Page 76 of Her Lion of a Duke
Cecilia sighed and sat in a chair.
“It was not something that happened all at once,” she continued. “I only wrote about gossip for the first while, and I relished it. I could say anything I wanted without being shunned. Felix Gray was the writer, after all, and as people agreed with him, I found it easier to continue.”
“But you have always spoken your mind. You did not need to?—”
“But I did. You saw the way people thought of me. All I ever did was turn gentlemen away, but because of how I did it, it made me unapproachable. Could you imagine what would have happened if I said what I really thought? They would have called me a madwoman for believing that women should be allowed to vote, and sent me to Bedlam.”
“That does not mean that you had to attack me so publicly.”
“I was not attacking you! Do you truly think that you have always been so important to me that I would write with such anger? No. I cared about inheritance because it is something that I will never receive. It infuriates me that gentlemen are given it because they are thesensiblesex, and yet you all murder each other for it. That is the irony that I spoke of. I never would have accused you of murder, and you know it.”
Leonard gaped at her. While she hated to see him that way, she was pleased that he was showing emotion at last.
“And what is so sensible about pretending to be someone else?”
“I do not know, Leonard. You could tell me that yourself, since you have been doing the same thing.”
“I have not.”
“No? Then tell me where your reputation for being a careless merrymaker comes from. You took that from Henry, used it to hide the fact that you were hurting, and hoped that nobody said a word about it. It has worked until now, but it ends here. If you are going to chastise me for hiding behind a pen name, remember that you are no better.”
“Do not turn this one on me!” Leonard snapped, slamming his fist on his desk. “I am not the one who has brought shame on this household. If you were discovered, we would be ruined.”
“And nobody will discover the truth. The only reason you did it is that my belongings were searched. I covered my tracks well—not that you care.”
“I do.”
“No, you do not. You only care that I wounded your pride. Had I never discussed such a sensitive topic, you never would have cared who I was, and I would have been some obscure writer. But you read something that you did not agree with, and you let it drive you—” She broke off.
She was angry and defensive, but she did not wish to call him insane or anything of the sort. Despite how he saw her at that moment, she had no intention of being cruel.
“I care about this because you are my wife,” he said in a low voice. “I was looking for Felix Gray for my own sake, yes, and to avenge myself and Henry, but that was not all. I wanted to provethat no one dares to hurt the Pridefields, including you. I did this for us.”
Cecilia took a deep breath, not wanting things to get worse than they already were. She had planned to apologize profusely, but in the moment, she was unable to.
Though she was not proud of hurting her husband, she could not pretend not to be proud of everything she had achieved. She had gained popularity with nothing and no one behind her, as an anonymous man nobody had heard of.She had done it by herself.
There was something to admire about that, whether Leonard agreed or not.
“I will not pretend that my motives were not selfish,” she relented. “I first wrote before my debut, for I knew that there would be questions if a lady like me debuted and a mysterious writer appeared at the same time. I wanted power, Leonard, and I wantedcontrol. I did not wish to control the ton, so to speak, but I wanted some control over my life.”
“You achieved that.”
“But it was more than that. I knew even then that I would not find a husband. Gentlemen do not want to marry ladies like me, which meant that I would be relegated to the shelf. I was more than happy with that, but I refused to be a burden to my family. If I wanted to be myself, I needed some sort of insurance. A safety net, so to speak. That was what the money was for.”
“And then you married a duke.”
“And then I married a duke.”
They sat quietly for a moment, Cecilia hoping that he believed her. She had not told a single lie, but she knew that it was not what he wanted to hear.
He had been hoping that it had all been a terrible mistake and that she had been innocent all along. She wished that were the case, but she could not change what had happened, and the more she thought about her accomplishments, the less she wanted to change them.
“What happens now?” she asked quietly.
“That entirely depends on what you think about leaving Felix Gray behind.”
“I cannot. I wanted to, believe me, but that is my life’s work. I cannot just give it up. I thought you would know that.”
