She watched the shields and bars move by, and those numbers stack up when they joined the pile that showed their versos.
At the bottom, when she was almost done, she noticed something that made her heart sink. The last five all had numbers from five years ago. They were together now, but she was sure they had not been this morning.
These crests had nothing to do with her paternity. They were far too recent. Yet Jonathan had found them of interest. Enough interest that he had separated them out. Had he then used Summerhays’s library to investigate the men to whom they belonged?
The implications of that pressed on her. A surprising pain speared her heart. A good deal of humiliation joined the hurt. She shielded herself with anger, but it did not obscure the disappointment.
It had been stupid to think that any passion could be free of the accountings that marked women’s lives and hearts. She had been naïve to believe she had nothing to lose in this affair.
She had probably been sharing a story with Jonathan from the first night she saw him in this house, even though she had not realized it. It was time to find out what that story was.
J
onathan entered the house through the garden door, as he always did. There had been no lights visible from within, however, when he looked up the street while on his way to the mews.
Silence greeted him. Not only that of a household that had retired, but one more still and pervasive. He paused on the first landing of the back stairs and listened. Normally sounds of life came from Celia’s chamber. Tonight not even a floorboard creaked.
He had stayed too long with Castleford. The duke’s condescension came with demands, especially for the likes of Jonathan Albrighton. Tonight Castleford seemed determined to ensnare his guest in his excesses. It had taken considerable finesse to escape the debauch that had been planned.
He lit a candle in his chamber and removed his coats, all the while musing about the duke and his women, and the oddity of this renewed friendship. Perhaps Castleford had concluded that since both he and Jonathan Albrighton were bound for hell, it would be less lonely if they went there together.
He untied and slid off his cravat. As he did the air in the chamber moved. Immediately alert, he looked to the door.
Celia stood there, with a single taper in her hand. Her golden hair was down and brushed, flowing in its soft waves over her shoulders and chest. She was still dressed for the day, however, and the glint in her eyes was not one of anticipation.
Anger flowed to him, and disappointment, and an emotion so poignant that it twisted his gut. She tried to act casual as she closed the door. He knew in that instant, however, that this night would not end like the others.
She blew out the flame on her taper, and the shadows flooded her. Then the light from his own candle and the window found her and she became again, as she had always been for him, an oasis of golden light in a desert of darkness.
She strolled over to his writing table and its stacks of journals and papers. She perused a few titles. “You have varied intellectual interests, Jonathan. That does not surprise me. Although discoveries on chemical compounds seem a little obscure to me. Then again, perhaps some of them have practical applications that you find compelling. Poisons, for example.”
So it was going to be like that tonight. He could not really blame her, if she had learned something to indict him and the life he had led. He did not have to like it, however.
“I have never used poison,” he said.
“I have heard it is unreliable, so that is probably wise.” She poked at a few more journals. “Nothing on heraldry. I thought it was one of your fascinations.”
He reached for her, to stop this. To soothe, or to distract, he was not sure which. She raised a hand to block the embrace, and warned him off with her eyes too.
“I should have come back here long ago,” she said, gazing around the chamber, at the artifacts of his life. “I should not have allowed you to remain a mystery.”
“I am no longer one to you, and you know it.”
“Would that you were, perhaps.” Even anger could not harden the sweetness of her face, but a good deal of it was in her; that was clear. “I thought you were visiting London for a spell, before going elsewhere. I thought that you were here between missions or investigations. I think now that I was stupid to assume that.”
He could admit it, or he could lie. Or he could say nothing. The last option was his common choice when pointed questions were asked about his activities. He made it again now.
Fury flared in her eyes. “Will you insult me by refusing to speak of it? Will you ignore my questions as if I am a whore you dallied with and expect to be gone once the coin is paid?”
“I have not insulted you. You have asked no questions. You are angry but I do not know why.” Except he did. The sense of pending loss inside him said he did. It astonished him, how hollow that truth felt, and how it wanted to grow until it emptied him out.
“Don’t you?” She stepped close to him and looked up at his face. She peered at him so hard one would think she had never seen him this closely before. “I learned from Audrianna that there were whispers about my mother years ago. About her and a French lover, and about her loyalty. Do you know of this?”
“Yes. They are rumors only. Nothing more.”
“Rumors are enough in this world.” She searched his eyes, as if she had to work hard to see anything at all. “Jonathan, are you here because of a mission? Are you investigating my mother? Or me?”
“Not you. Not even her, in truth. Not investigating. That is the wrong word.”
“What is the correct word?”
“I was asked to see if she had left a record of her liaisons. The goal was not to harm anyone, but to protect the innocent.”
Her expression fell. She turned her head away, dismayed. “It is true, then. Oh, dear God.” She paced to the window and looked out at the night garden below. “Audrianna’s mother-in-law told her about these suspicions. They made no sense to me, but if you also—”
“There is no proof of it. No reason to think it was true.”
“And yet you are here.”
“I was only asked to ensure no man was tainted by association to such rumors.”
She nodded, but he wondered if she had even truly heard him. She seemed to calm, however. He was not sure that was a good thing.
“It was not about you, Celia,” he tried. “It was to be a minor mission, to avoid embarrassment for men who were discreet and who counted on discretion in turn. She gave such discretion while she was alive. I was to ensure it continued now.”
“Of course it was
about me
.” She glanced over her shoulder at him as her anger bit the air. “You are here, aren’t you? You were in this house that night, and you stayed so you could do what you were sent to do, and deceived me in order to accomplish your goal. You have what you wanted, those names of her patrons over the years. I daresay that you have made a list from the drawings.” She looked away. “Since your mission is finished, I expect that you can leave now.”
She stilled then, with her back to him and her face to the window. She became a statue of stone.
“If you wish it, I will go.” They were hard words to say. He almost choked on them. He wanted to argue with her instead, but knew it would be hopeless to do so.
She did not even respond.
He donned his coats again, and took a few personal items from the table. He would get the rest later.
“Did she really give you this chamber, Jonathan? I never saw that document.”
“She did, but there is no document.”
She finally turned and looked at him. He waited, standing near the door, hoping she would say something else, but knowing if she did, it would not be what he really wanted to hear.
“What happened five years ago?” she asked. “You had a particular interest in the drawings from then, and in the men they identified.”
He saw himself finishing with that folio that afternoon in the library. He had been careless, and left the most interesting crests all together. Celia had noticed, when most people never would.
“It is a personal matter,” he said. “A private interest, related to one of my last missions during the war.”
“Yet you thought those crests might help you in this personal matter,” she said. “That means you think the whispers about my mother might be true.”
She gazed at him long and hard. She no longer appeared angry. The chamber lost its cold, brittle atmosphere.
“That is something, at least,” she said. “This personal, private part. It makes more sense to me, and less a calculated betrayal somehow, despite the implications for the conclusions you are drawing about the rumors.”
He opened the door. Her expression turned sad, but she said nothing. He walked over to her and his heart thickened with every step.
He took her face in his hands and looked at her in the moonlight. He memorized the feel of her skin beneath his palms, and the way she illuminated this space all by herself.
“I am sorry that I disappointed you, darling.” He kissed her, and let the brief contact brand his soul. Then he walked away, knowing that she would not speak again.
Chapter Nineteen
“Y
ou look likehell, Albrighton. Wakeup, andmy man will get you cleaned and shaved.”
Jonathan opened his eyes at the command that intruded on a very restless sleep. Castleford loomed above him. The duke was dressed for the day and appeared far different from how he had looked the last time Jonathan had seen him.
Clearing his head a bit, Jonathan noticed that he was sprawled on a sofa in the duke’s dressing room. Memories of the previous night rushed into his head.
After leaving Celia, he had retraced his steps to this house, and been brought back to these chambers by the servant. Castleford had taken one look at him and guessed that he had not returned to join the debauch still under way. To Jonathan’s surprise, Castleford had summarily ordered the woman in his bed to depart, had thrown on a robe, and had brought his new guest to this dressing room for a long conversation punctuated by too many silences and many glasses of spirits.
He ran his fingers through his hair. And froze. “What the hell—” He groped around his head, trying to make sense of what he did and did not feel.
“I had my man cut it while you slept,” Castleford said. “It looks much better now. He did a fine job of it.”
Jonathan glared at him. “You go too far.”
“I can’t be seen around town with a man whose hair is so unfashionable. You will thank me once you see it. The women will be swarming you now.”
Jonathan gave the short locks one final touch. His ire thinned, diluted by the hazy aftermath of all that drink.
“What time is it?” he asked, peering at a window.
“Nine o’clock thereabouts.”
Jonathan groaned. The decanter on a nearby table caught his eye. They had finished that off only two hours ago at best. “You have not slept at all, have you?”
“It is, regrettably, Tuesday, so I have not. And if I do not, neither do you. Bad enough you interfered last night, showing up with a funereal countenance the way you did.”
“I expected you to be finished with her by then.”
“I try never to finish so quickly. Now, up with you. I’ll not have another man lolling about in my chambers when I can’t.”
“It is rude of you to just throw me out, and even ruder to have cut my hair while I was unaware. I thought dukes had better manners.” He sat up, amazed at how full of wool his head felt. And how, with consciousness, that sick hollow in his gut returned.
Castleford gazed down, then sat and studied him. It occurred to Jonathan that he should either resent or fear that scrutiny, but he was too dead to care.
“You left here last night your normal, inscrutable, dodgy self, and returned so distracted I could have stolen your purse while you stood there. What happened in the interim? Did you find out that you really are only a middling sort of bastard, and not that of an earl, the way your mother led you to believe?”
The question sobered him faster than a bucket of cold water or a punch to the face. He stared at Castleford, thinking about punches to the face in a less metaphorical context.
“Ah. So it wasn’t that. And here I was going to banish your gloom by reassuring you the resemblance is notable.” Castleford suddenly looked bored. “It must have been a woman. Threw you over, did she? Probably because you are, I regret to say,
no fun
.” He stood. “I must attend to my duties now. As for throwing you out—there are at least thirty empty chambers here. If you lost your bed as well as your woman, you can stay in one of them.”
“That is very generous.”
“Yes, it is. It is the epitome of the sort of thing a kind, magnanimous duke would do. Be glad it is Tuesday.”
“You should know that I probably will not be any more fun if I stay here. I will not be going to hell with you.”
Castleford smiled, like a parent might with an innocent child. “Of course you will, Albrighton. Eventually. We both sold our souls long ago.”
A
gentle jostle jolted Celia awake. Light blinded her eyes when she opened them. Then she saw the window was not the one in her chamber.
She looked at the angled ceiling and stacked table. A thick misery instantly lodged low in her stomach. She must have cried herself to sleep.
She had been unable to say the words to stop Jonathan leaving, but the worst sorrow had immobilized her after he did. It had tortured her to remain in this chamber that was so full of his life and his spirit, but she had been incapable of walking out. And so she had given in to her emotions here, her face buried in the pillow that carried his scent.
She had not thought it possible to feel so horrible. Even after Anthony disappointed her as a girl, even when that truth had been thrown in her face, she had not been this desolate.