Page 20 of The General's Gift
Celeste opened her eyes, staring at them both. “I thank you dearly. But don’t you want to fall in love?”
Rue’s lips twisted. “Love? With Major Graves? Ha! That man will march off, catch a cannonball in the ribs, and leave me a widow for the eighth time. I refuse. No more black crepe. No more tears at dawn over a blasted drum.”
Prue shuddered violently, clutching at her skirts. “And I cannot love. I made a vow. To never expose my flesh to such temptations. Poor Thomas has begged me ten times for my hand—ten! Each time I refused, Lady Cecilia, because if I wed him, I would be compelled to present him with my body. And my body…” Her eyes rolled heavenward. “…is a furnace of wickedness. No, I cannot. I must not.”
Rue sighed, dabbing at her eyes with a kerchief. “And there you have it. One woman too afraid to bury another husband, the other too terrified to lift her skirts without bursting into flames.”
Celeste studied them both—Prue trembling at her own flesh, Rue glaring cannonballs at the man she clearly adored—and her heart squeezed. Loneliness clung to them like dust in the corners of this imposing house. They were as starved for tenderness as she was.
Smiling, she slid her arms around them both. Rue stiffened as though Celeste had attempted a wrestling hold. Prue nearly swooned into her embrace, fanning her crimson face.
“Oh, fear not, my new friends. I have the answer to all our woes. By Act Five, we shall be paired—or perish!”
Rue shook her head but did not remove her arm from Celeste’s hold. Prue gasped and flapped her prayerbook so furiously the pages nearly tore. But Celeste grinned, filled with a giddy, reckless certainty. If this house insisted on marching to the drum, she would simply conduct the orchestra. Rue and Prue might not know it yet, but their roles were already cast.
The candle guttered, its flame stooped under the weight of midnight. Hawk didn’t bother trimming the wick. He didn’t need more light. The map before him was already memorized. Rivers like veins across the spine of Spain. The roads to Burgos, to Vitoria. Places he’d ridden through, bled over, buried men in.
Sleep had abandoned him. He told himself it was habit, the campaigner’s instinct. A general kept watch while others rested. But the truth pressed heavier—she was under his roof. His shoulders stiffened, and he bent closer to the map, as if the neat ink lines might bar her from his thoughts.
Hawk pulled the pencil from his pocket, and his thumb circled the place where lips had been when she chewed the wood. He shut his eyes, jaw clenching. This was absurd. He could discipline men, horses, entire regiments. He could march without food, endure nights in mud. Yet one memory of a girl’s mouth was trying to turn his flank.
The door creaked softly. As if he had conjured her, the robber of his sleep stood at the library’s threshold, skirts brushing the frame.
“Are you lost?” He kept his voice clipped, his body still.
Her eyes darted to him. “No. Not lost,” she whispered. “Just lonely.”
The word struck deeper than he expected, lodging under his ribs.
“Your chaperone?”
A wry smile tugged at her mouth. “She sleeps when the lark goes to sleep, so she tells me.”
“And you?”
A sigh, barely audible. “I prefer to rise with the nightingale.”
Of course, she did. Theater folk and their nocturnal habits. The night for them was performance, masquerade, applause. He told himself it was nothing but indiscipline. Yet the way she said it—like poetry, not excuse—rippled through him in ways he should not allow.
“Is everything to your liking, Lady Cecilia?”
The name did something to her. Her chin tipped higher, and she straightened, just as she had done when he had presented her to the household. For a moment there, he had thought she would bolt, but she had stood her ground better than many a green officer in their first skirmish.
She drifted closer, slippers treading silently on the carpet. Her hair caught the lamp’s light. Or was it the fiery strands that lent the fire a new brilliance? Either way, the room was no longer gray.
Frowning, she traced the Tagus River as though she could feel the current in the paper. Hawk’s hand twitched, absurdly—as if the river, the page, the desk, all might register her touch and pass it to him. He curled his fist tight, nails biting his palm.
Her eyes lifted to his. “This is where he—my father…”
“Yes. I was with him that day,” Hawk said, the words quiet, stripped of ceremony.
“Why?”
He cleared his throat. “He was a great officer. Did his duty.”
The words should have rung like praise, yet they scraped raw. Hawk kept from her that duty had sent Philip to India when his wife was heavy with child. Duty had buried him before he could ever see that child’s face.
And for a heartbeat, Hawk could not help but think of another loss, his own wife, the newborn son, and the names he had rehearsed for him—strong, proud names—dissolved into silence.
