Page 96 of The Dueling Duchess

“But what I do care about is doing right by Cat now that I have her,” Cecile went on. “She should have a chance to be a young lady—as Marianne was raised, even though she ended up going into the Fayre. I think perhaps a governess is better. I never had one and I have often felt the lack of an education.”

“You didn’t go to school?”

“My father had me in the shop from the age of five—that is the way it is done in my family,” she said, aware that she sounded more than a little defensive.

“I wasn’t going to criticize.”

“People have in the past.” Her cousin Curtis had, for one. The fool should have understood that she never could have recreated her father’s gun plans from memory if she’d not grown up working at the bench alongside him.

Guy didn’t speak, but merely held her gaze, his expression serious and very un-Guy-like.

Also very unnerving.

“She will live with me,” Cecile said, only realizing as she said it how calm she now felt. Cecile had nobody of her own. And Cat had only George. The three of them could now have each other.

“I am glad to hear that,” Guy said, his smile gentle.

“I will engage a governess for her,” she said. “Cat will have to earn her own way in life; the least I can do is equip her.”

“I think that is the right decision.” He raised a hand to hail a hackney.

“I would prefer to walk back.”

Surprise flickered on his face, but he nodded.

“Richie says you have more applicants to interview this afternoon,” he said after a moment or two.

“Yes, but I am not optimistic. I am beginning to think I am searching for someone who doesn’t exist. Most of the women have been so clumsy I’d never trust them with a spoon, not to mention a loaded pistol.”

He laughed, the sound warming her far more than it should and sending flutters through her chest.

“It’s true,” she insisted. “I had a girl—a pastrycook’s assistant who I think must have set fire to her last employer’s business—and when she discharged the pistol—after I’d demonstrated the process extensively—she shrieked, her arm jerked up, and she shot the ceiling, thankfully one of the panels rather than the chandelier.”

Guy chuckled.

Ugh. That intoxicating sound again.

“Well, there are women who know how to use fowling pieces and hunt—my sisters do—but you’ll not find them among the laboring classes, I’m afraid.”

“Maybe I should be advertising in the society section of the papers,” Cecile reflected gloomily.

They walked for a while in companionable silence.

“I want to ask you something. Something that is personal in nature,” Guy said a few moments later. “But I don’t want you to get angry with me.”

She cut him an amused glance. “Since when have you cared about anything like that?”

“You’d be surprised,” he muttered.

Whatever that meant.

Cecile considered his question while he gave a coin to the lad who’d cleared a path through the rapidly melting slush.

Although they’d been lovers for weeks, they’d rarely spoken of personal matters. Their lives had been filled with so much drama and excitement, they’d had plenty of other things to discuss, like dodging French mercenaries, demented deposed kings, and unscrupulous barons.

Cecile had discouraged personal questions and hadn’t asked any of her own. She’d known all along their liaison was temporary. Why make parting an even more painful business?

But here he was, back in her life.