A Sense of Sin (26 page)
“Celia.” He said her name like a prayer.
She felt heat and pleasure spilling together, tumbling her over and over like a wave. He moved above her, back and forth like the tide, pushing and ebbing, only to return again, with another wave, another thundering crash of sensation.
A sound like a groan reverberated through his chest and she was glad he felt it, too—need so fierce and so blissful she could not even articulate it.
He reached for her tightly fisted hands and drew them out to the side, lacing his fingers with hers. Something within her unfurled at the gesture, so possessive and yet protective. She felt safe, literally in his hands. She was where she belonged, with him, body and soul.
He pushed up, taking his weight onto his arms, and air rushed over her, cooling her skin, and she breathed it in. She missed the reassurance, the solidity and comfort of his weight upon her, tethering her to the earth. But the position brought his hips more snugly against her bottom, and changed his angle. When he rocked into her again, she felt him all the way to her core. He pushed up, leveraging his hips, changing the angle once more. And she found herself following, pushing back into him, wanting more of his body against hers, wanting more of the friction of his taut belly against her backside.
His arms came around her and he gathered her up to kneel before him, between his powerful, flexing thighs. She leaned back against his heat and let her head fall against his shoulder, opening herself, displaying herself for his eyes and his touch. His big hands searched and stoked upwards, cupping her breasts, fondling and playing. His clever fingers found her nipples tight and ready. He pressed the delicate pink tips between his fingers, each tweak, each pluck sending a note of needy pleasure cascading through her bones. His other hand roved down, splaying across the flat of her belly, and lower, tangling in the curls covering her mound. He stroked her, parting her flesh, brushing a featherlight touch across that place, her pearl. Sensations burst and beckoned.
“Yes,” she sobbed. “Yes, Del, please.”
“Celia. I can’t wait. I need—Celia!” And he gripped her hard against him and exploded into her, and she went careening over the edge.
She was flying, untethered to earth, aloft on gust after gust of searing sensation, blown from bliss to bliss by his breath, his touch. His love.
Two hours later, Celia could barely look at Del for the heat in her face, as he perused her from across the breakfast table, all lazy, knowing smiles. If he kept looking at her like that, she was going to dissolve into a puddle on the floor. She needed to find some purpose. Other than climbing back into his bed. “May I put my books in your library?”
“Celia, this your house, too. You needn’t ask permission.”
His laughing tone was just short of patronizing. “I wasn’t asking for permission. I was asking for your consent. I wouldn’t like it if someone came and rearranged my library to their whim without at least consulting me. It is only polite to do so.” But it seemed everything she did this morning was destined to amuse him. “I was simply giving you the courtesy of warning you. I’m taking over your study. Good day, sir.”
His laughter followed her down the corridor and across the house.
Mr. Level had put the heavy trunks containing her collection of books in the middle of the floor. The problem, she soon saw, was that there was no room on the shelves. Nor did the books seem to be in any particular order. They were stacked on the shelves haphazardly, novels mixed in with histories, poetry with social commentary. Her orderly, classifying, assorting brain began to rebel. She would never be able to find what she needed.
It wouldn’t do. Everything must be sorted. Even the stacks on the table. Celia crossed to the desk to draw out writing paper and found the desk drawer to the right filled with old letters, tossed in no particular order. She immediately recognized the handwriting. It was Emily’s.
Before she could question the rightness of her actions, she began to read, sorting them chronologically as she went. Some of them were written before she had known Emily, before she had arrived at school, but for most she had been there, very often in same the room with Emily when she had written them. Emily had often read her letters aloud and they had laughed and joked and exclaimed together over one witticism or another.
Celia had spent upwards of an hour by the time she finally got to the letters near the end, written in the weeks before Emily’s death. It was so hard to read those last few. To feel anew Emily’s doubts and torment caused by the rumors. Celia could well understand Del’s pain, his thirst for revenge. It was awful to read of those ugly, taunting rumors and know Melissa Wainwright had started them.
She was lost to her sorrow, her face wet with tears and her nose beginning to run, when he walked in.
“Celia,” he gathered her into his arms. “Don’t cry, love.
“Oh, Del.” She put her arm around his middle burying her face in his lovely, broad, warm, solid chest. “I should have asked first, but I had to read them. It’s still so sad. So horribly sad.”
“Hush. It’s all right.” He held her to him and stroked her hair. “Don’t cry.”
“I was with her when she wrote most of these. I remember everything we were doing and oh, it just makes me so sad. But I want to read them all, even the ones at the end.” Celia looked up at him. “You need a secretary, by the way. You’re shockingly disorganized.” She blew her nose into the handkerchief he handed her.
“Coming from the weeping woman without a handkerchief.” He looked down at the paper in her hand and he pulled a worn parchment out of his breast coat pocket. “
This
is the last one. I was coming to put it back with the others.”
This
is the last one. I was coming to put it back with the others.”
Celia looked again at the date on the letter in her hand. “No. This one is dated just six days before she . . . died. Six days. She would have written at least two more letters. She was nothing if not punctual and organized”—she looked around at the library with its haphazard piles of books—“unlike you.”
“Yes, very unlike me. Do you mean to say, you
know
she wrote more letters nearer to the date of her death?’
know
she wrote more letters nearer to the date of her death?’
“I don’t know, but I think it very likely. Perhaps she did not get a chance to post them. Or by the time they had reached wherever you were supposed to be, you had already come back and missed them?”
He looked away, out the window. “That’s possible. Probable even. Could have gone off on some other ship and missed me completely.”
“Where would the letters have gone, in either instance? If she didn’t post them or if they never got to you?”
Del’s mouth turned down at the corner. “To Cleeve, I suppose. They would have taken all her possessions home to Cleeve Abbey.”
“Perhaps you could write them. Or we could go there.”
He closed up like a fist. “No. Why dig up the past? It won’t bring Emily back.”
She agreed. “But I feel as if I’m missing something. Something important. Reading the letters again, it just strikes me as . . .” She frowned, trying to adequately identify the emotion. “These letters say Emily originally thought I was the source of the rumors—which I didn’t know about until after—until I had read her suicide note. Why did that note say she was killing herself for love of me? She never said so in these letters. She was shocked by the rumors, as shocked as I was. It’s simply wrong.”
“Perhaps she didn’t have the courage to tell me her true feelings.”
“No, that can’t be right, either. She wasn’t like that. She was straightforward and courageous. She told you the truth about everything else important in her life, didn’t she?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“I would like to see those last letters if they exist. I wish I’d saved the note—her . . . last note.” She shook her head, wishing she could shake away the empty feelings just as easily. “Del, it just makes no sense.”
He nodded grimly. “You’re right. We need to go to Cleeve.”
C
HAPTER
25
HAPTER
25
I
t took a day’s hard ride to cover the fifty miles to Cleeve Abbey. Celia was buoyant and hopeful throughout the long day—she shared none of Del’s trepidation. He had seen the place only once in the past nine and a half years, when his father had brought him home from the Marines after Emily’s death.
t took a day’s hard ride to cover the fifty miles to Cleeve Abbey. Celia was buoyant and hopeful throughout the long day—she shared none of Del’s trepidation. He had seen the place only once in the past nine and a half years, when his father had brought him home from the Marines after Emily’s death.
When he had received Emily’s last letter, he had become so concerned he had petitioned straightaway for leave to go to her. He had transferred within days to a ship making for Portsmouth. It had been an interminable two weeks’ sail, buffeted by bad weather and indifferent winds.
When he had at last lowered anchor in Portsmouth, his father, having found his direction through Emily’s letters, had been waiting for him on the quay, with the news he was too late. Emily was already dead.
Del had gone home with his cold, withdrawn, silent father in the family coach only long enough to see her grave, before he left for London. He couldn’t stay at Cleeve Abbey. Even with all its balance and symmetry, it had seemed strict and confining. Even a house that big could not contain all the rage and frustration he felt. Nothing could.
His father had thought to control him by denying the funds to finance his fall into disrepute, but Del had his own independent fortune, earned through prize monies. Indeed, he was still living on prize money. The damned settlements he had worked with Lord Thomas Burke had specified it. He would take no money from Cleeve.
They rode into the forecourt in the late afternoon. He had forgotten the abbey’s easy, lush beauty. Summer brought a softness and warmth that had been noticeably lacking on his last visit. It had seemed to rain incessantly that spring. Or perhaps he remembered only the rain, an outward sign of his inner misery.
Cleeve Abbey, despite its medieval name, was a massive hall in the classical style, monumental in its scale. As a child, Del had often thought it seemed more of a museum than a home. But in all its Palladian grandness, the house was softened by the lush green of a Cotswold summer. Nevertheless, when they rode across the huge lawn of the forecourt, troops of liveried footmen decamped from the central door on the ground floor beneath the cascading terrace steps and the
piano nobili
above.
piano nobili
above.
Del helped Celia from her horse, and they were immediately shown up to the large central hall, where the Countess awaited them.
“Rupert, darling, how like you not to send word of your visit.” She turned her pale cheek for a kiss. “Have you no luggage?”
“Good evening, Mama. It follows.”
“Lovely.” She squeezed his hand in affection. “How nice you could visit so soon after your wedding. My dear”—she embraced Celia—“welcome to Cleeve Abbey. Should you like to retire, or may I offer you some refreshment?”
“I confess, your ladyship”—Celia curtsyed to his mother—“a dish of tea seems just the thing.”
“Then you shall have it.” She smiled and nodded at the butler in confirmation of her request. “The yellow drawing room.”
They were shown into to the Countess’s private sitting room. It was nothing as he remembered, all done up in bright, sunny colors and exquisite textures of light silk. When the Countess took her seat, she held out her hand to him, so he kissed his mother’s cheek again before he retreated to stand apart at the mantelpiece. It astonished him, the warmth and genuine pleasure of her welcome, her incredible lack of resentment at his incommunicative treatment of his family in the past years. She kept looking at him as if she needed to repeatedly reassure herself he was real and standing in her room. It was humbling.
“My dear.” Lady Cleeve greeted Celia in the same way, with a kiss to her cheek. “I am so glad you have come. We did not get a chance to speak at your wedding, or before. Rupert seems to have been in an abominable rush to marry, though now that I have you before me, it is obvious why. You are very lovely.”
His mother was so small and dainty next to Celia, whom he realized once again was really rather tall. She didn’t always seem so to him, because of course she was smaller than he, but compared to the rest of the world, she was a veritable Diana. She stood a full head taller than his mother.
The Countess of Cleeve was easing into middle age with all the appearance of grace. Yet, he could see she had been wearied by her sorrow, as if her pain had marked itself into the lines visible on her face. It was as Lady Renning had said—Emily’s death had been a great loss for his mother. He had been alone in his rage, but not in his pain.
How could he not have seen that?
But his mother conducted herself with all her usual warmth, always a striking contrast to his dictatorial father.
“You are too kind, your ladyship,” Celia answered and an arc of color spread across her cheeks.
“Not at all. You will think me sentimental, but I am glad to have a daughter in the house again. Especially you, for I felt I already knew you and loved you, through my dear Emily’s letters.”
Celia impulsively covered the Countess’s hand with her own. “I am honored, my lady, and I do not think you sentimental. I understand you completely, because I feel quite the same. I knew you all, and loved you all, but especially Viscount Darling, before I met any of you.”
“Yes, their letters.” The Countess looked away, pained by the memory. “We did not know they wrote, you see. It was hard. We had been deprived of him for so long, and she kept his whereabouts a secret from his father and me, but I console myself at least
she
had him for the time leading up to her death. It is a comfort to know that.”
she
had him for the time leading up to her death. It is a comfort to know that.”
“I am sorry you were deprived of him, but I must be happy for myself, for if Emily had not read me his letters, I could not have fallen in love with him. So you see, it was Emily who brought us together and I must be always grateful for that.”
“Then so am I, my dear, so am I.”
“But also, ma’am,” Celia interposed gently, “it is in search of those very letters we come. Viscount Darling is missing, or never received, some letters I am sure Emily wrote to him. We were hoping that such letters were either returned here with her things, or were forwarded here for him.”
“I do not know. Rupert?” She turned to her son. “Your father took care of all those things. He went to the school in Bath to . . . take care of everything. You shall have to apply to him.”
“Thank you, ma’am, I will.”
Del excused himself. He thought of going for a walk to reacquaint himself with the abbey grounds, to put off the inevitable conversation with his father, but his better self would not allow it. At this time of day the Earl was to be found in his estate office, working with his secretary. Del did not especially want to beard the Lion of Cleeve in his own den, but Colonel Delacorte would never have put off an unpleasant dressing-down from a superior officer. He would have done it straightaway with fatalistic good humor.
At his knock, his father bade him enter and Del stepped back in time into his father’s meticulously kept estate office. It was one in a suite of rooms from which the Earl presided over his vast holdings. The estate office was nearer the back of the house, where there was a small vestibule for people with business with him to be received. Beyond the office lay the Earl’s private book room, a place where he read, kept his personal correspondence, smoked, and took his leisure. Beyond that was the more public room of the library, a magnificent oak-paneled chamber of two stories with a small balcony ringing the second floor. It housed the abbey’s magnificent collection of books, some of which dated to the period more than two hundred and fifty years earlier when the abbey had been dissolved during the reign of King Henry VIII. They were rooms that spoke of rank and responsibility, and of duty. Duty to Cleeve.
“Forgive me for the intrusion, sir. May I speak to you?”
The Earl of Cleeve leaned back in his chair to consider his request. He showed no surprise that his son should have suddenly appeared before him after years and years away—presumably a servant had informed him of Del and Celia’s arrival. Behind his desk, in the seat of his power, the Lion of Cleeve was just as Del had remembered and expected. His piercing blue eyes were still quick and penetrating, even predatory, tracking Del as he stepped into the room, trespassing into the Earl’s territory. But there were changes too. The leonine mane of ginger blond hair was liberally streaked with white, and there were lines etched across his handsome, tanned face, wrought by care or worry or simply age. Cleeve had always seemed so all-knowing, all-powerful, and even invincible, Del was startled by this aspect of humanity and mortality in his father. Time passed and changed all of them.
But the Lion of Cleeve was far from feeble. He waved off his secretary, and regarded his son down the impressive length of his aquiline nose. “Be so good as to give us a moment, Sands—”
“There’s no need, sir,” Del interrupted, determined to keep the interview as short as possible. “This task will undoubtedly fall to Sands. I have just now spoken to Mother about the dispensation of Emily’s things from school. Mother indicated you were the one to bring all of Emily’s effects back from Bath. I thought you might have some record.”
“Of course I do.” His father was nothing if not a prodigious record keeper. “May I ask why you are suddenly so interested in something which took place over a year ago?”
“It is not a sudden impulse, sir.” Del tried to keep to the tone he would have used with a commanding officer. “I have had this matter under consideration for some time, though it may prove to be nothing. I am looking for more of Emily’s letters—letters I never received. I had hoped they might be amongst Emily’s possessions, if they still exist.”
“What do you hope to find in these letters you did not receive?” His father’s tone was mildly curious.
Del hated having to justify himself to his father, like a child, especially as he was not yet ready to reveal their suspicions. Too much was at stake. And he wanted to do it on his own. It was his mission, his mania, to get to the bottom of Emily’s death. He did not want his father’s help or interference. “I am not exactly sure, sir. But I hope to afford both myself and Miss Burke—that is, my wife—more clarity of understanding regarding Emily’s death.”
“I see. It has been my experience some things are beyond understanding, Rupert. However, Sands will know where to find the record of the inventory.”
“Yes, my lord.” The secretary spoke up on cue. “That would have been April of the year ninety-three?” Mr. Sands rose and went unerringly to the place on the shelf where the appropriate ledger was housed. “Would you care to read it now, my lord?”
“Thank you, Sands. I’ll take it into the library, if I may. But also, I might ask if the items listed in the inventory still exist, are they here?” Del could think of no less awkward way to ask. “What happened to the things listed in your meticulous inventory?”
“They were delivered here, for your mother to see, or not see, as she chose in her grief. Grief which, I will note, you neither shared nor witnessed.” His father spoke gruffly.
Del would not argue with his father. There was nothing to be gained for any of them in a row over his actions. Emily was dead, and he still did not know the reason.
“If your mother did not order them distributed to the parish, I imagine your sister’s things to still be in trunks, either in her former room or recently transferred to storage at the end of the year’s mourning period. Mrs. Starling would know.”
“Thank you.” He bowed to his father. “I will consult with the housekeeper.”
“One moment. Thank you, Sands.”
The secretary bowed himself out of the room as quietly and efficiently as he did everything else.
The Earl wasted no time coming to his point. “Well, Rupert, I am glad you have seen fit to visit your mother. She has been anxious to see you and celebrate your marriage, and get to know your bride.”
“Yes, sir. I left them together.”
“Good. She seems an amiable girl.”
“She is. And particularly intelligent.”
A strange smile played at the corner of his father’s mouth. “Yes, an admirable quality. She was your sister’s friend, as I recall.” He shifted in his seat and regarded his papers for a long moment before he spoke. “I do not pretend to understand your reasons for looking among Emily’s things, but I will
ask
—because I have learned
insisting
will do no good with you—I will ask you not to upset your mother with whatever quest you have currently set for yourself.”
ask
—because I have learned
insisting
will do no good with you—I will ask you not to upset your mother with whatever quest you have currently set for yourself.”
“I would never set out to—”
“No, you never set out to hurt her, but you
have
, nonetheless. With your absence and your distance.”
have
, nonetheless. With your absence and your distance.”
Del could not bring himself to openly concur, although he knew it to be true.
“I pray, however,” his father went on, “you do not willfully misunderstand me. I am glad you are come home. I have waited a very long time—patiently I have thought, though you may not find it so—to have my son back.”
Ah, yes, the inevitable reckoning. His father loved nothing so much as reminding Del of his failures to his duty. “I am here, at your disposal.”
His father raised his eyes to the ceiling and chuckled. “You, my son, have never been at my disposal. Not when you were a lad, and certainly not now. You have not even been under my influence since some time in the spring of the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and eighty-five. Nor, in the time since your arrival back in England, have I asked you to be. Can you imagine why that might be, Rupert?”
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