1816

CELINE

The next several days followed a depressing pattern. Wake, cry, argue with a bird, pay calls, cry, attend dinners or dances, perhaps the theatre, and repeat. My very public, very concerted effort to demonstrate that I was not investigating anything and that I had nothing to do with William was both time consuming and exhausting.

I hadn't been out in society in such a bold way since I was a debutant. I was feeling my age and recalling every single reason I detested half the ton in the first place. And, of course, the half that I could stand were infrequent in their attendance.

That was certainly the case tonight at the Montrose ball while Mr. Wesley Parker spoke directly to my décolleté. I had been forced to choose my most scandalously cut gowns for these events in order to ensure that I escaped no notice. It had the unfortunate side effect of attracting leches like Parker. The repugnant oaf made my stomach lurch and my flesh crawl even more than the rest of them.

Every single time someone placed my hand in the crook of their arm, every time someone handed me from a carriage, with every insignificant brush, it was all I could do not to scream at them all. " Not for you! Not for you to touch, not for you to stare at, not for you to smile at. No! " Instead, I merely smiled demurely, looked away, and swallowed the knot in my throat.

"So, what happened to the solicitor who was courting you? Did you finally see reason?" Parker asked.

My fingers positively itched for my long discarded fan to hide behind.

"Our friendship ran its course."

The first time I had said something to that effect, the words produced a physically painful effect. Now the phrase was rote.

"Peculiar arrangement, that," he replied. Mr. Parker was, however, the first person to press beyond my vague comment. Interest sparked anew in my chest. Could he be?

That spark was doused as quickly as it arrived. Whether he was responsible for Gabriel's death or not was irrelevant. Because I was finished investigating.

Nothing was worth William's safety, not even the truth.

That fact had become its own kind of truth. I had lived for years without knowing, and with no answers in sight. I could do so again.

Ironically, I had also lived for years without William. But his continued existence—even if I never saw him again—was as essential to me as breathing.

In the end, it had come down to William's life or Gabriel's memory. And I had chosen.

"I hadn't realized my comings and goings were of such interest."

"Indeed, they are. Would you care to join me for the next set?" A waltz. With Mr. Parker. Every part of my being revolted.

"I thank you for the offer, but I don't waltz." I turned and stepped over to the drinks table before he could protest further, though he muttered something about waltzing with Hart under his breath.

And so my days and nights continued, mind-numbing monotony after mind-numbing monotony.

A change in pace finally came nearly a week later with Xander's summons to Rycliffe Place.

It was eerie, stepping inside the house nearly packed up. Great sheets covered the furnishings, and some of the wallpapering revealed darkened rectangles where paintings had protected the paper from the sun's displeasure.

"Cee?" Xander called from down the hall in the study. I had to press myself along the wall twice to avoid a servant carrying some large trunk or painting. Finally reaching the study, I peered in.

There was Xander, ever dignified even with an undone waistcoat and cravat, plopped on the floor surrounded by books and ledgers in various piles.

"Well, isn't this cozy?"

"You're not as charming as you think you are," he retorted as he flipped through a ledger with disinterest before adding it to a stack.

"Lies. Can I help?"

"Actually, I was hoping you would take a look upstairs and see if there's anything you wish to keep. You have most everything by now, but I wouldn't want to dispose of anything precious."

"Thank you," I said, pressing a teasing kiss to the top of his head.

The stairs proved to be nearly as treacherous as the hall, but I made the journey without injury. I turned down the hall to the rooms that were once my own. Memories danced through my mind of these halls, more loving and less bloody than the moments that haunted me below.

There, at the end of the hall, was a set of three open doors. These had been closed up longer than the rest of the house, seven years, or thereabouts. The same white sheets covered the furnishings, gray for the thick layer of dust.

There was the massive bed where I fell in love with my husband, right in the center. Under the window was my dressing table, long ago emptied. I started there, yanking the sheet and releasing a storm of dust. Nothing rested on top except the large vanity mirror I had no need of. As expected, the drawers were bereft.

I tried to right the sheet, but it slid off the other side, once, twice, three times before I realized it needed a second hand to reach over the top of the mirror without pulling away from me.

Feeling rather guilty that I had caused even more work for the already overwrought servants, I approached Gabriel's dresser with more caution. I lifted one edge and folded the sheet carefully in half over the top.

Gabriel had always kept the top clear of clutter, but the drawers had been an organized chaos. Over the years, the contents had spread their way across London, to Xander, Davina, and Her Grace—to me. The first drawer had little but a quill, an inkwell, and some parchment.

I slipped that one closed, content to leave those items to a future owner. The sheet caught in the edge of the drawer. Pulling it back open, I gave a gentle tug, but the sheet didn't budge. A harder yank revealed that it was caught. One last jerk and the problem exposed itself. A false bottom.

My husband had a false bottom in the drawer by his bed. I supposed I ought to have some sort of feeling about that, but it was entirely unsurprising. After slipping out the quill and other items from the drawer, I lifted the wood piece.

Below it was a stack of parchment. And right on top was a yellowed banknote.

WILLIAM

It was a wonder how quickly someone could become essential. She went from stranger, to nuisance, to friend, confidant, lover in days. Now all that was left behind was a dull ache in my chest and a throbbing behind my left eye.

A few days of my foul temper had been enough to scare off even the most determined visitors to my office, Bates included. It had, however, been a very productive few days.

That, of course, led to its own pitfalls. No sooner had Xander's documents been completed than Kit shoved me out the door toward Rycliffe Place to gather signatures.

In fairness, I had made no fewer than three clerks cry just that morning.

When I arrived, the house was in a state of organized disarray. Servants scurried about with various trunks and paintings, covering furnishings and the like. One of them merely grunted with a head nod down the hall when I asked after Xander.

Peering in a drawing room, I found no hint of Xander. But there was a sense of Celine. In the curtains and settee that hadn't yet been covered—purple damask in the same tones she still favored. It was the slap of a reminder that I didn't need.

Next, I passed a music room and a dining room. At last, I found Xander in the study at the end of the hall. This room bore no evidence of Celine. Xander had made it his own. And he was currently hunkered on the floor in a little fortress of documents and ledgers.

Though I favored my desk, I was no stranger to the looming and foreboding presence of a perilously stacked document tower. I knocked on the doorframe and he invited me in, not glancing up from his project.

"Xander?"

"Oh," he said, whipping around to verify the identity of his intruder. "Will! I thought you were… someone else."

"Just me, I'm afraid."

"Are those all the documents I asked for?"

"They are."

"Help me up? I believe I've been bent in this position so long that I have lost the ability to stand."

"Wait until you see the other side of thirty."

"Oh, good Lord. With any luck, Davina will have given me a fit of apoplexy and put me out of my misery by then." I pulled him to stand. He had managed to surround himself with piles and spun once, twice for an escape before deciding to step over gingerly.

"Alas, I've yet to find anyone who manages to have their apoplexy conveniently timed."

"If she doesn't, my mother will manage. She's been detailing every ridiculous fairy story she can find about Scotland. Did you know that I'm certainly going to be mangled by wulvers and drowned by kelpies?"

"I hadn't heard that. I'll miss you dearly."

"See that you do." He wandered over to the desk that remained uncovered. It was blanketed by yet more documents. He made a half-hearted attempt to shuffle the piles before picking up the one directly in front of his chair and dropping it to the floor with a decisive thunk .

"Do you need… help? With all of this?"

"I need a drink with all of this. And a large fire. Also, a new sister. Dav is responsible for at least half of these." He lifted the corner of a stack, letting the pages snap from his thumb in rapid succession. "Do you suppose she's a changeling? Mother was concerned for my future offspring as well, but perhaps she should look to her own."

"It might explain a few things…"

"Oh!" A soft, startled, feminine voice came from the doorway. Celine .

The single syllable was a punch to the gut. I turned, slowly taking her in. She was so damn beautiful it hurt. Still all honey curls, golden skin, and wide downturned olive eyes. She wore a simple gray dress with blue flowers. The cut was modest, merely hinting at curves I had caressed. She held a thin file in her clenched hand, insignificant in comparison to the deluge of paperwork in the office.

"Cee, glad you're here. We've some documents that require your signature."

"You do?"

"I do. I didn't get a chance to mention them at the ball the other night. Will and I have made some… arrangements for you."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Oh, damn, Cee! Nothing like that. I've just arranged for an additional dowry if you choose to wed again. And we're giving you some authority over funds in case Davina boards a boat to the Americas and you need to send someone to fetch her back before she weds a Puritan."

"She would hardly wed a Puritan. She's flighty, not a prude."

"I just need you to be able to authorize the funds for someone to fetch her before she develops the abhorrent accent."

"And a dowry? What precisely made you and William believe I required a dowry?"

"Oh, Will very much didn't. I did. I want you to have any option your heart desires, Cee." He turned to me. "She is able to spend it as her own if she does not wed, correct, Will?"

"Indeed." I sounded as though I swallowed a frog and it was stuck halfway down. I cleared my throat awkwardly.

"Very well, which documents do I need to sign, surely not all of these?" She gestured to the whole of the room in a teasing manner.

"Hilarious. Will, can you go over them with her? I'll go see if I can harass someone into tea." He slipped out of the room, entirely oblivious to any protests. She released a weary sigh as he darted down the hall.

"William."

"Lady Rycliffe," I answered. It may have been my imagination, but I thought I caught a flinch as she passed me to take Xander's seat. She settled her folder on top of one of the piles and directed her attention to the stack before her.

Proximity was a necessary evil since I needed to flip through the pages and point to places for her signature. Unfortunately, the closed distance made her warm, sensual scent all the more noticeable, distracting, arousing.

"This one gives you control over the dowry Xander is bestowing on you."

"Do you mind if I read it?"

"Of course not. You should. I just find that it's rare that people do." She read silently before signing her name with a flourish.

"This allows you to manage some additional funds that Xander is bestowing on Her Grace and Lady Davina."

"He probably should have mentioned that…"

"I think he's a bit distracted." And so it went. Explanation, reading, questions, signatures, desperately resisting the desire to bury my face in her silky curls.

Xander took an extraordinarily long time with the tea. By the time he returned, she was on the last swirl of her name on the last document, and he was bereft of tea.

"Couldn't find anyone with a spare moment. I hope you don't mind," he muttered, navigating his piles of parchment.

"Not at all."

"I think I will be going. I've found everything I need, Xander," she said, grabbing a file off one of the stacks.

"Celine…"

"Goodbye, Xander. Mr. Hart," she said my name as if it was a curse, before vanishing through the door as if she'd never been there at all. Xander sighed after her, slipping around to his seat behind the desk.

Before he could sit, a knock sounded, startling us both. He turned, brushing one of the top folders off his pile.

"So sorry, Your Grace," the footman said. "Did you still wish for tea?" Xander turned to me, seeking a response. I shrugged, entirely without preference. It was unlikely to taste less like ash than anything else had for having been in her company for nearly half an hour.

"No, thank you." The footman nodded and scurried off back to trunks or sheets or whatever else was needed.

Xander bent down to gather the scattered contents of the folder. He flipped through them, his brow furrowed. "These must be yours, Will. They're not mine." He handed them over.

"I didn't bring a..." Suddenly, I recalled Celine setting the folder on the stack before signing documents. She had grabbed the wrong one.

I took the file from Xander and flipped it open and there, right on top, was an old banknote. Made out to Gabriel Hasket, Marquess of Rycliffe.

From Mr. Wesley Parker.

Damn .