“It’s nothing.” Peter’s voice was curt. “Forgive me for using such language casually. Leavenworth, will you walk me out?”
“Certainly.”
Peter bowed, and Celia realized she ought to kiss him goodbye, but the two men were already deep into details and the door closing behind them.
“Since he is paying for a room at an inn, then he is planning to come back again.” Celia spoke aloud. She was losing control, getting all in a flurry about something unreasonable. She nudged the cold toast with her toe and decided she wasn’t hungry.
And Celia didn’twantto go outside. If she had a reprieve from that awful carriage, then she was going back to bed.
*
It had beena very long week, and Celia fell asleep despite her anxiety. When she awoke, the dust motes were floating in the noonday sun. She had no one to care for, no responsibilities.
She had no idea what to do.
She could stay inside all day if she wanted to. She could lay in bed all day if she wanted to. Peter didn’t know what was best for her, and besides, her ankle hurt.
It turned out, Celia was unable to lay in bed during the day. Five minutes later, she sat down at the secretary. It was a cozy little inn, so it would be nice to pass a few days here.
Nice, but lonely.
“Dear Rose,” she wrote, but found nothing more to say. Everything was too sad or too foolish.
Where was Peter going? He had not made any effort to explain his life to her, but Celia had to admit that neither had he made an effort to disguise his conversations with Leavenworth in front of her, which was more than one could say for most men. She was getting the strange impression that his last few years had been as full of danger as the war years, first in reconstruction France and then working for…Celia shook her head. She had an idea of what Peter had been doing, but her imagination must have carried away with her. It was beyond what could be logically borne, to think that she had married a spy and he was currently racing off to receive some contraband information in secret code. Meeting with some scarred bully-boy in the dark of night. What could be more absurd? Peter was just a middle son in the endless ranks of the English gentry, taking agovernment job to supplement the income from the small estate he had inherited from some distant uncle.
A middle son who purchased an entire traveling retinue in the blink of an eye. And had a false identity. And a punch that could take down a man twice his size, and a self-confidence that even peers of the realm instinctively respected. There must be some obvious explanation, Celia was just too overwrought to see it.
She attempted to draw, but all her figures came out lopsided.
She shuffled through her clothing, meaning to mend the hem she had torn, but Bridget had already done it.
She took a few stitches with colored silk, but the needle surely weighed a thousand pounds. Besides, it was so dull. Her usual embroidery frames were too large for traveling, so she had brought only a small one. Her interest in working out her new monogram had already faded, although she had tried to keep it entertaining by using uncial characters and adding her favorite flowers. But there was no room for interesting detail or shading, and anyone at all could embroider a monogram.
She set down the travel frame but flared with frustration about that, too. Most women stopped painting and embroidering when they married, but Celia wasn’t going to. Peter might think he had married someone to fix up his house, but he was going to get someone who made the world more beautiful. No matter how busy she was, she would take an hour every day to make art. And what was more, she was going to encourage her entire household staff to do the same. She would improve the world like that, with time and art for everyone.
She curled up in the chair, dinky frame dangling from her fingers, staring bleakly out into the town square. Peter, Peter, Peter. For the last few days, he had made her feel defensive and helpless and prickly, and now she missed him fearfully.
She rested her cheek on her knee and closed her eyes. If this was not about absurdities like knives glinting in the moonlight, then she could not stop thinking about that other person he had wanted to protect. He had mentioned a female pronoun here and there, his voice lower and more serious. Perhaps a natural daughter. And if he had a natural daughter and a fake name, perhaps he had another wife hidden somewhere. Or a mistress—what if he had a long-term mistress, and they had children together, and what if now that he decided to open his house again, he was going to fetch them so they could all travel together. Celia certainly understood wishing to not make this hideous journey twice, but it would be uncomfortable to make it in the company of her husband’s first family. The one he really loved.
In the late afternoon, Bridget found Celia still curled in the chair.
“Ma’am, the sun has come out. Shall we go outside?”
“No!” Celia’s voice came out harsher than she had intended. She was arguing with someone who wasn’t even there.
“The church on the corner is supposed to have very special glass windows. We could walk and look at them?”
Celia just turned her head into her knees. She did not want to walk anywhere, past men looming on the street, alleys where Lord Edmund might be hiding.
“I know the carriage is uncomfortable, ma’am, but I feel a little better, myself, taking a nice walk.”
Celia was quiet.
“Or I could just bring pillows and blankets outside. There’s a chair in the courtyard, under a rose arbor, and you could sit with the sun on your face.”
Celia hated roses. She hated sun.
“Or I could just bring tea to you, ma’am.”
