The Girl with the Make-Believe Husband

“If you had not sailed to New York,” Edward continued, “when would you have married me?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

“So maybe it was for the best.” He wondered if she could hear what he heard in his own voice. It was a little too low, a little too smooth.

He was baiting her. He could not help it.

She gave him an odd look.

“If Cousin Horace had not harassed you,” Edward continued, “we would not be wed. Although I suppose . . .” He let his words trail off deliberately, waiting until she had to prod him to continue.

“You suppose . . .”

“I suppose I would think we were married,” he said. “After all, I went through with the proxy ceremony months ago. Think of it, all this time, I could have been a single man and not realized it.”

He looked up, briefly. Say something.

She didn’t.

Edward picked up his glass and tossed back the last dregs, not that there was really much of anything there.

“What happens now?” she whispered.

He shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

“Did he have any things? Beyond the ring?”

Edward thought back to that last day before he and Thomas had left for Connecticut. They had not known how long they would be gone, so the colonel had made arrangements to store their things. “Colonel Stubbs should have his effects,” he said. “I will have them brought to you.”

“Thank you.”

“He had a miniature of you,” Edward blurted out.

“I beg your pardon?”

“A miniature. He always had it. I mean, no, he didn’t carry it with him at all times or anything like that, but when we moved he always made sure it was with him.”

Her lips trembled with the hint of a smile. “I have one of him as well. Didn’t I show it to you?”

Edward shook his head.

“Oh. I’m sorry. I should have done.” She slumped a bit, looking utterly lost and forlorn. “They were painted at the same time. I think I was sixteen.”

“Yes, you look younger in it.”

For a moment she looked confused, then she blinked several times and said, “You’ve seen it. Of course. Thomas said that he’d showed it to you.”

Edward nodded.

“Once or twice,” he lied. There was no need for her to know how many hours he’d spent staring at her image, wondering if she could possibly be as kind and funny as she was in her letters.

“I never thought it was a very good likeness,” she said. “The artist made my hair too bright. And I never smile like that.”

No, she didn’t. But to say so would be to admit he knew the painting far better than “once or twice” would imply.

Cecilia reached out and took the ring. She held it in both hands, pinched between her thumbs and forefingers.

She stared at it. For such a long time, she stared at it. “Do you want to go back to the inn?” she finally asked.

But she didn’t look up.

And because Edward did not trust himself to be alone with her, he said, “I need to be by myself right now.”

“Of course.” She said it too quickly, and she lurched to her feet. The ring disappeared into her fist. “I do too.”

It was a lie. They both knew it.

“I’m going back now,” she said, motioning needlessly to the door. “I think I would like to lie down.”

He nodded. “If you do not mind, I will stay here.”

She gestured faintly toward his empty glass. “Maybe you shouldn’t . . .”

His brows rose, daring her to finish that statement.

“Never mind.”

Smart girl.

She took a step away, then paused. “Do you—”

This was it. She was going to tell him. She was going to explain it all, and it would be fine, and he would not hate himself and he would not hate her, and . . .

He did not realize that he’d started to rise until his legs hit the table. “What?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Tell me.”

She gave him an odd look, then said, “I was just going to ask if you want me to get you something at the bakery. But I don’t think I wish to see anyone right now, so . . . Well, I’d rather just go straight back to the inn.”

The bakery.

Edward fell back into his seat, and then before he could contain himself, a harsh, angry laugh burst forth from his throat.

Cecilia’s eyes went very wide. “I can still go, if you wish. If you’re hungry, I can—”

“No,” he cut her off. “Go home.”

“Home,” she echoed.

He felt one corner of his mouth squeezing into a humorless smile. “Satan’s Abbey.”

She nodded, her lips trembling as if they weren’t sure if they were supposed to smile in return. “Home,” she echoed. She looked to the door, then back at him. “Right.”

But she hesitated. Her eyes flicked to his, waiting for something. Hoping for something.

He gave nothing. He had nothing to give.

So she left.

And Edward had another drink.

Chapter 17

We have finally arrived in New York! And not a moment too soon. We traveled via ship from Rhode Island, and once again Edward proved himself a ghastly sailor. I have told him it is only fair; he is appallingly good at everything else he does.

Ah, he glares at me now. I have the bad habit of saying my words aloud as I write them, and he does not appreciate my description. But do not fret. He is also appallingly good-natured, and he does not hold a grudge.

But he glares! He glares!

I might kill your brother.

—from Thomas Harcourt (and Edward Rokesby) to Cecilia Harcourt

Cecilia walked back to the Devil’s Head in a daze.

Thomas was dead.

He was dead.

She’d thought she’d prepared herself for this. As the weeks had passed without a word, she had known that the chances of Thomas being found alive were growing slim. And yet, now . . . with the proof of his signet ring in her pocket . . .

She was wrecked.

She could not even visit his grave. Edward had said that it was too far outside of Manhattan, too close to General Washington and his colonial forces.

A braver woman might go. A more reckless spirit might toss her hair and stamp her foot and insist that she must lay flowers at her brother’s final resting place.

Billie Bridgerton would do it.

Cecilia closed her eyes for a moment and cursed under her breath. She had to stop thinking about bloody Billie Bridgerton. It was becoming an obsession.

But who could blame her? Edward talked about her all the time.

Very well, maybe not all the time, but more than twice. More than . . . Well, enough that Cecilia felt she knew quite enough about Lord Bridgerton’s eldest daughter, thank you very much. Edward probably didn’t realize it but she came up in almost every story he told of growing up in Kent. Billie Bridgerton managed her father’s lands. She hunted with the men. And when Cecilia had asked Edward what she looked like, he’d replied, “She’s actually rather pretty. Not that I noticed for so many years. I don’t think I even realized she was a girl until I was eight.”

And Cecilia’s reply?

“Oh.”

Paragon of everything articulate and insightful she was. That was her eloquent response. But Cecilia could hardly tell him that after all of his tales of the amazing, superhuman Billie I-Can-Ride-a-Horse-Backwards Bridgerton, she’d pictured her as a six-foot Amazon with large hands, a mannish neck, and crooked teeth.

Not that the crooked teeth were in any way relevant to Edward’s descriptions, but Cecilia had long since accepted that a little portion of her heart was petty and vengeful, and, blast it all, she wanted to imagine Billie Bridgerton with crooked teeth.

And a mannish neck.

But no, Billie Bridgerton was pretty, and Billie Bridgerton was strong, and if Billie Bridgerton’s brother had died, she would have traveled into enemy lands to make sure his grave had a proper marker.

But not Cecilia. Whatever courage she possessed had been all used up when she’d stepped on the Lady Miranda and watched England disappear over the eastern horizon. And if there was one thing she’d learned about herself over the past few months, it was that she was not the sort of woman to venture into a nonmetaphorical foreign territory unless someone’s very life hung in the balance.