Miss Goodhue Lives for a Night (6 page)

“I will leave you with my porter for that information. If none of his information is of use, then come back to me, my girl, and we will do everything we can to set it to rights.”

He awkwardly patted her knee and then stood swiftly before she could possibly grab his hand in gratitude or some such display. And with a glance at Theo—one that said
you'll take care of the woman
,
yes?
—he left.

“What on earth was all that about?” Theo asked the moment Birmingham was gone.

“With Colonel Birmingham?” she answered, surprised.

“Yes, and the fawning. And the, er, crying.”

“He wanted to be helpful,” she said. “He's a man of army regulation that rushes into danger, except the only danger he's seen of late has been trying to save the last tart from teatime. So I gave him a young lady to rescue.”

His brow came down, darkening his vision. “And you fed him a very convenient story too, right off the top of your head.”

“I . . . well, yes.” She blinked. “I don't want to compromise my cousin. For heaven's sake, I thought you would agree with that, at least.”

“I do. I just . . . I should have remembered better, that is all.”

“Remembered what?” she asked, her face shuttering.

Remembered just how good she was at lying. How easily deception fell from her lips. But he was saved from saying it by the return of the young guard Johnson.

“This is a list of boarding houses that the men often use when they first come to London,” he said, handing Theo a scrap of paper. Then, leaning in close, “Sir, I might recommend you visit the ones on the lower half of the list without the lady.”

“That is not an option,” Cecilia said, turning to Johnson. “Tell me, do any of the boarding houses accept couples?”

“Couples?”

“Yes . . . we think my brother may have . . . recently married,” she said, trying to be circumspect. But Johnson, for his part, saw right through it.

“Ah,” he said. “Well, I don't know about that. But, if you are looking for a lady as well as a soldier . . . there is a ball tonight.”

“A ball?” Theo's eyebrow went up.

“Yes. To welcome the new officers. Everyone is invited, as are their sweethearts. I happen to have two tickets,” he said, his attention squarely on Cecilia. The look in his eye spoke his hopes loud enough to be heard all the way to Grosvenor Square.

“Oh, Officer Johnson,” Cecilia said, biting her lip. “I would be—”

And it was the biting lip that did it, because Theo found himself suddenly saying, “I'll buy them.”

“They're not for sale,” Johnson replied.

“Not even for ten pounds?”

The boy's head swiveled to him. “Ten pounds?” he asked.

Ten pounds was likely more than he made per annum. But still he hesitated.

“Each,” Theo said. “Ten pounds each.”

A glance to Cecilia with a shrug had Johnson holding out his hand to Theo. A quick exchange of a bank note for two tickets to the ball complete, Theo and Cecilia thanked the man and made their escape.

They didn't say a word until they were out of the building, walking past the lines of soldiers in formation, and Theo handed her up into the carriage.

“That . . . twenty pounds is a great deal of money,” she said finally, once they were under way.

“It's nothing.”

“No, I know it is not nothing. A man in your position earns only so much, and I'll pay it back.”

“It is really no trouble,” he repeated in a tone that he hoped would have her dropping it. But either she missed it, or he did not convey the message properly, because she just shook her head.

“No, I am meant to go to the bank anyway; it will be no trouble to draw an extra twenty pounds from my funds.”

He cocked his head to one side. “You have funds?”

“Yes,” she replied. “I had a dowry. When I didn't marry by the time I came of age, it became mine.”

Something didn't fit. If she'd had a dowry, why had she wanted to marry him for
his
money? Or, what she thought was his money?

That was what his uncle had said in that room at the inn. That she thought Theo was Lockwood's heir. And that even at the moment she was being told otherwise.

He hadn't believed his uncle.

Until he had proved it.

Hence her having her own funds providing a conundrum.

Perhaps it had been a small sum, but invested wisely over a decade, she had enough to live on. Still, he doubted she could spare twenty pounds.

“You don't need to worry about it,” he said with finality. “It's taken care of.”

“At the very least, would you stop doing that?” she snapped.

“Stop doing what?”

“
Taking care
of everything. I'm not helpless, you know.”

“I didn't know,” he replied. “Considering you came to me for help.”

“No, I came to London. On my own. I applied to Lord Ashby through friends for assistance. And I am the one who talked Birmingham into helping us, and who talked Johnson into helping us. I am not someone to be left by the carriage with a pat on the head while you do all the work, considering I am the one who is actually doing it. So if you would be so good as to let me cover the expenses of this mission, you can wash your hands of the whole thing.” She sat back in a huff.

Theo blinked twice. Three times. Frankly, he was blown back against the carriage seat. Who was this woman sitting across from him, so achingly familiar, and yet so temptingly different? She had grown much in the last decade.

Perhaps she had grown the most in just the past few hours.

“Although,” she said in a concessionary tone, “it was clever of you to think the man my cousin would fall for would be just as horse mad as she.”

“Of course,” he said, clearing his throat. “Since it was the one fact that I knew about your cousin, and the one fact I knew about her young man was that he wore a blue coat, the horse artillery was as good a guess as any. She and her lover would have had to bond over something, after all.”

She gave him a suspicious glance. “What makes you think they would need something in common to bond over?”

He shrugged. “All couples do.”

“We didn't.”

“Of course we did.”

“What?” she said softly.

“We both wanted, rather desperately, to know more.”

He watched her breath hitch, a flush spread across her cheeks and down her neck.

“I thought you were so funny,” he whispered. “Playing make-believe with your sister, dancing like a woodland sprite in the woods by my uncle's house. You turned so red when I saw. And you became so breathless when you got that dreamy look in your eye.”

Her eyes took on that dreamy look then as she leaned forward, as lost in the memory as he.

Their knees touched. He found the backs of his fingers dancing against hers.

It was some kind of spell, he thought—or he would think, when his brain returned to full function. But at that moment, it was as if they were not in a carriage in London. She had not been angry at him only a moment ago. And a decade had not slipped away from them.

It was as if the emotions of the morning, the closeness, the way she had clung to him earlier—all of it conspired to make him lose his sanity for just these few seconds.

Now . . . now she was biting her lip again. Determined.

“I'm much better than I was,” she said, her gaze drifting down from his eyes to his mouth. “I know it doesn't seem it, but I am not as dreamy as I was. I see things far more clearly now.”

“I am not certain that is better than before,” he whispered as his mouth claimed hers.

6

T
here was only one reason that Theo Hudson could possibly be kissing her right now, Cecilia thought. And it was because she had completely lost her mind.

The morning had been so very strange. It was as if she had left Lincolnshire, and arrived not only in London but in her own life ten years ago. When the only person in the world who could command her attention stood front and center in her vision. And that was the reason—the only reason—that she'd leaned forward when he did. That she let his arm slip around her back when he shifted to sit next to her, and pressed her against him. That she pressed herself against him in turn, her busy hands running inside his coat, her palm flat against his shirt.

Suddenly she was remembering so many things, lost and buried with a decade of being alone. Like how he had looked, his cerulean eyes burning bright and his cheeks flushed when he'd run all the way from Sir Lockwood's to her father's front door, just to return a pair of gloves. Or the way her skin shivered when he'd taken her hand at that inn on the road to Gretna Green, while he signed the ledger making them man and wife a day before they actually would be.

And kissing. Oh, how she had missed kissing. Every one of her senses was alive. She breathed in his smell—soap and pine trees, as if he had been walking in a forest. His hand snaked its way to her neck, his fingers dancing with the tendrils of hair that drifted out from her bonnet. His tongue sought out hers, and she found herself yearning. Yearning, for the first time in ten years, for something she had forgotten how to want. Something she had willed herself into forgetting.

It was like waking and drifting to sleep at the same time.

She wanted to stay in this dream. She wanted to let go of the last ten years and that horrible night that started them, and live in this space kissing and holding tight to the man who was the boy she'd once loved.

“Theo,” she said, gasping for air. Her voice was small, the single word a question. Asking,
was this really him
?

And apparently, the answer was no.

He froze at the sound of his name. His hands stilled at her neck, his mouth hovered above hers. She looked up, and saw in those blue, blue eyes . . .

Horror.

She removed her hands from his coat. He let go of her waist, the back of her head. Like a gardener untwisting vines from a fence, they disentangled themselves.

He ran his hands ruthlessly through his hair, tugged on the edges of his coat.

She should have straightened her skirts, her bonnet. But in that moment, she wasn't at all certain she had control of her hands.

“My apologies,” he said gruffly. “I forgot myself.”

“Yes,” she replied. “You should.”

His eyes came up and met hers.

“I'm . . . I'm not here for that. For you. I am here for my cousin.” As she said it, she wasn't certain of which of them needed more convincing.

“Yes of course,” he said with a nod. “It is increasingly obvious that our past is hindering our investigation.”

“Well,” she said, trying to calm the runaway stampede that was her heartbeat. “We will simply have to work harder to ignore our history.”

Or perhaps she would do better to pay closer attention to it. To remember her devastation at the inn. To remember the condescending looks her brother-in-law the vicar had given her for years—her tax for his benevolence. The town full of gossiping biddies who had accepted her into their ranks, and would be aghast to learn that not only had she not yet picked up material and tea and returned fish, she had instead spent the morning kissing a man who had betrayed her!

“Do you intend to inquire at any of those boarding houses this afternoon?” she asked.

“As many as I can,” he said. Then his eyebrow went up. “You mean to let me go alone?”

“I . . . don't know much about the city, and I think it best if I . . .” Her hand unconsciously went to her kiss-swollen lips, and he knew what she was thinking. Because he thought it too.

Likely best if they had some space from each other.

“Besides,” she continued, clearing her throat, “I feel certain the best chance of success will be when I attend the ball this evening.”

He looked up at her. “You mean when
I
attend. I think it best if I go alone.”

“And I think you are mad,” she countered. “Attending a military ball on your own? You will stick out like a sore thumb.”

“You alone would stick out like a sore thumb just as much as me. More so.”

“Need I remind you that you don't know Eleanor, or what she looks like?”

“And need I remind you, neither do you?” he countered. “You told me yourself you haven't seen the girl in a decade.”

“I'll know her when I see her,” she said, her voice steel, just as the carriage came to a stop. “And with any luck, I'll see her this evening. At the ball.”

The door swung open, revealing that they were in front of Lord Ashby's residence.

“If you insist on coming,” she said, hopping out of the carriage with the assistance of the driver, “you may escort me.”

“Cee, I think you're forgetting something,” he called out, causing her to pause in the midmorning sunshine before her foot hit the first granite steps. “I have the tickets.”

“Check your pockets, Theo,” she retorted. “I think you'll find that I have them.”

She didn't have to watch as he patted his coat and searched the inner breast pocket. Somehow, in their tangles, her hand found her fingers on the tickets and, well . . . somehow they had ended up in her pocket.

But out of everything that had occurred in the past few hours, the fact that she had unconsciously filched the tickets to the ball from Theo's pocket was the least disturbing.

It had been, she decided, as the butler opened the door for her and the sound of the carriage clattered away, a very, very strange morning.

AND IF THE
morning had been strange, the evening was, no doubt, about to be much stranger. Because Miss Cecilia Goodhue—schoolteacher from Helmsley, Lincolnshire—was going to attend a London ball.

And she hadn't a thing to wear.

“But I never thought to bring a ball gown!” she had told Lady Ashby when she arrived back. Lady Ashby—who had quickly demanded that their guest call her Phoebe, especially considering that Cecilia had been witness to a violent amount of baby sick spewing all over the lady's day dress. One simply cannot think of anyone as a countess when they are drenched in regurgitated milk, she'd been told, so why bother?

“Of course not, why should you?” Phoebe replied, blotting her gown while a nurse took the baby and gently bounced it, walking in a circle. “But this will give me an excellent excuse to dress you.”

“Dress me?” Cecilia asked. “Oh no, my lady, I . . . I will simply wear a regular gown. We will not linger there, I'm sure—if Eleanor is not at the dance we will know very quickly.”

“What if you get there before her?” Phoebe asked logically. “Or you could find that you need to ask other guests questions, and that simply will not do in a day dress—why, they'll throw you out on the street!”

“Oh,” Cecilia said, sighing. “I hadn't thought of it like that.”

“Come, let's see what's in my wardrobe,” she said, putting down the cloth and giving up on her gown. Then she took the baby from the nurse with an indulgent smile. “I haven't been able to wear any of my lovelier gowns in so many months, you will be doing me the greatest favor in airing them out.”

“Now?” Cecilia asked. Her head spun a bit from the speed at which things were happening. “But . . . I have several errands to run—friends in Helmsley wanted . . .”

“Give the errands to a footman, he'll see them done.”

Phoebe drew up to her full height, which was average, but the posture made her the most imposing figure in the room—not to be rebuked. “That's why we have footmen, or so my darling Ned says. Now come—there are gowns that require thorough assessment.”

They spent the better part of the afternoon in Phoebe's rooms, her entire wardrobe spilling out onto settees and the bed. A long mirror was brought in to the room, and Cecilia was placed upon a footstool in front of it.

“I know, it's absolute excess,” Phoebe said, watching as her gowns were trotted out one by one. “And in truth I would prefer to have a wardrobe I could fit into one trunk—I'd never needed more than that before. But when we married, Ned told me that he would give me everything in the world. After he bought out all the dress shops on Bond Street, I realized we would have to curtail some of his enthusiasm.”

It was just then that a soft knock sounded on the door and Chalmers, the very formal butler, stuck his head in.

“My lady, Frederick has returned from the errands. Where should the items be placed?”

“Oh—Miss Goodhue's room, I should think. Correct, Cecilia?”

At Cecilia's nod, Chalmers raised an eyebrow, but intoned, “Very good, my lady.”

Chalmers stepped back, and Cecilia glimpsed a procession of crate after crate being hauled past.

“Goodness—what on earth is all that?” Phoebe said.

“Bolts of fabric,” Chalmers replied. “From the docks.”

“How many are there?” Cecilia asked weakly.

“About ten more, miss.”

Cecilia felt her cheeks burn. It seemed like Mrs. Robertson got the better part of her helpful arrangement. But she wasn't the only one, as Cecilia quickly learned.

“The crates of tea are on the next cart. And the wood carving shop was closed, so we were unable to return the fish.”

“You . . . you can just put them in my room as well, then,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Thank Frederick, miss. He's the one who had to load the carriages.”

Phoebe blinked as Chalmers followed the items down the hall, then turned to Cecilia.

“Well, it seems you will have far more than one single trunk on the way back.”

“Yes,” she sighed. Then, “You had a wardrobe you could fit into one trunk?” Cecilia asked before she could stop herself. It was a crass, personal question, and she had met Phoebe only this morning. “Forgive me, my lady, but you are so very polished . . . it's hard to imagine.”

“The polish comes from capable ladies' maids and dressmakers. Underneath it all I still can't help but think of myself as a governess.”

“You were a governess?” Cecilia asked, astonished. “To . . . to a grand London house?”

“No, to a terribly ordinary family in the middle of nowhere.” Phoebe smiled, lost in the memory. “But I've found that managing London is not unlike managing children. There are desires, and tempers, and fits if people don't have things exactly to their liking. But a firm, well-placed word and a small kindness goes a long way.”

“That will be good to remember tonight,” Cecilia murmured as a green satin gown was held in front of her. The ladies' maid cocked her head to one side, and then dismissed it.

A regal eyebrow rose. “I have discovered that such lessons work on men too. Perhaps it would be useful with Mr. Hudson.”

Cecilia's eyes met Phoebe's in the mirror. “I . . . I'm sure I don't know what you mean.”

“My husband told me that he'd recruited Mr. Hudson for this particular endeavor because he has spent time in Manchester, and he might know the family.” Phoebe glanced down at the baby, sleeping peacefully. “Then I watched you leave his jaw on the floor of the carriage as you walked up the steps when you came back today. And I do believe my husband is more right than even he realizes—which is a rather annoying habit of his.”

Cecilia felt her stomach drop all the way past the footstool and to the floor. She felt as green as the gown that had just been thrown aside. It was difficult enough to turn up at the doorstep of an earl and his countess, asking for aid in searching for her errant cousin, then not only be confronted with a man—
the
man from her past—but to have the lady of the house deduce it . . . Well, suffice to say her embarrassment was akin to the time that she was seven and was getting a leg up on climbing a fence from Johnny Westmore, when she discovered she had forgotten to put on her petticoats that day.