Chapter Nine

B y the time Cecilia stirred from her faint a half-hour later, Anthony had propped her torso up on the pillows at the headrest of the bed and finished cleaning her leg as best he could. The pale yellow bed covers were now stained a light orange from the bloody water, and her left stocking and shoe, along with the bloody bandage, lay crumpled on the floor. Slowly, she opened her eyes. She seemed confused as to where she was for a moment, then she looked down, saw her naked leg un-bandaged on the bed, and sat up abruptly, wincing in pain as the movement caused a fresh trickle of blood to escape from the wound. Anthony leapt up from the chair where he had been watching her and pressed her back into the pillows. She fought back for a moment, pushing him away with surprising strength, but the concerned look in his eyes seemed to pacify her and she relaxed into the cushions. She glared at him imperiously, wary and aloof, demanding he speak first, as he eased back down into the chair beside her. He cleared his throat.

"Well," he managed.

She stared him down. He couldn't tell what she wanted. For him to leave? To explain? To demand explanations? He spoke again. "I swear I have not taken advantage. You need have no fear for your honor. I merely… I wished to know what was causing you pain."

She waived her hand in dismissal of his explanation as her eyes surveyed the bloodied bandage on the floor, the basin of red water and now-stained washcloth, the drops of her blood on his sleeves, then looked back up to catch his eyes again. She raised an eyebrow. "Honor," she muttered dismissively. Evidently the news that her honor was still intact was not what she had wanted to hear. Perplexing. He remembered her last words as she'd fainted. Ah, she must want assurance that her wound had been kept a secret.

"I did not call for a doctor, though I think it should go without saying that you should call one immediately. I was also not sure if I should call for your maid, so I didn't." He stood. "If you wish, I shall call her now."

She held up her hand to stop him. "No. Don't call for anyone. Sit down." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

His eyes traced her form, the ample bosom, rumpled dress and exposed leg giving her the appearance of an Oriental odalisque. He sat and crossed his legs to prevent another inappropriately timed arousal. He forced himself to focus on her face. No, that wasn't working. The unruly red curls around her forehead were just as alluring as the heaving of her chest as she breathed. He looked down at the wound in her leg and the seriousness of the situation rescued him from the appreciation of her form. "You owe me no explanation, of course," he said cautiously, "but I should dearly like to have one."

She opened her eyes, piercing him with the same unapologetic gaze he had come to expect in their brief acquaintance. "What makes you think I care a fig for my honor? That I am honorable?" she asked, avoiding his request for an explanation.

Anthony opened his mouth to answer, then sat back in surprise and closed it again. She continued. "Did the kiss I gave you at Lady Spencer's not adequately destroy what assumption of my honor you might have had? Or, if not that, the fact that I have been wandering about town without a chaperone?" She raised her eyebrow as if to challenge him to make further assumptions about her person.

After a few moments, he regained enough composure to answer, "You are the unmarried daughter of a Duke. I merely assumed."

She laughed. It was a dark hollow laugh that made him shift uncomfortably in his seat, not the feminine giggle she had made at the ball. "If half of what I've heard of your reputation is true, my lord, then you assume a very great deal." Now it was his turn to raise an eyebrow. "And yes," she said, "I am aware that in insulting your devilish reputation, I have implied my own fall from grace." There was something of a devious sparkle in her eyes now, the same knowing look that had so intoxicated him when she kissed him at their first meeting, as if she relished the sensations she conjured in his flesh. But just as he leaned forward to kiss her again, the look disappeared. She squeezed his hand where it lay on the edge of the bed. "Thank you for keeping this between us."

Anthony frowned. "I should still like to know what this is."

She withdrew her hand. "You were right when you said I did not owe you an explanation."

"Perhaps you do not, but as I took the time out of my evening to ensure you did not die in your own foyer, then I at least deserve the name of whoever did this to you. I assume this is related to the gentleman who evinced such an… unseemly knowledge of your person at the ball?"

She looked back to him, surprised, one hand picking at the neckline of her gown. "I didn't realize you were privy to so much of that exchange. And what would you do with such knowledge should I give it to you? Challenge him to a duel over a disagreement you know nothing about?"

"Any so-called disagreement that involves a lady being shot is no small matter."

"No," she answered hesitantly. Cecilia edged back into the pillows as if to shield herself from him. Then she looked up at him again, with that demanding, piercing gaze that never failed to imprison him. "This is a long story," she said, "and an unhappy one, and my own burden would lighten with the sharing of it. And I think, perhaps with your reputation, it would shock you much less than it would the rest of the ton . But if I satisfy your curiosity, I must have your word, not as a gentleman, because you hardly are one, but as the honest man who cared for me this night when I was vulnerable, that my story will be safe with you."

Anthony was intrigued. He loved good gossip as much as he loved a good woman, and this story promised to be as intriguing as the woman who told it. Even if he was honor bound to never let it pass his lips. "You have my word," he said.

She began, closing her eyes, "Then let us start from the fundamentals. I am nearly the last of my family. As I'm sure the gossip has informed you, my father died only a few years ago, and my mother has not left our country house since we buried him. She refuses to stray far from his grave. It is not my father's passing but the reason for his death that is the beginning of my story, so I suppose I must preface my tale by explaining that I was raised with more freedom and education than the average daughter of a duke. My childhood was spent in my family's country estate with my little brother, George, as my only playmate, and by the time I had my first season, I had become accustomed to having my own way in everything. Being informed by my father that I was expected to attract a wealthy match of my own nobility or above was not the sort of thing I pictured for my debut. At the time, I had aspirations to a love match. Though looking back, I did manage to confuse love and carnal pleasure rather badly." At this, she smiled slightly with the same kind of indulgent reminiscence with which he and his friends often recounted their escapades at their gentlemen's club. She continued, "I had become enamored of a young man of noble blood but far below my class whose identity, for the purposes of this story, need not be revealed. I decided that as I might not have a chance to feel love in the arms of my future husband, I should take it where I found it, while I was free enough to pursue it. And I must be blunt in saying what follows as there is no delicate way to say it." She sighed and squared her jaw. "I arranged a tryst for myself and my admirer in a brothel where I would not risk being recognized, and where I could enjoy my deflowering without interruption from my family or any of the better parts of society." Here the wicked smile played at the corners of her mouth again as she opened her eyes and looked at him. "And I most certainly did."

When the revelation forced a lustful sigh out of him, he realized he had been holding his breath. "You lost your virginity in a whore house?" he asked, his voice coarse and throaty and betraying too much shock and titillation for his taste. He swallowed and licked his lips. She was doing it again, damn her. Those knowing eyes; the way she passed her hand across her abdomen as she looked at him, apparently appreciating the effect her story was having on him. And now, of course, she made much more sense. The innocence he had assumed of her due to her unmarried position, and the way she had responded to, nay even demanded, his physical attentions during their first kiss had been impossible to reconcile.

And, to his surprise, the knowledge that this fine lady before him was not the virginal heiress society expected her to be, that he had hoped a day ago she might be, did not disappoint him. He rather relished the idea that there was at least one young woman in all of England who was not so cowed by propriety that she wouldn't take the matter of her physical pleasure into her own hands, rather than letting one of society's resident rakes snatch it from her.

Desire tightened around his chest. He wished he had been the one she met in that brothel. The first man to enjoy the thrill of slipping her dress off her shoulders to reveal what no man had seen before, running his fingers lightly over the soft place at the base of her throat, brushing his lips against the nape of her neck. If only he had been in town those years ago during her first season, rather than cavorting on the continent with the rather expensive mistress he'd had at the time.

She chuckled. "Is there a more fitting place?"

"A whore house?" he repeated, incredulous.

"It was deliciously forbidden: everything I wanted it to be." She fixed him with a patronizing gaze. "As someone who has made their reputation sampling all the illicit delights life has to offer, I'd expect you to understand that when one is denied something, it takes on an almost irresistible magnetism." When he only shook his head in disbelief, she continued.

"Unfortunately, my family tracked me down. They were too late, of course, but it took them most of the night to find me, and it was a rather unsavory part of town. They swept me back to the country immediately, hushed everything up very nicely…" her voice trailed off and she frowned, guilt gathering in the tears at the corners of her eyes. "By the time I recovered, my father and brother were ill. They'd caught consumption searching for me that night." She drew a shuddering breath. "Father died. George lingered on for another month or so…" She did not bother to brush away the tears that ran slowly down her cheeks into the pillows.

Then the import of what she had said struck him. George Warenne, dead ? "I do not understand," he managed to say. "George Warenne, Duke of Queensbury, is alive. He currently serves in His Majesty's 9 th Regiment."

"Ah, yes," she said, his words having a rousing effect on her as she propped herself up on her elbow amongst the cushions. Though her tears had not yet dried, she smiled the mischievous smile again, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Here is where my and George's story truly begins.

"Upon my father's death, my mother, who is as strong-willed a woman as I, became worried for our welfare. She must have known that George would not survive long, and with the sole heir gone, the ducal estates and properties would be passed to a distant cousin and she and I would be left at his mercy. She wished neither that, nor that I would have to give up the freedoms and privileges to which I had become accustomed. When George passed, she had him buried quietly on the property, and made no announcement of his death. I don't know what she intended to do beyond pretending his existence as long as she could manage, but it gave me the best, and worst, idea of my life." Her eyes sparkled.

"Which was?" he prompted, riveted.

"My brother had bought a Lieutenant's commission, much to Father's chagrin, of course, but George was always as wild as me. I—well I didn't want to go on living at the manor with all that sadness and I was angry and—I decided to take it."

"You what?" Anthony gasped.

"Relinquished my dresses, bound my breasts, and took my brother's place. It had always been George's dream to serve his country. I wanted to make his dream come true." She said it so matter-of-factly, as if she had done nothing more than alter the wallpaper in her room.

Anthony couldn't think, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't believe her. No, not her words, but her . She was incomprehensible. She was a woman. A wanton woman, yes, but a woman. Yet she was unlike any woman he'd ever met. She was unlike any man, too. People simply didn't do these things. Not the people he knew. "Impossible," he said.

"Hardly," she answered. "My brother and I always looked alike. As he was a year younger than I, it was easy to explain away my hairless chin and less-muscled frame as his undeveloped youth."

She paused, seemingly waiting for him to question the plausibility of her story again, but he merely shook his head and said, "Go on."

"The next year was exhilarating. Being a man was exhilarating! Training, drinking, whoring, gambling. The life of a young soldier is a charmed life indeed. I'm sure there are plenty of men who don't think that, but for someone who always wanted freedom but never truly had it, it was a beautiful life. Hard work, of course, but still free! And as I managed to secure a private room for myself, hiding my identity was not –"

He interrupted her. "Pardon me, but whoring?"

"I played the game to the hilt," she said, her serious expression poorly masking amusement. "In fact, I had quite a reputation around the barracks."

Whoring? Drinking? Gambling? He had already felt her lean muscular physique, so it was no small stretch of the imagination to think she had been dedicated to her military training, and he knew quite a few women with more than a passing fondness for the bottle or the cards, but… whoring? It was not logically possible. He squinted his eyes and rubbed his temples. The evening was proving to be fascinating to say the least, but he had not been filled with so many contradictory emotions and thoughts since his father had sat him down at the awkward age of eleven after catching him peeking at one of the maids kissing a footman, and attempted to explain the relations between men and women. That had been uncomfortable. But this was bordering on surreal. "Lady Cecilia –"

"Just Cecilia."

"Cecilia, how do you expect me to believe you had a reputation for whoring when you are clearly not, not at all…" he cleared his throat, " …properly equipped?"

She chuckled again. "There is much more to whoring than shoving a foot in a boot." She smiled as the indelicate euphemism made him raise an eyebrow. "There's lust – " here she allowed her eyes to trail over his body, the corners of her mouth curving up the slightest bit when her gaze reached his groin. Involuntarily, he licked his lips. "There's confidence – " she lifted her chin and one eyebrow ever so slightly while the hints of desire played at her lips, looking down her nose at him appraisingly. Anthony had the fleeting impression of being a prize steer in an auction. "There's the knowledge of the female body that only another female would fully possess." She ran her fingers lightly across her abdomen as she had done before, and his loins responded with expectation. "You see," she said breathily, "I haven't taken you to bed yet, but you know I will, and you know I'll be good."

He tried to breathe, but his lungs wouldn't respond. "You will?" he whispered, disturbed at how close to a plea the words were.

"Anthony," the word was a ghost of a murmur in her throat. She leaned towards him, lips open and expectant. He leaned forward to meet her. "It is a very simple game indeed." Then the little wicked smile spread across her face and she fell back into the cushions, laughing.

"I see." He sat back in his chair, attempting to look as casual as possible. Damn the chit, she had him eating out of her hand! She knew it and she was enjoying it! He folded his hands over his lap to cover his erection. He had to distract her from his helplessness by bringing her back to her story. "Seduction is one thing, Cecilia, but how, pray tell, did you perform the acts necessary to build up a reputation?"

"You men are all so convinced your cocks are God's gift to womankind, you forget there are other avenues to pleasure," she scoffed.

"You don't mean—"

Cecilia rolled her eyes. "I was the rare sort of man prostitutes dream of. The offer of pleasure with no expectation of return… I was a favorite client."

"I don't believe you," Anthony said. It was a lie. Unbelievable as it might seem, he had no doubts about her story. It was incomprehensible. Fascinating. Utterly ludicrous. Scandalous. Cecilia. He was beginning to sense a pattern.

"You wouldn't be the first man to think his prick was solid gold," she said, deliberately misunderstanding him. She laughed. "But if more men followed my example, there would be a great deal more satisfied women. It nearly got to the point where prostitutes were soliciting me ." She smiled and shook her head. "Good days they were. But nothing lasts forever, and happiness doubly so." She sighed and steeled herself to go on.

"We were called to battle. I knew, when I joined, that we were in the middle of a war with Napoleon. But I never thought I'd have to fight." A look of sudden realization flickered across her face. "Then again, perhaps I did. Perhaps I took that commission because I couldn't find anything left to live for and I wanted a bit of a lark before I made my grand goodbyes. That or I was so much more na?ve than I would like to admit now." She looked at Anthony, her gaze hollow and hypnotizing. "Have you ever been to war, Anthony?"

He had to be honest. "No."

"I wouldn't recommend it. Not only is it the most useless, sickening, insufferable waste of human effort," she fairly spat out the words, "but life on the campaign made hiding my femininity nearly impossible. I couldn't bathe regularly. We all smelled a mess, but a woman's smell is different from a man's. I was sure every time I walked past one of the men, he'd know. I decided I'd made a mistake. That I would request a transfer back to London. I was playing the role of a duke; I didn't think it would be hard to take the coward's way out with my family name to back me up. But then, this…" she pulled her left sleeve down, revealing a long pink scar, the mark of a bullet or perhaps a sabre cut just below the shoulder. "Some of the men got much much worse. Men who had been my friends. George's friends. So I did the foolish thing and stayed. And that's when he found me out."

He . She said the word as if she were naming the devil. "The man I saw with you tonight?" Anthony asked.

She nodded. "Captain Brinkley. He noticed my hesitance to let the doctor see to my wounds. He came into my tent while I was trying to bandage myself, and…" The fa?ade of confidence on Cecilia's face faltered for a moment as her lips curled back in the same disgusted sneer she'd cast at Captain Brinkley at the ball that evening. "Being a committed opportunist, he demanded a price for his silence."

Anthony had no words for this sort of situation. He knew what price she meant. The price no man should demand from a woman. Not a gentleman, and not even a rake. A rake took what was freely given, but he did not steal. He watched, helpless, as Cecilia bit back tears, her hand rubbing her chest absentmindedly as she struggled to breathe. On instinct, he reached out and grasped her fingers, holding them steady. She flinched once, then stilled, her breathing calming under his touch. Self-conscious at his rare kindness, Anthony tried to pull away, but she held his hand against her chest. The warmth seeping through her bodice burned him. The heat was exquisite.

"There is not much more to tell," she continued, her voice returning to its matter-of-fact timbre. "Our arrangement went on until a month ago, when Captain Brinkley was given leave and sent here. I knew I had to follow him to make sure he stayed silent. Not long ago, I was shot in battle and fell unconscious. When I woke, I found I'd been left for dead on the field. So I let George stay dead there, and I pawned my sabre and the buttons from my regimental jacket to make my way back to England. And the rest you have been privy too. I have spent the last four days attempting to persuade Captain Brinkley to leave George for dead, as I have done, but he is a stubborn man."

Anthony squeezed her hand in his. His attention to her story was no longer plagued by lust. He still felt it of course. Lady Cecilia was no less beautiful then when he'd first seen her, and certainly more fascinating. But now, he discovered, he had respect for her.

Respect for a woman. The feeling was fresh and strange. He enjoyed it. And how could he now enjoy bending Cecilia to his will when he felt such a need to protect her, to keep her from the sort of treatment even he would never have inflicted? Well, that finally quashed the last of his hopes to… to do whatever it was he had intended to do with her before he knew.

"What will you do now?" Anthony found himself asking.

She gave him a searching look, pressed his hand harder against her bosom, then fixed him with a pleading smile. "I will ask you ever so politely to take the bullet out of my leg. I have tried, but I cannot focus through the pain."

He drew back. "Beg pardon?"

"The bullet is still in my thigh, Anthony," she said, slowly and clearly as if he was stupid and she was merely asking him to pass the strawberry jam. "Please take it out."

He shook his head. Cleaning up all the blood had almost been more than he could handle, and the thought of causing her further pain made his bile rise. Not to mention the fact that he had no medical training. And this whole evening must be some dark and unforgivably frustrating dream. He would wake up in the morning with a hangover and find that Lady Cecilia was just another flirtatious debutante. Oh, but that would be too simple, wouldn't it? Cecilia did not seem like a simple woman. "Call a doctor."

"No doctors. No one must know. There are tweezers on my nightstand and knives and towels aplenty in the washroom from the last time I tried. You could have it done in five minutes."

He stood to leave. He was sure if he stayed a moment longer in her presence he would either vow to be her knight in shining armor until the end of time or ravish her there on the bed, surrounded by bloody sheets. Neither option seemed like a remotely good choice. "Lady, Cecilia, you –"

"I've told you," she said with a gentle smile, "call me Cecilia."

"Cecilia, you ask too much of me. I cannot – it would cause you pain."

She sat up on the bed and grasped his wrist as he tried to walk away. His eyes met hers and for a moment she left the depth of her suffering and loneliness unmasked. The slight twitch of her lip as she begged him was a siren call. He could not look away. "Please, Anthony. Nothing you could do to me could hurt more than—than what has already been done to me." Her mouth twisted in a wry smile. "Please."

"I…" he began, but he could make no more refusal. He simply stared at her, at the ghost of hope he saw dancing across her amber eyes.

"Help me."

Yes. He nodded. Always, yes .