Cecily took a pretty pink bottle up and lifted the stopper to apply rose water to her face. “Oh, as to that,” she said not quite meeting Mina’s eyes in the looking glass. “Things have undergone a slight change between Sir Matthew and myself.” She simpered as she opened a box of pearl powders. “Since that unfortunate contretemps that you so kindly extricated me from.” She dabbed a large powder puff to her nose and chin. Swiveling on her seat, she looked earnestly at Mina. “I will not scruple to tell you, my dear Miss Walters—”
“Mrs. Nye,” Mina interjected smoothly, but Cecily took no notice of such a trifling detail.
“—that you must wish me happy in the very near future.” She fidgeted with the ribbon at her breast, a moment. “Only fancy! Quite unbeknownst to me, Sir Matthew has been madly in love with me all this while! He finally declared himself in a fit of passion when he railed at me for being taken in by that unworthy scoundrel Mr. Brinson. It seems poor Sir Matthew wished for me to make up my own mind, but when he saw I could be so easily taken in, he said he will no longer permit my being out in society until we are safely married. We are only waiting for my twenty-first birthday next year and then we shall tie the knot.”
Mina frowned. “And what do you think about that, Cecily?” she asked, feeling somewhat taken aback.
“Oh, well I am fully sensible to the honor that he does me, Cecily answered, preening herself. “I daresay none of my schoolmates will marry so well as I.” Mina remembered that Eliza Hinch had married a baronet but thought it would not be fortuitous to bring that up at this precise moment. “It does still take me aback that I should have captured his heart,” Cecily admitted in a burst of confidence. “For he always seemed so stern and forbidding, that I never once thought of him in the role of lover, but now that I do…” She blushed. “Well, I have to own he is the very finest man I know. And not so very old at six and thirty. We are only related by marriage, and besides Sir Matthew has promised that he will take me to Rome for our honeymoon and that I may have one of my cousin’s litter of Maltese dogs for my very own companion. They are such dear little things, like little balls of white fluff! Oh, I shall be so happy to have both a husband and a little doggy of my own,” said Cecily clasping her hands together and gazing at her reflection in the mirror raptly.
“I see,” said Mina, though in truth she found it extremely hard to imagine Cecily as the wife of dry Sir Matthew. She wondered for instance, what on earth they could have in common to talk about of an evening. For Sir Matthew was cool and sardonic where Cecily rattled on like a pea goose. While it was true that Cecily still seemed to feel some vestiges of her former awe around her guardian at present, Mina did not doubt this would soon dissipate and then she would regale Sir Matthew with her every empty-headed thought. Still, she reflected, it was highly likely that people thought she and Nye made a strange couple. Perhaps Sir Matthew would simply sit Cecily on his lap as Nye did with her. “I am happy things are going on well for you, my dear,” she said aloud.
“Oh yes,” Cecily agreed dreamily, as she threaded a riband through the front of her locks. A discreet knock on the door heralded the arrival of a tea tray which was set down on a gilded occasional table.
“Would you be so kind as to pour, Miss Walters?” Cecily asked, her eyes not leaving the mirror.
“Of course.” Mina nodded and thanked the parlor maid. “I do wish you would call me Mina, now Cecily. For our own ages are not so very disparate and we have been acquaintances now of many years. And with you so very soon to be entering matrimony, it seems foolish that you should address me so formally.”
Cecily wheeled around at this; her expression rapt. “I would be delighted, my dear Mina!” she exclaimed. Mina wondered at it, but it seemed Cecily was in deadly earnest. The only reason Mina could think of, was that Cecily could write to her former schoolfellows, now proclaiming them to be bosom friends. For her to think of this as a social triumph was so patently absurd that Mina could not help hiding a smile, despite her own mood at present.
Cecily applied perfume and then rang the bell for her maid to help her into a dress of lavender with a profusion of ruffles and lace. Mina had poured their tea and eaten half of the toast before Cecily dismissed her maid and sank into a chair beside her.
“Now tell me everything!” she urged. “Dearest Mina, spare no detail, for I want to hear it as though it were one of those wonderful stories you used to tell us at school.”
Mina regaled her with an extremely expunged version of all that had befallen her since their perfidious stable hand abducted her and secluded her in an underground passage. Of Gus Hopkirk’s involvement she mentioned precious little, save that he had implored the villainous Reuben not to let her freeze to death, or offer her unnecessary violence.
“What a terrible man that ostler was - so cruel and brutish!” Cecily shuddered. “For you to be at the mercy of such a ruffian turns one blood quite cold!”
Mina agreed. When she came to the part of the story where Reuben had gagged and bound her for her
