Beauty and the Duke (20 page)

“Mum, your cloak,” Annie said, rushing from the dressing room carrying the garment. “The sun may be out, but the air can still be a bit nippy.”

She accepted the cloak over her shoulders. “Thank you, Annie.”

Aunt Sophie, Mrs. Samuels, and Rebecca had already gone ahead. She and Erik would be arriving at the festivities in the official Sedgwick coach.

Sweeping around the corner and appearing on the landing, she saw her husband pacing at the bottom of the stairs. They both came to a stop, his hand on the carved knoll of the banister. His eyes slid over her appreciatively.

Her eyes widened.
Good heavens!

Her husband was not dressed in any such English garb as mundane as hers. Standing below her was a powerful laird. Erik wore a breathtaking tartan of hunter green, ancient red, and black, trimmed in tassels of gold. The pleated kilt reached his knees and was finished off by a sporran and a ceremonial waistcoat and jacket trimmed with gold buttons. All he lacked was a claymore and battle-ax.

The man was magnificent.

He held out his hand. “The festivities await, madam.”

She glided downstairs on slippers she worried would begin pinching her feet before the afternoon was gone. “Your grace,” she said softly and dipped in a playfully regal curtsey. “You look…”

“Like a laird?”

“Indeed, you do. We don’t match. Am I dressed correctly?”

“Do I sense doubt in your tone?” He sounded astonished, as if she had never doubted herself. “You look charming, Christine.”

She wanted to be beautiful to him. “I am only slightly ignorant of fashion, which makes me somewhat less than knowledgeable. But Aunt Sophie’s London modiste assured me this gown is the top of fashion. I would not wish to embarrass you, Erik.”

She had removed her spectacles, and he eased them out of her gloved hand and returned them to her nose. “Put them back on if they help you see,” he said. “You will pass just fine as you are.”

He could say that with casualness. Erik was the master of all he surveyed, after all. He had been the duke here since he was two.

Yet, for the first time since being a girl in her teens, she found herself willing to remove her spectacles and be blind rather than be different from everyone else. She should have worn blue rather than green. Or something less extravagant. Or English.

The carriage ride to the large hamlet of Sedgwick some miles away took less than an hour. She had visited the market and shops here over the last month, but today it was as if she were seeing the thatched cottages, brown chocolate-box houses, and winding streets for the first time. People stopped to stare as the carriage rumbled down the narrow cobbled main street and, as the coach and four slowed to a more sedate pace, she better glimpsed the faces of those who lined the road. Not all seemed welcoming.

She stole a nervous glance at her husband sitting quietly on the bench beside her. “It is not you they dislike,” he said.

She would almost have preferred that it
was
her they disliked or mistrusted. Erik did not deserve it. This past month had taught her that much. “How long has it been since you have been to the fair?” she asked.

“I have not been in seven summers. I thought perhaps it was time I finally introduce you to Sedgwick. You needn’t worry for me, Christine.”

She smoothed the folds of her expensive cloak, one that Erik had presented to her only last week, and touched the diamond bobs in her ears and the one that lay above her breasts, feeling very much a lady of consequence.

She had been receiving many gifts these past weeks and now understood a little more why. None of the gifts had to do with any desire Erik might have to put her on display. Indeed, unlike his generous marriage contract, these gifts were not tied to promises or partnerships or to the passion they shared in bed. These were more personal. He did not so much
expect
her to like the gifts, as he
wanted
her to like them. He was seeking something deeper from her in the only way he knew. And it was suddenly
she
who did not feel worthy of
his
affection.

A line had formed by the time they reached the fairgrounds. Erik helped her down from the carriage and they both turned and faced the silence of the crowd. He introduced her to neighboring landowners, business associates, tenants, sheep farmers. He knew everyone in some form or another, though he seemed close to no one. His solitude had never been more evident, and she wondered at the boy he had been, growing up here. He never talked about his childhood.

But the day remained warm and the sky bright blue and free of clouds. Soon the novelty of the Sedgwick duke’s presence faded and the crowd returned to their entertainment. Christine continued her tour of the enormous fairgrounds, walking among the people on her husband’s arm. They watched an opera rendition of something that might have been Macbeth. She didn’t care that at the end, she was the only one who clapped.
Erik paid them well for their performance, and as the afternoon wore on there was jousting, dancing, and games to attend. Jugglers and acrobats moved among the crowd.

The evening crowd was a mixture of members of high society, lower-born individuals, and dozens of barefooted children who laughed and followed the ropedancers as they wound through the busy aisles. Hundreds of booths were set up to sell wares. Woolens, leather, copper, and trinkets were all displayed.

In the background of it all, like a historical tapestry, Sedgwick Castle sat on the distant hill bathed in the glow of a misty sunset, an ancient reminder of the people’s fealty to their laird, and his to the land that supported them all.

Erik watched her now in that way of his that made her wish she could read his thoughts. A frisson of lightning seemed to shimmer between them.

“Would you care to join me in a high-stepping riga-doon?” he asked.

Christine looked past him at the dancers as musicians played their lutes and pipes, inviting others to join the circle with carefree abandon.

“I would love to dance.”

Erik took her hand. She was not an experienced dancer, but tonight her toes tapped to the tune of the beat as if she had spent her life dancing, and her eyes sparkled with delight. Shoulder to shoulder she went with her husband to the beat of the music. Her feet flew. Her laughter sounded, drawing the curious gaze of bystanders as many stopped to watch their laird. But Christine didn’t notice.

She couldn’t remember another time in her life when she’d enjoyed dancing this much. When the music changed, so did their tempo. The fire seemed to grow
stronger and hotter. She looked into her husband’s sherry eyes and felt the same burning heat where his gaze touched. They stayed the evening among the dancers until neither of them could spring another step.

“You dance well,” she said, breathless, when they stepped away into the cooler shadows an hour later, away from the light of the fire and many of those who had stopped to watch them.

He did not reply and Christine had a feeling he had not danced in years either. Perhaps he’d even surprised himself that he still could.

“Ah, Sedgwick.” A voice turned her.

A balding middle-aged man, possessed of an impressive set of whiskers and mustache, stood next to the penny beer tent as if he’d been waiting for Erik to see him, and when that failed he finally summoned up the courage to step forward. A smile on his face, he swept up Christine’s hand and muttered that he was pleased to meet her. “Lady Sedgwick. Ye be lovely if I say so myself.”

Erik smiled and introduced the older gentleman as a neighboring farmer who bred the finest hunters outside of Ireland. Bowing his head in gratitude, the man lightly clicked his boot heels. “Thank you, your grace.” He rolled his r’s with gusto. “And to that point, I have brought the prized mare ye were interested in looking over,” the gent said. “Do ye like horses, Lady Sedgwick?”

She didn’t have the heart to tell him that horses were only one rung above a camel on her favored list of temperamental hairy quadrupeds with large teeth. She liked her Miss Pippen. “Of course,” she said. “Who does not enjoy a great mount?”

The moment she said the words, she felt the rise of heat. She stole a glance at her husband, but at that
moment, she thought she saw Lady Rebecca duck between two vendor tents.

Ever since they’d collided outside the hothouse, Becca had been acting strangely. She was supposed to be with Aunt Sophie.

“Go on,” she told Erik, glad for an excuse to escape a visit to the tent housing the horses. “If you will excuse me, I’d like to check up on my aunt.”

Erik grabbed her arm, his touch startling her. He looked over his shoulder.

“Go,” Christine said quietly, when it looked as if he might argue with her. “I will find you after I have eaten a candied apple.”

With that pronouncement, she swept through the crowd after his sister.

C
hristine lost Becca in the crowd. But she did find Aunt Sophie tippling near the whisky barrels.

“She be buying her own keg,” Mrs. Samuels said, wrapping her shawl about her ample bosom. “But first she ’as to taste everything from ’ere to kingdom come. We’ve already been ’ere most of the night.”

Christine peered worriedly at her aunt. Mrs. Samuels patted Christine’s arm. “Ye don’t be worryin’ about Lady Sophia, mum. I won’t let her wander off and get lost.”

“Have you seen where Lady Rebecca has got off to?”

“That child be a handful of trouble, mum. She went into the woods ’bout ten minutes ago.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, mum.”

Christine walked a goodly distance through a copse of firs away from the noise. Needles cluttered the ground and cushioned her step with a pungent evergreen fragrance. Alarmed, she stopped when she glimpsed a horse and buggy through the trees.

Lady Rebecca stood near a pagoda with an older, fashionably dressed woman wearing royal-blue velvet and a wide hat that dipped to the side of her head.
The woman’s hair was coifed in a plaited bun at her nape. Both women turned as Christine walked into the clearing.

Erik’s sister visibly started. Her hand went to her breast. “Christine…”

“Rebecca.”

The other woman did not move. Closer up, the woman’s features were more distinguishable. By the tilt of her eyes and shape of her mouth, she looked remarkably like Becca. In fact, Becca introduced the woman as the Countess Sutherland, her mam. “Oh, please don’t tell my brother you saw me with her,” Becca pleaded, then promptly wrapped her arms around her mother’s waist. “Mam is here to see me. That is all. Not to cause trouble. Please, you must promise not to tell Erik.”

“Becca…”

“My daughter is right to be concerned,” the countess replied, her arms tightening around Becca. “My son will not countenance my presence here.”

Her heart thudding, Christine stared from daughter to mother, and suddenly felt sick. This was
not
what Christine had expected to walk into. “Why the subterfuge, my lady? You are her mam. Simply come to Sedgwick.”

“She can’t,” Becca quietly said. “They do not get along.”

Christine’s gaze confronted the countess’s with far less compassion than she’d felt a moment before. “You are his mother as well.”

“Erik doesn’t like complications. You will learn soon enough that everything must have its proper place in his life. Mine is in London, out of his way. If you tell him you saw me tonight, you will only make it harder on Becca by forcing her to defend me.”

“Mam…” Becca whispered. “Please.”

Christine’s heart clenched. “Surely he will know you are here,” she said. “This village is not so big that you will pass unnoticed.”

The countess smiled. “I have not been to Sedgwick in fifteen years. Most do not know me. I am staying in a cottage across the lake.” The countess took her daughter’s hands into her own. “Go back. We have visited long enough.”

“Find Lady Sophia,” Christine said. “I will speak to you shortly.”

Becca turned pleading eyes on Christine. “Please.” A frown failed to detract from the fragility of her age or the beauty of her large brown eyes, which slanted upward from beneath delicately sweeping brows.

Christine remembered what Boris had told her. Erik and Rebecca did not share the same father. But remembering her own mother’s abandonment, she suddenly did not want to see Rebecca suffer in the same way.

“Go now,” Christine quietly said. “I won’t say anything to your brother.”

Rebecca pressed Christine’s hands to her cheek. “Thank you.”

After Becca reluctantly departed, the countess turned the full force of her attention to Christine. “I would warn you not to betray my son with a deception except that my daughter would only be hurt if he discovered hers. Rebecca is sixteen and still very much a child in many ways. She doesn’t understand that there will never be any reconciliation between her brother and myself.”

“Perhaps he has changed, my lady. Maybe you should offer to try.”

“Erik is incapable of forgiveness. He has paid me a
great deal of money not to try. It is a simple thing to take his gifts, I suppose. He is a very difficult man to love.”

Christine bit back an angry retort in defense of the man she had come to know very well. “I suggest you leave if you wish to keep your presence unknown to him.”

Countess Sutherland walked past Christine to the buggy and turned, her gaze startlingly direct. “I was curious about the woman my son would marry after his torrid marriage to Elizabeth.”

“And what have you discerned, my lady?”

The corner of her mouth crooked. “That you are not she.”

That you are not she.

What the blazes did that cryptic nonsense mean?

Watching the countess climb into the buggy, Christine found herself frozen in place by her own misgivings. Erik deserved more, she thought, as she struggled with her own culpability. She had taken as much as anyone from him.

She turned to find her way back to the grounds before Erik set out looking for her, little realizing she had only been gone a half-hour. She found Aunt Sophie and Mrs. Smothers and asked them to take Rebecca back to Sedgwick. The night had not aged another five minutes by the time Christine found where the livestock was housed.

No one harassed her as she walked across the crowded grounds toward the large canvas tent erected to keep horses separated from the pigs, bulls, goats, sheep, and chickens. She finally found Erik near the last stall.

He saw her and beckoned her nearer. “I was beginning to wonder what happened to you.” His gloved thumb brushed her bottom lip. “No candied apple?”

Christine shook her head. “No,” she said. “I found Aunt Sophie by the whiskey kegs.”

He chuckled, then before she could pull him away to a quiet corner, he raised his chin and nodded to someone behind her. She turned as a beautiful mare came into view. The man she had met earlier held the bridle, clearly having brought the high-stepping horse from the stall so Christine could examine her. She had never seen a more striking horse. She was nearly black and silky smooth with a coat that glistened in the lamplight.

“Do you like her?” Erik asked, watching her closely.

She met her husband’s eyes. Then, realizing the mare’s owner was holding the bit and anxiously awaiting her response, she said, “The mare is the most beautiful horse I’ve ever seen.”

“She’s yours if you want her.”

She was too taken aback to respond or to hide her thoughts, as she looked at the mare. The horse
was
beautiful beyond compare. She had never seen its like.

“You don’t have to do this, Erik,” she said quietly. “I have Miss Pippen.”

The creases around his mouth deepened. “You do not like the gift?”

“It isn’t that.” She folded her arms across her heart, and stared reflectively into his face. “Who would not love such a horse?”

He nodded to the man behind her. “Deliver the mare to my stables.”

“Yes, your grace.” The portly gentleman’s cheerful reply tempered by a worried look in her direction, he led the mare away.

When she and Erik were alone, she faced her husband, “As I have told you before, you are most generous.”

“I have insulted you. Why?”

“You have not insulted me. The last thing you have done is insult me.”

“Christine…”

Whatever Erik had been about to say died as he looked up.

A man and woman stood next to the stall where the mare had once been. The pair wore simple clothes, but of a finer cut and cloth than the tenants and villagers she had met. The lantern light dappled the man’s handsome visage. He was not much younger than she. The dark sweep of his hair dipped into a widow’s peak and framed his face. He and Erik could have been related.

“Look who has come to our country fair, Lara,” the man said to the woman beside him. “It has been a long time, Sedgwick.”

Shaking off her trepidation, Christine remained next to her husband and waited for an introduction that did not come.

“Maxwell. Lara,” Erik said.

“We have not yet had the pleasure, Lady Sedgwick,” the other man said. “But if your husband won’t introduce us, I will do the honors.” He presented her a courtly bow that for all its mockery boasted of rank. “I am Lord Johnny Maxwell. This is my sister, Lady Lara. We live across yonder loch.”

His was the estate she could see from her window. “Maxwell?”

“The Maxwells and Sedgwicks share a distant great-great-grandfather, and more. Elizabeth is our sister,” Maxwell said, his eyes a clear blazing blue. “What your husband has neglected to say is that we are all family.”

The fair-haired woman nodded at Christine. The woman’s hair was too tightly coiled at her nape. She wore a dark blue dress devoid of lace or other adorn
ments. Her appearance couldn’t be more stark, but for one moment as she’d glanced at Erik, her face had come alive.

Erik moved behind Christine. “We were just leaving, Maxwell.”

Maxwell stepped in front of Christine and she felt Erik’s body tighten. Lara put a hand on Maxwell’s arm. “Johnny—”

“Imagine our surprise to learn Sedgwick had not only found someone in London to wed him,” the man continued, “but that he had done so in such an efficient manner. Like magic—” Maxwell snapped his fingers. “Poof. He has another wife.” He stared shrewdly at Christine as if seeking the flaw that must be present in her character. “How much did you pay her to wed you, Sedgwick?”

Christine could only gape at the man’s gall, as she stood shocked that he would bait Erik in such a manner, as if he expected—nay wanted—Erik to strike him. A sudden vision of bloodshed filled her mind.

But Erik did nothing.

Nothing.

Christine lacked the same restraint. But before she could reply, Erik’s hand went beneath her elbow. Maxwell saw the movement and grinned. “Is it that you have no honor left for her to defend, Sedgwick? Or are you a coward who only takes his vengeance out on women?”

An audible gasp sounded from around Christine, and she realized there were others in the tent near the stalls.

Erik had not moved, yet his very stillness brought a hush down on them all and silenced his adversary. People nearby had started to back away as if they expected guns to be drawn. Whatever this confrontation
was between the two men, it was not new and went beyond the bounds of hatred.

“Are you finished, Maxwell?” Erik asked.

“Am I? You tell me.”

Lara suddenly turned into her brother’s arms. “I want to go home now, Johnny. Please. Papa will wonder what has become of us.”

Her panic evident to her brother, his expression suddenly softened. “It’s all right, Lara.”

She clutched at his waistcoat. “Please, let us go from here, Johnny. Before it is too late.”

Johnny finally lifted his gaze. To Christine, he bowed gallantly. “We are the beggared in-laws, Lady Sedgwick. We are allowed certain liberties with our laird. Especially one who has not ventured among us in some time.”

Thirty minutes later, she and Erik were in the carriage and crossing the bridge to Sedgwick Castle.

The carriage bounced over a rut, and his shoulder bumped hers. Turning her head, she peered up at Erik’s profile. They had not spoken a single word since they’d left the tents. She’d been too angry. Tucked in her cloak, she looked outside.

“How could you allow him to humiliate you?” she asked without turning, looking at his reflection in the glass.

His arm braced on the back of the seat, he bent and turned down the lamp. “Worse has happened.”

“Has it?” She faced him in the darkness. “Why would you not defend yourself?”

Why had he not defended
her
?

“Why, Erik? How could you have not felt anything at all?”

“Should I have called him out, Christine?” he said after a moment. “Would that make everything better?
Soothe injured feelings and sensibilities? A little bloodshed to cleanse the palate? If I called him out, one of us would die. Are words worth killing another man over? What is it you want?”

“What is it
you
want?” she flung at him. “No one should be allowed to insult you in such a manner. And you just let it happen. Why?”

Tears burned in her eyes, but she did not move to swipe them from her cheeks. She did not want him to see she was crying.

He was not even defending himself—even from her!

“Are we fighting,
leannanan?
”

The mockery in his tone was too much an affront.

But the depth of her feelings stunned her, not only because their argument left her hurt and confused, but also because she did not understand him. How could he not have defended himself? “You are either blind or a coward, Erik,” she whispered. “You allowed Johnny Maxwell to make a fool of you.”

A long, ugly silence followed and Christine regretted the words ere they left her lips. The carriage stopped and she realized they had arrived in the inner courtyard. No one had come to open the door.

“It appears we have arrived home, madam.”

“Home?” she said in an unsteady voice. “Is that where we are?”

Most of the rooms were closed off and still covered in shrouds. He wouldn’t allow her in the keep. He spent half his sleepless nights in the library. He was estranged from his mother, practically so from his sister whether he realized it or not. No one came to visit. “The only one who seems able to tolerate your behavior is your daughter.”

His face hidden in the shadows, Erik opened the door. He stepped out easily, being of a height that did
not require the use of a step. He set his hands on her waist and pulled her out of the carriage with little effort, his touch scalding her even through layers of fabric. She strode past him, only to have him snatch her arm and spin her about. “I am still your husband, Christine,” his voice was soft, not with tenderness, but a warning she had never heard in his tone before.

“And you would think of me as chattel, like all your other possessions. You do not own me.”

“Aye,” he said, laughing. “But I can buy your services well enough. Tell me,” his breath brushed her hair just above her temple, “what exactly did Maxwell say that was not the truth? Are you more embarrassed because he made a fool of me? Or because I did not grab up the gauntlet and slap him for you?”