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She looked up quickly. “Help you with what?”
“Winning Cecelia back.” He hadn’t planned to do it. But then he hadn’t planned to shove her away, either. “I need her more than I need a title. Or money. Or land. Or air.”
His mother laid a hand upon her chest. “Marcus, that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said.”
“If she heard me, she’d gladly volunteer to deprive me of air and smother me with a pillow. I believe she hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you,” his mother corrected. “But she is rather angry.”
“Do you think I can’t tell that?” he barked. At her shocked expression, he worked to soften his tone. “I’m sorry, but I only have a few weeks before she will go back home.”
His mother’s brows drew together. “Marcus, are you under the impression that you can’t go back to the land of the fae?”
“It’s not worth going back there if she won’t accept me in her life.” He flopped in a chair rather ungracefully, suddenly feeling like the air had been let out of him.
“We have a lot of work to do,” his mother said. And she pulled a writing desk into her lap. “Let’s make a list, shall we?”
She smiled. And hope bloomed within Marcus for the first time in months.
Five
Cecelia curled into a ball on her bed and hugged a pillow to her middle. She wasn’t a crier on a normal day, but she hadn’t anticipated how difficult it would be to see Marcus. To be forced to be in the same house with him.
A knock sounded against her door and she jumped to sit on the edge of the bed. She swiped furiously at her eyes and crossed to the mirror, where she adjusted the hair that covered the tips of her ears. When she was satisfied, she called, “Come in.”
The door opened a scant inch, and Cecelia held her breath. Certainly, Marcus wouldn’t come to her chambers, would he? A brunette head poked through the door, and Cecelia’s heart leaped in her chest. “Ainsley!” she cried.
The brunette streaked across the room and ran directly into Cecelia’s embrace. Cecelia set the girl back from her. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to see you, you ninny,” the girl said with a laugh. Then she threw her arms around Cecelia again.
“But how did you get here?” Ainsley hadn’t traveled with the wind the way that Cecelia had. She had to have come a different way.
“I went by way of the fish, if you must know.”
Cecelia’s mouth fell open. No one went the way of the fish except the garden gnomes and people who wanted to negotiate. “What was that like?”
“A harrowing experience that I never want to go through again,” she admitted with a laugh. “Father thrust me behind him and wouldn’t let me so much as look over his shoulder. The fish traded passage for a watch fob Father carried and a few cravats he had in his luggage. It was the strangest experience.”
Ainsley pulled Cecelia into her arms for another quick hug and then set her back. “You look dreadful, by the way,” she said candidly.
“Thank you,” Cecelia said in a monotone.
“Only a good friend will tell you when you look positively wretched,” her friend reminded her.
Ainsley had been her best friend for longer than Cecelia could remember. She knew everything about her, and what she didn’t know, Ainsley would soon pry from Cecelia’s locked jaws.
“How’s Marcus? Have you seen him yet?” Ainsley asked.
“Mr. Thorne is well,” Cecelia said.
“So, that’s why you look like something the dog dragged to the door.” Ainsley flopped ungracefully onto Cecelia’s bed and kicked her slippers from her feet. “I hoped I’d find him maimed by one of the gavels in the House of Lords. Or trampled by a hansom cab. Or bitten by a rabid dog.” She shrugged and smiled. “I assume I can’t look forward to seeing him drooling and slobbering all over himself just before he dies a slow and painful death.”
Ainsley was nothing if not candid. But she did make Cecelia laugh. “I can’t believe you’re here,” Cecelia said with a sigh. A heavy weight had lifted from her shoulders the moment Ainsley walked into the room.
Ainsley’s brown eyes sparkled with mirth. “Perhaps we can hide some perfectly dreadful plant in his tea leaves that will make him use the retiring room over and over and over.”
Cecelia threw a pillow at her best friend. “I don’t want to cause him harm. I never did.”
