The Girl with the Make-Believe Husband

He reached into his pocket.

“What happened?” She was closer now. He had no choice but to hear her.

He pulled out the ring and set it on the table.

Her eyes followed his motions, and at first she did not seem to grasp the significance. Then she reached out with one trembling hand and took the ring within her fingers, bringing it to her face for a closer inspection.

“No,” she whispered.

He remained silent.

“No. No. This can’t be his. It’s not so unique. This could belong to anyone.” She set the ring back on the table as if it had burned her skin. “That’s not his. Tell me that’s not his.”

“I’m sorry,” Edward said.

Cecilia kept shaking her head. “No,” she said again, except this time she sounded like a wounded animal.

“It’s his, Cecilia,” Edward said. He did not move to comfort her. He should have. He would have, if he did not feel so dead inside himself.

“Where did you get it?”

“Colonel Stubbs.” Edward paused, trying to figure out just what he wanted to say. Or not. “He asked me to apologize. And offer his condolences.”

She stared at the ring, and then, as if a tiny pin had been jabbed into her, she looked up suddenly and asked, “Why would he apologize?”

It figured she would ask. She was clever. It was one of the things he loved best about her. He should have known she would immediately latch on to the part of his statement that did not quite fit.

Edward cleared his throat. “He wished to apologize for not telling you sooner. He couldn’t. Thomas was involved in something very important. Something . . . secret.”

She clutched the back of the chair next to him, then gave up all pretense of strength and sat. “So he knew, all this time?”

Edward nodded. “It happened in March.”

He heard her gasp—a tiny sound, but filled with shock. “He sat with me,” she said in a bewildered whisper. “In the church, when you were still unconscious. He sat with me for hours one of the days. How could he do that? He knew I was looking for Thomas. He knew . . .” She brought her hand to her mouth as her breath started coming in heavier gasps. “How could he be so cruel?”

Edward didn’t say anything.

Something in Cecilia’s eyes sharpened, and the pale green of her irises took on a metallic edge. “Did you know?”

“No.” He gave her a flat, direct stare. “How could I?”

“Of course,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.” She sat there for a moment, a hopeless statue of baffled grief. Edward could only wonder at her thoughts; every now and then she seemed to blink more rapidly, or her lips would move as if she might be forming words.

Finally, he could take no more. “Cecilia?”

She turned slowly, her brows drawing together as she asked, “Was he given a burial? A proper one?”

“Yes,” he said. “Colonel Stubbs said he saw to it himself.”

“Could I visit—”

“No,” he said firmly. “He was buried in Dobbs Ferry. Do you know where that is?”

She nodded.

“Then you know it’s far too dangerous for you to visit. Far too dangerous for me to visit unless I’m ordered to do so by the army.”

She nodded again, but this time with less resolve.

“Cecilia . . .” he warned. God above, he could not even contemplate chasing after her into enemy territory. That area of Westchester was a sort of no-man’s-land. It was why he’d been so surprised when Colonel Stubbs had said he’d gone alone to meet with Thomas. “Promise me,” Edward growled, fingers biting into the edge of the table. “Promise me you won’t go.”

She looked at him with an expression that was almost puzzled. “Of course not. I’m not a—” She pressed her lips together, swallowing whatever she’d thought to say in favor of: “That’s not the sort of thing I would do.”

Edward gave a curt nod. It was all he could manage until he got his breathing back under control.

“I imagine there is no headstone,” she said after a few moments had passed. “How could there be?”

It was a rhetorical question, but the pain in her voice made him answer, anyway. “Colonel Stubbs said he left a cairn.”

It was a lie, but it would give her comfort to think that her brother’s grave had been marked, if only with a small pile of stones.

He picked up his empty glass, fiddling it around in his fingers. There were a few drops left in the slightly rounded bottom, and he watched as they rolled this way and that, always following the same dampened path. How hard would he have to tilt the glass to force a new rivulet? And could he do the same with his life? Could he just tilt things hard enough to change the outcome? What if he threw it all upside down? What then?

But even with all this going on inside, his expression did not change. He could feel the stasis on his face, a steady evenness, devoid of emotion. It was what he had to do. One crack, and God only knew what was going to come pouring out.

“You should take the ring,” he said.

She gave a little nod and picked it up, blinking back tears as she looked down at it. Edward knew what she’d see. The Harcourts had no coat of arms that he knew of, so the flat plane of Thomas’s ring bore only the letter H, elegantly scripted with one flourishing swirl at the base.

But then Cecilia turned it over and looked inside. Edward straightened a bit, curious now. He had not known to look for an inscription. Maybe it wasn’t Thomas’s ring. Maybe Colonel Stubbs had lied. Maybe—

An agonized sob burst from Cecilia’s lips, the sound so sudden and harsh that she almost looked surprised that it had come from her. Her hand formed a fist around the ring, and she seemed to crumple right there in front of him, laying her head on her forearm as she cried.

God help him, he reached out and took her hand.

Whatever she had done, for whatever reason, he could not confront her about it now.

“I knew . . .” she said, gasping for breath. “I knew he was probably dead. But my head and my heart . . . They weren’t in the same place.” She looked up, her eyes luminous in her tear-streaked face. “Do you know what I mean?”

He didn’t trust himself to do anything but nod. He wasn’t sure his head and his heart would ever be in the same place again.

Edward picked up the ring, wondering about the inscription. He turned so that the inside caught a bit of the light.

Thomas Horatio

“All of the men in my family have the same ring,” Cecilia said. “Their given names are engraved on the inside so that they can tell them apart.”

“Horatio,” Edward murmured. “I never knew.”

“My father’s grandfather was called Horace,” she said. She seemed to be calming down. Ordinary conversation could do that for a person. “But my mother hated the name. And now—” She let out a choked laugh, followed by an inelegant swipe of her face with the back of her hand. Edward would have offered her a handkerchief if he’d had one. But he’d rushed out that morning, eager to surprise her with treats. He hadn’t thought he’d be gone above twenty minutes.

“My cousin is named Horace,” she said, almost—but not quite—rolling her eyes. “The one who wanted to marry me.”

Edward looked down at his fingers and realized he’d been rolling the ring around between them. He set it down.

“I hate him,” she said, with enough intensity to compel him to look up. Her eyes were burning. He wouldn’t have thought the pale hue could contain such heat, but then he remembered that when fire burned hot, the color of it turned cold.

“I hate him so much,” she went on. “If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have—” She drew in a loud, sudden sniffle. From the looks of her, she hadn’t felt it coming on.

“You wouldn’t have what?” Edward asked softly.

She didn’t answer right away. Finally, she swallowed and said, “I probably wouldn’t have come here.”

“And you wouldn’t have married me.”

He looked up, caught her gaze directly. If she was going to come clean, now would be the time. According to her story, she had not taken part in her half of the proxy marriage until she was on the ship.