Page 24 of All Scot and Bothered
He slammed the door behind him hard enough to shake the entire house.
“I’ll be goddamned,” Genny marveled, her eyes sparkling. “You were magnificent!”
“I was?” A trembling overtook her, threatening to shake the wig loose from her head.
“Lord, I took you for a bluestocking, but I never knew you had that kind of poise and sass in you. And the accent? Where’d that come from?”
Cecelia could only shrug. “My butler is French.” She pushed back from the desk, moving to the window to watch Sir Ramsay stalk to an imposing, somber carriage, tucking himself inside with grace rarely observed in a man of such heft.
“Genny.” She said the woman’s name with unmistakable gravitas. “Genny,pleasetell me they won’t find anything. If you’re honest, I vow to keep you safe, to absolve you of any punitive actions. I’ll pay you most handsomely, but Imustknow if Henrietta was a bawd, or if anyone has ever been kept here against their will. I must make reparations if Henrietta’s committed such heinous crimes—”
“Hush, honey.” Genny was at her side in an instant, taking Cecelia’s hands in hers to turn them face-to-face. “Look into my eyes so you know the truth. The women who work here dress provocatively and, like Lilly, they occasionally take lovers and we look the other way. That’s the whole of it. We—you—do not sell sex, and certainly not children.”
Cecelia searched Genny’s earnest features for a lie, butwas only reminded of the woman’s kindness and unabashed affection. Her savior. Her friend.
When she nodded, Genny squeezed her hands, bringing them to her mouth to press a fond kiss to her knuckles, like she was a beloved sister.
Genny released her to reach for the wig, removing it.
Cecelia expressed a sigh of relief to be rid of the heavy thing, and she divested herself of the cloak as Genny poured a pitcher of water into a bowl and wet a cloth.
Bending down, Cecelia peeked under the desk where little Phoebe still huddled.
“You can come out now, darling,” she soothed. “The men are gone.”
The girl peered out at her from the shadow under the desk, her features a bit blurry as Genny hadn’t yet returned Cecelia’s spectacles. Phoebe tugged on a crisp white pinafore tied over a somber black mourning dress. “If it’s all the same to you, miss, I’d prefer to stay, but here is your book. We didn’t let him find it, did we?”
“Indeed, we did not.” Cecelia took the book from her, puzzling over the girl. This was no sort of place for a child, what with a gambling hell next door and cruel lawmen kicking the doors in. What could Henrietta have been thinking? “Are you not lonely under there? Would you not like to come out so we may be properly introduced?”
The girl shook her head. “I have my dearest friends, Frances Bacon and Fanny de Beaufort.” She held up two plush dolls, one with golden curls, and another with red. “They are excellent company, but they only like to talk to me, Miss Henrietta said so. I might like to come out, butthey’renot ready to meet you yet.”
Cecelia understood. “How fortunate you all are to have found each other,” she said, unwittingly adopting theover-bright cheer she’d always despised people for addressing children with.
Phoebe peeked at her shyly. “Do you have anyone like Frances and Fanny?”
“I do, indeed,” Cecelia explained with the requisite warmth that accompanied thoughts of the Red Rogues. “My two dearest friends are Francesca Cavendish, the Countess of Mont Claire, and Alexandra Atherton, the Duchess of Redmayne. We met at school and formed a club for girls with red hair called the Red Rogues. They are also most excellent company, and often wary of strangers like Fanny and Frances are. But they’ll love you instantly, and I think you shall like them a great deal.”
A sharp pang of agony pierced the softness she intrinsically felt for the girl. To alleviate the boredom and isolation of her childhood, the same imagination that had conjured monsters in her nightmares could also summon friends from the motes of dust in the cellar she’d been locked in or from shadows on a moonlit night.
She’d willed them into existence like a God, creating full and vivid characters with which to laugh and dream and converse.
They’d provided most excellent company. They’d kept her safe from the ghosts she heard in the wind, or the demons the Vicar Teague had convinced her were encircling her endlessly, awaiting the right moment of weakness in which to drag her soul to hell.
Or worse, possess her body.
She might have gone mad without these imaginary friends. She might have given over to the dark.
Still, there was nothing like true human companionship.
Phoebe studied her silently for a moment, and then scooted her friends deeper into the recesses of the desk.“If you’d like to get Francesca and Alexandra, I can keep them safe under here.”
Cecelia’s heart became a puddle of tenderness. The sweet child thought her friends were dolls.
It struck Cecelia with dizzying gravity that she was this girl’s custodian now. The closest thing she had to a mother. The responsibility weighed heavier on her shoulders than did the entire ordeal with Ramsay.
She’d never had real parents of any kind, the closest paternal relationship being that of Jean-Yves. And if she really inspected it, the Frenchman had no real duty to her beyond that of a beloved employee. She loved him like a father, truly, but she also paid his wages and sent him on errands. He was both confidant and occasional adviser, but he’d never exhibited any kind of authoritarian tendencies.
Mostly he just went along with whatever new schemes she and her Red Rogues hatched with a very Gallic sort of bemused acceptance. So long as he had his wine, his pipe, and his papers, he was a generally easygoing sort of fellow. His affection was gruff but his disposition always warm and open. He’d befriended her when she was little older than Phoebe, and without his guidance, she’d have been completely alone.
