“What?”
“I must persuade him to leave, don’t you see? Even if he doesn’t catch on, look how many more people will be underfoot. Two girls coming to help already. I’ll have to stay locked in that attic for days on end.
“It’s harmless,” she continued, defensive already. “I just thought I’d…” Her hesitation didn’t seem to improve the housekeeper’s mood.
“Cynthia.”
“All right! I thought I’d become a ghost. That’s all. I had no idea a harmless female ghost would keep him up all night. He was not so thin-skinned in his youth.”
Mrs. Pell gasped so loudly that Cynthia’s last words were drowned out. “You were in his chambers?”
“For a moment. He sleeps too lightly. It made me nervous.”
“Nervous? I’d say you’re quite mad, young lady!”
She shrugged, perturbed that her excellent idea was being dismissed. “It worked, didn’t it? If he can’t sleep, he’s not likely to hang about, is he? And why is he here? Did he tell you?”
“It’s not my place to ask, just as it’s not your place to be in a man’s bedroom in the middle of the night. It’s not proper and it’s certainly not wise. Unless you are hoping to get caught?”
Scowling at the bright encouragement on Mrs. Pell’s face, Cynthia said, “No,” very firmly. “I have devised a plan.”
“Another plan?”
She knew very well what Mrs. Pell thought of her plans, but there was no other way to escape and ensure her little sister was safe as well. She needed money, and she needed it now. Luckily for her, she had her great-uncle’s diaries. And a plan.
“I have no other choice,” she murmured. “How am I to search the cliffs if he is here?”
Mrs. Pell muttered something about danger and bad ideas, and Cynthia cursed Nicholas again. She had only just convinced the housekeeper that the plan would work, and his arrival was undoing days of persuasion. Something had to be done.
Cynthia turned to the kitchen table and busied herself with cutting a slice of brown bread. “What is it you think he could possibly do for me?” she asked quietly. When she received no answer, she pulled the crock of butter closer and shook her head. “It’s well known he has no money. Even here in the wilds of Yorkshire we’ve heard he must marry an heiress, so you can have no fairy-tale dreams that he will scoop me up and carry me away to a life of luxury. Why, he couldn’t even afford to set me up as his mistress.”
“Young lady…” Mrs. Pell started, ready to launch into a lecture, but the words faded away as if she didn’t have the heart for it.
Cynthia turned back to her, swallowing a bite of the sweet, dark bread. She shrugged. “I’m hardly mistress material at any rate, so I honestly have no idea how you think the good viscount could assist me.”
Mouth opening as if she would speak, Mrs. Pell twisted her apron between two strong hands, but then she only shook her head.
Cynthia looked down at the thick flannel nightdress that Mrs. Pell had loaned her. Aside from the filthy gray gown she’d arrived in, it was all she had. One could not pack for a suicide, after all. Bound to arouse suspicion.
“Where has he gone?” she asked.
“Off to see Mr. Cambertson. He’ll be back soon with more questions than I’d care to answer, I expect.” She’d hardly finished speaking when the sound of a carriage snuck past the closed kitchen door. “Go!” Mrs. Pell cried, but Cynthia was already leaving. “And you must keep hidden! No more wandering about!”
Cyn slipped the last bit of bread into her mouth and eased open the panel hidden in the kitchen hall, but she didn’t quite close it all the way. Instead she stopped there, just inside the old servants’ passage, and waited until Nicholas arrived. When she heard his step, she put her eye to the opening she’d left.
His dark blond hair was disheveled; the uneven swirls of gold curved over and around each other and made Cynthia’s fingers itch to smooth them. Or muss them further.
He looked so familiar and precious that her heart stuttered over every beat. Yes, she’d seen him twice already, but both times he’d been sleeping. Awake, he was just as she remembered, and yet there were so many things she’d forgotten. The way he ducked his head when he was thinking. The exact rose shade of his mouth. The line of his nose where a little bump revealed a childhood break. And the deep frown lines between his brows.
Except those had never been there before.
She’d been so absorbed in his face that she hadn’t noticed the conversation he was having with Mrs. Pell. The housekeeper was pale and nodding as Nicholas whispered, “I had no idea.”
Cynthia hadn’t worried overmuch about her family’s response to her supposed death, but seeing the sorrow and concern on Nicholas’s face made her realize how self-centered she’d been. She wasn’t particularly close to her mother or sister—and certainly not to her stepfather—but she realized now that her mother must be heartbroken and her sister frightened and sad. But the outcome would’ve been no different if Cynthia had been given over to Lord Richmond: her family would never have seen her again and she’d likely have turned up dead soon enough. She certainly would’ve wished for it.
Selfish she might be, but she was alive and relatively unscathed.
As Nicholas stared at the floor and listened to something Mrs. Pell was saying, Cynthia began to realize that perhaps the frown lines weren’t the only change in him. He was certainly larger than he had been ten years before. Taller and wider and altogether more male. And his voice was far deeper and touched with a certain roughness it hadn’t had before.
His hair was far shorter than he’d ever kept it, cut close along his nape where once there had been careless curls.
And he looked…weary. But perhaps that was only the travel.
Cynthia eased the panel fully closed and made her way blindly toward the narrow staircase along the back wall. She touched her tongue against the ridge of the scar that marred her bottom lip, remembering the feel of a wet mouth sucking at her, of sharp teeth breaking through the skin when she tried to pull free. That monster had liked that, really liked it, giving Cynthia her final glimpse of the madness lurking beneath her fiancé’s distinguished façade.
The tiny bit of guilt that had started blooming inside of her withered. She couldn’t feel bad over a viscount’s sleepless nights. She couldn’t feel bad over her mother’s grief. Her very life was on the line, and no one had seen fit to worry over that. She was on her own.
Setting aside her guilt, Cynthia put one hand against the wall and raced up the steps as quietly as she could to plan tonight’s excursions.
Lancaster’s neck wouldn’t stop its aching, despite the three glasses of brandy he’d downed in quick succession. He shifted against the kitchen wall, crossed his left boot over his right and stared down at the empty tumbler.
He understood what had happened to Cynthia now, or at least the bare bones of it, but there was so much he didn’t know. He needed to know, needed to know everything.
His life was spent gathering information and formulating the correct response. Plucking every bit of knowledge he could glean in order to survive. He’d perfected this technique upon his family’s move to London. Not only had he never received an education like most boys of his standing—boarding school and all the fraternal bonding that went along with it—his life had been in complete disarray in those first months. So he’d watched and learned and carved out a place for himself among the ton by analyzing every situation he was thrust into.
But this wasn’t a matter of social survival. This was life and death and all the suffering in between.
Running