stirred, mumbling something in her sleep. Lord Darlington blinked, then jerked his gaze from her face to Isabella’s.
The tension between them snapped, and the moment was gone.
He turned away from her, settling Isabella in her bed and dropping a kiss on her pink cheek. When he straightened from the bed he stood there awkwardly, as if he wasn’t sure what to do. Finally, he gave her a curt nod, avoiding her eyes.
Cecilia rose uncertainly to her feet. “Good night.”
He nodded again, and then…then he did something that shouldn’t have sent a shiver over her skin, followed by a confusing rush of searing heat.
But it did.
He strode to the door that connected Isabella’s cozy room to his own bedchamber, opened it, and closed it again behind him. He was so close she could hear him on the other side, the soft thud of his footsteps moving across the floor.
Cecilia dropped onto her cot, her knees trembling. The only thing separating her sleeping quarters from Lord Darlington’s bedchamber was a single, connecting door.
Chapter Ten
Four days later.
Gideon opened one eye as his bedchamber door creaked open, the notes of “The Irish Girl” drifting through his head. Had he dreamed of that song again? Of the sweet, clear voice that sang it, each silvery note falling like soft raindrops against his skin—
His other eye flew open, a grimace twisting his lips. For God’s sakes, had he really just compared Cecilia Gilchrist’s voice to silvery raindrops?
Yes. Yes, he had.
He dragged the pillow over his face with a soft groan. There was no reason that song, in her voice should still be echoing as clearly in his head as it had since the first notes left her lips. He’d heard dozens of voices sweeter than hers sing dozens of songs much prettier than that one.
Gideon listened to the soft scrape of the brush against the hearth, the chink of coal, then the strike of flint against steel as Amy lay the fire. At least, he assumed it was Amy, as the business was concluded tidily, with no deafening crashes.
Once she’d left him alone in his bedchamber he sat up, plunged a fist into his pillow, and fell back against it with groan. Every night for the past four days, he’d dreamed about Cecilia Gilchrist. If it wasn’t her voice, it was her wide, dark eyes. If not that, then it was her affection for Isabella, or her seemingly endless supply of inappropriate ballads.
He was preoccupied with her, and he didn’t like it one bit.
Only the worst sort of scoundrel lusted after his servants. He was a man with potent physical urges, but never in his life had he cast a lascivious glance at any of them—not before his wife’s death, when there’d been dozens of housemaids roaming about the castle—and not afterward. He’d confined his masculine attentions to his wife, and he’d do the same again when he and Fanny Honeywell were married.
He needed to banish Cecilia from his mind and put his attention where it belonged.
On his betrothed.
She’d be here in a matter of days. A week after that she’d become his marchioness, and this strange fixation he had on Cecilia would wither like blighted fruit on the vine.
It would, because he wouldn’t allow it to be otherwise.
Until then, he’d simply make a point of keeping away from Cecilia. There was no reason for her to remain in Isabella’s bedchamber when he spent time with his niece. He was perfectly capable of tending to her on his own. He’d always done so before, and there was no reason to change his habits now, even if his masculine urges reared up in violent protest at the thought.
Especially then.
And reared up they had, damn them.
This morning’s protest was more violent than usual, and it took longer than it should have for Gideon to wrestle his body into submission. So long when he crawled from his bed at last, he found the water in the basin had gone freezing cold. He splashed a handful on his face anyway, hoping it would douse the flames in his belly and knock some sense into him, then he donned his riding clothes.
He and Haslemere had agreed to have a ride this morning, and Gideon fancied a good, hard one before the sky released the snow that had been threatening for days, and they all found themselves trapped inside the castle.
Haslemere offered no objection, and so the two of them rode for hours, until Gideon’s heart was pounding with exertion, his thighs