Page 16 of To Marry and to Meddle
“Youare not this adorable,” Emily said. She looked back down at the kitten, stroking a finger down the length of his spine, smiling as he arched his back under her touch, the purring growing louder. “Cecil,” she said definitively.
“Excuse me?”
“His name is Cecil.”
“Why Cecil?” Julian asked.
“Because he looks like a Cecil,” Emily said simply, and Julian knew there would be no arguing with her.
“Cecil Lucifer Beelzebub,” he said thoughtfully. “It has a nice ring to it.”
Emily glared at him. “Cecil Turner-Belfry,” she said firmly.
“Well, you may certainly call him that if you wish. I’ll just rest easy in the knowledge of histruename.”
Emily opened her mouth to reply, but before another word could be uttered, Cecil Lucifer Beelzebub Turner-Belfry climbed into her lap, turned around three times, and sat down contentedly.
“Oh!” Emily said rapturously. “Julian, look at him. He just wants someone to take care of him.”
“He has that,” Julian said, not liking the pleading look she was beginning to direct at him. “You’re going to keep him. There’s no need to turn into a watering pot over this yet again.”
“But,” Emily said, widening her eyes at him, “he needs someone to cuddle with tonight—he’sscared.”
Julian gazed skeptically at Cecil Lucifer Beelzebub, who looked—was it possible for a kitten to appearsmug?
“He is not scared,” he pronounced with great certainty.
“I think he’d be comforted if he could sleep somewhere he felt safe.”
“How fortunate, then, that you spent a quarter of an hour arranging a pile of blankets to just the precise degree of softness for his lordship’s delicate bones,” Julian said, giving a pointed look at the makeshift cat bed near the fireplace.
“Julian.”
“Emily.”
Emily’s eyes widened, if possible, even further—how on earth didshe do it? She looked exceedingly innocent and lamblike and nothing at all like the woman who, an hour earlier, had been sighing in his ear as he pushed her back onto a bed, a whole banquet of possible wedding-night activities laid out before him.
Then, the coup de grace: the faintest tremble of her bottom lip.
Julian sighed, a pragmatic enough man to know when he was beaten. “Fine,” he said shortly. “But if he murders me in my sleep, I expect you to observe a proper mourning period for a husband, even though our marriage hasn’t been consummated.”
“Julian!”
He bit back a grin as he turned back the sheets, thinking that really, for all its troubles so far, this marriage business might not be half-bad.
Five
It was midway through arasher of bacon that Emily first sensed something was amiss.
She and Julian had slept until midmorning, and had not bothered to make much haste in their morning ablutions; Julian had vanished while Emily was dressing, and had returned a quarter of an hour later to report that, with any luck, they would be back on the road by midafternoon. Since that left several hours to be filled, Emily had taken her time dressing, with Hollyhock’s assistance.
At last, they had made their way down to breakfast, while Cecil had been left upstairs with another plate of scraps and a dish of water. She was in the process of wondering if Julian would notice if she slipped a piece of bacon into her napkin and smuggled it upstairs for Cecil when a sudden change came over her husband. He, like her, had been idly gazing around the room as he ate, not seeming terribly interested in any of the activity surrounding them. He had a way of doing that, she reflected—of looking around him like a prince surveying his subjects, always seeming just ever so slightlybored. She wondered if he was aware of this—if he was doing it on purpose, even. It was certainly effective, as it immediately made one conscious of all the ways that one might be personally responsible for his boredom. It was… intimidating.
In the blink of an eye, however, his demeanor changed; the shift was subtle enough that Emily did not think anyone who had not been watching him closely would have noticed, but shehadbeen watching him closely, she realized with faint embarrassment. And she did notice.
All at once, the air of lazy, bored contentment was gone; slouched slightly in his chair in a way that implied that he sat up straight for no one (Emily, by contrast, had a spine as straight as a measuring stick), he did not alter his posture, but his gaze sharpened, and Emily became aware that he was intently focused on something outside the window they were seated next to—or, as it happened, someone.
Two someones, in fact.
