The Girl with the Make-Believe Husband

“Sophie?” he said dismissively. “She’s hardly capable.”

“My other great-aunt. Dorcas.”

His eyes narrowed. “I am not familiar with an aunt Dorcas.”

“You wouldn’t be,” Cecilia said. “She’s my mother’s aunt.”

“And where does she live?”

Considering that she was wholly a figment of Cecilia’s imagination, nowhere, but her mother’s mother had been Scottish, so Cecilia said, “Edinburgh.”

“You would leave your home?”

If it meant avoiding marriage to Horace, yes.

“I will make you see reason,” Horace growled, and then before she knew what he was about, he kissed her.

Cecilia drew one breath after he released her, and then she slapped him.

Horace slapped her back, and a week later, Cecilia left for New York.

The journey had taken five weeks—more than enough time for Cecilia to second- and third-guess her decision. But she truly did not know what else she could have done. She wasn’t sure why Horace was so dead-set on marrying her when he had a good chance of inheriting Marswell anyway. She could only speculate that he was having financial troubles and needed someplace to live. If he married Cecilia he could move in right away and cross his fingers that Thomas would never come home.

Cecilia knew that marriage to her cousin was the sensible choice. If Thomas did die, she would be able to remain at her beloved childhood home. She could pass it along to her children.

But oh dear God, those children would also be Horace’s children, and the thought of lying with that man . . . Nay, the thought of living with that man . . .

She couldn’t do it. Marswell wasn’t worth it.

Still, her situation was tenuous. Horace couldn’t actually force her to accept his suit, but he could make her life very uncomfortable, and he was right about one thing—she couldn’t remain at Marswell indefinitely without a chaperone. She was of age—barely, at twenty-two—and her friends and neighbors would give her some leeway given her circumstances, but a young woman on her own was an invitation for gossip. If Cecilia had a care for her reputation, she was going to have to leave.

The irony was enough to make her want to scream. She was preserving her good name by taking off by herself across an ocean. All she had to do was make sure no one in Derbyshire knew about it.

But Thomas was her older brother, her protector, her closest friend. For him she would make a journey that even she knew was reckless, possibly fruitless. Men died of infection far more often than they did of battlefield injury. She knew her brother might be gone by the time she reached New York.

She just hadn’t expected him to be literally gone.

It was during this maelstrom of frustration and helplessness that she heard of Edward’s injury. Driven by a burning need to help someone, she had marched herself to the hospital. If she could not tend to her brother, by God, she would tend to her brother’s best friend. This voyage to the New World would not be for nothing.

The hospital turned out to be a church that had been taken over by the British Army, which was strange enough, but when she asked to see Edward, she was told in no uncertain terms that she was not welcome. Captain Rokesby was an officer, a rather sharp-nosed sentry informed her. He was the son of an earl, and far too important for visitors of the plebian variety.

Cecilia was still trying to figure out what the devil he meant by that when he looked down his nose and told her that the only people allowed to see Captain Rokesby would be military personnel and family.

At which point Cecilia blurted out, “I am his wife!”

And once that had come out of her mouth, there was really no backing away from it.

In retrospect, it was amazing she’d got away with it. She’d probably have been thrown out on her ear if not for the presence of Edward’s commanding officer. Colonel Stubbs was not the most affable of men, but he knew of Edward and Thomas’s friendship, and he had not been surprised to hear that Edward had married his friend’s sister.

Before Cecilia even had a chance to think, she was spinning a tale of a courtship in letters, and a proxy marriage on a ship.

Astoundingly, everyone believed her.

She could not regret her lies, however. There was no denying that Edward had improved under her care. She’d sponged his forehead when he’d grown feverish, and she’d shifted his weight as best she could to prevent bedsores. It was true that she’d seen more of his body than was appropriate for an unmarried lady, but surely the rules of society must be suspended in wartime.

And no one would know.

No one would know. This, she repeated to herself on an almost hourly basis. She was five thousand miles from Derbyshire. Everyone she knew thought she’d gone off to visit her maiden aunt. Furthermore, the Harcourts did not move in the same circles as the Rokesbys. She supposed that Edward might be considered a person of interest among society gossips, but she certainly wasn’t, and it seemed impossible that tales of the Earl of Manston’s second son might reach her tiny village of Matlock Bath.

As for what she would do when he finally woke up . . .

Well, in all honesty, she’d never quite figured that out. But as it happened, it didn’t matter. She’d run through a hundred different scenarios in her mind, but not one of them had involved him recognizing her.

“Cecilia?” he said. He was blinking up at her, and she was momentarily stunned, mesmerized by how blue his eyes were.

She ought to have known that.

Then she realized how ridiculous she was being. She had no reason to know the color of his eyes.

But still. Somehow . . .

It seemed like something she should have known.

“You’re awake,” she said dumbly. She tried to say more, but the sound twisted in her throat. She fought simply to breathe, overcome with emotion she had not even realized she felt. With a shaking hand, she leaned down and touched his forehead. Why, she did not know; he had not had a fever for nearly two days. But she was overwhelmed by a need to touch him, to feel with her hands what she saw with her eyes.

He was awake.

He was alive.

“Give him room,” Colonel Stubbs ordered. “Go fetch the doctor.”

“You fetch the doctor,” Cecilia snapped, finally regaining some of her sense. “I’m his w—”

Her voice caught. She couldn’t utter the lie. Not in front of Edward.

But Colonel Stubbs inferred what she did not actually say, and after muttering something unsavory under his breath, he stalked off in search of a doctor.

“Cecilia?” Edward said again. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ll explain everything in a moment,” she said in a rushed whisper. The colonel would be back soon, and she’d rather not make her explanations with an audience. Still, she couldn’t have him giving her away, so she added, “For now, just—”

“Where am I?” he interrupted.

She grabbed an extra blanket. He needed another pillow, but these were in short supply, so a blanket would have to do. Helping him to sit up a little straighter, she tucked it behind him as she said, “You’re in hospital.”

He looked dubiously around the room. The architecture was clearly ecclesiastical. “With a stained glass window?”

“It’s a church. Well, it was a church. It’s a hospital now.”

“But where?” he asked, a little too urgently.

Her hands stilled. Something wasn’t right. She turned her head, just enough for her eyes to meet his. “We are in New York Town.”

He frowned. “I thought I was . . .”

She waited, but he did not finish his thought. “You thought you were what?” she asked.

He stared vacantly for a moment, then said, “I don’t know. I was . . .” His words trailed off, and his face twisted. It almost looked as if it hurt him to think so hard.

“I was supposed to go to Connecticut,” he finally said.

Cecilia slowly straightened. “You did go to Connecticut.”

His lips parted. “I did?”

“Yes. You were there for over a month.”

“What?” Something flashed in his eyes. Cecilia thought it might be fear.