One Forbidden Evening (Zebra Historical Romance) Page 20

  In a move that Cybelline could define only as traitorous, Anna squirmed off her lap and raced to Ferrin. He scooped her up in one arm and placed her on his shoulder. Anna laughed delightedly. She begged to be put down but only so she could demand to be taken up again. Ferrin obliged several times before he called a halt, pleading exhaustion and placing a hand dramatically over his heart.

  Anna accepted this without argument and returned to her mother. When Cybelline reached for her again, she was aided in the lift by Ferrin.

  “Thank you,” Cybelline said. She put the doll in Anna’s hands and noticed that her daughter held it in the same fashion she was being held. It made her smile, this desire to practice motherhood at so early an age. She rubbed her chin against the crown of Anna’s silky red-gold hair, then placed a kiss where her daughter’s soft spot had been. Anna mimicked the behavior perfectly.

  Observing the same thing from a slightly different perspective, Ferrin also found himself smiling, though he wasn’t certain he was as comfortable with his reaction as Cybelline seemed to be with hers. He felt slightly restless and unsettled, while she appeared perfectly content.

  Cybelline raised her eyes to Ferrin. “You had some opinion that you felt compelled to share, I believe.” When he merely stared at her, she prompted, “Regarding my daughter’s size and my strength—or lack of the same.”

  “Let us go on as if it’s all been said,” he told her. “I’m quite sure you are able to divine my thoughts on the matter.”

  “Indeed.” Cybelline thought Ferrin might take up one of the chairs, or better still, quit the room, but he put himself at the opposite end of the window seat so that her feet were mere inches from his thigh. If she stretched her toes she would be able to touch him. To remove the temptation, she drew her knees forward and shifted Anna in the cradle of her lap. “You have come with some purpose in mind?” she asked.

  Ferrin tempered his amusement. She was prickly this afternoon. Upon consideration of all the signs that would point toward her regaining her health, he counted Cybelline’s vexation with him as one of the important ones. “No purpose but to gauge your wellness this afternoon.”

  “I fear it is not much improved since you gauged it this morning. It occurs to me that if you were to absent yourself for a period of time, then you would be better able to note my progress.”

  Ferrin pretended to consider her suggestion. “When you say a period of time, you are perhaps thinking of something longer than a few hours?”

  “Longer than a day, actually.”

  “A sennight?”

  “At least a fortnight.”

  His dark eyebrows rose faintly. “Is distance also a consideration? You would prefer I absent myself from your home?”

  “I hope you will not take offense when I say I would prefer that you absent yourself all the way to London.”

  Ferrin grinned openly now. “Offended? How can I be when you say it so prettily?”

  She wished he would not be amused or amusing. It was completely comprehensible to her how he had managed to charm her staff. Even the redoubtable Webb was now in his thrall. The Henleys were anxious to seek his advice on matters regarding repair to the house. Mr. Kins admired his horse. The maids admired the cut of his figure. Nanny Baker was sufficiently moved by what she observed in his manner to compliment his treatment of Anna. The footmen and grooms were in awe of his athleticism. Mrs. Minty had been overheard to say that she appreciated his excellent appetite.

  And Anna clearly was captivated by him.

  Cybelline’s own feelings were considerably more confused. “Anna, will you ring for Nanny, please? It’s time for your nap.” Although Anna did not generally protest going down for her nap, Cybelline thought that Ferrin’s presence might tempt her to argue now. She wasn’t entirely surprised when her daughter didn’t move.

  “She’s gone down herself,” Ferrin said, nodding at the little girl.

  “What?” Cybelline tilted her head to one side to better see her child’s face. Anna’s long lashes lay still against her cheeks. “So she has.”

  “Shall I ring for Nanny?”

  “Please.”

  Ferrin did as requested, then offered to take Anna from Cybelline’s lap until Nanny arrived. Cybelline hesitated, then agreed because Anna’s sturdy little body was pressing uncomfortably against her thigh. She was afraid that if her leg went numb, her daughter would simply slide from her lap.

  “Thank you,” she said, helping him take Anna up.

  Ferrin merely nodded. He did not move away from Cybelline’s side until Nanny Baker arrived. When she and Anna were gone, he did not return to the window seat, but took up a sentinel position to one side of the mantelpiece.

  Observing his rather stiff carriage and reserved manner, Cybelline said, “I fear I have indeed offended you.”

  He did not deny it. “Are you saying that such was not your intent?”

  “No. I mean yes, it was not my intent. I hesitated to give you Anna because I did not want to surrender her, not because I didn’t want you to have her. It is not the same thing at all. The greatest hardship of my illness has been being separated from from my daughter. I find I am reluctant to turn her over, even to Nanny.”

  “I wondered if you were perhaps jealous of her attentions toward me.”

  “Of course I am,” she said. “I freely admit it, but I hope I am sufficiently mature not to be mean-spirited. Anna is a flirt, Mr. Wellsley, and she must have everyone’s heart. It does not follow that I do not have hers.”

  “Then I apologize for mistaking your motives. She has my heart, as you have already observed. It struck me as unkind that you had misgivings about me taking her.”

  “I have misgivings but not about that.”

  “Oh?”

  Cybelline thought she was immune to that single raised eyebrow, having been on the receiving end of it for so many years from Sherry, so she was disappointed that Ferrin was able to put her off her stride with it. She had to take a deep breath and exhale slowly before she was able to continue. “I am prepared to speak to you of what is painfully embarrassing to me. Pray, do not make it more difficult.”

  Intrigued now, Ferrin stepped away from the fireplace. “It is not my wish to distress you, Mrs. Caldwell, or to provoke you to distress yourself.”

  “Then stay where you are. I know I would prefer it.”

  Ferrin obliged, hitching his hip on the arm of the sofa instead of taking a single step past it. He folded his arms across his chest and waited.

  Cybelline was not eased in the least. She could not rid herself of the disquieting sense that she was being baited. “I hope you will know that I speak from the heart when I say I am so very grateful for your intervention. That you answered my maid’s summons speaks well of you. You had no reason to come here save for your own sense of charity. I think you know also that the staff is grateful for what you have done for me. Indeed, for all of us.”

  “It has been remarked upon,” he said.

  “To me it certainly has. I was less sure they had said as much to you.”

  “Mrs. Caldwell, I am unclear if thanking me is what you find to be so painfully embarrassing, but I can assure you that I find it so. Please, have done with it.”

  She flushed. “Thanking you is but a first step,” she said. “I do not know how else to go about the thing.”

  “You might put it before me plainly. I seem to be able to grasp most particulars in that fashion.”

  Cybelline realized she was worrying the inside of her lip and released it. Her chin came up, and she forced herself to meet his glacial blue eyes directly. “I believe you are due an apology for my untoward behavior.”

  Ferrin said nothing. He realized he was holding his breath and released it slowly, imperceptibly, waiting to hear what she would say next.

  Now that Cybelline was healthy enough to have color in her cheeks, that color deepened to a dark rose. “I should not have tried to kiss you. In my defense, which you might well
think is of no consequence, I must tell you that I was neither awake nor dreaming, but in a state which I can only describe as twilight.”

  “Twilight.” Ferrin feared he might be entering that state himself.

  “Yes. I am aware it does not satisfy as an explanation, but it is all I can offer. You were right to take offense of my actions.”

  “Offense?”

  “I do not misremember your reaction. You were patently horrified.”

  “I’m afraid you do misremember. I was startled, not horrified. I hope you recall there was no kiss.”

  “That was because you were horrified.”

  “That was because your aim was not true.”

  Without thinking, Cybelline dropped her eyes to his mouth. The faintly amused curl of Ferrin’s lips had her lifting them quickly. She could not think what to say.

  “Mrs. Caldwell,” Ferrin said gently, “I know better than you do how ill you were the night I was summoned. Anything you might have done—or said—is of no account, and it never has been. I wish that you would not—”

  She interrupted him. “Said?” she asked. “What did I say?”

  “You don’t recall?”

  Cybelline’s fingers curled around the embroidery hoop, and she raised it in front of her as she shook her head. “I remember what I did,” she said. “Or at least what I thought I did, but I have no recollection of saying anything.”

  He frowned slightly, wondering how much he might tell her. “You said, ‘You work too hard.’” He watched Cybelline’s grip on the hoop tighten until her knuckles lost their color. “And, ‘You’ve been gone an age.’”

  She nodded once. Her stomach turned over, and she thought she might be sick. She pressed the hoop against her midriff when she sensed there was still more to come. Although she did not want to know the answer, she forced herself to ask, “Is there something else?”

  “I wasn’t certain what I should say in response. I think I confirmed that I was here now.”

  Yes, she thought, that was also in her dream.

  “And you agreed with me,” he said.

  Cybelline watched him closely and wondered if she could be satisfied it was all that passed between them. “And then I tried to kiss you.” It was the smallest of hesitations, and if she had not been searching his face for it, she would have missed it. “Tell me the whole of it,” she said. “What did I say before I tried to kiss you?”

  “You do not want to know.”

  “I do,” she lied. “In fact, I insist upon it.”

  “Very well,” he said at last. The reckoning was upon them because she insisted it should be. “You thought I was someone else.”

  She closed her eyes a moment, then said weakly, “My husband, you mean. I called you Nicholas.”

  It would have been so comfortable to agree that she was in the right of things. He felt certain she would have appreciated the falsehood for a time but come to hate him for it in the end. He also had to acknowledge that it might come to that in any event.

  “No,” he said, holding her eyes with his own. “You said my name. You called me Ferrin.”

  She thought she might faint. Hearing him confirm her worst fear was like taking a blow. The hoop that she held so tightly against her abdomen offered no protection. It dropped from her nerveless fingers and fell to the floor. Neither one of them made any move to retrieve it.

  “Cybelline?”

  It was the first time she had ever heard him use her name, yet it seemed to come easily to his lips. She tried to hide her fear of this intimacy behind an icy attention to what was proper. “I’ve never given you leave to address me so familiarly.”

  “No,” he said. “You have not. Shall I tell you how I addressed you in my mind before coming to Penwyckham?”

  She almost put her hands over her ears. That he would taunt her for such childishness stayed her.

  “You were Boudicca. Always Boudicca.”

  The effort not to cry made Cybelline’s throat ache. The pressure at the back of her eyes was almost unbearable.

  “I’ve known since your arrival at the cottage, Cybelline,” Ferrin said quietly. “You will perhaps wish I had said so from the first. I do not know if that would have been the better way, but you also said nothing, and I know you recognized me as well. How could you not? I was merely wearing an eye patch at Wynetta’s come-out, while I had to penetrate not only your golden mask but your magnificent mane of red hair as well.”

  Cybelline self-consciously lifted trembling fingers to touch her hair.

  “I prefer what is you,” he said, “though I imagine you think I have no right to say so.”

  A tear spilled over the lower rim of her lashes. Impatient with herself, she dashed it away. It was followed by another, then another. She turned her face toward the window. The landscape, white again after another snowfall, blurred so that the horizon disappeared. The lowering clouds lay seamlessly against distant trees.

  She felt her wrist being taken, and a handkerchief was thrust into her hand. She had not heard Ferrin’s approach, nor did she hear him back away. Her first indication that he had done so was when his voice came to her from his position at the sofa.

  “I did not come to Penwyckham because I thought I would find Boudicca here,” he said. “I thought I would find Boudicca’s friend.”

  Cybelline pressed the handkerchief to each eye in turn, then glanced back at him. Her voice was husky with the thickening that persisted in her throat. “What do you mean?”

  “Boudicca had a friend at the masque. Or so I was given to believe. Perhaps you recall that Boudicca was searching for a shepherdess with green ribbons on her crook. I learned from my mother, who had it from Lady Rivendale herself, that you were that shepherdess.” Ferrin watched Cybelline ease herself around slightly. She was regaining a measure of her color. Her eyes, though, remained luminous with tears she kept at bay by sheer force of her will. “It was the spear, you see, that led me here. You left it behind.”

  She nodded, then said on a thread of sound, “But you promised…”

  “I know.” He thought she would say something then, but she remained silent. She seemed more resigned than angry. “I learned from my mother you were at the masque. It was only mentioned in passing, but it meant something to me because I had already heard the name Caldwell in connection to the spear. I’d shown it to a man who used to teach at Cambridge in the hope of find—”

  “Sir Richard Settle.”

  “Yes. How do you know him?”

  “He was an adviser to my husband.”

  “Adviser?”

  “I do not know what other word applies. Mentor, perhaps. He did not consider Nicholas a colleague because my husband never made a formal study the way Sir Richard had. He was more than an acquaintance but less than a friend. It seemed to me that he was always willing to help my husband and that Nicholas was grateful for his attention and his advice.”

  “I did not receive the impression from Sir Richard that they were so well acquainted.”

  “I cannot say how Sir Richard would characterize their association. I only know how I thought of it.” She bent now and picked up the hoop, putting it to one side. “I suppose Sir Richard told you the spear belonged to my husband.”

  “He thought it might have, yes.”

  “Tell me, how did you know of Sir Richard’s interest in Roman and Celtic artifacts?”

  “I was at Cambridge. He was one of my professors.”

  “Then it was not even difficult for you, was it?”

  “No.”

  Her short laugh held no humor. She put her legs over the side of the window seat, removed the blanket, and stood, smoothing her gown as she did so. “Will you take tea with me, my lord?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I should like that.”

  Cybelline went to the table, where the service had been set out. The pot was still warm, and she poured tea for both of them. She was glad to see that her hand was steady as she passed the cup to Ferrin. “
Who is Mr. Wellsley?” she asked, choosing one of the chairs to sit in. “Other than being a scapegrace, I mean.”

  Ferrin removed himself from the arm of the sofa and sat on one of the cushions. His smile was properly chagrined. “Porter Wellsley is my good friend. Do you think I have sorely abused his name?”

  “No. I have had it from everyone who’s come to know Mr. Wellsley that he is a model of excellence.”

  “A paragon. Oh, I surely hope not. He no longer wants to be an incorrigible rascal, but I think he will find it a burden to be in so lofty a position as a paragon.”

  “You needn’t worry that I will put the thing about,” she said in dry accents.

  He chuckled appreciatively. “No, I don’t suppose that you will.”

  “He knows you are here, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “And has given you carte blanche to use his name?”

  “He insisted upon it, in fact.”

  Cybelline was curious, but when Ferrin offered no explanation, she did not ask for one. “Then he really is the grandson of the Viscountess Bellingham.”

  “Oh, yes. Did you doubt it?”

  “Not really. I could not quite bring myself to believe that the Lowells were part of your scheme.”

  Ferrin took mild exception to this characterization of his presence in Penwyckham. “I have no scheme, Cybelline.”

  Now it was Cybelline who proffered the dramatic arch of one eyebrow.

  “It’s true, though I understand that you cannot credit it. I came here to make your acquaintance, discuss the spear, and learn how I might find Boudicca. As I told you, I thought you were only her friend. I had convinced myself that you must have loaned her the spear.”

  “Loaned it? An Iceni spear?”

  “You would have me believe you could not have been persuaded to lend such a valuable article? Before you assure me that is the case, I feel I must remind you that you showed considerable carelessness for the thing by leaving it behind.” He watched her jaw snap shut and knew his point had been made. “Why did you leave it?”

  “I assure you, it was not done with purpose.”

  “Truly?”

  “Of course it was not!”