heart. All that time his heart had been like those icy white roses, frozen inside his chest. Months and months had passed, and all that time, he’d never once been warm.
He didn’t need to say so. Cecilia saw the answer in his face.
“Come with me.” She took his hand, drew him toward the bed, and eased back the coverlet. “Get into bed, Gideon.”
He wanted to. God, he wanted to, but he wouldn’t take advantage of the only woman who’d shown him any kindness since the Murderous Marquess was born.
“Just to sleep.” She nodded at the bed. “I don’t want you to be cold tonight.”
Gideon gazed into those sweet, dark eyes and God help him, he couldn’t say no. He wanted it too much. Wanted her next to him, her warm body curved against his.
So, he did as she bade him. He climbed into the bed and held his arms out to her. The coverlet rustled, the bed beneath him dipped under her slight weight, and then she was there, curled against him, her head resting on his chest.
“Go to sleep, Gideon.”
Gideon closed his eyes, and for the first time since he’d lost his wife and son he slept throughout the night, dreamless and warm.
Chapter Eighteen
Cecilia dreamed of anguished blue eyes and frozen white roses. The dream was disturbing in a way she didn’t understand, in a way a dream never had been before, and she woke with a start, her night rail damp and a gasp on her lips.
She lay still for long, uneasy moments, struggling to remember where she was, but then Gideon shifted beside her, and she knew. She hadn’t intended to join him in his bed, much less fall asleep beside him. She’d only meant to wait with him until the dreadful cold that had seeped into his body and soul passed, then return to Isabella.
But he’d wrapped his arm around her waist and gathered her against his hard, warm chest. He’d fallen asleep at once, his deep, even breaths brushing against the back of her neck, and she couldn’t bear to wake him, this man who’d lost so much, suffered so deeply.
She slid out from under Gideon’s arm as quietly as she could, but before she could slip back into her own bedchamber, she found herself pausing, something she couldn’t name luring her back, her footsteps silent against the floorboards. It drew her closer, the hem of the blue silk bed hangings brushing over the tops of her bare feet. In a daze, she reached out and rested her fingers on the heavy gilt frame of the portrait.
She hadn’t come here for her. When she’d entered his bedchamber, she’d thought only of Gideon. It wasn’t until she saw the portrait that she realized of course…of course, she’d be here. It was, of every other place in Darlington Castle, the only place she belonged.
Lady Cassandra, the seventh Marchioness of Darlington.
Cecilia edged closer, staring up at Lady Cassandra’s face. Had she seen it before? There was something familiar about her features, as if Cecilia were looking into the face of a friend, not a stranger.
Cassandra was fair-skinned and blue-eyed, with high cheekbones, a slender nose, and a determined jaw that was just a touch too square to be considered strictly pretty. She hadn’t been a beauty like Lady Leanora, who was without dispute a dazzling, glittering diamond of the first water, with a face so perfect it almost hurt to look at her.
Not Cassandra.
The firm jaw, the kindness in those blue eyes…there was nothing about Cassandra’s face that could ever hurt a soul. Lady Leanora was a blinding diamond, but Cassandra was softer, subtler, more easily overlooked, perhaps, but her beauty was deeper than her skin, like a ruby with a banked fire at its center.
Cecilia stared up into the blue eyes, speechless. She felt as if she knew her.
As if she’d always known her.
And Gideon…she turned to look at him, her heart twisting at the vulnerability in his face, his defenselessness. The shadows in his eyes were hidden from her now, the deep lines of pain etched about his mouth relaxed in sleep.
It wasn’t the face of a man who’d murdered his wife.
She padded on bare feet back to her own bedchamber, ready to collapse with fatigue, but it wasn’t just her body that was exhausted. It was her heart, too. It gave a miserable lurch in her chest when she recalled the look on Gideon’s face last night as he stood above the white marble headstone