“I’m fine,” George assured her. Hers was not the concern he wished to receive. He half-turned his attention back to Cece, hoping that she might have realized the seriousness of the situation.
“See, he’s fine!” she insisted, throwing her arms wide. “He had to have been cheating, or he never would have been able to lay a hand on me. Nobody ever manages to catch me.”
“I was not cheating,” George insisted. The sting of her accusation once more caught him sharply in the chest.
“Yes, you were! You are a cheat,” Cece snapped, glaring at him with anger brimming in her brilliant green eyes. George would have given anything to grab her then, to take her into his embrace and force her to calm down so that he could assure herhe was not anything of the sort. Yet, before he could do so, she added, “You’re a cheat and a coward!”
To be called a cheat was one thing, but a coward?
The pain in his leg suddenly forgotten, George jumped to his feet and towered over her once more.
“How dare you? I’m no coward!”
“Yes, you are,” she snapped back at him, and for a second, he thought she might push him again. He braced himself, prepared for it. Cece had always been a terribly sore loser. This was nothing new on her end, and things always worked themselves out. They always had tiffs like this, and yet, there was something about that word –coward.
“Go on, Georgie, admit it!” Cece insisted. “You are a cheat and a coward. You told me so by the fountain. You’re a coward.”
“You had to have been cheating,” Walter insisted. “Cece is right. Nobody ever catches her. We all give up in the end.”
George didn’t respond. He was still stuck on that word.
“Yeah, go on, George, admit it!” Elizabeth added, brushing back a loose strand of pale blonde hair.
George’s stomach clenched, yet he did not snap back at his best friend’s little sister. Instead, he found himself staring at Cece, his entire world feeling as if it were falling apart as he saw the angry intent within that beautiful green gaze.
“Go on, George, tell them what you told me,” Cece insisted, placing her hands upon her hips, hips that in recent months had started to grow rounder.
The urge to reach out, grab her hand, and drag her somewhere more private to talk was almost uncontrollable. He even took a half-step forward, but Cece’s next words stopped him dead in his tracks.
“Georgie here is frightened! He’s a coward and a cheat, and he would run from a rabbit, let alone the French!”
The lump in his throat grew so thick then that he couldn’t utter a word past his trembling lips.
The laughter of those all around him made his eyes sting, but it was the look on Cece’s face that had a single tear rolling down his cheek.
“Look, there it is!” Mary said, clearly following her sister’s lead as she so often did. “He’s crying.”
“I am not,” George protested, angrily swiping his sleeve across his face.
Again, his friends laughed, and his chest tightened until he could barely breathe.
Unable to stand there a moment longer, he glanced around the group, pausing on Cece’s angry face before he turned on his heels and started to hobble away.
Silence fell then as though they realized the nerve they had hit.
“George! Come back!” Catherine called after him. “She didn’t mean it, did you, Cece?”
But George did not wait to hear the answer. He fled, barely able to hold back the tears that stung his eyes even more than the burning he felt in his wounded leg.
Chapter 1
Lady Cecelia Flannery never believed she would find herself here at just eighteen years old. Dressed all in black, her head bowed low just as her mother had instructed her.
As her father’s body was committed to the ground, she held back the tears that she had been fighting for the last several days.
On either side of her, her mother and sisters wept openly, her mother sliding her handkerchief beneath her thick black veil now and then to wipe away a tear.
All around her were sombre faces, hundreds of faces, and she couldn't help wondering how many had actually known her father. How many had turned up simply to pay their respects because he was an earl?
