In front of them the fire crackled and spat, causing Cecilia to look up from the book she was reading and stare into the flames. She was ever conscious of Major Crawley sitting just a few feet from her, aware every time he shifted or moved, aware of every breath he took.
Foolish girl, she told herself. She’d nearly kissed him that morning out in the stable. After everything she’d promised herself, after all her years of self-restraint and careful behaviour. One smouldering look from a man she wasn’t sure even liked her and she was ready to throw it all away.
Forcing her eyes back to her book, a rather dry factual book on the Great Fire of London a couple of centuries ago which seemed to be blaming the whole episode on one poor baker, it was only a few seconds before she heard Major Crawley shift. He rose, slipped off his jacket and began rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. Cecilia tried to look away, but the rhythmic motion of his fingers mesmerised her and she couldn’t help but watch as he revealed his tanned forearms.
His eyes came up and met hers and she thought she detected a hint of amusement on his face before he turned to face the fire. She watched as he prodded at the logs with the poker before settling back into his chair.
‘Good book?’ he asked, his eyes raking over her, but his expression giving nothing away.
‘A little persecutory,’ she said. In response to his raised eyebrow she elaborated. ‘They are blaming the Great Fire of London on one man.’
‘When in reality it was down to poor town planning and a sense of invincibility,’ Major Crawley said.
‘Well, yes.’
‘But it is much more sensational to go on a witch-hunt.’
She nodded, knowing she should return to her book, but unable to look away from the man in front of her.
‘How about a game?’ Major Crawley said.
‘A game?’ He didn’t seem to be the sort of man who liked to play games. Far too serious.
‘A game of morals.’
‘You have one of those?’ she asked.
The games made of linen squares stuck to pieces of wood were fast becoming popular among the ton to play after dinner parties or between friends. You had a little carved figure, some counters to signify coins to pay any fines and a dice to roll. The winner was the first one to the last square and you were disqualified once you’d lost all your counters.
‘I do.’
‘Who do you play with?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘My many companions, of course.’ He gestured around the little room and she couldn’t help but giggle.
‘I can just imagine you sitting here by yourself and playing.’
‘I’m not that much of a lost cause.’
Together they unpacked the box and Cecilia wondered if it had ever been opened before. The lid was stiff and the pieces lined up perfectly inside. As Major Crawley rose to get drinks—an essential part of any game of morals, he told her—she peered at the squares. You could advance more quickly if you landed on the virtues: honesty, prudence, sobriety, charity, sincerity and humanity. Then there were squares with sins: idleness, passion, folly, lies, blasphemy, cheating and perjury. And squares with punishments for those sins: the whipping post, the pillory, the stocks and Newgate.
‘Your counter, Lady Cecilia,’ Major Crawley said, passing her a carved lady with a flamboyant dress and a hairstyle modelled on the fashions from the last century.
‘We are the only two here,’ Cecilia said softly. ‘For today, at least, why don’t you call me Cecilia?’
He looked at her and for a moment she saw the fire flare in his eyes and she felt a heat begin to rise up from somewhere deep in her body. Then he inclined his head and murmured, ‘Cecilia.’
It took her a minute to recover from the deep, low voice saying her name as if she were the only woman on earth.
‘Joe,’ he offered. It suited him. She knew his parents called him Joseph, his sister, too, but she suspected he preferred the shortened version of his name.
‘Shall we play, Joe?’ she asked, testing out his name. It seemed awfully familiar. There were no other gentlemen she’d ever called by their first names, not even her guardian’s son, who she’d been residing with for the past four years. Peter Turner—to his face she called him Turner, and in her mind she called him The Wet Rag, or sometimes just Rag for short.
‘Ladies first,’ he said, handing her the dice. She rolled and moved her counter, leaning over the board and reading the square she landed on.
‘Passion,’ she said. ‘Proceed to the ducking stool to cool that fire and pay a fine of one.’
Joe raised an eyebrow and watched as she pushed her counter to the ducking stool.
‘It’s a bit excessive,’ Cecilia murmured. ‘Ducking a girl just because of a little passion.’
‘Compared to what society does to a woman who shows passion, I think your little lady has got away lightly.’
‘True.’ Many a woman of Cecilia’s acquaintance had been ruined by just one kiss, one inappropriate touch. She glanced up at Joe sitting across from her. If anyone ever found out she’d spent two nights here unchaperoned with an unmarried man she would be ruined. Not that she had anything to be ruined from, it wasn’t as though she was ever planning to marry, but her reputation would be destroyed and the gossips would tear her apart.
‘No one will ever know,’ Joe said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘You can tell my family you only just set out and you can tell your guardian you’ve been with my family the whole time.’
‘I wouldn’t put it past him to already be hammering on the door at Hawthorn House,’ Cecilia said. She could picture the rotund old man wheezing through the snow and demanding his ward back from the Crawleys.
‘He cares that much about you?’ Joe asked, rolling the dice and moving a couple of spaces. ‘Sobriety,’ he said, raising the glass of whisky in the air in salute.
Cecilia snorted. ‘He cares about my money.’
Joe raised an eyebrow in question and she sighed. For so long she’d dealt with her guardian alone, it would be good to have a moan to someone about the impossible situation.
‘I am rather wealthy,’ she said, feeling her cheeks redden as they did whenever she spoke about money. It wasn’t boastful, just a fact. She’d been touted the wealthiest heiress in England. Cecilia didn’t know if it were true, but she suspected she was in the top three at the very least.
‘What has that got to do with your guardian?’
‘His fortunes have been declining in recent years and he wishes to prop his up with mine.’
Six years he’d been working on Cecilia. At first it had been flattery and compliments, gently ushering her and his son, The Wet Rag, together at every opportunity. Encouraging her to turn down other suitors. As she’d neared her twenty-first birthday he’d become more desperate, less subtle. There had been the comments about what she owed him for taking her in, an insistence that she pay him back by marrying his son. When Cecilia had stood strong against this pressure he’d become less and less pleasant and more recently Cecilia had spent her evenings dodging his wandering hands and trying to ignore his spiteful comments. He was the reason that in recent months she’d learned to lock her doors and put a chairback beneath the handle. Her guardian, in his desperation, had turned to drink and when he was inebriated he got a certain look in his eyes that Cecilia did not trust. More than once he’d brushed past her too closely or let a hand rest where it shouldn’t.
‘He would like me to marry his son, Peter Turner.’
‘Peter Turner...’ Joe mused. ‘Not that insipid-looking chap who couldn’t find his own boots even with the help of a map?’
‘That sounds like him,’ Cecilia said, smiling at the look of horror on Joe’s face. It was a relief she wasn’t the only one who disliked the man.
‘Tell me you’re not even considering it.’
‘I’m offended, Major Crawley, that you even have to ask.’
‘Joe,’ he said softly.
‘Joe,’ she repeated. ‘Anyway, my birthday is on Christmas Day and then I’ll be twenty-one. I shall be in charge of my own inheritance and no longer obliged to live with the Turners and their scheming.’
‘What do you plan to do?’
She shrugged. ‘Go away. Far away.’
He nodded as if he could understand that desire.
‘I’ll buy a little house somewhere, set myself up as a spinster. Perhaps become involved in some charitable organisations.’
Joe laughed. ‘A spinster. You’re far too young and pretty to be a spinster.’
‘You think I’m pretty?’
‘Of course. A man would be foolish to deny it.’
Cecilia felt a peculiar warmth somewhere deep inside her and smiled.
‘Do you know how many marriage proposals I’ve had in the past four years since my debut?’ she asked.
‘Apart from Turner the younger?’ He shook his head.
‘Twenty-four. That’s six a year.’ Cecilia shook her head slowly and took a moment to roll the dice, counting the squares. ‘Greed,’ she read. ‘Go to Newgate and miss a turn.’ She looked up and saw Joe’s expression. ‘I’m not boasting about the proposals—none of them was worth anything. None of them cared for me, none of them really knew me. They just all saw the inheritance, the money they could be in possession of if they were smart enough to fool me.’
‘It must have been very difficult to tell who your friends were. Charity, move three spaces forward.’
Cecilia laughed, hearing the note of bitterness in her voice.
‘I was fooled a couple of times before I worked out why I was quite so popular.’ She tried not to think of the mistake she’d very nearly made. Her naïve seventeen-year-old self had been flattered by the attention from the rakish Lord Melbry. He’d danced with her, kissed her, led her off into darkened rooms to whisper his messages of love into her ear. She had been all ready to elope with him, completely besotted. It had only been luck that meant she’d overheard his conversation with one of his friends, declaring it the easiest seduction he’d ever performed and the one with the biggest rewards.
Cecilia had been devastated, with the loss of a man she thought she had loved and had loved her in return, but more lastingly with the loss of her innocence. She suddenly began to see the new friends and suitors for what they really were—just interested in her wealth.
‘I understand not wanting to get hurt,’ Joe said slowly, his eyes focused down on the table in front of him. ‘But do you really want to commit yourself to a lifetime of being alone?’
‘I could ask you the same question,’ she said, trying not to make it sound as though she was lashing out in retaliation to his words. ‘Surely it is better to be out there in the world than hiding yourself away here in this cottage?’
Joe looked up and grinned, one of the first true smiles she’d seen on his face. ‘We’re a pair, aren’t we? The spinster heiress and the lame Major.’
Cecilia giggled, wondering how he would react if she moved her fingers forward a little across the table to touch her fingertips to his. It was an urge she was finding hard to suppress, but she knew that even though she was seeing a softer side to Major Crawley right now, he probably would not like the invasion of his personal space.
‘Humility,’ Joe said, moving his piece a few places forward. ‘Take another turn.’
Cecilia watched as he rolled the dice again, taking in the soft curve of his lips and the smooth skin of his jaw as her eyes danced across his face. Still she was waiting for him to answer her about his plans for the future, but it looked as though he was not going to elaborate any time soon.
‘Don’t you get lonely here?’ she asked quietly.
‘No,’ he said with a conviction that told Cecilia he’d been asked the question before. Probably by his mother. ‘I’ve learned to enjoy my own company.’
‘Good. So in the months you’ve been here what have you decided about your future?’ she pressed.
‘You’re relentless,’ he murmured. ‘Did my mother send you to find out what I’m doing with my life?’
‘You’ve found me out,’ Cecilia said with a smile. ‘I’m nothing but a spy for Mrs Crawley.’
Joe took the dice between his fingers and twisted it backwards and forward for a few moments, looking down at it intently. ‘Do you know, I still haven’t been able to decide.’
She wondered if he was stuck in the past, stuck in the war, mourning for lost friends and unable to move past the grim reality of battle. Over and over again she’d heard of men returning from the war changed, finding it difficult to slot back into everyday life, not able to understand the petty grievances of their loved ones now they’d seen larger things to worry about.
‘Do you think living here has actually stopped you from moving forward?’ Cecilia asked, knowing she was going too far, probing into too personal a matter, but not being able to stop herself.
Joe rolled the dice, the clattering the only noise as his face set into a neutral, unreadable expression. ‘Six,’ he said, moving his piece along the board to the very last square, which had a picture of a church steeple on it. ‘It would seem I’m the winner.’
Without another word he got up and poked at the fire.
‘We need more wood,’ he said, glaring at the almost-empty basket.
‘Do you always run away when someone’s questions get a little bit close to the truth?’ she asked quietly. It was far too presumptive to say to a man she barely knew, but although they had only just become reacquainted she wanted to help him. As much as someone with such little experience of real life could help.
‘Nine years I was in the army. Nine years. That’s almost a third of my life,’ he said, looking into the flames. ‘I don’t want to go back, but I’m finding it a little harder to move forward than I had anticipated.’
‘So it’s not about your injury?’
‘Not entirely,’ he said, then sighed, and Cecilia wondered if the man in front of her knew what was holding him back from participating in life again. He fell silent, then gave a shrug, picked up the basket that normally contained the firewood and headed for the door.