Beauty and the Duke (14 page)

Erik considered the empty tumbler in his hand,
then set it down. “Do you believe in ghosts or curses, Boris?”

“No, your grace.”

Erik’s gaze went to the clock atop the mantel. “Has the physician gone for the evening?”

The doctor lived in the sleepy Sedgwick hamlet five miles east of the castle. If Erik had taken the main road around the craggy hills, they would have ridden through the village.

But Erik had been vain or foolish, perhaps both. He’d wanted Christine to see not just Sedgwick Castle but the entire valley as he saw it, as most had rarely seen it from high in the hills, wrapped in mist and sunlight. A moment of childlike whimsy, he thought in disgust, banishing the vision and pushing past the clutter of his thoughts.

Boris informed him that the doctor would return in the morning and that Lady Sophia was with Christine, most of the drama of the day now died to a whisper in the candlelight. “We have finally got your sister to bed,” Boris said. “I believe Lady Rebecca will recover in the morning when she sees that Lady Sedgwick has not been felled by the curse.” The elder cleared his throat. “Not that any of us believes such nonsen—”

“Have you located my daughter yet?”

“Yes, your grace. My guess is she is the ‘ghost’ that fairly scared Lady Sophia’s maid to death earlier this evening and caused her to drop the tea service she was bringing to her ladyship. Fortunately, nothing was broken.”

Erik had not forgotten his daughter in the melee of that afternoon’s drama, but her absence was not abnormal, since she usually only made an appearance when she wanted to be seen. He knew most of her hiding places, but this evening he had been too preoccupied
to find her until Boris informed him she had not eaten her supper.

“Where is Erin now?”

Boris cleared his throat. “That is what I came to tell you.”

Five minutes later, Erik entered Christine’s sitting room. Lady Sophia was seated by the fire. His gaze darted around the dimly lit room. He wasn’t sure what he was going to find after following the line of nervous servants down the corridor. He felt his body relax slightly. He shut the door.

“Lord Sedgwick,” Lady Sophia said without turning her head.

“I was told my daughter is being held prisoner in this room…”

Lady Sophia sniffed. “If you are referring to the owner of those little bare feet hiding behind the curtains, I will credit that you have come to the correct conclusion. We are in what one might call an impasse.
I
believe I am owed an introduction after having helped clean up the tea tray Mrs. Samuels dropped. The lady Erin believes she is hiding.”

Erik’s boot heels made little sound on the carpet. He slowly drew back the heavy drapery. His daughter stood there, clutching an old porcelain doll to her chest. Her chin rose. “Come now, Erin.” He knelt in front of her and gently tilted her chin. “It is time to come out of hiding. Everyone has been looking for you.” She shook her head as much from stubbornness as fear.

She was a wild-looking child with long, unruly blond hair to her waist and bare feet below her white nightdress. Balking at being pulled past him, she clasped his shoulder. He made a gentle motion with his hand. “Will you not say hello?”

Shaking her head, she mutely hid her face in his shirt. Erik shifted on his knee. “This is my daughter, Erin.”

Lady Sophia approached and peered over her nose. “Can she not speak for herself? How old is the child?”

He smoothed the curls from Erin’s face. “She had measles as a baby and lost much of her hearing. But she is very adept at communicating when she wants something, though you might not be able to understand everything she says.” He turned to his daughter. “Do you want to tell our guest how old you are?”

Clearly, she did not.

“She is almost seven.” He cupped her cheek and forced her to look at him. “Did you come in here to see the pretty lady in the next room?”

Her head shook more adamantly, and Erik knew it would be impossible to take his daughter into Christine’s room until Erin was ready.

“Hmpf. Incorrigible, no doubt.” Sophia studied Erin with more detail, but there was a new softness to the set of her lips. “She brought Christine a sprig of heather and set it next to her pillow. We didn’t see her until after Mrs. Samuels stumbled over her in the darkness. I fear the collision scared them both witless.” Her eyes narrowed daggers at him. “The child could have been hurt. Does she have no proper supervision?”

Erik stood. Erin clung to his leg. “I have a household of servants and a nurse who watches over her. Short of locking her in the nursery under restraints, I have found it simpler just to allow her to come and go. She would anyway.”

“That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. Why…” Casting about for words she sputtered, “A child needs boundaries.”

Amusement quirked his lips. “You are welcome to try and give her some, my lady. But I think it might be rather like trying to put a harness on your niece.”

Bracing her hands on her cane, Sophia suddenly looked toward the door leading into the bedroom. “My niece was awake earlier. She would not take the sleeping draught the doctor tried to give her. She ate a bit of supper.” Lady Sophia’s eyes came back to rest on him. “She does not blame you. She was worried that you might believe yourself cursed and that you were staying away from her while nursing some immense guilt. She wanted to assure you she has not died.”

“She said all that, did she?”

“She will probably remember none of it in the morning.” Sophie held out her hand to Erin. “Come,” she said to Erin, like a seasoned army sergeant. “It is past your bedtime, young lady, and your papa has some place he needs to be.”

Erin eyed Lady Sophia’s outstretched hand as if it were a snake, mutiny flickering in her eyes. Erik gently pulled her face around. Her large blue eyes widened in growing panic. “Your supper is waiting for you in the nursery, Erin.”

“I will see that she gets there,” Sophia briskly replied before he could lift his daughter and take her himself. “Come, come, dear,” she patiently insisted. “I am an old woman. You do not expect me to open that door on my own?”

Shoving his hands into his pockets, Erik stepped back. “Her nurse is standing outside the room.”

Hesitantly, with a glance back at Erik, his daughter laid her hand in Sophia’s. He watched the two walk across the room. Erin opened the door. His daughter did not look back at him. The door shut behind her.

Darkness fell over the room. Erik looked around him
at his shadow wavering against the walls, trying to remember the last time he’d willingly stepped into this room. The tall clock at the far end of the corridor began to chime, signaling the end to a very long day.

After a moment, he walked through the dressing area and into Christine’s bedroom. He removed his jacket and dropped it on the chair. He stoked the fire back to life to chase the chill from the room. Then finally, he crossed the room and stood next to the bed. He looked down upon his wife.

Surrounded by velvet hangings, she faced the hearth, her hair a shadow across the stark whiteness of the pillow. The blankets did not conceal her body from his gaze, and though she wore a shift, she may as well have been naked to him. His gaze slipped downward to caress the shape of her breast, the curve of her waist and flair of her hip, her peacefulness in sleep a contrast to the wanton in his arms last night, completely unaware that she tempted him profoundly. That she had always tempted him in a way he did not understand.

Then her fingers folded around his, and he was suddenly staring into her blue eyes, holding his breath. A tremor passed through him that he was unused to feeling, and like a man in a trance, he surrendered to the gentle tug of her hand and sat next to her on the mattress.

“This is not how I had planned our first night at Sedgwick Castle, your grace,” she said, her voice as smooth and warm as the amber firelight, reassuring
him
when he was the one who should have been comforting her.

“The physician said you will be up and about in a few days.”

The lump on her head was visible even in the shadows, and he wanted to tell her he was sorry for nearly
killing her, the notion absurd, since he held no sway over the weather or geological occurrences that would have combined to cause that pothole. He did not believe in curses and his nature did not lend itself to emotional soliloquies or apologies. He was not a man weakened by passion.

His passions were dangerous.

“Lie beside me,” she murmured sleepily, her eyes already closed.

And he did as she asked, against all warnings, and because he was a fool and he was exhausted, he stretched out his body next to hers. Her fingers moved over his chest where his shirt opened. For eons it seemed as if his eyes assessed her, then he touched her with infinite tenderness as she settled against him. Fully dressed as he was, he did nothing more than hold her.

His well-laid plans always failed around Christine. The first time he’d met her she’d been trouble to him. Not because she played coy with his affections, but because she did not. She could not flirt worth a damn. Unlike her cousin Charlotte or, later, Elizabeth, she was not popular or wealthy. In his entire life, he’d never met anyone as oblivious to her own faults as she was secure with her differences. She was an outcast, without self-judgment or self-pity the least helpless person he’d ever known. She was what she was without apology, and from the first moment he’d met her in that crowded ballroom in Somerset, he’d been incapable of seeing anyone else that summer. They’d been friends before becoming lovers, the only person in his life who had asked nothing from him.

Years ago, he’d accepted that she had chosen her work over him, and he had never allowed himself to look back. Now he did.

And, as the hours waned into dawn and Erik left
the room, he knew he would have preferred that Lady Sophia not told him that Christine never knew about his proposal. He had thought it had not made a difference but he found it was a lie.

Christine awakened to the sound of thick, rolling purrs. For a moment, she thought she was dreaming and she did not know where she was. The purrs rumbled louder. Her eyes flew open.

Beast
.

Easing herself around beneath the covers, she found Beast stretched across the white ruched satin comforter at her back, an undignified contradiction to his plush surroundings. He’d found her. She wrapped him in her arms, awake now as he butted his head against her cheek and buried his nose and whiskers deeper in her hair.

“You made it, good boy, you.” She cooed to him and they snuggled together, enjoying their reunion. He’d not abandoned or forgotten her. “Did Lady Rebecca take good care of you? She must have. I swear you are fatter.”

Fighting dizziness, she lay back against her pillow and looked past him to the room, wondering if she had imagined Erik in here last night. Her hand went to the lump on her head. A dull headache and tenderness on her ribs made her grimace. A forgettable beginning for her at Sedgwick Castle, when she had wanted to make a good impression. Now, with dawn on the horizon and no one guarding her, she reached for her spectacles on the nightstand.

Holding Beast in her arms, she padded barefoot across the room to throw open the sash. She frowned. Dawn colored the horizon, but a tree defeated her desire to see much beyond her tousled reflection in the heavy leaded glass. Disappointed, she turned back into the
room. With its paneled doors and resplendent French bed and Teniers tapestries, her chambers were reminiscent of eighteenth-century gaiety and brightness. She moved into an adjoining chamber to look for her trunks. A porcelain claw-foot tub sat against the wall.

Candlelight flickered in glass globes. Someone had recently been in here. She could still smell a taint of sulphur in the air as if someone had just lit the lamps. A panel door suddenly opened behind her. Christine turned as a young serving girl, wearing a white mobcap and carrying a full pitcher of water, entered.

“Oh, mum. Ye be awake.” She rushed to set down the pitcher on a nearby dressing table trimmed in delicate floral chintz. “I be Annie, yer lady’s maid.” The girl suddenly eyed Beast with narrowed eyes. “Oooh, he be a sly tom, that one is. Everyone ’as been searching fer him. He only comes out when he is hungry. ’E likes ’is cod well-cooked and with a dollop of sweet whipped cream, mum.”

Christine raised her brow in amazement. “Your cook makes his meals?”

“Oh, yes, mum. He gets only the best at Sedgwick Castle. The master’s wee sprite of a daughter ’as taken a fancy to him, too.”

“Erin?” Christine said.

“Lady Erin is much like your cat. If she doesn’t want to be seen, she won’t be. Come. Ye must be chilled.”

Wearing only her shift, Christine was chilled. The girl took her through an interconnecting door to a dressing room big enough to be a formal sitting room. She opened one of the mahogany armoires. “I ’ave unpacked the trunk what arrived with you. Everything else what come in last week is aired and pressed.”

Christine stopped in the doorway. She admired the
yellow-and-white walls skillfully over-painted with trailing vines that matched the white-framed furniture and plush yellow chintz upholstery. An off-white Turkey carpet covered the floor in its entirety. The room was beautiful.

“Lady Elizabeth painted all of her private apartments yellow and green to match the daffodils what bloom here in the spring.”

“The former Lady Sedgwick lived in these rooms?”

“Beggin’ yer pardon, mum. I didna’ mean any disrespect to you. The master’s chambers be right through those doors.”

Christine turned, surprise momentarily etching her expression even as the quick movement sent a shaft of pain through her head.

Of course, Erik’s former wife would have lived in the apartments adjoining his private rooms. She glanced at the room almost in regret, much of her appreciation of the furnishings suddenly spent. “I’m not offended, Annie.”

Annie pulled Christine’s pink wrapper from the armoire and began brushing away the wrinkles. “She was an artist, mum. Her work is all around Sedgwick Castle. Even after all these years we be admirin’ it.”