For Your Arms Only (19 page)

“You wouldn’t!”

She smirked. “Do you really want to take that chance?”

Callie glared at her, but more in exasperation than anger. “Good night.”

Cressida laughed, and began getting ready for bed herself. Her fury at Papa’s actions was significantly tempered by the thought of Callie finding happiness—and with Tom, of all people. If Papa really had left them for good, it might at least lead to something good.

It was almost enough to distract her from wondering what might happen the next time she saw Alec.

C
allie found her an hour after luncheon the next day, her eyes shining and her face flushed. “I have something to tell you.”

“What is it?” Cressida laughed. “It must be very happy news.”

“It is.” Callie took both her hands, her fingers trembling. “Mr. Webb—Tom has asked me to marry him. And I have said yes.”

Cressida’s mouth fell open. “He—You—So soon? But you only just knew!”

“Don’t look so surprised,” her sister cried. “You yourself told me he has been like family for so long you were considering marrying him!”

“Well, I never did! I knew he loved you, not me, and I wanted to make you see it, too.” Cressida felt a flicker of alarm, but Callie burst out laughing.

“You must know I’m teasing you. He…he told me of your conversation last night. How it gave him hope. How it gave him the boldness to speak to me when he never would have dared before.” Callie’s eyes were moist. “Cressida, I am forever in your debt. Without you, I might have never believed he cared for me, and I never would have had the courage to tell him I cared for him so, knowing how Papa—”

“Papa won’t dare interfere,” she said when Callie stopped abruptly. “I won’t let him.”

Her sister drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “No.
I
won’t,” she said firmly. “Not anymore.”

“Good.” She gave a stout nod. “And I am very happy for you and Tom both.”

Callie’s smile bloomed again, so bright with joy Cressida couldn’t help smiling back even though her heart was pounding. “We’re returning to Portsmouth,” Callie said. “We both felt more at home there, and want to return. Now that Brighampton is gone, we neither of us want to burden the Hayes family any longer than necessary. And we want you and Granny to come with us. I shall ask Major Hayes to tell Papa, if—when—he locates him, to send word to us there.”

“Oh. Of—Of course.”

Callie looked at her closely, but Cressida smiled quickly, and her sister let it go. “I am going to Granny now. I do hope she’ll be happy—oh, Cressida, do you think she’ll fret that he’s…?” Callie fluttered her hands nervously.

“That he’s a soldier like Papa? A decent man? Madly in love with you? Why on earth would she?”

Her sister flushed. “She always wanted us to marry well.”

“Callie,” said Cressida quietly, “if you marry Tom, you will marry very well indeed.”

“I know.” Callie seemed unable to contain herself any longer, and she embraced Cressida before hurrying off to tell Granny the news.

Cressida pushed aside Papa’s journal and the sketch pad where she’d been making her notes on it. Back to Portsmouth…Her eyes flitted around the conservatory. Away from Penford. She got up and walked slowly through the house. Her mind reeled. Callie and Tom, to be married! It was wonderful that two people so dear to her could find happiness together; it was everything she had hoped for…but it was also a thunderous crack in her world. For so long they had all been together as a family, but now they really would be family—and Cressida knew with a creeping discomfort that it would be strange to see Tom married to her sister. They would set up house together. They might have children. They would sit by the fire at nights together, and then they would go to bed together. And Cressida, the spinster sister, would be left sitting by the fire with Granny.

She was not jealous. She was
not
. Cressida refused to be jealous when she really was truly happy. It was demeaning to herself and unfair to Callie, who deserved love and happiness, and to Tom, who had loved her so long and so patiently without hope. Her fingernails dug into her palms as she wrestled with her wildly irrational emotions, and before she knew it she was standing in front of Alec’s study door.

John Hayes opened the door when she knocked. Cressida wet her lips. “I beg pardon. I didn’t wish to interrupt—”

“We were finished,” Mr. Hayes said. He glanced over his shoulder at Alec, who stood behind his desk. “Were we not?”

“We were. Please, come in.” Alec beckoned with one hand for her to enter. Mr. Hayes bowed his head politely as he held the door for her, then let himself out.

Suddenly she felt like a fool, running to unburden herself to Alec when he clearly had worries of his own, and had shouldered some of hers as well in his search for Papa. What was she to say? That her sister was getting married and it made her heart writhe with longing to be the one someone loved beyond all reason? It was jealousy, small and petty, and Cressida hated herself for feeling it. But he came around the desk and held out one hand to the sofa. “You look distressed,” he said. “Has something happened?”

“Yes.” She shook her head, sitting at one end of the sofa. “But a very happy thing. Mr. Webb has proposed to my sister and she has accepted.”

“Ah.” His gaze swept her face. “I wish them both very happy. I suspected he harbored hopes in that direction.”

She gave an embarrassed laugh. Of course Alec would have noticed even what she had not seen in years of living with Tom and Callie both. “Yes, I think he has done for some time. My father…I think Papa would not approve…” She stopped, concentrating on stilling her hands in her lap. “No, I must be honest with you,” she said in a low voice. “Papa knew Tom loved her, and he warned Tom away. He even…he even married Callie to that horrid Mr. Phillips to prevent Tom from marrying her.” Alec said nothing. Cressida swallowed. “So Callie truly deserves to be loved, and I think Tom will make her happy. I cannot imagine a finer man.”

“Indeed,” he murmured.

For a moment it was silent as Cressida sat picking at a loose thread at the edge of her apron and not looking at him. What had she expected him to say? “They plan to return to Portsmouth,” she said to fill the void. “Granny will go with them, I am sure. She was born and raised in Portsmouth, and now that we’ve lost Brighampton, there’s no reason for her to stay here.” The loose thread had begun to unravel in earnest under her restless fingers. She forced herself to stop and clasped her hands.

“I will speak to Webb, then,” he said. “He’ll want wagons for the journey.”

Cressida nodded once. “That is very kind of you.” But not what she longed to hear. Had he assumed she was going with them as well? What
had
she hoped he would say? That he wanted her to stay, to argue with him more and question his every move and insist on being included in his trips to find her father when her presence only complicated his efforts? That he wanted to hold her up against the wall as he had done that day in the library and press his lips to the back of her neck in earnest, and discover how little it would take to melt her reserve?

“And do you go with them?”

She looked up and met his gaze. Her heart thudded and her white-knuckled fingers trembled. She should say yes, because Callie had invited her to live with them and she had no reason or excuse not to go with her family. She wanted to say no, because she didn’t want to leave Penford and him and the uncommon connection she felt between them. Instead she sat there staring into Alec’s fathomless blue eyes and said nothing at all.

An eternity seemed to pass. Cressida knew her only thought must be written on her face, but she was helpless to hide it. Perhaps she shouldn’t even try. Perhaps he would make the decision for her. He was too honorable to trifle with her. Surely he would be merciful and wish her well with her family in Portsmouth if he cared nothing for her, or knew there was no future for them. Because Cressida, who always had a smart answer and who never shied from speaking bluntly, was completely tongue-tied by the realization that she did want him to ask her to stay, for any reason at all.

Abruptly he surged to his feet. “Would you walk with me?”

Dumbly she nodded. She stood and went out the door when he opened it, walked with him through the house and out into the garden. Past the gardenias and the roses, past the wildflowers that carpeted the lawn just behind the garden, across the grass, and on and on they walked. Cressida didn’t know what he intended, but she realized that it didn’t matter; she trusted him. And she would be happy to walk with him like this all day.

“I never missed Penford much while I was away,” he said suddenly. “I strained toward adventure, and did my best to find it at every opportunity. I was the terror of Marston, along with Will Lacey, as anyone will tell you. When I was seventeen my father was only too happy to purchase a commission in the army for me and pack me off to all the adventure one could have fighting Bonaparte, and I was only too happy to go. I packed my trunk and didn’t look back.”

He came to a stop on a slight rise overlooking sloping fields, with the river sparkling in the distance like a fine silver thread. The house was behind them, nestled in the verdant gardens. It was warm and bright and beautiful, and again Cressida felt gripped by the sense that she would rather be here than anywhere. How could he leave without looking back, without growing sick for home at some point, when
this
was home? But Alec’s eyes seemed to be focused somewhere else entirely as he narrowed his eyes against the sunshine.

“I never thought Penford would be mine, or that I would have such a duty to it. If I had suspected…” He paused, and spoke more slowly, choosing each word with care. “If I had suspected, I might have acted differently. Or perhaps not.

“A battle is unimaginable. No one who hasn’t survived one can truly understand the confusion, the frantic efforts to control men and horses and guns and get them into anything resembling what the commanding officers ordered, the blind panic that drives men to abandon their positions and run when the tide of battle changes. It is terrifying and yet, at the same time, exhilarating. One’s blood runs hot and fast, one’s mind works at a feverish pace. At moments you feel capable of inhuman feats, and perhaps you are. There are long stretches of waiting, or forming up, or trying to maneuver into position, and then all hell breaks loose and you have less than a second to react, or be killed.”

He fell silent again. Cressida gazed out at the gentle swells of peaceful green grass and tried to picture them swarming with men, bloody and wounded and charging forward with murder in their eyes. Papa had never said much about actual battles, and the dispatches printed in the newspapers always painted such a glorious picture of gallant officers leading their men into the fray, of steadfast British infantry standing firm under withering enemy fire. She knew men died in war, or came back mangled and scarred, but she had really only known Tom and Papa, who both returned home whole and healthy.
And Alec
, whispered a little voice in her head, reminding her again of the scars that crossed his back and chest.
You know him
…

“What comes after the battle, though, is worse—far worse.” His voice had grown soft and hollow. “Everything is chaos, as regiments are scattered far and wide, or perhaps so decimated they can never be found. Men you loved as brothers are gone, blown to pieces or shot up badly enough the surgeons must cut apart what’s left. The waste of life, both human and animal, is astounding, and yet one’s mind dulls to it. After a while you can look over a battlefield rotting in the sun and simply not feel much of anything. Relief, perhaps, that you are one of the survivors, or regret that you lost good men, or failed to hold your position, or failed to completely crush the enemy. But there is always another battle to come; there will always be war, and death, and treachery.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she whispered. She knew before he said it what he was going to tell her next.

His eyes drifted shut. “I know rumor holds I left Waterloo for piracy in the West Indies, or fled to America in disgrace with a pile of French gold. The truth…The truth…”

After a long moment of silence, she said, “The truth is that you came home five years later to help a complete stranger, even after she pointed a pistol at you and questioned your intentions. You asked uncomfortable questions that needed to be asked, and told uncomfortable truths.” She glanced sideways at him from under her eyelashes. “Those are not the actions of a coward—nor, I think, of a scoundrel.”

“You had—have—no reason to trust me,” he replied. “And indeed you did not, initially.”

Cressida thought about that a moment. “No,” she said slowly. “I had no reason to trust you. But I do, all the same.” She paused. “I suppose it wouldn’t be trust if it had to be proved, would it?”

Alec filled his lungs, the fresh air almost painfully sharp in his chest. There was that. How odd that she alone wouldn’t jump at the chance to know the truth when he knew everyone else in Marston would have. “The truth is that I became a spy,” he said before he could reconsider. “For the Home Office. I posed as servants and tradesmen to spy on rabble who muttered discontent with the government. It was the only chance I could see to restore my good name, eventually. And it failed. I never meant to come home without my honor, but here I am, with a history as clouded and obscure as the day I woke up to discover I was accused of treason. I would rather have remained dead, for all intents and purposes, than come back now, like this, and yet…” He made himself breathe. Carefully he straightened his fingers, which had curled into fists as the familiar helpless fury stole through him again. It had been months, even years, since that feeling had gotten the better of him.

Her eyes had grown large and round during his outburst. She stared at him, white-faced, for what seemed an eternity. “Oh,” she murmured. “I see.”

Did she? He gave a bleak smile. “I wanted you to know.”

Those wide golden eyes didn’t waver. “Why?”

“Because…” He shook his head and looked away. “I did.”

She was quiet. He couldn’t be surprised if she turned and walked—or ran—away. “And that—that’s why you were sent to find my father? You said your talents were well-suited to it, and I always wondered what you meant.”

Alec let out his breath in surprise. “Yes. Hastings asked my employer, and he sent me.”

She blinked a few times in quick succession, and swallowed, fixing his attention on the slim column of her throat. “Then…The Home Office is interested in my father’s whereabouts? Why?”