“Good evening. Is Cecelia about?” he asked. His heart was beating like a team of runaway horses.
The maid glanced toward the stairs and back at him. “She said she doesn’t want to see any visitors tonight, Mr. Thorne. I’m sorry.”
He pointed to his own chest. “Did she say me specifically?” Of course, she wouldn’t do such a thing. Would she? Perhaps she was angry at him after all.
A couple of burly footmen walked toward the stairs carrying a tub and buckets of water up the steps.
“She said she didn’t want to see anyone today, Mr. Thorne. She’s had a long day of it.” The maid glanced down the corridor toward Mr. Hewitt’s suite of rooms. “And it might be a longer night,” she said, but it came out as a frustrated breath.
“Is everything quite all right?” Marcus asked.
“Quite,” she said.
But household staff wouldn’t say if something wasn’t all right, even if the walls were caving down around their ears.
“Would you like to leave a note?” she asked.
“No. I’ll call upon Miss Hewitt tomorrow,” he said. He turned to walk away.
“I’m glad you’re home, Mr. Thorne.” Marcus turned back to face her. But she wasn’t smiling. She was doing the opposite, and she worried the edge of her apron. “I hope you can help to set things to rights.”
She closed the door softly, and he stood there until he heard her footsteps fade away.
Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
He wouldn’t be able to sleep until he saw Cecelia. So, he waited for a moment and then slowly opened the front door, looking left and then right to be sure no one was around. His Hessians made soft knocks against the oak floor, so he sat down on the lowest stair to pull his boots from his feet. He set them in the dark corner behind the stairs and quickly climbed the staircase in his stockinged feet.
He knew which room was Cecelia’s. He’d played in it when he was small, and he’d steered clear of it when he was older, because being caught in Cecelia’s chambers past a certain age was inappropriate and her father would have thrashed him.
The house no longer smelled like freshly oiled wood and clean linen. It smelled like dust and discomfort. What had changed? Had Cecelia’s mother’s death changed the household this much?
He stopped outside Cecelia’s door and listened intently. A splash of water and the clank of a bucket against the floor were all that he heard. Was Cecelia taking a bath?
He scrubbed a hand down his face. Good God, the woman would unman him and he hadn’t even seen her yet. It had been less than a day since he’d seen her, yet he ached to look into her eyes, to hold her in his arms.
The idea of Cecelia naked in the bath, with nothing but clear, clean water tickling her skin, was enough to steal the breath from his lungs. But then he heard her sniffle.
He opened his mouth to call out to her as he stepped into the room. It was the poorest of form for him to spy on her and for her not even to know he was there. But there was a privacy screen between them. He stepped to the edge of it, his feet still quiet, and prepared her name on his lips. But then he saw her reflection in the looking glass. She was curled into a ball, her face buried between her bent knees and her shoulders heaving.
Good God, what was
he to do? He couldn’t rush to her. He couldn’t take her in his arms, not as he was. What on earth was making her so sad? It wasn’t him, was it? Perhaps it was. Perhaps he was the last person she ever wanted to see.
His heart ached with the need to go to her. But she laid her head back against the rim of the tub, and he couldn’t tell if the wetness on her face was from the bath or if it was from her crying.
The knob on the door turned, and Marcus dashed to hide behind the curtains that hung from Cecelia’s bedposts. He’d hidden here plenty of times when he was younger and they played hide the slipper. Only now he didn’t feel quite as well concealed. He held his breath until the maid stepped behind the screen with Cecelia.
“Shall I help you with your hair, miss?” the maid asked.
“Yes, please,” Cecelia muttered.
She sounded like all the fight had been leached out of her. Perhaps he’d just caught her at an unguarded moment. This wasn’t his Cecelia. His Cecelia rarely ever cried. She hadn’t even shed a tear when she’d fallen from Mr. McGregor’s apple tree when she was nine. She’d cut her arm badly but never shed a tear.
Marcus untangled himself from the bed curtains and tiptoed to the door, where he let himself out into the corridor and crept back down the stairs.
He reached into the shadows for his boots, but a crash from down the corridor caught his attention. Without even thinking, Marcus walked toward it. Perhaps Mr. Hewitt was injured. He’d never forgive himself if he left the man there hurt. But as he went around the corner, the sound of a scuffle met his ears.
Good God, it was like Bedlam. He looked into Mr. Hewitt’s chambers, where he was being held down by two footmen. And Mr. Pritchens, the stately old butler who never had a cross word for anyone bellowed at him, “We will not allow you to do this. You will leave her be.” He pulled a flask from his interior coat pocket. “Here.” He shoved it at Mr. Hewitt, who took it like a man who was dying of thirst. “Drink it all. Then go to sleep,” the butler warned. He brushed a lock of hair that had tumbled from his perfectly combed head back into place. Mr. Pritchens never looked disheveled.