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He laughed harder. “You look just like you did that time I caught you spying on the village boys swimming in the buff!”
She immediately forgot her nervousness and snapped straight. “I never did!” she gasped before remembering that she, in fact, had. Worse than that, she’d followed them to the beach in anticipation of catching just such a show.
“Ha! I see it’s all coming back to you now. There were five or six very naked young men, if I recall.”
The blood beneath her face was coming to a boil. “Nick,” she scolded, forgetting she’d meant never to call him that again.
That one word broke the tension in the room. Lancaster shook his head, his smile gentling.
She took a deep breath. “Please do not be angry with Mrs. Pell. She wanted to tell you and I begged her not to. Don’t put her out.”
“Put her out? Are you mad? How could I possibly be angry with her when she may very well have saved your life?”
That pulled her out of her worrying. Her own mother had clucked and dismissed Cynthia’s assertions that she would not survive being married to Richmond. But Lancaster seemed to accept it as a point of fact.
“Come now,” he said. “We will discuss all this in the morning. Into bed with you. Are you hungry, thirsty?”
“No.”
He shooed her toward the bed with his hands.
“But where will you sleep?”
“I’ll sneak into the chamber next door.”
As Cynthia watched in weary shock, Lancaster locked the door to the hallway and gestured toward the door to the adjoining room.
“I’ll be right there. The lock should keep the maids from stumbling upon you.”
“This is all unnecessary,” she protested, but Lancaster was shaking his head.
“Nonsense. Good night.”
“Oh, well then. Good night.” And he was gone. Just like that. An echo of his old place in her life. An all-consuming force one moment and then vanished in the blink of an eye.
She could only stand there, staring at the fading green paint of the door, her cheek still tingling faintly from his brief, meaningless touch.
When the door opened again, she blinked.
“Pardon me, but…” He peeked in. “You will be here in the morning, won’t you, Cyn?”
She thought about it for a moment. Should she run? Really, there was no point in fleeing now that he knew she was alive. “Yes, I’ll be here,” she said carefully.
His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Promise?”
“I promise.”
The relief in his gaze warmed something deep in her belly. “Good.” The latch clicked shut.
A few minutes passed before she lowered herself to the bed. Somehow it seemed disarmingly intimate to be in his bed, and even more so knowing he might reappear through the door at any moment and find her snuggled in. But the clock ticked the minutes away from somewhere on the floor, and the room was cold. When her tension began to melt away, Cynthia wilted.
Her nights had been nearly sleepless since he’d returned to Cantry Manor, and the soft mattress proved irresistible. There was nothing to be done. Her masquerade was over. She could accomplish nothing tonight. Tomorrow she would argue her case, and shape her plans to Nick’s response.
She curled into the bed. The pillow surrounded her with his scent when she lay her head on it, and Cynthia fell asleep just as she had so many times as a young girl…dreaming of Nicholas Cantry.
How in the world could she sleep?
Leaning against the doorway, Lancaster shook his head, never taking his eyes off the slight rise in the covers where Cynthia Merrithorpe slept.
