Beauty and the Duke (12 page)

Christine stood for a moment in the common room brushing the raindrops from her cloak, aware that Erik had moved no further. As she glanced up, she steeled herself. Those sitting at the tables closest to them had quit talking. The chorus of rowdy laughter slipped away. Since she could not concede she warranted such regard, she realized that it was not her presence but Erik’s that had dropped the noise level in the room to dead silence.

“Gentlemen,” Erik said.

A few men met his eye, then proceeded about their business, albeit in a more subdued manner. The door to the kitchen suddenly sprang wide. A stout matron wearing a white apron appeared. “Yer grace!”

Her face flushed, she hurried forward and snapped to one of the serving girls, who was holding a tray piled high with empty glasses with a frozen look on her face. “Get yerself movin’, Finella, ’afore I take a bloomin’ switch to yer backside, girl. It’s his grace. Take him upstairs to the rooms we prepared.”

The young barmaid scampered forward. Another maid, a younger red-haired image of Finella, entered the room and sidled past Erik to follow the footman carrying the trunks upstairs.

“Beggin’ your pardon, guv’nor,” the elder innkeeper nervously said, self-consciously patting the gray wisps of hair escaping from beneath her mobcap. “The weather has brought in a crowd tonight and I’ve ’ad to spend more time in the kitchen.” She stole a surreptitious glance at Christine and then at Aunt Sophie before she hastily wiped her hands on her apron. “Supper will be to yer rooms shortly. I’ll see yer favorite bottle of Lochnager brought up, yer grace.”

Erik inclined his head. “That is why I always stop here, Bessie.”

The matron blushed profusely. To Christine, she curtseyed. “Lady Sedgwick, it be our pleasure to welcome ye for the night. ’Tis a terrible night to be about and we’ve already warmed yer room.”

Captured by the woman’s kindness, Christine thanked her. “My wife would like a bath brought up, Bessie,” Erik said, moving Christine ahead of him to precede him up the narrow wooden stairs. “See that my other guests are cared for.”

Christine attempted to look over her shoulder at Aunt Sophie, but Erik’s body blocked her efforts. “Your aunt will be all right,” he said against her ear. The stairs creaked beneath their weight. His head brushed the rafters. “If there is anyone here who can take care of herself it is she.”

Her hand locked in his and his other lightly touching her waist, like a brand, Christine felt him behind her the entire ascent and prayed she would not trip on her skirts. At the end of the narrow corridor, she finally turned to face him. Rain pebbled against the roof. She resisted looking up at the ceiling if only because the noise blunted the sound of her own heartbeat in her ears. He seemed so calm, completely inured to the attention, as if it were common fare that he halt an entire room of conversation with his presence.

“Is it always like this wherever you go?” she inquired.

“Like what?”

“Everyone knows you. Do you travel here often?”

“This is the only respectable inn between Kirkcaldy and Sedgwick Castle. Bessie has been curator of this establishment for five years. Her rooms are clean and she is a notable cook. I have stayed here many times.”

She gazed up at him with a half smile. “Bessie seems quite in awe of you.”

“I am the largest employer that supports this borough. Some years when the crops fail, I am the
only
one who can pay any wage. Hunger is a motivating factor to many to be polite and respectful.”

“I didn’t know Sedgwick land was so close to this place.”

“This village is part of the Sedgwick duchy. We’re
on
Sedgwick land.”

“But I thought we were still a half day from Sedgwick Castle?”

“We are. But it is not a road any sane traveler attempts at night.”

Christine was left momentarily speechless. She’d known the Sedgwick duchy was large, but for some reason she was not prepared to learn just how significant it was.

A gloved hand slipped beneath her chin, tilting her face into the sconce light. Both apprehensive and attracted, she fought the urge to melt against his powerful masculinity as her practical nature intervened to remind her that theirs was a partnership. He’d explicitly spelled out her purpose in their contract. “A maid is inside,” he said, his voice intimate and hushed. “Will you need more than an hour for your toilette?”

“I’ve lived in jungles and deserts and shared quarters with snakes, centipedes and scorpions, not to mention bloodsucking sand fleas. The experience taught me well how to economize on my toilette.”

Amusement in his eyes, his gaze lowered slightly to caress her bosom, suffusing her with an aura of warmth. He leaned around her to open the door, brushing his arm against hers. “Then I will return in an hour, madam.”

She wrapped her hand around his arm. “Where will you be?”

He tipped his chin to the door next to this room. “For now? In the chambers next to yours.” Then he released her hand from his sleeve and gently edged her inside the room. “Enjoy your bath, madam.”

E
rik stepped inside the room adjoining Christine’s and shut the door. A single lamp lit the room. He walked to the window and, pulling aside the curtains, peered outside. A lull in the clouds let the moonlight through and he looked out over an uneven landscape of stone chimneys and thatched roofs stretching into the sleepy village.

Raindrops that had gathered on his cloak had dampened the floor. Removing his hat and gloves, he turned back into the room, carelessly tossing each to a chair. His cloak followed. A bathing closet divided this room from Christine’s and he reflected on the hour he had given her.

He had just stripped off his waistcoat when a knock sounded. Working off his cravat, Erik opened the door. Bessie’s older daughter, Finella, stood hesitantly in the corridor. She carried towels and a bottle of Lochnager and two glasses. Head down, her bright blond hair framing her face, she murmured, “I brought yer drink, yer grace.”

Erik stood aside to allow her into his chambers. Her chin shot up as if he had just invited her into his bed. He frowned. The top of the girl’s head barely reached his chest. She looked all of Becca’s age, per
haps younger, though it was hard to tell with her hair in her face.

Unlike other landed gentry who frequented this main road, he did not sample or abuse the local fare. Not that he had been chaste these last seven years—he had not. He simply did not use his power to mistreat children and servants. Erik considered her for a space, then took the towels from her arms and told her to set the whiskey on the table just inside the door.

The girl slid past him and did as he bid. “Is there anything else?”

The valise he had brought in last night and left here when he went to Kirkcaldy this morning had already been unpacked. His robe lay across the bed. “Attend to my wife’s toilette, Finella. She is in the chambers next to this one.”

Clearly relieved not to be doing whatever task it was she thought she should be doing for him, she scurried off, her threadbare shoes making only a whisper of sound on the floor. He had shut the door and started to undress, when another knock sounded. Down to his shirtsleeves, he rolled each to his forearms and swung open the door.

Mr. Attenborough stood at his threshold. “Your grace…” His solicitor had the good sense to look apologetic for the interruption.

“What is it now?”

“Lady Sophia has requested an audience with you.”

“Tonight? Does she realize I might perhaps be occupied?”

“The innkeeper told her ladyship she was preparing Lady Sedgwick’s bath and that you were not currently in the room. Lady Sophia was adamant,” Attenborough said. “I think she must have been a sergeant-major in a past life.”

Erik’s brows rose. “Is she armed?”

Mr. Attenborough’s stern visage cracked slightly. “I would not hazard to guess. But if you wish that I frisk her…” Color rose in his staid solicitor’s cheeks. “Not that I would.”

A corner of Erik’s mouth moved. “Are you blushing, Attenborough?”

“No, sair. I am a lawyer, your grace.”

A few moments later, Erik knocked at Lady Sophia’s room at the top of the stairs and at her clear summons entered the small chambers. A fire in the stove against the wall took some of the chill from the room. Lady Sophia sat on a red-cushioned chair in front of the window, her back straight, and her hand resting on the top of her cane. She turned her head and, despite the harsh set of her mouth, the lamplight captured the softness of her face.

With her patrician features, her beauty in her youth must have been unrivaled, he thought.

Erik had once done his own inquiries regarding Christine’s entire family, including her eccentric aunt. He knew Lady Sophia Sommers had never married, though she had once caused a scandal when she eloped with a naval lieutenant in Nelson’s command. Her furious father had promptly annulled the marriage and exiled the beauty to Italy for a year. Three months after the event, her lieutenant died fighting the French fleet in Aboukir Bay at the mouth of the Nile. Lady Sophia had been eighteen…the same age Christine had been when Erik had met her his first year in London.

He could see much of Christine in the shape of her lips and eyes, but that was as far as the resemblance went. Christine had not yet developed the deep cynicism that had formed the deeper lines bracketing her aunt’s mouth and that he knew reflected back at him.

“Is my niece going to survive, you think?”

Erik recognized that the question had more to do with Christine’s association and marriage to him than with any physical condition she might suffer. Leaning an elbow against the dresser, he folded his arms. “Is she ill?”

Lady Sophia thumped her cane on the carpet. “That is
not
what I mean, young man, and you well know it. I know you have already spoken vows, but I will know your intentions before it is too late for my niece to change her mind.”

“It is already too late, my lady.”

Nor was he in the habit of explaining himself or his actions to anyone, especially when, in his opinion, he had already consummated the marriage many times, if one went back into their history, and tonight was a mere trifling detail.

But something in Lady Sophia’s tone touched him. Though he could not help but admire her obvious affection for Christine, another concern that Christine might have voiced doubts nagged him. “What has your niece told you?”

“Nothing. She is taking this wedding business very seriously. Frankly, I have never seen her behave in such a manner. It’s alarming.”

Mildly relieved, he looked away from Lady Sophia’s penetrating glance, but he was thinking of Christine. He answered in a serious tone. “Your niece and I are in accord over the terms of our marriage, my lady.”

Bracing her hands on her cane, Lady Sophia sniffed. “She defended you to our family, you know. None of them will ever speak to her again. No great loss as far as I am concerned, they do not deserve her. But I will not have you be her greatest mistake. I will not see her hurt. Does she know what her father offered you to marry her?”

Erik tightened his jaw but did not look away. “I took nothing from her father, Lady Sophia. And I would take nothing from her. I have allowed her to keep Sommershorn Abbey. The land is in a trust. Should she ever need to return…for any reason.”

“She would be crushed to ever learn that her papa went to you. Her pride would not stand the betrayal, you see. So if I seem harsh…it is only that Christine is not like me or her father or you, your grace.”

“No daughter should love her father less for wanting to see her future secure. Christine is a big girl, my lady.”

Lady Sophia suddenly rose in a swish of silk. “Perhaps you do not know that her mam left her and her father when she was five.” Sophia walked to the window and looked at his reflection in the glass. “They were on a dig in Greece and the woman Christine idolized and trusted decided her life would be more exciting with a Shakespearean actor than with a husband and their child.”

Bracing her weight on the cane, Lady Sophia turned. “I loved Charles but he was entirely too selfish, dragging Christine from one dig to another, mourning the loss of his marriage, never thinking that his daughter lost her mother. And Lord knows I am not the embodiment of feminine sentimentality. Charles lost himself during those years and it was Christine who pulled him from the brink. I believe he would not have been the paleontologist he became if not for her.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Erik asked, more than aware of Christine’s talents.

“Ten years ago, Christine had no idea that you made an offer for her hand. Her father never told her. You thought she rejected you,” Lady Sophia said as
Erik shoved his hands into his pockets and turned away. “Then you signed the contracts for her cousin’s hand and that godforsaken land in York, and it no longer mattered. You were gone from her life. Then last summer, your letter to Charles came from out of the blue. I know it was business about a find you had made on your estate…” Lady Sophia’s study of him remained deliberate. “But whatever Charles had done in the past to Christine, he tried to make it up to her, you see.”

A vast sense of anger swamped him. Not because Erik made the choices he had in the past, he was a pragmatist after all, he told himself. Wishing the last ten years stricken from his life would be akin to wishing his daughter had never been born.

His anger came because someone else had made a decision that profoundly shaped his life. Nor did he want Lady Sophia believing Charles Sommers had manipulated Erik into returning to London now. He had not. Erik truly needed help to deal with the bones washing up on his land from an expert, who—no one but he seemed to understand—was Christine herself.

Especially since he knew the reason she had wed him. He might need an heir to reassure that all he’d worked to build in his lifetime would remain with his family and his people, but Christine wanted her beast and her glory. Her passion had always been her fossils.

As he walked to the stove and stared at the flames contained within the iron grate, he said, “She would have turned down my proposal, my lady.”

Lady Sophia held her silence for a heartbeat. “Of course. Everyone expected you would wed her cousin after all, and, like you, my niece is a pragmatist because circumstances required it of her. You went on with your life and she with hers. Christine is a woman who needs
something to believe in, you understand.” Lady Sophia drew in a breath. “But she is more fragile inside than you think, Sedgwick.”

An hour later, her hair damp from her bath, and clad in a scandalous nightdress possessing the gossamer thinness of Babylonian silk, Christine stood in front of the long cheval glass.

Upon entering the chamber, she’d discovered the white nightgown and silk robe from her trousseau laid out on the bed. Almost afraid to touch her fingertips to the delicate cloth, she had a moment’s doubt. The French modiste she had found on Bond Street to make her traveling trousseau had told her that a proper bride would never wear such a scandalous garment, but mistresses were constrained by no such barrier. Since Christine was not quite a bride or a mistress—she was both and neither as she was not sure where
partner
fit between the two—she had more freedom to choose. But as she peered at the unfamiliar woman in the glass, barely recognizable with her tumbledown hair to her waist, the color high in her cheeks, her schoolmarm appearance vanquished behind white gossamer, she wanted only that Erik see her as an equal and viable partner in this contract.

Especially since walking into the inn that night and realizing she’d never felt less like a duchess than the moment she’d stood next to Erik in front of those people sitting in the common room. She squeezed shut her eyes and opened them again, half expecting to see herself standing at Sommershorn in the dark of her laboratory wondering what madness had inflicted upon her.

The young girl who had helped with her bath had quietly left earlier. Alone, Christine turned to study the room. Dark paneling covered the walls. The foot
of the plush canopy-draped bed opened to the hearth. The comforter had already been turned down revealing crisp white sheets smelling of lavender. A fire warmed the cozy confines of the room. A beautifully set table topped with sterling, crystal, and the finest porcelain glittered in the warm light.

With a small gasp, she straightened. Erik stood just inside the door leading to the bathing room. Leaning against the door frame, one hand holding the neck of a whiskey bottle, the other a glass, he raised the tumbler to his lips, and peered at her from over the rim. He had not undressed, and she did not know why.

“Madam,” he said, the lazy grace of his stance conflicting with the heat she felt from his eyes.

She smoothed the fabric of her nightgown. “I didn’t hear you enter.” She panned her arm across the room. “The proprietress has gone beyond expectations. The room is beautiful.”

She had the vague impression that he was watching everything about her closely. “I am glad everything meets with your approval,” he said quietly.

She wished now that she had put on her robe. “Have you checked on Aunt Sophie and Mrs. Samuels to make sure they are saf—?”

“No one at this inn will harm them, Christine.”

She believed him. Of the people she’d seen thus far tonight, she could not imagine a one who’d rather not jump off a cliff and dash themselves on the rocks below than dare draw the wrath of the duke of Sedgwick.

Yet, she had never been afraid of him. In fact, fear was the last thing on her mind as she stilled her racing heartbeat and pondered why he seemed hesitant when there had been nothing fastidious about him in London.

Taking a deep breath, but short of announcing that she was ready to do her duty by their contract, she focused her attention on the glass of whiskey in his hand and might have asked if he had another glass if she thought she could stomach the assault.

Then he was suddenly standing in front of her and her gaze rose in deference to more than his height. He slid her glasses higher on her nose. “When did you begin wearing spectacles?” he murmured.

She ruefully smiled. “When I woke up in a blur one day and realized it wasn’t the effect of too much drink.”

His hand moved to her chin and tilted her face. “As I recall, drinking was never your forte.”

Her rebellious streak surfaced. But he was right. She rarely drank except for wine and an occasional glass of champagne, and doing so now would prove only that she was foolish. She wondered what else he remembered about her.

“You like stargazing,” he said in response to her unspoken thoughts. “You are the only person with whom I have ever climbed a tree simply to get closer to the moon.”

Christine had forgotten that silly night where she had tippled in wine, stripped off her petticoats, and climbed a tree. He’d followed and, sharing a stout branch above the leaves, she’d pointed out the Big Dipper and Pegasus. The whole universe had been staring down at her that night.

Erik moved past her. He set down the bottle and glass on the nightstand, retrieved her robe from the bed, and laid it across her shoulders. “We are about to be delivered our supper,” he said.