her grip on the champagne glass, willing herself not to look at him.
When she’d first seen him standing in the centre of the room, as sturdy as a wide oak in the middle of a barren field, she’d been torn between fleeing and facing him. The girl who’d once pressed him about their future together in the Falconbridge conservatory, only to be sneered at by a man unwilling to debase the family name with a poor merchant’s daughter, wanted to flee. The woman who’d helped her husband rebuild Belle View after the hurricane demanded she hold steady. The wealth and plantation might be gone, but the woman it had made her wasn’t and she’d wanted him to see it.
She finished the drink, the biting liquid as bitter as her present situation. Despite her time at Belle View, she’d returned to London no richer than when she’d left, her future more uncertain now than it had been the day she’d climbed aboard the ship to Virginia, the husband by her side as much of a stranger as the people in this room. She might shine with confidence in front of Randall, but everything else—the land in the colonies and her wealth—was a lie. She wondered how long her fine wardrobe and the width of the Atlantic would conceal her secret and the nasty rumours she’d left behind in Virginia. Hopefully long enough for either her or her cousin Theresa to make a match which might save them.
She deposited the empty champagne glass on the tray of a passing footman, the crystal clinking against the metal. As the footman reached out to steady it, she glanced past him to where Randall stood with a group of gentlemen, his square jaw and straight nose defined as much by his dark hair as the practised look of London ennui. Then he turned, his blue eyes meeting hers with a fierceness she could almost feel. Her thumb and fingers sought out the gold bracelets on her wrist while her lungs struggled to draw in an even breath. For a moment she was sixteen again, desiring him beyond reason, and nothing, not the long years of her marriage or the hours she’d spent managing Belle View, seemed to matter. She’d loved him, craved him, needed him, and in the end he hadn’t experienced the same depth of feeling for her.
She looked away, shaken by how, after all these years, he could still needle her, and chastising herself for speaking so freely with him tonight. No matter how easy it was to tease and flirt with him as she used to, she couldn’t afford to be bold with a man like him. It might ruin her.
‘Mrs Thompson, I hear you’ve been living in America,’ a woman’s distant voice intruded, snapping Cecelia’s attention back to the circle of ladies.
‘Yes. I have a plantation in Virginia.’ Her stomach tightened with the lie.
‘What brings you and Miss Fields back to London after all this time?’ Lady Weatherly asked.
Cecelia met their curious looks, the same awkwardness that nearly stole her tongue the night Daniel had presented her to the Richmond families at the Governor’s ball stealing over her. She squared her shoulders now as she had then, defiant against her unease and their scrutiny. ‘I brought my cousin back to London in the hope of seeing her settled.’
‘Did she not have suitors in Virginia?’ Lady Weatherly pressed like a small terrier determined to dig out a rat and Cecelia bit back the desire to tell the Countess to keep to her own affairs. Despite a dubious reputation, the statuesque young woman draped in gauzy silk was a fixture of society whose good opinion Cecelia needed to keep. Swallowing her pride, Cecelia repeated the story she and Theresa had practised during the crossing.
‘She did, but when the British burned Washington, we were no longer warmly received, despite having known many of the families for years. It wasn’t suitable for her to look for suitors under such hostile circumstances. When I suggested a Season in London, she was thrilled with the chance to come home.’
‘Speaking of gentlemen—’ Lady Weatherly waved away her interest in Cecelia with one gloved hand ‘—here is Lord Strathmore.’
‘Good evening ladies.’ Lord Strathmore bowed before fixing Cecelia with a smile more snakelike than charming. ‘Mrs Thompson, would you care to join me for some refreshment?’
‘Thank you, but I have no appetite tonight.’ His smile faltered and she widened hers. She didn’t relish the Earl’s company, but it would prove less irksome than Lady Weatherly’s questions. ‘If you’d care to escort me to the pianoforte, I’d like to see how my cousin is faring.’
‘It would be my pleasure.’
As she and Lord Strathmore crossed the room, she hazarded a glance at Randall, startled by the glare he fixed on Lord Strathmore. As fast as the look came it was gone and he turned back to the man next to him and resumed his conversation.
Cecelia wondered what about the man raised Randall’s hackles. Lord Strathmore had no reputation she could discern, or none Madame de Badeau had seen fit to reveal, and the woman delighted in revealing a great many things about a number of people.
‘May I be so bold as to say how radiant you look tonight?’ Lord Strathmore complimented, his serpentlike smile returning to draw up the small bit of skin beneath his round chin.
‘You’re too generous.’ She untwisted the strap of her fan, shaking off the strange reaction to his look. With so many things worrying her, she must only be seeing trouble where none existed.
‘Madame de Badeau tells me you have no horse in London at your disposal.’
‘No. I had to leave my beautiful horse in Virginia.’ Anger burned through her at the thought of the stables, Daniel’s stables, the ones he’d worked so hard to establish, now under the control of her selfish stepson Paul.
‘It’d be my pleasure to accompany you and your cousin in Rotten Row. I keep a few geldings in London suitable for ladies to ride.’
‘You’re most kind.’ The idea of riding properly in Rotten Row beside Lord Strathmore dampened her enthusiasm. However, borrowing horses from his stable would spare her the expense of hiring them and allow her and Theresa to be seen during the fashionable hour.
Cecelia stepped up to the pianoforte and touched Theresa’s elbow. Her cousin turned, frowning at Lord Strathmore, and Cecelia shot her a warning look. In their present situation, Cecelia didn’t have the luxury to refuse any man’s attention. Except Randall’s.
Only then did she notice the absence of his voice beneath the melody of the pianoforte. She glanced around the room, expecting to meet his silent stare, but saw nothing except the other guests mingling. Relief filled her, followed by disappointment. He was gone, his conversation and interest in her as finished tonight as it was ten years ago. Yet something about their exchange continued to trouble her. Beneath Randall’s rakish smile and desire to capture her notice, she’d sensed something else, something all too familiar. Pain.
Polite applause marked the end of Miss Domville’s piece and Cecelia clapped along with the two young men standing on the other side of the instrument.
‘Play again, Miss Domville,’ Lord Bolton, the taller of the two, urged. ‘We so enjoy your fingerwork.’
Instead of blushing, Miss Domville rose and coolly lowered the cover on the keys.
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with your own fingerwork for the rest of the evening,’ she answered in a sweet voice before coming around the piano and taking Theresa by the arm. ‘Miss Fields and I are going to take a turn around the room so we may discuss all of you in private. May we, Mrs Thompson?’
Cecelia studied Miss Domville, debating the wisdom of letting Theresa associate with such a bold young woman. However,
