Read Online A Rake’s Guide to Seduction by Caroline Linden - Free Book Online Page A

it. Hannah must have closed the room and never opened it. Celia walked into the center of the room, looking around in mild astonishment. The last time she had been in this room, she had been a new bride. Memories stirred at the edges of her mind. Her wedding dress had been hung there on a dressmaker’s form so it would not wrinkle. For some reason Celia remembered her maid saying it had taken three hours to press it, and they didn’t dare lay it flat even for a night. That had been the evening before her wedding. She hadn’t gone to sleep until very late, so excited she could hardly stay in bed.
    She walked over to the window and looked out. The gardens lay below, lush and colorful. Far more colorful than the Kenlington gardens; practicality had reigned there, for many plants couldn’t survive the harsher northern winter.
    Celia turned away from the window and sat at her dressing table. The plants weren’t the only thing that had not survived well in Cumberland. Her reflection caught her eye. She leaned closer and studied herself.
    She looked older, for certain. She had seen herself many times in this mirror, and for an instant, she almost expected to see the same pink-cheeked, smiling girl of old. Instead she saw a pale, thin face, blond hair scraped back into a subdued knot. Her blue eyes were somber, and there was no pink in her cheeks. The black of her mourning gown only made her look paler, more devoid of color. Her eyelids fluttered closed and for a moment memory intruded again; Bertie’s handsome face smiling over her shoulder into this very mirror. His arms around her. His breath on her neck as he whispered words of love. Those words seem to echo mockingly inside the hollowness within her. She opened her eyes.
    Bertie was not there behind her in the mirror. The charming boy she had married was gone, every bit as dead as the indifferent, distant husband he had become. Only she was left, and she wondered just how much of her he had taken to the grave with him.
    Sluggishly she got to her feet. She supposed she was tired, and hungry, and all those things one ought to be after a long journey. But lying down held no appeal, and being alone had not brought her any peace, not even in the room that had once been her haven. She opened the door and left.
    In the corridor she met Hannah again. “Oh,” said her sister-in-law in surprise. “You’re not tired?”
    Celia gave a wan smile. “Not much. I’ve been away too long to want to sleep the day away.”
    “Of course.” Hannah smiled, not asking anything further. Celia wondered what her mother had told Hannah. “I was just going up to see the children. Would you like to come with me?”
    “Yes, thank you.” She had never seen Hannah and Marcus’s two young sons. “I hear the boys are quite a handful.”
    Hannah sighed and shook her head. “That they are. The baby of course is just a baby, but Thomas…oh my, Thomas. He keeps us all running from morning ’til night.” She led the way upstairs to the nursery, which was now open and bright.
    A little boy with wavy dark hair sat at a small table, arranging tin soldiers. At their entrance, he looked up, blue eyes brightening. “Mama!” he cried, leaping from his chair and running into Hannah’s arms.
    “Thomas,” she cried back, scooping him up. “I have brought someone to meet you.” She turned toward Celia. “Your aunt, Lady Bertram, has arrived.”
    The little boy pressed his cheek to Hannah’s shoulder, studying Celia from the shelter of his mother’s arms. He was sturdy and round, with bright, curious eyes. Celia stepped forward and made a slight curtsy. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance, sir,” she said to him. “But you must call me Aunt Celia, instead of Lady Bertram.”
    “Ceelee,” he whispered, then hid his face in Hannah’s arm. Hannah laughed, and Celia smiled. She supposed she properly ought to call him Tavistock, as Marcus’s heir, but it seemed absurd to call a