Page 80 of Lady Louisa and the Carriage Clock
Charlotte winced. “Full to bursting. It’s time for his supper.”
“Really?” Ashford wiggled his brows.
“And you’re not staying,” Charlotte replied, her cheeks turning a light shade of pink.
Ashford handed the babe to his mother. “I received a letter from Cecil. He’s at his estate in Yorkshire but hopes to travel to Kent soon.”
Louisa walked to the window in the room and looked down into the gardens below. There was an awkward silence in the bedchamber before Ashford cleared his throat.
“I have some estate business to see to.”
When the women were again alone, she turned from the window to see Charlotte nursing her child.
Edith stood staring at Louisa.
“I’m fine. Lord Wycliffe will arrive soon and then I will ask him a very important question.”
Edith frowned. “What question?”
“Whether he loves me.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
July 1817, Kent
“Wycliffe, you’re going to ask the lady to marry you?” his mother asked, her voice pitched higher than usual due to her apparent excitement. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed as she clapped her hands. “You wouldn’t tease me?”
Cecil turned from where he stood staring into the cold hearth of the drawing room in his townhouse on Park Lane. “I am. If the lady accepts my suit, I wish to be married in Yorkshire with David officiating.”
“What woman alive wouldn’t accept you?” The petite red-haired woman smiled contentedly. “Lady Louisa is the only daughter of an earl, and from a good family. The girl is quite fashionable, as I recall.”
“Very much so,” he replied before asking with a frown, “How would you know that? You haven’t been to Town in an age.”
“Diana keeps me apprised of the goings on in London,” his mother responded with a wave of one hand. “She also told me the young woman has exquisite taste in furnishings and textiles. Goodness, this townhouse could use updating. I adore gardening but could not care one jot about the inside of a house.”
He'd been surprised when his mother decided to return to London with him after he’d been at the estate in Yorkshire for a fortnight.
“I will assist you in reopening the house,” his mother explained. “Your intended can travel to London with her family so the settlement contract may be drawn up.”
He did not remind his mother he hadn’t yet secured Louisa’s hand.
The Rogue’s Alliance was destroyed. Bones and Henry had finished with their part of the list and made a report to Lord Sidmouth, as had Cecil and Leopold. Sidmouth had possession of the original RA ledger. Henry would return to work for the Home Office while Bones had elected to stay in Cecil’s employ.
Cecil had decamped to his childhood home in Yorkshire to face the ghosts of his past and make peace with his future. His brother David, the local vicar, welcomed his return to the family with open arms and an understanding ear.
“I don’t know who murdered our brother,” Cecil whispered to David the night he arrived in the village. “I failed.”
Seated in the tiny parlor of the rectory, David snorted. “Failed? You helped bring down a monstrous organization. You did what our brother set out to do. I can see no greater honor to his memory than destroying the RA. The question is, can you find a way forward now.”
He didn’t ask David what he meant. Cecil’s life had been full of mayhem and murder for the last three years. Could he settle into a quiet country life, with a season in London when Parliament was seated?
Several days later, seated in the rectory parlor again, there came a discreet knock at the closed door before it opened, and a maid looked in. “Vicar, the missus wanted to remind you there is just time for your walk before supper.”
“Thank you, Jane.” David unfolded his gangly figure from the weathered leather arm chair he’d been seated on. “Come along, Wycliffe.”
Supper in the country was often at seven o’clock, quite early compared to Town, and in July, the sky would stay light until well after eight o’clock. Neither man donned outer clothing as the summer had been warm.
David’s ‘walk’ was a stroll across the churchyard and down a dirt path to visit the private mausoleum on the Wycliffe estate. Cecil accompanied his brother as he’d done the last two weeks, often strolling along silently, listening to birds squabble in the air or the trees.
