“I do—”

“And Sebastian will know as soon he lies with me.” If he lies with me. She pushed the thought away, refusing it room in her mind.

“—but the world must know,” Ceci said. “You know as well as I that the show of truth is more valuable than the truth itself.” She gripped Beatrice’s shoulders and shook her gently. “If the truth alone mattered, you could join Sebastian at Benbury tomorrow.”

“I cannot wait so long,” Beatrice whispered.

“Are you so eager?” Ceci asked, her eyebrows lifting.

“Eager? No, I am no more eager to be Sebastian’s wife than a condemned man is for the hangman. But I would rather not wait, day in and day out, for the rope.”

“It will not be so ill, Beatrice, I swear it.”

“I cannot keep a still tongue in my head when I am with him! I carp and complain as no proper wife should ever do. He will lesson me, Ceci, if not with a switch, then with the flat of his hand, and I do not know that I can endure any more of it. What shall I do?”

“Be still, dearling, hush.” Ceci knelt and, setting the comb aside, took Beatrice’s hands in her own, squeezing them gently. “However angry Sebastian may be with you—and he is angry, though I think him a fool for it—he is also a good and kind man. He is not Thomas Manners and he will not use you as Manners did.”

“How can you know that? How?”

“How can you not? Sebastian does not beat his horses or his hounds. Why should he beat his wife?”

There was truth in what Ceci said. Sebastian was not given to harming those in his care, more than could ever have been said of Thomas Manners. Seeing that was one thing, trusting it another. She could not take that step. She whispered, “I am sore afraid.” As senseless as it seemed, she did not fear Sebastian himself. She only feared to marry him.

“I know, dearling, I know.” Ceci let go of Beatrice’s hands to wrap her arms around her. Beatrice rested her head on her sister’s shoulder, while Ceci rubbed her back as Mistress Emma used to when they were small girls. Ceci’s cleverness had not made her cold or uncaring, nor had she forgotten how to love. Beatrice felt strength flowing into her as if it came from her sister.

“I am so glad you will be with us at Wednesfield,” she said.

The hands on her back stilled, but Ceci did not speak. Beatrice lifted her head to face her sister. Her mouth was turned down, her eyes shadowed by her lashes. Beatrice’s heart chilled.

“You are not coming home.” She did not need to ask, not when she already knew the answer.

Ceci’s lashes lifted, revealing sadness and excitement mingled. “If the queen gives me leave, I shall return to my post as maid of honor.”

“Why?” Why do you go? Why do you leave me when I need you? “For the family’s benefit? We do not need it. For love of the life at Court? You do not love Court, I have seen it in your face.” She was bereft, betrayed, wanting to hold Ceci to her with both hands and angry at the knowledge that nothing could hold her sister back.

Ceci released Beatrice and sat back on her heels. “No,” she said softly. “I do not love Court.” She sighed. “I do not want to leave you at all, but there are things…people…one man I must face before I do anything else.”

“Who? Who must you see? And why?” Who is so important you can abandon me? Beatrice pushed the thought aside. I will not feel sorry for myself. Pity, from whatever source, was worthless.

Ceci swallowed. “I loved a man.” She picked up the comb and ran her fingertip along its teeth, the faint rattle of her fingertip’s passage loud. “I thought he loved me.” She laid the comb in her lap. “I need to know the truth. I need to know how he feels.”

“Who is he?” Rumors returned to her, tales half heard because no one would tell her outright. Disbelief spread silence through her mind. “Not the Duke of—”

“Do not say his name!” Ceci cried, reaching up to put her fingers over Beatrice’s mouth. “I cannot listen to it.”

“There were rumors—” Beatrice said against her sister’s hand.

Ceci nodded. “There is some truth to them.” Her hand dropped away. “If he does not love me, I must know. And the only way is to see him again.”

Her sister’s courage stole the breath from Beatrice’s throat. To confront the man she loved simply to know with certainty that he no longer loved her. The one time circumstance had demanded like courage from Beatrice, she had fled behind the barrier of pride, afraid to risk a little wound, a little pain. Ceci’s risk seemed so much greater.

“And if he does love you?” she asked. She had to know, as if the knowledge might answer some question she had not faced, resolve some dilemma she had not acknowledged. “You cannot marry him.”

“I know I cannot marry him. But if he loves me, I will know all I have done has not been a mistake.” Ceci’s eyes were unfocused, as if she gazed on memory and no longer saw the narrow, candlelit bedchamber.

“What did you do?” What could her good, clever sister have done that the knowledge a man loved her would transmute mistakes?

Ceci’s attention returned and as it did, something in her face closed. “Turn. Let me comb your hair.”

Beatrice turned her back on her sister. Even if the look on Ceci’s face had not warned her, she would never pry into another’s secrets. Too many fingers had poked at hers.

Yellow candlelight and gray shadows bounced off the flaws in the wall before her. The patterns of illumination and obscurity shifted as the candle flame bobbed, jerked by the drafts creeping underneath the door. Almost speaking to the play of light and dark before her, Beatrice said, “It will not be the same at Wednesfield without you.”

Common sense reminded her she had not needed Ceci in years, so it should not matter that her sister would not be at the castle. Yet the forlorn voice she thought she had quelled asked, Who will be my companion now?

“It was not the same when you left,” Ceci replied. She lifted Beatrice’s hair off her neck a moment before the comb resumed its gentle tug. “I shall return when you marry Sebastian.”

Beatrice nodded. What shall I do until then?

“M ichaelmas?” Sebastian asked, certain he had misheard the earl. Surely Lord Wednesfield could not expect him to wait almost two months to claim Beatrice. “I do not see the need to put the wedding off.”

The earl’s stare reminded Sebastian of the days of his boyhood when the earl had treated him almost as one of his own sons, teaching him how to be a gentleman and landowner even as he taught his sons Jasper and John. That same expression had been the earl’s response to foolish questions; seeing it now, Sebastian frowned. What was wrong with what he had just said? There could be no reason to delay the wedding.

The earl shook his head, the stare turning to a look of disgust. “No, there is no need. It does not matter that when your son is born men will count on their fingers and say the boy is of Thomas Manners’s getting. So long as you claim him, what does it matter that men call him bastard behind his back?”

The earl’s quiet, thoughtful tone annoyed Sebastian, all the more so because he deserved the earl’s scorn. He had made foolish assumptions. Still, two months? “Why so long, my lord? Beatrice has been a widow for over a fortnight.”

“Are you so eager?” the earl asked, his eyebrows lifting.

Something the dark depths of the earl’s eyes made Sebastian wary, wary enough to hold his tongue. “No, my lord, I am surprised. But I see your point. Michaelmas it is.”

The earl smiled. “That was simple enough, lad.” The smile deepened. “I do not think the rest will pass so easily.” He raised his mug of ale to his mouth and drank deeply.

The apprehension tightening Sebastian’s muscles eased. The drink was an old trick of the earl’s, meant to make the man on the other side of the table believe he was gathering his thoughts when, in truth, he had already carefully considered everything he meant to say. Affection and admiration, so much a part of his relationship with the earl he could not remember a time when he had not felt them, surged through Sebastian.