The Girl with the Make-Believe Husband

As for what she’d do once she was home . . . She supposed she’d have plenty of time in her ship’s cabin to figure that out.

“Good sir!” she called out to the man who was directing the cargo. “When do you leave?”

His bushy brows rose at her question, then he cocked his head toward the ship and said, “You mean the Rhiannon?”

“Yes. Do you head back to Britain?” She knew that many ships detoured to the West Indies, although she thought they usually did so on the way to North America.

“To Ireland,” he confirmed. “Cork. We leave Friday evening, if the weather holds.”

“Friday,” she murmured in response. It was only a few days away. “Do you carry passengers?” she asked, even though she knew that they had done so for the westward voyage.

“We do,” he said with a brusque nod. “Are you looking for a spot?”

“I might be.”

This seemed to amuse him. “You might be? Shouldn’t you know by now?”

Cecilia did not dignify this with an answer. Instead she employed a cool stare—the sort she’d once thought befitting of the wife of the son of an earl—and waited until the man jerked his head toward another fellow farther up the embankment. “Ask Timmins. He’ll know if we have space.”

“Thank you,” Cecilia said, and she made her way to a pair of men who were standing close to the bow of the ship. One had his hands on his hips while the other gestured toward the anchor. Their stances did not indicate that their conversation was urgent, so as Cecilia approached, she called out, “Your pardon, sirs. Is one of you Mr. Timmins?”

The one who’d been pointing toward the anchor doffed his hat. “I am, ma’am. How may I help you?”

“The gentleman over there”—she motioned back to where the cargo was being loaded—“mentioned that you might have room for another passenger?”

“Man or woman?” he asked.

“Woman.” She swallowed. “Me.”

He nodded. Cecilia decided she liked him. His eyes were honest.

“We’ve room for one woman,” he told her. “It would be in a shared cabin.”

“Of course,” she said. She doubted she could afford a private cabin, anyway. Even a shared one was going to be a stretch, but she’d been careful to keep enough funds to pay for her passage home. It had been difficult; she’d had almost nothing to live on before Edward woke up. She’d never been so hungry in all her life, but she’d kept herself to one meal per day.

“Might I know the cost, sir?” she asked.

He told her, and her heart sank. Or maybe it soared. Because the fare was almost one and one half times what she’d paid to come to New York. And that was more than she had saved. She didn’t know why it was more expensive to sail east than west. Probably the ships charged more simply because they could. The people of New York were loyal to the crown; Cecilia imagined that passengers tended to be more desperate to leave New York than to arrive.

But it didn’t matter, because she didn’t have enough.

“Do you want to purchase passage?” Mr. Timmins asked.

“Ehrm, no,” she said. “Not yet, anyway.”

But maybe on the next ship. If she siphoned off a bit of money every time Edward gave her some for shopping . . .

She sighed. She was already a liar. She might as well be a thief, too.

Thomas’s trunk was heavy, so Edward had made arrangements to have it transported to the Devil’s Head by wagon. He knew there were plenty of people in the front room to help him get it up the stairs.

When he reached room twelve, though, he saw that Cecilia was not there. He was not entirely surprised; she hadn’t said anything about going out at breakfast, but he couldn’t imagine that she’d want to hole herself up in the room all day. Still, it felt rather anticlimactic, sitting here in the room with her brother’s trunk. She was the reason he’d gone to get it, after all. He had imagined something of a heroic return, brandishing Thomas’s trunk like a hard-won prize.

Instead, he sat on the bed, staring at the damned thing taking up half the available floor space.

Edward had already seen the contents. Back at the army office, Colonel Stubbs had thrown open the lid before Thomas could even stop to think if they were invading someone’s privacy.

“We need to make sure everything is there,” Stubbs had said. “Do you know what he kept in it?”

“Some,” Thomas said, even though he was better acquainted with Thomas’s trunk than he had any right to be. He’d hunted through it on far too many occasions, searching out Cecilia’s letters so that he could reread her words.

Sometimes he didn’t even do that. Sometimes he’d just stared at her handwriting.

Sometimes that was all he’d needed.

God, he was such a fool.

A fool? Much worse.

Because when Stubbs had opened the trunk and asked Edward to inspect the contents, the first thing his eyes fell upon was the miniature of Cecilia. The one he now realized didn’t look like her. Or maybe it did, if one didn’t really know her. It did not capture the life in her smile, or the extraordinary color of her eyes.

He wasn’t sure a paint existed that could capture that color.

The colonel had returned to his desk, and when Edward looked up, it was clear that his attention was on the documents before him and not the trunk across the room.

Edward slid the miniature into his pocket.

And that was where it remained, even when Cecilia returned from her walk. In the pocket of his coat, which hung neatly in the wardrobe.

So now Edward was a fool and a thief. And while he felt like an ass, he couldn’t bring himself to regret his actions.

“You got Thomas’s trunk,” Cecilia softly exclaimed when she entered the room. Her hair was a little mussed from the wind, and he was momentarily mesmerized by a thin tendril that fell over her cheek. It curled into a soft blond wave, holding far more curl than it did when her hair was fully down.

How nice to defy gravity.

And what an odd, nonsensical thought.

He rose from the bed, clearing his throat as he pulled himself to attention. “Colonel Stubbs was able to retrieve it quickly.”

She moved toward the trunk with a strange hesitancy. She reached out, but paused before her hand touched the latch. “Did you look?”

“I did,” he said with a nod. “Colonel Stubbs asked me to make sure it was all in order.”

“And was it?”

How did he answer such a question? If it had been all in order, it wasn’t now, not with the miniature in his pocket.

“As far as I could tell,” he finally told her.

She swallowed, the gesture nervous and sad and wistful all at once.

He wanted to hold her. He almost did; he stepped forward before he realized what he was doing, then he stopped.

He could not forget what she had done.

No, he could not allow himself to forget.

It wasn’t the same thing.

And yet when he watched her, standing in front of her dead brother’s trunk with hopelessly sad eyes, he reached out and took her hand.

“You should open it,” he said. “I think it will help.”

She nodded gratefully and slid her fingers from his so that she could lift the lid with both hands. “His clothes,” she murmured, touching the white shirt that lay neatly folded at the top. “What should I do with them?”

Edward didn’t know.

“They won’t fit you,” she mused. “He wasn’t as broad in the shoulders. And yours are more finely tailored, anyway.”

“I’m sure we can find someone in need,” Edward said.

“Yes. That’s a good idea. He would like that.” Then she let out a little laugh, shaking her head as she brushed that rebellious bit of hair from her eyes. “What am I saying? He wouldn’t have cared.”

Edward blinked in surprise.

“I love my—” She cleared her throat. “I loved my brother, but he did not give much thought to the plight of the poor. He did not think ill of them,” she hastened to add. “I just don’t think he thought of them at all.”