Lady Cecily And The Mysterious Mr Gray. Janice Preston

invited everyone to share in her joy and she gave the impression of barely contained energy as she moved.

      ‘I have heard so much about you, Cecily. I hope we can be friends.’ Thea’s voice was unexpectedly deep for a woman and endearingly gruff.

      ‘I am sure we shall.’ Cecily kissed Thea on both cheeks. ‘Are your parents here?’

      She would be staying at Thea’s parents’ home, Stourwell Court, for the next few days and it was only good manners that she should greet her hosts.

      The spark in Thea’s eyes seemed to fade. ‘They have gone home. My father had a stroke six years ago. He is not strong and cannot walk. He insisted on attending the wedding in his wheelchair, but Mama took him straight home afterwards. You will meet them later.’

      ‘I shall look forward to it.’

      Vernon’s letter had related the story of Thea’s father’s infirmity and the awful circumstances that were the cause of it. A swindler had courted Thea and then cheated her father out of a fortune before jilting poor Thea at the altar. Her family—not part of the aristocracy or even the landed gentry, but hard-working manufacturers of lead-crystal glassware—had been almost bankrupted and the shock had caused Mr Markham Sr’s stroke. Thea and her younger brother, Daniel, had worked tirelessly to pull both the business and the family back from the brink of ruin.

      Cecily glanced around the small group of people gathered outside the church. Apart from Leo and Rosalind, and Rosalind’s grandfather, Mr Allen—all of whom had already been in the Midlands in order to collect Mr Allen’s belongings from his Birmingham home—and Dominic, there were few others. Of the servant with the diamond in his ear, there was no sign and she supposed he had attended the wedding in order to help Mr Markham get to and from the church. A strange sensation stirred her insides at the thought of the man and his dark, unfathomable gaze. Irritated, she cast him from her thoughts.

      ‘Allow me to introduce you to my brother,’ Thea said and she drew Cecily towards a young man who was talking to Dominic.

      Daniel looked nothing like his sister, being tall and dark, but there was little time to talk for Vernon soon ushered them all into motion, urging them ahead of him.

      ‘Come now, it is time for the wedding breakfast. I intend to spend the rest of this day in celebration of my good fortune in marrying this gorgeous, perfect woman.’

      He swept one arm around Thea’s waist and pulled her close for a kiss. The sting of tears took Cecily totally unaware. To see her much-sought-after, handsome brother so utterly smitten with Thea, even though she was not of their world...that was true love. It had been the same with Leo and Rosalind. Almost from the first time Cecily had seen her powerful oldest brother—a duke from the age of nineteen—with Rosalind it had been clear he was besotted. Cecily ducked her head and blinked rapidly until she was sure her emotions were under control again and then she plastered another happy smile upon her face and allowed Dominic to hand her into the coach for the journey to Stourwell Court. She barely noticed the house as they drove up to it, so preoccupied was she. Then the carriage halted and they entered the house and were shown into the dining room where the wedding breakfast was laid out.

      The first person she saw was the man from the church. And he was not a servant, as she had first thought, because Leo himself carried out the introductions.

      ‘Cecily, my dear, this is Mr Gray, a very good friend of Daniel Markham. Absalom—my sister, Lady Cecily Beauchamp.’

      Mr Gray bowed. When he straightened there was such a look of bemusement on his face that she almost—but not quite—giggled. And she never giggled. Ladies do not giggle, especially thirty-year-old spinsters who are sisters of a duke. But the giggle bubbled dangerously in her chest nevertheless.

      ‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr Gray,’ she said.

      His dark eyes narrowed and she felt a whisper of caution deep down inside, but she could not fathom what it meant.

      ‘Likewise, Lady Cecily.’

      He moved away abruptly and they did not speak again, but her eyes were drawn to him again and again during the wedding breakfast. His stillness. His watchfulness. A quiver ran through her every time his dark gaze touched upon her and she deliberately looked away so she did not meet his eyes. Later, she questioned Thea—casually—about the presence of Absalom Gray and she learned that he was a gipsy—‘or Romany, as he prefers,’ whispered Thea—who had recently saved Daniel’s life. Nothing much else was known about him. He was, Thea had confided, a man who guarded his privacy.

      And then the diamond earring, which made him somehow mysterious and dangerous, and the faded, loose-fitting clothing—serviceable but not that of a gentleman—made sense. Cecily noticed that Mr Gray disappeared after the wedding breakfast and the toasts, and she felt at once relieved and disappointed: relieved in that she no longer needed to be on her guard against catching his eye and disappointed in that his brooding presence had at least diverted her from agonising over her own future.

      * * *

      She maintained her cheerful mask all through the afternoon and on into the evening, when neighbours and friends of the Markhams had been invited to share in the celebrations. Her life had prepared her for just this outward mien of calmness and grace, even when her insides were in tumult and even while her inner voice berated her ceaselessly for her mean-spirited response to both of her brothers’ good fortune in finding love and happiness. She gazed around the drawing room, at the happy, champagne-flushed faces and, of a sudden, it all felt too much. She needed to get away. She needed a few minutes alone where she did not have to act a part.

      She caught Rosalind’s eye and gestured, indicating that she was going to relieve herself, before quietly leaving the room. Instead of heading to the ladies’ retiring room, however, she found a side door that opened into the garden and she let herself out into the fresh air. She did not linger by the house, but followed a gravelled path that bisected a formally laid out garden, instinctively heading away from the laughter and the light to a place where, as twilight dimmed to dusk, she would be invisible to any other guest who ventured outside. As she walked, a breeze sprang up and she chafed her arms against its unexpectedly sharp bite, wishing she had thought to fetch her shawl before coming outside. She glanced back at the Court, its every downstairs window blazing with light, wondering if she should return to the celebration, but—just for the moment—she could not face it. The strange agitation that roiled her insides was making her nauseous. Inside the house, joy and congratulations continued to flow as freely as the champagne. And Cecily shared the joy and congratulated the happy couple with all her heart. Truly she did. But...

      She needed time alone to sort through her thoughts and her emotions, which felt precariously balanced, as though the slightest nudge might result in a complete loss of control. And one thing Cecily prided herself upon was that she never lost control. She shivered, hugging her arms around her torso, and rubbed again at the gooseflesh on her bare arms, deliberately allowing her deepest fears a free rein as she continued to stroll along the broad path flanked by glorious roses in full bloom, intermingled with sweet-smelling herbs. The moon, brightening by the minute, was already high in the sky and the stars winked on, one by one, as the velvet cloak of the night shrouded the garden.

      It wasn’t that she begrudged either Leo or Vernon their happiness. She was thrilled to see them both so wonderfully, ecstatically in love. And she liked both Rosalind and Thea. Very much. But Vernon’s marriage, coming so soon after Leo’s, had left Cecily...where, exactly?

      And now she could allow her innermost fears to float up to the surface and form into coherent thoughts, she could pin down the source of her greatest fear: these two momentous changes in the life of the Beauchamp family had left Cecily fast travelling down the road to that unenviable position: the unwed dependant.

      The maiden aunt.

      The recipient of pitying looks and the butt of snide jokes.

      No longer mistress of anything, but a supplicant.

      Her life had changed, through no fault of her own, and she had no power to prevent