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Edward thought hard

and he seemed to have married Cecilia Harcourt

He opened his eyes and tried to focus on the green-eyed wo down at hiine what Edward Rokesby ht say when he finally woke up She’d come up with several possibilities, the most likely of which was: "Who the hell are you?"

It would not have been a silly question

Because no ht--no matter what everyone at this rather poorly outfitted ht, her name was not Cecilia Rokesby, it was Cecilia Harcourt, and she most definitely was notin the bed at her side

As for how the ht have been so that she was his wife in front of his co officer, two soldiers, and a clerk

It had seehtly She ell aware of the dangers of traveling to the war-torn colonies, to say nothing of the voyage across the temperamental North Atlantic But her father had died, and then she’d received word that Thomas was injured, and then her wretched cousin had co around Marswell

She couldn’t reo

So in as probably the only rash decision of her life, she’d packed up her house, buried the silver in the back garden, and booked passage from Liverpool to New York When she arrived, however, Thoiment, but no one had answers for her, and when she persisted with her questions, she was dismissed by the nored, patronized, and probably lied to She’d used up nearly all her funds, was getting by on one house rooht not have been a prostitute

(That she was having relations was a certainty; the only question hether she was being paid for them And Cecilia had to say, she rather hoped she was, because whatever that wo, it sounded like an awful lot of work)

But then, after nearly a week of getting nowhere, Cecilia overheard one soldier telling another that a ht to hospital a few days earlier He’d had a blow to the head and was unconscious His name was Rokesby

Edward Rokesby It had to be

Cecilia had never actually laid eyes on the man, but he was her brother’s closest friend, and she felt like she knew him She knew, for example, that he was from Kent, that he was the second son of the Earl of Manston, and that he had a younger brother in the navy and another at Eton His sister washe ooseberry fool

His older brother was called George, and she had been surprised when Edward had admitted that he did not envy hi lack of freedom, he’d once written, and he knew that his place was in the ar and Country

Cecilia supposed that an outsider ht have been shocked at the level of intimacy in their correspondence, but she’d learned that war made philosophers of men And un adding little notes of his own at the end of Tho about sharing one’s thoughts with a stranger It was easy to be brave with so table or in a drawing room

Or at least this was Cecilia’s hypothesis Maybe he riting all the sas to his family and friends back in Kent She’d heard frohbor Surely Edas penning letters to her, too

And it wasn’t as if Edas actually writing to Cecilia It had started with little snippets from Thomas: Edward says such-and-such or I am compelled by Captain Rokesby to point out

The first few had been terribly a bills and a disinterested father, had welcoht to her face So she replied in kind, adding little bits and pieces to her own missives: Please tell Captain Rokesbyand later: I cannot help but think that Captain Rokesby would enjoy

Then one day she saw that her brother’s latest raph written by another hand It was a short greeting, containing little more than a description of wildflowers, but it was froned it

Devotedly,

Capt Edward Rokesby