Page 54 of A Flaming Lady's Secret Valentine
Daphne laughed under her breath. “You intended to carry on this love affair, then? Was itreallyas good as they say?” She clapped her hands and settled back. “I wish we could forgo all this worrying and skip to the part where you describe what happened in grisly detail.”
“Your salacious curiosity will not be sated.”
“Not until I die. Even then I imagine I will roam the earth as a ghostly Peeping Tom making up for these many years spent as a virgin,” Daphne grinned, “but I digress.” She tapped her fingers against her mouth. “Would you like to be with him again?”
Cecilia felt herself flush with embarrassment because the truth was that, yes, despite the absurdity of it all she wanted to continue seeing Raphael as much as possible. She felt she must, deep inside a feeling of constant yearning.
“I would.”
“Do you . . .” Daphne licked her lips. “It is love, is it not?”
Cecilia merely nodded.
“Oh, of course you would have to go and fall in love with him. You could not just take the bait and enjoy a kiss.”
“Take the bait? What do you mean?”
Daphne’s face flashed red and she quickly straightened up. Cecilia jolted forward to stop her tea from spilling over.
“I meant nothing. I said nothing,” Daphne offered unconvincingly.
Cecilia looked up at her. “Why on earth would you say that then? Surely you could not mean . . .”
Her mind flashed back to that morning a month prior when she and Daphne had been admiring Raphael from the window of her bedroom. No more than four weeks had passed but Cecilia felt like an entirely different person now.
Daphne had tasked Cecilia with getting to know Raphael, and Cecilia had thought she had done so to spark a short-lived Valentine’s romance between her friend and her father’s steward. But Cecilia could not recall Daphne ever having said that explicitly. Even if she had, she had never pressed the matter.
“When you asked me to investigate Mr Travers before Valentine’s Day, did you intend on reaping the benefits of that dare for yourself?”
Daphne’s neck worked. “I do not believe I understand.”
“Yes, you do. I am not cross with you, even if the answer is no. Did you want me to carry on with Mr Travers in the end instead of you? Was this your plan?”
It dawned on Cecilia, as she watched Daphne’s lips spread into a pleading smile, that God could not have designed a better ally for her. They had become friends because they shared a county and because their parents were steadfast allies, but they had stayed friends because Cecilia grounded Daphne, and because Daphne inspired Cecilia to live.
Now it seemed she had encouraged her to love as well.
“All I did was plant a seed,” Daphne murmured.
“I saw how you gawked at him, and I saw how lovely he was, and I thought,perhaps there is something here, perhaps it will make Cecilia smile while fending off boring Lord Radcliff, and jealousy ought to do it one way or another.” She shrugged. “I was right and I am so sorry. I should not have made a mock cupid of myself.”
“Do not be sorry,” Cecilia uttered. She reached for Daphne’s hand.
“You gave me a nudge but the elements of my undoing were there already. If I had not rebelled now then I would have married Radcliff and rebelled afterwards when there were so many more people to implicate. You should not be sorry, because I truly do love Mr Travers. That is a gift, not a burden, no matter how it came to be.”
“If that were true you would not look so grief-stricken.” Daphne began gorging herself on shortbreads, and Cecilia chuckled. “Now that my secret is out, will youpleasetell me what is troubling you? We’ve established that it is not your purity, nor is it anyone’s business. What else could possibly be hurting you?”
She owed Daphne the answer to that question and more, though she was afraid of admitting the truth even to herself. Leaning back, Cecilia closed her eyes and began to speak.
“When Raphael and I had . . . well, when things were over, he said something that troubled me and I panicked. He said that he would make a wife of me if he could, or words to that effect.”
Cecilia grappled with the memory, understanding at last why she had been so upset the day prior upon her return to the house. “I left without saying anything, and I think he was really hurt.”
Her eyes smarted and she looked away.
“It was such a lovely thought, I know, but nothing can ever come of it, can it? It terrified me to realise that there is this gorgeous, intelligent, humble, funny man in my life who loves me and whom I love, who is everything Lord Radcliff is not and will never be, and yet I am powerless to pursue him. Because of class! Because of family!”
The room was quiet for a long moment. The silence was punctuated only with the ticking of the clock in the corner and the creaking of the table atop which Daphne sat anew. Cecilia had no idea what was running through her friend’s mind.Get over yourself, silly girl! Many are the women who take lovers and do not think twice about it;or, Poor, woolly-headed Cecilia, falling for the first man who should show some interest in her!
