“Half an hour and the last loaf will be ready,” she announced cheerfully, coming over to stand beside them. “Maybe we’ll save that one for your breakfast, if you apologize to your father.”
They both frowned at her in puzzlement, and she sighed.
“Lilian, what did I tell you about hitting your father the other night?”
“You said I shouldn’t hit Papa because he’s good and he loves me and it might hurt him, even though it doesn’t,” the little girl summed up with some effort.
Blushing slightly at having her compliments repeated in front of their subject, Cecily nodded, keeping her eyes on the child rather than the darkly handsome man who was holding her.
“So, what should you say to your father now, Lilian?”
With a sound of impatience but no real protest, Lilian turned her head to Nathaniel. “I’m sorry I hit you, Papa.”
Nathaniel looked surprised, but then nodded gravely and kissed his daughter on the forehead.
“You are forgiven,” he told her, before raising amused eyes to Cecily’s.
Again, she nodded in approval of how he was handling his child.
For a long moment, they only gazed at each other, Cecily feeling some of the same warmth that had flowed between them when they had been kneading the dough.
“Do you love my father?” Lilian asked abruptly, completely shattering the spell.
Inhaling sharply, Cecily turned away and walked back to busy herself with shifting the bread bags. She knew that her face was flushed, and she did not trust herself to smooth her expression. Nor did she wish to see Nathaniel’s.
“I shall warm some milk for you, Lilian,” she said conversationally. “It will help you sleep.”
As she walked away down a side passage to fetch the milk from the cool stone shelf in the larder, she was conscious that Lilian’s question had stirred something within her, alongside the embarrassment of her own feelings and her wariness of Nathaniel’s reaction.
What did she feel for this strange man, who was her husband and whose touch so easily made her body sing to music she had never imagined? Was it love? She did not know with any certainty what love itself should be, but she did know that she had never felt these feelings for anyone else.
A new sadness clouded her thoughts. Whatever her feelings for Nathaniel, it seemed unlikely that he would or even could reciprocate.
“I cannot love him,” she told herself firmly, leaning against the pantry door. “I cannot!”
By the time she returned to the kitchen with the milk, her face was composed again, although the same could not be said for her disobedient heart.
CHAPTER 25
“… a
nd they all lived happily ever after,” Nathaniel finished the story and closed the book.
“You don’t read it as well as Cecily,” Lilian said critically.
Nathaniel laughed uncertainly and put down the book on the bedside table. As he had promised Cecily, he had come upstairs tonight to read Lilian a bedtime story. He had thought it was going rather well until now.
“I suppose I don’t. Now, go to sleep.”
“But I want another story!”
“I’ve already read three stories, and it’s getting late, Lilian. Cecily said that you should be asleep by now.”
The clock had struck eight, and dinner would have started downstairs.
“Why won’t you read me another story?” Lilian demanded, sitting up in bed.
His heart sank as he recognized that firm tone; it signaled that one argument would only lead to another. Cecily did not approve of such disputes with the child, although Nathaniel himself was unsure how to avoid them. They just seemed to happen whenever the two of them were alone.
