Please, please, don't say it—
She couldn't speak. Instead, she gave a faint nod. No matter how she tried, she couldn't bring herself to break his gaze.
“Lady Cecelia, since our meeting, I have been profoundly aware that you are unlike any other young lady I have ever had the pleasure of knowing,” Lord Greystone said, his tone clear and crisp, even sweet.
Cecelia closed her eyes and, for just a moment, allowed the terror to wash away in favour of being wooed by the gentleman before her.
If this were to be her one and only proposal, she did not wish to look back on it and see only the negatives. She allowed theviscount's words to wash over her as she opened her eyes once more.
“You are the most beautiful and radiant creature that I have ever laid eyes upon,” Lord Greystone continued. “And I cannot bear the thought of wasting any more time beating around the bush. I wish to spend the rest of my life with you, and therefore, I ask, will you, Lady Cecelia Flannery, do me the honour of marrying me?”
Cecelia's face grew cold, and she knew without doubt that she must have gone terribly pale. That much was clear from the way that Lord Greystone's expression fell.
She watched as the oddest thing occurred. For just a second, she thought she saw another standing before her. Not George this time, but Lord Greystone again, or at least, a far less friendly version of him.
And it startled her into taking a step back.
A memory flashed in her mind, George warning her of the viscount. What was it that he had said all those weeks ago?
She couldn't remember the full details, but they were enough to make her hesitate now. Maybe she ought to have listened, at least until George had finished telling her all he had to tell. Instead, she had insisted that she would not hear of it.
Now, here she stood, trapped between the viscount and her mother, their wishes aligned, and yet hers were suddenly so clearly the opposite.
“Lord Greystone, I—”
“What is the matter?” Lord Greystone said, his grip on her hands tightening a little. Alarm spread through Cecelia’s chest as it bordered on uncomfortable. “Have we not waited long enough for this moment?”
Cecelia struggled to swallow past the lump in her throat. The sound of blood pounding in her ears made it almost impossible to hear what he was saying. She felt as if the entire world were spinning around her, and only Lord Greystone’s grip on her was anchoring her there. Yet, somehow, she prayed for him to let her go, even if it meant never finding which way was up again.
“Lady Cecelia, if you do not accept my proposal, people will begin to talk,” Lord Greystone said, never blinking. “Our courtship has dragged on long enough. People have already begun to speculate.”
“Lord Greystone,” Cecelia said through gritted teeth, her panic rising, “you … you’re hurting me.”
He seemed not to hear her as his grip tightened further, becoming truly painful now. Cecelia’s heart raced so violently she thought it might burst from her chest, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get her hands free of his grip.
“You can’t continue to lead me on in this way, My Lady,” he said. His voice had gone from that of a charming gentleman to a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the sneer just too much to keep hidden.
“I … I don’t know what you mean—”
“You will make fools of us both,” Lord Greystone continued, his voice becoming low. He stepped closer, pulling her to him as he whispered in her ear, “I won’t have a frivolous woman like you be the ruin of me.”
That word was the undoing of Cecelia’s panic and the beginning of her anger. It boiled up inside her as she remembered how, once, George, too, had called her such a thing.
She had sat back and accepted it with the quiet patience of a lady then. After all, it had come from the lips of someone who had once known her, the real her, not this lady she pretended to be.
But there was no way on Earth that she was going to stand here and take such an insult from a man who barely knew her, a manwho had clearly been deceiving her. Whatever his reason for doing so, she wasn’t about to fall for it any longer.
“How dare you call me such a—” she began, finally managing to pull her hands away in her anger.
She never got to finish the sentence, for the sound of horses’ hooves on the bridge came charging towards them.
Though she did not see it immediately through the fog, she sensed its direction and turned just in time to find the large black stallion skidding to a halt a few metres from her mother.
The woman screamed as if she thought the stallion were about to hit her, and she and her lady’s maid scurried out of the way even as the rider dismounted, yelling something Cecelia could not quite hear.
“Get away from him!”
When the voice finally hit her ears, George’s face came swimming into view through the fog.
