She pulled her hand away and turned in place, forcing him to adjust their dance position.
“I often have an assignment in London during the Season, but I was in Bruxelles last summer. I could be—”
Celia focused on the music and spun the other way.
“You need someone capable. You deserve—”
Celia ducked under his arm and around his back. When she returned to position, Mr. Hughes had tucked his mouth into silence.
She didn’t care at all. Mr. Hughes wasn’t going to marry her, which was just fine. She needed a house and land and good clean earth, not a man full of pretty excuses, this amadán with his almost-flirtation and smelling of brandy when he wasn’t drunk.
The music stopped and so did Celia’s feet. Celia jerked her hands away, her fan flopping heavily against her wrist. She pressed her lips upwards and produced a curtsey and a “thank you sir” before turning and striding away, or as much as a lady could stride without tripping on her ruffles. She was thirsty—she needed some lemonade, which was why she was in a hurry.Surely she would feel better, her heartbeat would steady and her throat would unclog, if only she had some lemonade.
To her annoyance, Mr. Hughes followed her, keeping pace politely. To her even greater annoyance, he immediately procured some lemonade. Celia accepted it without meeting his eyes, but after she had drained the whole glass, she repented enough to thank him. The words dragged like sand in her throat, and Mr. Hughes beckoned the waiter for a second glass, watching Celia carefully as she drank.
Celia squared her shoulders and stared back. He could leave any time, now. Standing next to a young lady at a ball could be mistaken as showing an interest, which he clearly did not have.
Peter’s gaze dropped to her side, and the corners of his lips pressed in anger. In the scurry of leaving the dance floor, her long gloves had crumpled down, leaving her elbow bare. Celia did not need to look more closely to guess that mottled red had blossomed across her pale skin. Her hands were occupied with her lemonade glass, so she couldn’t pull her glove back into place. She raised her chin. It wasn’t his business anyhow.
Mr. Hughes’s hand flickered, moving towards her and stopping. “Are you well?”
His voice was soft, but Celia felt unfamiliar sharp edges prickling between them. “My skin is not orange, is it, sir?” She took a deliberate sip of lemonade. “I prepare my own creams, you see.”
“That is”—his gesture was short and frustrated—“I am trying to say, how can I help?”
Oho, so now he thought he would help.
“I can manage on my own.” Celia passed him her empty lemonade glass, tugging her gloves back into place and turning away.
“Miss Westhaven!”
Celia paused. She would not make a stir. She would give him one more moment.
He reached for her hand and she extended it, letting him bow one more time. But as he straightened, he leaned close—close enough to fool a matron that he was flirting with her. “Have a care for yourself,” he murmured. “Find a way out of the net set for the Thompsons. Remember—you haven’t much time.”
He did not understand her at all, not if he thought she would leave her cousins. Celia did not let any of her emotions show on her face. She nodded, a gracious lady to her overwrought suitor, and glided away.
She had never wanted to marry him at all. Not last spring, and not today.
Tucking her hand in her ruffles, heading towards her aunt, Celia snapped her fingers. Even the imaginary Cu Sidhe would not come. They lurked in the shadows, their red eyes glowing, their mouths open in a canine laugh. They had delivered three warnings to Celia tonight, and now she understood. Her family was under attack, and the Irish hounds of hell would not obey her commands.
*
The moon glimmered,blurry, over the peaks of rooftops and chimneys. Celia pulled her dressing gown closer and gave herself a few moments to observe the exact color of light, feel that celestial thread of connection. The same moon gleamed over Ireland, the same light trickled into heaven.
Celia’s feet hurt, her elbow throbbed, and her head had that muzzy late-night feeling that still reminded her of desperation, even though no one was ill. But she was finally in her own room, with space to think and Marianne slumbering in her bed.Eyes still on the sky, Celia reached down to the bit of Marianne nearest her, which turned out to be the long angle of shinbone. She rubbed gently through the counterpane.
When Celia was eleven, Aunt Thompson and her daughters had arrived at Killyreigh to visit Celia’s mother. It was different from the other visits because Aunt Thompson was great with child, and they stayed for nearly two years. Celia had simply been delighted to romp everywhere with Rose and play dollies with Henrietta; the highlight of her young life was when she held newborn Marianne. She had been secretly glad that Aunt Thompson was so dreary and grown-up, sitting about, talking and playing the piano for hours, for it meant that Celia was permitted to play with the baby for much of the day.
Marianne’s first words were a cheerful mash-up of English and Irish, and her first wobbly steps were straight into Celia’s arms. They had left when Celia was thirteen, mere weeks before her mother’s accident.
Four years later, nursing her stepmother after the twins were born, Celia understood that Aunt Thompson had been reeling with grief that year. Now, Celia wondered if her aunt’s misery had been precipitated by something more than the birth of a baby, and she wondered if the same problem had returned.
Tonight’s three clues led Celia to her uncle. Aunt Thompson was once again declaiming an opinion that did not fit with her prior behavior. Rose said that her mother was ill, but Rose’s brilliant literary analytical skills tended to fail with people; she would always excuse her father and blame her mother. If Mr. Hughes had heard rumors, then the problem must be the head of the family.
Celia sighed, sagging against the bed post. That was the way of the world: when the man of the house went down, he took everyone else with him. Everyone, everything. Her painting, Rose’s writing, Henrietta’s laughter, Marianne’s education.
Celia’s eyes slid past the curtains, shivering in the draft, to the painting just beyond. It was only shades of gray in the moonlight, but Celia knew every brushstroke, every burst of color. She had painted it soon after her brother had brought her to live with the Thompsons, using wash after wash of Hooker’s green and cobalt and India yellow for the greenery around the castle. She could feel the sun-warmed flagstones, see the weathered turret rising on the left, smell the yellow jasmine spilling over the portcullis. Just looking at the painting, she felt mellower, softer, safer.
