Secret Valentine (9 page)

* * *

Devin watched Cecelia drag into the breakfast
room and signal for coffee. He folded
The
Morning
Post
and studied his ward. Her dress was wrinkled, and her eyes
were bloodshot. She looked like a female version of his cronies
after a night of hard carousing, as if she had never been to bed at
all.

"Cecelia?"

She sat up straight and looked as guilty as
he had ever seen her look. "Gracious, they still haven't identified
that poor girl." She pulled the newspaper across the table. "Does
she look like anyone you know?"

Devin looked at the line drawing on the front
page, knowing perfectly well Cecelia was diverting his
attention.

"No, no one I know."

"That's so sad. They're going to have to put
her in a pauper's grave if no one claims her soon."

"Cecelia, she's probably just another soiled
dove who decided she'd be better aloft. It's tragic, but there's
nothing you or I could do to undo her death."

Cecelia pressed her lips together and shook
her head. "They examined the body. She wasn't a prostitute, not
that she would deserve to have an unmarked grave if she were. And
she didn't drown. Someone threw her in the Thames after she was
already dead."

He looked at the paper again studying the
drawing intently. She looked like a moderately pretty young girl,
but not even vaguely familiar. "If I had an inkling of who she was,
I would do something."

Cecelia nodded and sipped her coffee. "Yes, I
know you would. I just wanted to be certain you looked
closely."

"What I want to know is why you look like
death warmed over?"

She stared at him with her velvety brown eyes
and lied outright. "I got so engrossed in reading I didn't get any
sleep."

"Reading what?"

She stared at him a second too long before
she said, "
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.
"

Figured she would throw out story about a
depraved rake written by a dissolute hedonist. "Reading about a
pilgrimage or were you on one?"

Her confident expression shattered. "What do
you mean?"

"It wasn't reading keeping you awake last
night."

She looked away. "I was so reading."

What in blue blazes was she up to? And when
had she stopped carrying around a book all the time?

Later, he found both her and Aunt Marsh
asleep in the morning room. He tried to shut the door quietly, but
Cecelia sprang up from the chaise lounge. A few minutes after that,
as he was getting ready to leave the house, he looked outside and
saw her hand one of his footman a packet. Then his footman headed
up the street.

She entered the front door as he descended
the steps.

"What are you doing?" He folded his arms
across his chest. "Reading?"

Her expression looked strained, on top of
looking exhausted, but she still managed to be flippant. "Arranging
a secret tryst."

"That's not funny, Cecelia." He hated being
caught in this strange place between being her guardian and
responsible for her well-being, and being a suitor. "You obviously
didn't go to bed last night, and your jest about secret trysts does
not amuse me."

"If you must know, I sent him to a shop."

"To do what?"

"Pick up some thread. I sent a sample of the
material so the color could be matched, and then, of course, he is
to get some toads if they are to be had."

Devin wasn't entirely satisfied, but he
couldn't pinpoint what made him uneasy. Her explanation, aside from
the toads, seemed reasonable. "You trust a footman to match
colors?"

"No, I trust a shop girl."

"Cecelia," he tried to think of what he
wanted to say.

She looked at him expectantly.

"You know you may always rely on me, don't
you?"

"I know I have depended on you too much this
past year."

He shook his head. He didn't see that she
relied on him at all. "If you are ever cast in the briars, I
would..." This wasn't coming off the way it should.

"You would help pluck them from my
backside?"

He smiled. "And I should enjoy it
mightily."

She folded her arms too. "Inflicting pain by
removing thorns or that I put myself in pain in the first
place?"

"Not the pain part, for I should never want
to see you hurt."

She looked away. There she went again closing
off to him. He wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her. He
wanted to kiss her until she melted at his feet. He wanted to
spirit her off to some secluded castle until...But none of those
things would make her open up to him, so he did nothing. He had
destroyed what closeness they had developed with his suggestion of
marriage.

He looked over his shoulder at the stairs he
had just descended. "You know I could look about my attic anytime I
have a mind to do so."

Her gaze darted back to his, worry lines
etched into her forehead.

"But I keep waiting for you to invite me
in."

Cecelia dropped her arms and tried to smooth
the crinkles from her skirt. He could have told her the effort
would be futile.

"I did once," she said in a small voice.

"Not really, not with open arms." He
descended the remaining stairs. He drew on gloves. "I trust the
session with the dressmaker went well."

Cecelia nodded and shrugged in the same
motion.

"You are having her make up a new riding
habit, aren't you?"

Cecelia watched him like a wild animal would
tense unsure if he were friend or predator. Truth was he was
probably both, so even though her caution stung, he couldn't quite
fault her for it.

"She's coming back Thursday next."

"I have a bay I bought at Tatt's this last
Thursday, that I think might suit you."

"I don't wish to be so indebted to you."

He moved to the door. "One should not feel an
obligation to repay gifts freely given. I would buy you the moon,
should it make you happy, Cecelia. But I fear you would regard it
as a burden meant to chain you."

He had already sent for his horse. A groom
should have brought it round to the front by now. He stepped out
the front door. Had buying her gifts been the wrong way to go with
her? He felt at a loss as to what he should be doing to persuade
her to marry him. And he was quite worried his suggestion that she
needed to commit to marriage had forced her down some reckless
path. A path she never would have sought, if he had not made her
feel settling her future was urgent. Was she so opposed to marrying
him?

He no longer believed his proposal should go
as well as he had thought it would when he first conceived the idea
of wooing her with valentines.

He had finally figured out what bothered him
about her explanation for sending his footman out on an errand. It
was Sunday. No shops were open on Sunday.

* * *

Cecelia stared at the word she had just
written. How on earth did one misspell heart? But sure as day
h-a-r-t
looked back at her. In her own poem too. There was
no way she could squeeze in the
e
. Lately, she had taken to
composing her own poems on the cards rather than rely on the ones
out of the books.

She was exhausted. She had stayed up all
night last night working on the back orders.

She was worried that her poetry too often
centered on being kissed. But somehow her words written in the soft
blue ink from the new kit seemed less tawdry than before.

She needed to make enough cards today to send
to the other two shops selling her wares. They would need some to
sell in the last two days before Saint Valentine's Day arrived on
Wednesday.

She should just tell Devin what she was
doing. There really wasn't any reason to delay any longer. There
was enough money under her mattress to repay Devin a large part of
her expenses from the last year and see her through a year of
modest living, as long as she didn't frivolously spend money on
fashionable dresses she didn't need.

But when she told him, the possibility of
marrying him had to be put completely aside. She would have to
begin the process of severing ties with him. After all, society's
darling couldn't consort with a woman in trade. She had lowered
herself to the level of shopkeepers and tradesmen, or perhaps lower
because a woman in business was a more distrusted thing.

He would be able to move back into his own
house and resume his carefree life. He wouldn't be troubled by her
secrecy and aloofness or the problem of what should be done with
her if she no longer resided under his roof. He could once again
have his gentlemen friends over for dinner, and he could attend all
the balls he wanted. He could spread his kisses to women he wanted
to kiss.

If there was one thing she would regret, it
was that those few times when he had come near to kissing her, they
had been interrupted. But perhaps it had been best that way,
because he had only meant to do it to prove that he would fulfill
his obligations as a husband and perhaps didn't find the idea of
making love to her appalling. But that was not like the one time
she had seen him with a young matron in an alcove. His kisses then
had been amorous, passionate, and Cecelia had been mortified to
stumble across the pair. She'd tried to quietly back away, but he
had seen her and followed her.

That was the kind of kissing she wanted.
Unrestrained. Wild. As though it meant something. As though he
wanted it with every fiber of his being. But then she wouldn't get
that kind of passion, because he didn't love her and wasn't likely
to. She put her head on her workbench and imagined what it would be
like for Devin to grace her with that kind of ardor and fell
asleep.

She had a crease on her face when she woke up
to a knock on her door. She rubbed at it as she answered,
"Yes?"

"Miss, your package has arrived."

Barnes himself had come for her? She noted
that there was an acceptance, even an expectation, of her daily
gifts.

She sprang out of her chair and opened the
attic door. He handed her a small package.

"I took the liberty of asking the delivery
boy from whence he came."

She undid the bow. "And?"

"He is employed by Hartley's Emporium."

She pulled back the paper and saw the music
box that she had admired just a few days ago. Cecelia felt her
heart plummet. That clenched it, then. It was the shopkeeper all
along. What a silly dream to think it might be Devin.

* * *

Devin tossed in his bed. He couldn't sleep.
Concerns about Cecelia kept tugging at him. Her obvious lack of
sleep from last night and that she had sent one of his footmen off
to—well, not to buy thread from a closed shop on Sunday. Had she
told the truth the first time? Had she actually sent
his
servant
to arrange a tryst?

He didn't believe she was that foolish, but
she had been ridiculously naive at times. Finally he tossed back
the covers and called for his valet.

He would just go home and make sure she was
safe in her bed where she belonged.

* * *

Cecelia couldn't believe she had been
featherbrained enough to run out of glue. On Sunday night there was
nowhere she could go to buy more. She grabbed her lamp and raced
down the stairs. She could only hope that Devin might have some in
his desk.

The house was entirely dark. The servants had
found their beds hours ago. She took a glance at the bracket clock
on the mantel of the library: two-thirty-two. Not so very late.
Well, if she were at a ball, they would probably just be getting
ready to go down to supper.

She slept too much of the day away and needed
to work through the night, although she had tried to maintain a
semblance of normality by letting her maid help her into her
nightgown and dressing gown before climbing to her workroom.

She set the lamp on the desk and started
rummaging in the drawers.
Ink pots, pens, paper, twine, sealing
wax...Oh,
please let there be glue.
Could she use the
sealing wax instead? Could she sew the lace on the cards instead of
gluing it? Maybe if she pieced two pieces of pasteboard together to
cover the stitches, but that would require glue.

Devin unlocked the
front door and carefully let himself in his dark house. The gas
jets in the wall sconces had been turned down, but there was enough
light to see his way about. He would just peek in her room. He
would stand in the doorway and not cross the threshold. He just
needed to know she was safely tucked in her bed.

She wasn't. He could see the flat, tidy
expanse of her bed. The covers hadn't even been turned down. He
crossed the room to be sure. All right, so now he had broken every
rule. He was in her bedroom in the middle of the night, alone. But,
one couldn't compromise a maiden who wasn't present.

A giant hand twisted his innards and yanked
with savage glee. Bloody hell, where was she?

Fearing and dreading and trying to decide
what he should do, he reeled to the door. How could he find her? If
she had arranged to meet a yellow-livered cad, Devin would have to
find the wayward pair, rescue her, then shoot, strangle, and stab
anyone who dared ruin his ward.

He told himself to calm down. She could be in
the attic. Hope surged through him as he flew to the narrow
staircase, but before he had gone up more than a few steps, he
could see that the door to her attic hideaway stood wide open.
There wasn't even so much as a flicker of illumination from a
single candle. She wouldn't be up there in pitch darkness.

Or if she was, he needed a light to see. With
fear and anger churning in his gut he made his way back downstairs.
Questions assaulted his brain. What could he do? Where was she? How
was he going to find her?