them, and he had been stunned by the force of a yearning so unexpected it had nearly brought him to his knees. And it was at that precise instance he’d realized how very, very dangerous Lady Cecily was. Because against all reason, when he should have been proof against such nonsense, he had done the unthinkable and fallen in love.
And love at first sight, at that.
Robin had never been in love before, which is precisely how he recognized the sensation with such absolute certainty. Shortly thereafter, he had fled—and no, he would not appease his vanity by calling it anything else—from the more habitable portions of Finovair to those parts falling to ruin, which, he thought ruefully, looking around, was most of it. Because while Robin might be in love, he was not insane, and it would be insanity indeed to pursue that which he had no possibility of attaining.
He had learned that lesson early in life when he’d arrived in London as a young man. Society’s mamas wasted no time in cautioning their daughters against the son of an impecunious French count. And their papas had been just as quick to take Robin aside—accompanied by their more brawny retainers—to make
Thereafter, Robin had kept his liaisons strictly to the ranks of ladies who did not require marriage as a prerequisite to bed sport. And while his conquests were not nearly so legion as Byron assumed—and Robin let him assume—they were plentiful enough to keep a fellow from deploring his lot in life.
And why should he deplore his lot? he asked himself, stopping to stare sightlessly at the snowy courtyard below. He had health, good friends, a few acres of vines he still managed to keep a working concern, and—he cast a jaundiced eye down a hall of fallen plaster rubble and pockmarked walls—someday would inherit a Scottish castle. What more could he want?
He scowled at the betraying thought.
Irritably, he pivoted to leave, and as he did so, he heard the unmistakable if faint sound of a female cursing. Relieved by the distraction, he smiled, wondering if along with all the rest of the unwelcome bequests with which Taran—damn his unfruitful loins—intended to saddle him, he would also inherit a ghost. Though he thought even ghosts had more sense than to haunt so inhospitable a place.
He looked down the hall toward where the sound had come just as a pile of russet-colored rags topped by a head emerged from a doorway.
A particularly dark and lovely head.
Lady Cecily.
It appeared he was to be haunted, after all.
Chapter 21
For a second, Robin considered pretending he hadn’t seen her—again—and bolt down the adjacent corridor. By avoiding her thus far, he had avoided sampling what he could never wholly have.
True, manners had demanded that he make an appearance at dinner the first night, but he’d seated himself at the opposite end of the table from her and escaped as soon as Marilla had commenced her campaign to win Bretton’s . . . Well, if she won anything of Bretton’s, it certainly wasn’t ever going to be his heart. But, then, any fool watching her manhandle the duke would soon realize that Bretton’s heart was never her objective.
But now Robin found he could not resist the opportunity to spend some time alone with Lady Cecily before her rescuers came thundering through the passes. When they arrived, he would be gone. He had no intention of standing by while Marilla Chisholm convinced her father that events had occurred that could only be satisfied with a wedding. Particularly if it was his own.
Besides, perhaps if he spent some time with Lady Cecily, he would discover that she was not what every fiber in his heart declared her to be but simply a young lady whose lovely visage and pretty manners summed up the total of what she was or aspired to become. At least, he thought as he strode toward her, he could hope.
“Lady Cecily,” Robin hailed her, his amusement growing with each step.
She’d exchanged yesterday’s antique morning weeds for an even older ball gown, dating from an era when women would have had to turn sideways to enter through a door. But without the support of the underlying panniers that would have once jutted out from her hips, the heavy skirts dragged along the ground on either side of her like two broken wings.
The once rich ruby red silk had turned a dull rusty color, and the heavy application of silver thread embroidering the sleeves and hem had become green with age. Huge silk cabbage roses, once white but now dingy and yellowed, hung disconsolately from her elbows, waist, and hips.
Even during the height of George VII’s reign, when low-cut dresses were in vogue, the decolletage would have been indecent, but on Lady Cecily’s slight frame it hung so loosely that she’d been forced to wrap some sort of velvet shawl around her neck like a muffler before stuffing the ends down the bodice to preserve her modesty. The effort had apparently caused her hair to fall from its neat knot, and it, too, lay tucked beneath the velvet wrapping.
An image of how she’d look had she not been so enterprising with that damned shawl beset his imagination; her hair rippling over her naked shoulders, loose curls playing
