When I woke several hours later, I felt groggy and shameful somehow, as if sleeping late were a sin. The afternoon sunlight spilled into the room, and there was a warm cup of tea beside me—evidence that breakfast had been brought in and then taken back, and probably the same with lunch, and now it was past time for both.
I struggled to sit up, feeling a delicious soreness in my cunt as I did, and, for a moment, forgetting all the complicated pain of last night. All I remembered was the feeling of Silas’s fingers digging into my waist and throat, the filthy words he’d crooned in my ear as I’d writhed with that insane orgasm.
And then it all came back. Our fight. His cold voice and the even colder kiss to the back of my hand.
The fragile sense of hope I’d tried to cultivate as I’d fallen asleep had vanished somewhere along the way, like mist burned off by the afternoon sunlight. I felt only remorse and defensiveness and the grim fear that I may have ruined the most important thing that would ever happen to me in my life.
I have to see him. Now.
I threw off the covers and rang the bell for my lady’s maid, and within an hour, I was clad in a white and green day dress, a fashionable hat pinned into my hair, and delicate white gloves covering my fingers. I rubbed at the spot where my engagement ring had been as the carriage jolted and jerked through the afternoon clog of London’s busiest streets.
And then we were there, and I was flinging open the door to the carriage even before it had completely stopped, tripping down the carriage steps and rushing up the stairs to knock at the door.
What should I say? What words would expose everything I needed him to see—my love and my fear, and most of all, my need for him to understand me?
Or maybe it shouldn’t be words. Silas and I had always been physical, always been creatures of touch and desire. Maybe I would say nothing as I approached him. Maybe I would slide his jacket off his shoulders and tear at his cravat. Maybe I’d push him down onto his sofa and bounce on his cock until we were both covered in sweat and sin.
Just the thought of doing that made me shiver with anticipation and desire, made my nipples hard and tight against the constricting press of my corset. Yes. That’s what I’ll do.
But when the door opened, it was Silas’s butler, already bowing and intoning something in his low, clipped voice.
“Pardon?” I asked.
“Mr. Cecil-Coke is not present today. Nor will he be home at any time in the foreseeable future. I’m afraid that he’s left London in order to tend to a personal matter.”
Not home.
Left London.
Personal matter.
“Can you be any more specific?” I asked desperately. “It really is urgent that I speak to him right away.”
“I’m sorry,” the butler said firmly and a little disapprovingly. “I’m not at liberty to divulge anything more. If you’d like, I can send word that you’ve called.”
“I—yes. All right.” I fumbled for one of my cards in my purse and handed it to the servant. “Please let him know that I’ve come to visit. And is there any place where I can forward a letter to?”
Perhaps I looked frantic enough or perhaps he simply wanted me to leave, because he sighed and relented. “Vaison-La-Romaine in Provence would be the place, miss. Now if you’ll excuse me…”
I nodded numbly, stepping back so he could shut the door, trying to wrap my mind around this new information.
Provence.
Silas had left for France.
But why? To see his brother and sister-in-law at their rented villa like he had last year? To lick his wounds?
Was it a move calculated out of hurt…or out of anger?
Stunned, I made my way back to the carriage, my mind turning the entire ride home. That the selfish bastard had left right after this fight without a single word—without even a hastily jotted note—what kind of callous cruelty had been driving him?
I rested my head against the side of the carriage and pressed my eyes shut, trying to keep the blossoming tears at bay.
There was no grave in Provence, no long mound of humped, rich earth. For a long, terrible moment, I felt a homesickness for England so strong that it nearly brought me to my knees. That I should miss something as somber and gloomy as a graveyard—me, Silas, the smiling prankster at every party—would have seemed ridiculous not four days ago. But, nonetheless. I missed the deep green of English graveyard grass, the aged dignity of the weathered stones. Instead, Charlotte and her unborn child were deposited in a cramped forest of sandstone crypts and vaults, a miniature city of the dead, ceaselessly swept by the hot lavender-scented wind.
She should be buried at home, I thought distantly as the wind ruffled the flowers little Henry had placed on top of her crypt. An English grave for one of the best and loveliest Englishwomen I’d ever known.
But there had been no time. The warm Provencal climate had dictated the practical necessities, and with Thomas currently hovering in a state of near-death himself, there’d been no one other than the town officials to make the decision. Charlotte Cecil-Coke, mother of five and pregnant with the unborn sixth, had died of cholera four days past and had been interred in the nearest Protestant cemetery the day before I’d arrived.
