Secret Valentine (2 page)

"Cecelia."

She stopped with her back to him.

Thought after thought collided in his head.
Was she saying that he hadn't done this right? Or was she saying
she didn't want to marry him at all?

He had been dodging the hankies tossed at him
so long, he really hadn't quite thought that any woman might
not
want
to marry him.

He put his hands on her shoulders. She
stiffened under his touch. "Is there someone else? Some penniless
aspiring writer you've bumped into in a bookstore? A starving
artist you adore? A half-pay soldier home from the war?"

"Why would you think I would be so foolish as
to fall in love with a man of no means?"

Devin could feel her wince as well as see it.
"I'm asking if there is any impediment to my suit." Good Lord when
had he begun to sound so pompous? Was there someone else? He held
his breath.

"There's no one else," she whispered.

He exhaled. "Good then."

"I'm not marrying you."

"I'm moving back in my home, in four weeks,
chaperone or not," he answered.

"Stay for all I care. I'm not marrying
anyone, so it shouldn't matter if my reputation is ruined."

"Your reputation isn't the only one at stake
here, Miss Clemmons." He moved his hands to her falling hair and
fished out a pin to secure the chignon to the center of her head.
Her hair felt incredible against his fingers, as feathery soft as
the caress of a summer breeze.

What would it be like to remove all the pins
and let it flow across his hands, his pillow, his body?

He stepped back, startled at the image he had
conjured. Well, marriage did include that, although a man usually
looked to his mistresses for pleasure and his wife for duty. He
absolutely couldn't consider staying in his own home while she was
here alone. Although it wasn't much better for her to stay here
unsupervised.

She stood still as a deer, her head bowed
forward... over her book. He walked around her. Although it was
dark in the upper passageway of his London house, he could see her
watching him out of the corner of her eye, before she dropped her
gaze back to the pages.

"You're not reading that."

Her head popped up. Was there more than the
usual pale pink in her cheeks? She had unusually fine skin, like a
porcelain doll's. Was its texture as inviting as her hair's?

"It's upside down." He tapped the page.

She looked at it and smiled. "No wonder I was
having such difficulty."

She turned the book over, stuck her nose it
in, and skirted around him, walking along the passageway. She
paused only briefly at the top of the stairs leading down to the
main floors.

"You don't read upside down."

"Of course I do. It's just not as easy as
reading right side up."

"Do me the favor of not reading on the
stairs, so as to not break your neck as you descend. I should much
prefer a bride who can walk."

She rolled her eyes. "Perhaps I should try to
talk Mrs. Parmont into staying."

"She's already gone." He'd made sure of
that.

* * *

Cecelia escaped the library and returned to
her bedroom before Devin found her. Not that he would be searching
for her. She stepped up to her looking glass. The same plain
reflection with hair that refused to stay pinned, which always
greeted her, looked back. "Oh bother."

If Mrs. Parmont had stayed just a few more
weeks, Cecelia wouldn't be in this pickle with Devin. He would have
gone about basically ignoring her as he always did. She sat down at
her secretary and wrote:

When you asked for my hand

I did fly so high I never thought I should land

Cecelia frowned, then scratched through the
line. Dipping her pen in ink she began again.

When you looked at me with eyes of blue

And declared your love so true

My heart sprouted wings and flew

She growled and wiped her pen dry and closed
the ink. Obviously now was not the time to compose love poems. No,
she would do better to leave the love poems to those who knew what
they meant.

Damn him anyway.

She grabbed her satchel and tiptoed down the
hall. She crept up the attic stairs. It was growing late, and she
needed to make her daily rounds.

* * *

Devin stared at the brandy he had just poured
in a glass. It was to calm the jolt to his nerves, he told himself.
He swirled it around allowing his palm to warm the liquid to the
proper temperature. Brandy was a patient man's drink.

He was about out of patience.

How could she have refused his offer? Without
even giving it any consideration?

He yanked on the bellpull, and when his
butler appeared, he said, "Send the carriage for Aunt Marsh."

"Oh, sir," protested Barnes.

"It's either her or drag my mother home from
Italy." Aunt Marsh wasn't really his aunt, but a distant cousin
once or twice removed.

"I see. Well, Mrs. Marsh it is. She won't
like it a bit."

"Tell her it's only for four weeks, maybe
less."

Barnes raised an eyebrow.

"This
is
the last time. Do whatever
you can to make her comfortable."

Aunt Marsh was eighty if she was a day, a
wrinkled and bent old bird. She'd been his mother's governess then
companion before he blighted her days.

As a chaperone she provided little more than
a body. She certainly wouldn't budge from in front of the fire to
escort Cecelia about town. Not that Cecelia made any effort to gad
about, or that Aunt Marsh would notice one way or another. But as a
distant relative of his, not to mention dependent on the pension he
supplied her with, she would provide protection for Cecelia's
reputation, in appearance if not in practice.

Devin resigned himself to giving up his
favorite chair for the duration of the old woman's stay. He needed
to tell his valet to pack a bag for him, since he doubted that Aunt
Marsh would allow herself to be transported in such a hurry-scurry
fashion as to travel above two miles an hour and arrive
tonight.

When he entered the front hall, Cecelia
nearly plowed into him on her way to the front door. He grasped her
shoulders out of a strong instinct for self-preservation.

Her poke bonnet covered her messy hair and a
burgundy pelisse concealed her wrinkled black bombazine dress. She
looked almost fetching he thought with a start. After he'd settled
her out of danger of crushing his cravat, he asked, "Going
out?"

Perhaps she regarded the question as rather
chowder-brained since it was quite obvious she was on her way out
the door. Perhaps that was why she blinked her dark velvety eyes at
him above her spectacles. Good grief, when had he grown so fond of
her eyes?

Without a book to bury her nose in, she was
well and truly caught staring back at him. Just as he felt the
exchanged gaze was growing rather heated, she pushed her spectacles
up her nose and broke the connection.

"Perhaps I should ask, Where are you off
to?"

"Hatchards."

Books.
He should have figured. "I'll
accompany you."

Cecelia backed toward the door. "No need. I
have my maid
and
a footman."

"Just the same, I shall tag along too." He
was eager to test this newfound attraction to his ward. When he
thought of marriage to her, he knew she was quiet, rarely in his
way. She didn't expect him to entertain her, but would engage in a
conversation if he wished. She had never been coy or cloying,
things he detested in a woman. He thought he could be quite
comfortable with a woman who didn't require his constant attention,
but her refusal to his immanently reasonable suggestion of marriage
had caught him off guard.

"Don't you have another oppressive corn law
to pass?"

He retrieved his great coat and hat. "It's
Friday. We save our oppression laws for Tuesday." The House of
Lords only sat on Friday in an emergency.

"Oh." Her mouth twisted sideways as if she
were trying to think of another way to dissuade him from
accompanying her.

"Don't twist you mouth up like that."

She rolled her eyes. "Now you sound like Mrs.
Parmont."

She had no business comparing him to her
departed companion. He couldn't resist antagonizing her. "Put's me
in mind of a woman needful of a kiss."

She raised her gloved fingers in front of her
lips and glared at him.

"I don't expect that sounded much like Mrs.
Parmont." He pulled on his coat.

"I have a lot of shopping to do."

She wouldn't get rid of him that easily. He
extended his arm. "Shall we go?"

"I'm walking."

"Then, I shall contrive to keep up to your
pace." He jogged his elbow, reminding her he still held it out.

She placed the tips of her fingers on his
sleeve. He put his hand over hers supplying the pressure she
wouldn't apply.

Outside the maid and footman stood waiting.
After exchanging surprised glances, they fell in step a respectable
distance behind Devin and Cecelia as they made their way to
Piccadilly.

"I've sent for Mrs. Marsh," he said.

"Oh, you shouldn't have."

"Then, I should apply for a special
license?"

"Absolutely not. I shall look at the
advertisements in the
Post
tomorrow. I'll find a new
companion."

"No."

Her fingers trembled against his arm.

"No more paid chaperones. Mrs. Parmont was
the third in six months. It is starting to look like they leave
because of improprieties."

Cecelia blushed furiously. "That's just stuff
and nonsense. The first grew sick, and"—she scowled— "you're
counting Mrs. Marsh, who never wanted to leave her cottage in the
first place, and was only temporary until I found Mrs.
Parmont."

"I should hate to send for my mother."

Cecelia blinked at him. "I've never met your
mother."

"She might not come home anyway."

"Even if you asked her to?"

"She always does as she pleases, especially
since my father's passing." Now how had he started this line of
conversation? Best to change the subject immediately. "What sort of
book are you looking for?"

Cecelia shrugged.

"Mathematics? A treatise on animal husbandry?
An ancient text in Latin? Another novel?"

"If you must know, poetry."

Poetry? He absolutely had to pay more
attention to what she was about. He had known her to read about the
driest of subjects and then plunge into a popular novel, but
poetry?

The book store and lending library was
surprisingly crowded. Cecelia disappeared into a row of shelves
while he chatted with an acquaintance. She had ducked away before
he had a chance to reintroduce her. Since the woman who had snared
his attention had two daughters of marriageable age, he supposed
she was no more interested in exchanging small talk with his future
wife than Cecelia was interested in being social.

When he finally located her, she had a book
open and was studiously engrossed, not just pretending this time.
He looked over her shoulder and read the most syrupy love poem he'd
ever seen. He felt like gagging as he read
An Ode to
a
Fine
Pair of
Blue Eyes
. Was this what Cecelia
wanted?

He studied her short hairs just below the
edge of her bonnet. The curve of her neck enchanted him. He wanted
to lean forward and press a kiss there, or wrap his bare palm
around her nape and feel the fragile feminine arch of her neck.

Good Lord, she was a woman and, perhaps in
spite of all her practicality, she wanted to be wooed, persuaded of
the violence of his affections.

Trouble was, he rarely bothered to feel
violently about anything.

The most excess of emotion he had felt lately
was when she called the corn laws, which he had voted to pass last
session, "A foolish blunder of overprivileged landowners doomed to
cause no end of trouble." That he'd come to the conclusion she was
right hadn't made him any less angry.

"Find what you wanted?"

With a start, she snapped the book shut and
hid it behind her back as she spun around to face him.

He watched her struggle to drop the
impervious mask over her face. A welling of tenderness crept under
his breastbone. "Love poems, Cecelia?"

She dropped her arms to her sides, one hand
clutching the slim collection of poetry. "'Tis the season."

Absurdly a Christmas carol played in his
head, but Boxing Day had passed already. And while they were done
with January, it was still a long way from April and May. His
confusion must have shown on his face.

"Saint Valentine's Day is coming soon," she
said.

He had completely forgotten about the lover's
holiday. He put his arms behind his back and said inanely, "That it
is."

She rolled her eyes. "I have several more
stops I need to make."

"Shall we move on then? Give me your book;
I'll take it to the counter."

"I can buy—"

"Don't be absurd, Cecelia. You're my
ward."

"—them."

She picked up her spectacles from the top of
the stack of books on the shelf beside her put them on her nose.
Then she handed him the stack. Her expression was a cross between
belligerence and embarrassment.

He couldn't help but grin at her. She snorted
and moved past him toward the counter.

He read the titles as the charges were added.
Verses of Love. A Collection of Love Sonnets.
He couldn't
wait to get out of the shop and put the books into his footman's
hands. It was too much to hope that the man couldn't read. What had
happened to his sensible, practical, unemotional ward?

They stopped at a perfumer where Cecelia
bought scented ink. They stopped at a milliner shop where she
picked out several lengths of patent lace and a slew of delicate
ribbons. She bought several slips of foolscap and the thinnest
pasteboard they carried at another shop. He stewed about how to
convince her to marry him.