Chapter Twelve
Robert had done Doctor Hawkins and the young lady who assisted him, Miss Anna Hawkins, the courtesy of walking them to the door. Truth be told, it was not that he felt the need to be excessively polite. He had never had much inclination towards the masked ball, and, after his dance with Cecily, his urge to join the merriment had diminished still further.
He was honest enough with himself to admit that there was no other woman at the ball who caught his attention the way Cecily did. Anyone else would be a pale comparison. The idea of pretending to enjoy the party while Cecily sparkled and shone on other men's arms at the centre of the dance floor was detestable.
Once Doctor Hawkins and his daughter were seen safely off, Robert found himself seeking out another reason to avoid returning to his own ball. Ah! Of course. He had not yet gone to check on Thunder.
He made his way to the stables in time to see a carriage moving towards the front door. In the dark, it was nearly impossible to make out the driver's livery, so perhaps it was only because Cecily was on his mind that Robert recognised the Balfour colours at once.
She was leaving. She had promised to dance until dawn, but she was leaving!
His mind filled with all the things he ought to have said to her as they danced together. The thought of leaving those words unspoken was unbearable. Robert saddled Thunder in great haste and rode along the wooded path that followed the line of Scarcliffe Hall's long driveway. He cut across just in the nick of time, coming to a halt in front of Cecily's carriage just as it reached the gates.
Cecily's head appeared, sticking out of the window. "Driver! What on earth is going on?"
Robert brought his horse around to her side of the carriage immediately.
"You're leaving," he said. Cecily's mask was in her lap. He could make out every contour of her pretty face in the moonlight. She looked shocked.
"You asked me to, didn't you?"
"But you said you would stay. Why leave now?"
She tossed her head proudly. He was beginning to see that she brought out pride for a number of purposes, none of them to do with vanity. In this instance, she was hurt. "Ask your brother. He's a charming man."
"Did Hart discover your identity?"
"Pardon me, my lord." A blonde-headed girl pulled Cecily away from the window. "I don't think it's wise to have any more conversation between the Hartleys and the Balfours this evening."
Robert gritted his teeth. "Hart did something rash, didn't he?"
"He insulted my father," said Cecily, above Jemima's protests. "I had no choice but to speak up."
"Hart is not a bad sort, Lady Cecily. He simply… He doesn't take anything quite seriously." How could Robert explain his brother's difficult personality? "He was not always like this. He suffered a great disappointment, long ago, and he has kept himself too well-guarded since. He feels he has to defend himself. Mirth and mockery are his chief weapons."
"I don't see what Lord Jonathan's disappointments have to do with his rudeness about my father."
"Let me apologise on his behalf." Robert dismounted from Thunder and put his hand on the carriage door. "Step aside with me a moment. I'm sure that a few moments are all that is needed to put things to rights between us."
"Ceci!" warned her companion. "You must under no circumstances leave this carriage. He is a Hartley. What would your father think?"
Cecily hesitated – only for a moment. "Papa wouldn't approve of anything I've done this evening," she said, with a careless shrug. "So, Jemima, you must help me make sure he doesn't find out about any of it."
She stepped out of the carriage and tucked her arm through Robert's. "If you truly wish to address the feud between our families, let me be the first Balfour to agree to a proper debate. But I warn you, you will find it difficult to explain away the charges I will lay against your family."
"Thank you for giving me the opportunity to try." Ignoring the squawks of protest emanating from the carriage, Robert led Cecily out into the trees at the side of the drive. Expecting every moment that she would tell him to stop, he took her deeper into the dappled cover so that they were completely hidden from her friend and her footmen.
She followed him without a murmur of complaint. Robert wondered whether her blood, too, grew hotter with every step they took into the darkness together. He was not thinking straight, he knew. There was no excuse at all for hiding away with Cecily.
Unless what he really intended was not a conversation at all…
"That's quite enough," Cecily snapped. "I may trust you, my lord, but I don't think that gives you the right to make off with me into the woodland. The things I have to say to you are not fit for servants' ears, but we have gone far enough."
"Say your piece," said Robert. He leaned against a tree and folded his arms, waiting. Cecily had evidently not expected him to be so docile. She floundered, just for a moment. It was charming.
"Neither of us were alive when your ancestor ran off with a painter and blamed it on my dead great uncle," she began. A poor start. Robert could not conceal the annoyance that tightened his jaw.
"You mean, when Lord Thomas Balfour kidnapped Lady Letitia Hartley?"
"I don't know what your father has told you about that time," said Cecily, with a little sigh of annoyance. "And I must admit that I don't care to have my own friendships dictated by the woes of two people who are now long dead. I am more concerned with your family's recent crimes."
"Are you speaking of the ball? I assure you, it was not my idea."
"I suspected as much," said Cecily, a queer smile lighting her features. Robert underwent the uncomfortable realisation that she could read his character a great deal better than he could read hers. "But I did not mean the ball. As you know, Jemima and I did not suffer from the snubbing." She took something out of her reticule and held it towards him. Robert struggled to make it out in the darkness. "This is what concerns me, Lord Robert. I found it hidden away in the room you put me in at Scarcliffe Hall." Her voice softened, took on a tone that was almost pleading. "I can see no possibility of an innocent explanation."
She pressed the item into Robert's hand. It was small and round. A ring? He peered at it, just able to make out the Balfour crest.
"You found this in Scarcliffe Hall? That's quite impossible."
"I hold no personal grudge against you, Lord Robert. I promise you, this is no invention." Cecily was toying unconsciously with a strand of hair she had pulled from her chignon. There was nothing suspicious about her demeanour; she looked truly worried. "Have you seen it before?"
"Never," Robert admitted, passing it back. "I cannot think how such a thing would come into my family's possession."
"But I can think how, and worse – why," said Cecily. "This ring could be used to seal a letter pertaining to be from my father. Any manner of ill words might be signed with his name and sealed with his crest. If you have never seen this ring – and I wish with all my heart to believe you – then it must be your father or brother's doing."
"I cannot accept that. You may have been told otherwise, but they are both honourable men." Robert ran a hand through his hair, striving to find some explanation. "That room has not been occupied in many years. I doubt Hart, for one, has ever been into it. If a Hartley truly intended to do the Balfours ill with that ring, it must have been many years ago."
"If only I could believe you!" she whispered. He wished there was better light. By the tremor in Cecily's voice, her eyes were filling with tears, but he could not read her expression well enough to judge whether words of comfort would be well-received. "The way your brother spoke to me tonight – once he realised who I was – that showed true hatred, Lord Robert."
"Hart can be sharply-spoken, but he does not hate your family any more than I do," said Robert.
"Sharply-spoken! A pretty way of describing a cruel man."
"You would not speak of him that way if you knew him."
"How am I to know which to trust?" asked Cecily. "Your kind words, or your brother's harsh ones? When two such opposite sentiments are presented to me, which I am to listen to? I am sure your brother hates me. Your father – I know he does."
"I am not my family," said Robert. He spoke with all the passion he could muster, but he knew that would not be enough to persuade her.
There was only one way to convince Cecily of what lay within his heart.
He reached forward and took her face between his hands. He could barely see her reaction, but he knew by the way she gasped that she did not want him to stop. A trace of dampness traced its way down his thumb, the remnant of a single silver tear.
"I must kiss you," he said, trying to ease the rough want in his voice with tenderness. "I've been thinking of nothing else since we danced. I –"
"Why, Lord Robert," she said, with a touch of her usual spirit. "I had you down as a man of action."
Whatever further teasing she had in mind, he did not hear it. His lips were on hers. There was too much at stake to be gentle. He kissed her fervently, unremittingly, letting every part of his honesty and his desire for her make itself plain.
If he could have kissed away the generations of enmity, he would have. He settled for bringing Cecily's blood to the same feverish temperature as his own.
Her hands clung to him, taking great fistfuls of his shirt, with an answering need that only sharpened his hunger for her. His own hands were in her soft hair, gripping it with a force that must have been near-painful. He could not get close enough to her. They could only meld so far via lips and hands and tongues. It was not enough.
"We must stop," Cecily gasped into his mouth.
"I cannot."
"Nor I."
"Cecily Balfour!"
The shriek of horror tore straight down the middle of their embrace, sending them crashing apart. Cecily put her hands up to her half-tumbled hair, eyes wide and frightened. "Jemima! What are you doing?"
"What am I doing?" Jemima took hold of Cecily by the shoulders as if she were going to shake her. "Are your brains completely addled?"
He thought he made out a smile on those well-kissed lips. "Completely addled just about describes it, actually."
"I should escort you both back to your carriage," said Robert, painfully aware that Jemima had shrieked Cecily's name so loudly it was probably heard back at the house. Jemima rounded on him in a fury.
"You will do nothing more or less than keep away from Cecily! Leave her alone! You mean her no good, and I know it!"
The two girls vanished back in the direction of the carriage. Robert was left to slump backwards against a tree trunk, listening to the passion in his own heartbeat.
Jemima was right to doubt him. What Hartley had ever meant a Balfour any good, after all?
At that moment, Robert could not say whether he meant good or ill by Cecily. Kissing her was, by any measure, a wretched mistake. The implications for her honour, her reputation, her future… Had he, in fact, meant to harm her? Was that the irresistible impulse which had forced his lips to hers?
If that were so, then why did her sighs of pleasure still echo through his mind? Why was he filled with an unbearable aching, as though some vital part of him had been torn from his chest?
Robert had always considered himself an honourable man. A man of true honour would have considered the consequences. A man with good intentions would not have kissed Cecily at all.
Robert realised that he must be less honourable than he had always supposed. The only thought in his mind was of how and when he would be able to kiss Cecily again.