of the four of them who noticed the slight hesitation in her step when she saw Miss Honeywell. It happened so quickly he’d have missed it himself if he’d happened to blink.
Still, when she reached them, there wasn’t the slightest hint of apprehension in her face. She offered them all a calm, graceful curtsy, then turned a distant look on Gideon. “Yes, my lord? How may I help?”
“This young lady here says she knows you, Cecilia, from London.” Gideon emphasized the last word, so as to leave Cecilia in no doubt as to the import of his question. If she thought he’d forgotten she was meant to be from Warwickshire, she was very much mistaken. He hadn’t forgotten a single word Cecilia had uttered since the first moment she arrived at Darlington Castle.
He studied Cecilia’s expression, but she was looking at him as if she’d never laid eyes on him before, nothing but polite enquiry on her smooth, blank face. “Oh, no. I beg your pardon, miss, but I’ve never been to London. If that’s all, my lord?”
“Yes, I think we’ve kept Miss and Mrs. Honeywell standing about in the hallway long enough, Darlington. Now, shall we have our tea? You may go, Cecilia.”
Haslemere waved her back toward the other end of the hallway, but Cecilia hadn’t taken more than two steps before Miss Honeywell stopped her. “No, I’m certain it was you. Perhaps I’ve seen you walking in Hyde Park, or—”
“A housemaid, promenading through Hyde Park at the fashionable hour?” Mrs. Honeywell gave her skirts an important twitch as she looked down her nose at Cecilia. “I hardly think so, Fanny.”
Cecilia ignored this ill-tempered remark, and smiled at Miss Honeywell. “I imagine there are a great many young women in London who look like me.”
“No, there aren’t.” The words fell out of Gideon’s mouth before he realized he was going to say them. Indeed, even before he realized he’d thought them.
Haslemere pinched the bridge of his nose. “Don’t be absurd, Darlington. There must be hundreds of young women in London with dark eyes and dark hair.”
“There are, indeed,” Mrs. Honeywell snapped. “Nothing special in that.”
“No. Not like Cecilia’s, there aren’t.” Gideon stepped closer to her, with his gaze still locked on her face. There might be thousands of young ladies in London with Cecilia’s coloring, but no other young woman in the world could be mistaken for Cecilia.
Her eyes were dark, yes, but it was a warm, velvety, bottomless darkness, unlike any other dark eyes he’d ever seen, and her hair…Gideon’s fingers twitched with the sudden need to touch it, run his hands through those rich, mahogany-colored locks. And her mouth, the plump pink curve of it, the hint of vulnerability in that tender bottom lip, the surprising sweetness he hadn’t noticed until just now—
“I know!” Miss Honeywell, who seemed utterly oblivious to the sudden tension in the air, let out an excited squeal. “I recall where I’ve seen you before. You’re a friend of Lady Gray, are you not?”
“Lady Gray? What, you mean the countess? My dear Fanny, you’ve gone mad! What in the world would a friend of a countess be doing cleaning Lord Darlington’s castle? It’s absurd.”
“But I’m certain I saw you walking with her one day in Hyde Park—”
Miss Honeywell was interrupted by an explosion of shattering glass, followed by a cry of distress from Cecilia. “Oh, no! Oh, Lord Darlington, I’m so terribly sorry.”
“Clumsy girl! If you were my servant, I’d have that out of your wages!”
Mrs. Honeywell’s face had turned red with outrage, but it wasn’t until Cecilia dropped to her knees on the floor that Gideon realized what had happened.
She’d been carrying her polishing cloth and the glass globe from the lantern when she came into the hallway. When Miss Honeywell mentioned Emma Downing’s name, Cecilia had dropped the glass, and it now lay in a pool of shards on the flagstones at their feet.
“Oh, dear. I can’t bear the sight of blood.”
Miss Honeywell turned toward Gideon as if to hide her face in his chest, but he dropped her arm and knelt down next to Cecilia. “No, don’t try and pick up the glass. Don’t touch it again.” He caught her wrist to keep her from gathering up the shards. “Let me see your hand.”
He gently turned her hand over, revealing an ugly gash on the fleshy part of her palm. It was deep, with blood already gushing from it. For a moment Gideon stared down at her hand, transfixed by