would shatter at a touch, but there was despair in his gaze.
Slowly, Cecilia turned her attention to the portrait, stunned once again at Lady Leanora’s exquisite face. She’d never seen such pale, perfect skin or such luminous blue eyes, but there was something…unbearable about her beauty.
It wasn’t a warm or welcoming face, as Lady Cassandra’s had been, but overwhelming. Cecilia dragged her gaze away from it with a shudder, but if Lady Leanora’s beauty made her shrink back, it seemed to have a different effect on Gideon, who was still staring up at her as if he couldn’t bear to tear his gaze away.
Was it possible the villagers were right, and Gideon truly did have a tendre for his brother’s widow? He loved his niece, doted on her, in fact. Wasn’t it possible his affection for Isabella arose from a passionate attachment to her absent mother? Perhaps he was lavishing all his frustrated love for Lady Leanora on her daughter. Perhaps he’d refused to let her take Isabella with her when she fled because he’d hoped Isabella’s presence would lure her back to Darlington Castle.
Cecilia didn’t want to believe it, but the look on Gideon’s face, the way his breath seemed to be trapped inside his lungs…she cleared her throat, suddenly desperate to make him look away from that treacherous face. “I’ve never seen a more remarkable face than hers. I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to see her in person. Overwhelming, I imagine.”
Gideon startled, as if only now realizing Cecilia was there. “It’s a good likeness of her.”
Cecilia nodded, but she avoided looking back up at the portrait as she fumbled for something more to say. She wanted to ask if Gideon thought she’d ever return to Darlington Castle—or if he hoped she would—but something made her bite her tongue, something she feared was a desire not to hear his answer.
“It was a good likeness of her, I should say. It was painted a decade ago, when she first came to Darlington Castle after she and Nathanial married. By the time she left again, she looked…quite different.”
“Different in what way?”
Gideon laughed, but it was a hard, ugly sound. “One’s face is a reflection of one’s heart. What’s inside your heart makes itself known on your face.”
Cecilia swallowed. “What was in Lady Leanora’s heart?”
Gideon turned to Cecilia, a bitter twist to his lips. “Ice.”
Ice. It seemed a strange word to describe the lady he loved, unless he felt she’d betrayed him. Then it was the perfect word, wasn’t it? Just the word a jilted lover would use.
“They were cousins, you know,” he added. “Lady Leanora and my wife.”
“Cousins?” Cecilia turned to him, surprised. “I-I didn’t realize.”
“Yes. After my brother’s death, Lady Leanora summoned Cassandra to Darlington Castle to act as her companion. I met Cassandra then, and we married six months later. Do you think they look alike?” Gideon’s attention had drifted back to Lady Leanora’s portrait again, an unreadable expression on his face.
Cecilia followed his gaze, but she flinched away before meeting Lady Leanora’s frigid blue eyes. Perhaps there was a similarity in their features, but to Cecilia’s eye, no two ladies could look less alike. “No.”
That caught Gideon’s attention. “Why not?”
One is a diamond, the other a ruby.
That was what Cecilia thought when she’d first seen Cassandra’s portrait—that Lady Leanora was like a dazzling, glittering diamond, so bright it hurt to look at her, whereas Cassandra…
“One is fire, and the other ice.”
Gideon traced his fingertip down the bridge of her nose, over her parted lips and across her jaw, his gaze following the path of the caress. “Cassandra’s heart was written on her face. Her beauty came from here.” He lay his palm in the center of Cecilia’s chest, over her heart. “Just as yours does.”
Cecilia gazed up at him, mesmerized. It seemed like a lifetime ago she’d looked into his eyes and thought them cold. When she looked into them now, she felt she could happily drown in those warm blue depths.
It didn’t occur to her they were standing in a place where anyone could pass by and see them. She didn’t think of that as Gideon’s lips drew closer to hers. She thought of the sweet warmth of his breath against her mouth, his large, gentle hand resting over her wildly beating heart. She never considered refusing him. She simply tilted her head back, and offered her mouth to him.
His lips hovered over hers with a desperate groan, as if he’d waited