Beauty and the Duke (25 page)

He arched his brow. “Allow me to check my boot for the blunderbuss I keep stashed there.”

“That isn’t amusing, Erik. I am serious.”

“As am I. Wait here.”

Without using the rope for counterbalance, he started to stand. She snatched at his cloak to stop him. Something in the trees moved across the light. Miss Pippen suddenly lumbered into view. The tension drained from her muscles. And she fell back against the incline.

“Oh, lord…’tis only my horse.” She held a hand to her heart. “I must not have tied her securely. For a moment I was afraid.”

“Fear is healthy, madam,” he said, his eyes still on the ridge. “There is a reason I do not want people roaming about these hills alone.”

“We are not alone. We’re with each other.”

He smiled faintly, then looked off the edge behind him. Something in his stance made her uneasy. “What is it?” she quietly asked.

Erik was clearly as conscious as she of the fact neither of them had a view of the place where she had anchored the rope. If someone
had been
up there…

“Have you ever swum in freezing water?”

His tone held faint amusement. Was he
joking
with her? Or was he taking the edge off his own discomfiture? His mouth crooked, as if he hadn’t been uneasy, too. “I only ask because the river is bone-chilling cold.”

Christine hiked up her skirt and tucked it in at her waist, making it knee length. “In that case, I should go first, your grace. I’m lighter. You can catch me.”

Without waiting for him to argue, she took three quick steps up the incline. She didn’t trust the rope and would not allow him to go first. She dug her half-boots
into the talus. She held her breath, half afraid as she stretched for the first handhold in the rocks. “Dammit, Christine,” she heard him say.

Then Erik gave her a foot up and she found a solid grip. He knew she was right. If the rope’s integrity had been compromised, it was best that she go first since she was lighter. Besides, a person could find enough places to grab on to without taking hold of the rope in order to make a safe ascent. They weren’t on a cliff, after all. Erik would follow easily behind her.

To her left she caught a glimpse of a jagged edge of rock and stunted trees. Her hand held fast to an odd-shaped rock that cut into her palm. It took her only a moment to realize what it was as it came loose in her hand. And then her foot slipped. She grabbed the rope and it took all of her weight. Erik would make sure she did not fall.

The thought had barely crossed her mind when the rope snapped.

E
rik hit the frigid water and went under. Sucked down by the undertow, then pulled by the current and the weight of his clothes, he bumped against the rocks. His feet finally found purchase against the slippery bottom, and he rose. The water was glacier cold. The river went barely to his chest, but standing was not simple as he at once searched for Christine, unsure if she had followed him over the bank’s edge. She had fallen from the slope and he remembered shoving her forward into the incline. His effort to save her had been his doom. The momentum caused by that action had shoved him backward into the river.

With an oath, he wiped the hair out of his eyes and braced one boot against the rocks to keep from being swept underneath again. He struggled to remove the clasps on his cloak. He still wore one glove. Over the roar of the river and the waterfall in his ears, he sought to orient himself, realizing the current had dragged him down the river and to the opposite side. It might as well have been a mile from where he’d been when he’d gone over the ledge. He couldn’t get back there. Even if he weren’t wearing boots, he would not have been able to climb the lichen-infested rock.

He finally worked the sodden cloak off his shoulders. The current took it from his hands. He made it to the high bank at his back. He looked around for a handhold. And didn’t find one.

He thought he heard Christine’s voice. He looked over his shoulder and saw her on the opposite bank. Relief warmed him. She had not fallen. Though her hair and gown were damp with mud. Her soggy clothes clung to every line of her body. He wasn’t even going to ask how she had made it this far downstream.

“I am hurt you did not jump in to save me, love,” he called out.

“And drag us both under?” Her voice trembled. “You are taller than I am. At least you can stand.”

He touched his hand to a cut on his forehead. His fingers came back with blood. “Hell.”

“I see a place to your left, Erik. The bank is lower.”

She was correct. Erik finally found a handhold. After fighting the current, he pulled himself up on the river’s slippery stone bank. The sharp edges of rocks shoved against his hips and elbows as he rose to his knees. He’d injured his thigh as well, he realized. His trousers were torn. The cut did not seem too deep. He struggled to get to his feet, surprised at how weak he felt. He faced Christine on the opposite bank, his eyes at once searching the road above her.

“I want you away from here now. The river parallels the road for about a mile. Follow it,” he said. “When you get out of the woods, you will see Sedgwick Castle.”

“What about you? I am not leaving you.”

“Unfortunately, my way back to Sedgwick Castle will take longer. I have to find a place to cross.”

She pressed her palm to her chest and looked up at the sky. “You’ll need to dry your clothes, or you could suffer a deathly chill. You need a fire.”

“And what do you propose I use for matches?”

“Once when I was on a dig in Australia, Papa used two sticks to start a fire,” she said unable to hide the tremble in her voice in her failed attempt at humor.

His temper softened. She didn’t want to leave him. “Is there any place you have not been,
leannanan?
”

They both laughed at the absurdity of their conversation. He looked back toward the point where they had been standing, then up the steep hill toward where their horses were. Neither of them wanted to be the first to admit the possibility someone had been up there and cut the rope. Christine remained on that side of the river. He wanted her away from here as quickly as possible.

“It will be dark in a couple of hours. You will need every minute, or you won’t make it back before nightfall. Go, Christine. I will be all right.”

“Erik…”

“Go and get help.” His voice came out sharper than he intended.

He did not plan to stand there while she could still be in danger. He wanted her safe and gone from this place. “If I make it back to Sedgwick before you do, I will be most unhappy.”

“I will bring back help.”

He walked with her until they were each forced by obstructions to move from their respective banks. “Now go. Stay parallel to the river until you get to the open.” His shout carried across to her.

Then she was running, and a moment later gone.

Only then did he stop and lean against a large rock outcropping. Blood warmed his leg where it trailed down his thigh into his boot. The effort to open his trousers sapped some of his waning strength. He had torn a gash in his thigh. Watching the road for movement, he set his teeth against the length of his shirt and
ripped out a strip of cloth, then bound the gash. After a while he climbed the bank and began working his way toward Sedgwick Castle.

Erik didn’t know at what point over the next two days he realized he might die, that the curse would prove true after all. He suspected the idea began to take root shortly after the sun went down the first day, and he’d come out of the woods in a remote area near the cliffs just as a gust of cold wind hit him. Then the storm hit and he’d huddled in the shelter of a rock overhang away from the trees, pounded by the rain. Even in August, the evenings could be cold, and Christine had been correct about the life-threatening chill, especially coupled with wet clothes and the loss of blood. The injury on his leg had been worse than he’d first thought. It should have been stitched. He wrapped it instead in the river-water-soaked cloth he’d ripped from his shirt. A mistake.

With blurred vision and a debilitating headache, he knew he was in trouble when fever set in the next morning. Worried about Christine and lacking the patience to wait for someone to find him, and wondering why they had not, he chose to cross the river. The worst that could happen was that he would end up at the levee site a few miles away and his men would fish him out before he found himself eventually dumped into the sea. If he had been thinking rationally, he would have realized the error of his judgment.

The worst that had happened was that the river was a cold bitch and wanted to kill him. He made it across, but not before the current had swept him a half mile, and he had been slammed against rocks hidden beneath the surface and broken his ribs—or at least it had felt that way to him as he clung to the other side, with water
rushing over him. He’d climbed up onto the bank and remained where he’d fallen for a day.

He’d awakened just before sunset and first glimpsed Elizabeth standing on a distant grassy knoll, watching him. He remembered staring at her and feeling nothing—not even surprise. He’d often heard that the angel of death visited a person just before he expired. Elizabeth had found her true calling then.

Then he’d awakened to discover a blanket lay across him. Yet, even with the added warmth, the shivering would not stop, and he forgot to care that a ghost did not carry blankets.

Erik remembered little after that. Somehow, his men had found him. He remembered Christine holding his hand, then discovered it was Elizabeth who sat beside him in the cart—no, not Elizabeth—Lara, his mind realized.

But then maybe he had imagined all of it, because when he awakened again, a blazing fire burned in a hearth, and it was his mother sitting on the chair beside the bed. His first thought was that he had truly descended into hell.

His movements stirred her, and she pressed a cup to his lips. It was daylight, and from the comfort of the bed, he guessed he was in his own room. His head and arm ached with a dull throbbing pain.

“Erik…” She softly coaxed him to drink. “You must finish this. The doctor does not want you moving about.”

He pushed the cup from his lips. His weakness weighed down his limbs. “
Fook
the doctor.” His words, little more than a rasping whisper, hurt his throat. “Where is my wife?”

“Erik…please. Won’t you accord me some manner—?”

“Mother.”
Christ
…his head hurt just to talk. He closed his eyes again and waited to awaken from this new unpleasant nightmare.

“I am at least trying,” the voice said. “I have soup for you, and tea. Most of this needs to be warmed.” He opened his eyes. She was indeed beside him, not an illusion. “You have given everyone a scare, Erik. Me especially.”

“I don’t know why you are here, except you must think I am about to die. I don’t know what else would bring you to Scotland.”

“That isn’t fair to me, Erik,” she whispered, staring at the cup in her hands. “I am your mother.”

How could she have gotten to Scotland so quickly?

She couldn’t have. His gaze took in the rest of the room before coming back to rest on her. “How long have you been here?”

She set the laudanum-laced drink on the nightstand. “Since you went missing. Becca brought me here. She needs me, Erik. You must understand…a mother needs to feel needed sometimes. She needs her children around her.”

Erik pressed his fingertips against his temple. The last time she had needed him so much, he’d given her five thousand pounds. A bandage covered his head and wrapped his chest. “Where is Christine?”

“She is currently with Lady Sophia and Mr. Attenborough.”

Erik tried to remember why that should alarm him. Attenborough wasn’t due back until the end of the week.

Unless it was already the end of the week and his solicitor had received judgment back from the Commissionary Court.

Christine sat in Erik’s library stone-still and learned that her marriage to the duke of Sedgwick was not legal.

Until the moment Erik’s solicitor read the decree handed down after a preliminary examination by a magistrate in Dunfermline, Christine had not believed it to be true.

“His appeal failed,” Mr. Attenborough said. “I warned him that it would. It was a simple matter for Maxwell to have the death certificate nullified and hence render your recent wedding invalid. But considering the circumstances, the magistrate will not bring charges of bigamy.”

“Lord Sedgwick knew about this appeal when he returned from Dunfermline?” she asked.

Clearing his throat, Attenborough stole an embarrassed glance at Aunt Sophie. “Considering the seriousness of the original edict, I thought he would have told you, mum.”

“No,” she whispered.

“How long before all of this nonsense is settled and they can remarry?” Aunt Sophie asked.

“His grace will be legally free to wed in a year. We could get no magistrate to agree to conciliation even with a monetary settlement to Robert Maxwell. Lord Eyre still believes his daughter is alive.”

Aunt Sophie drew herself up. “If this Lord Eyre person is claiming his daughter is alive, he will be greatly disappointed. Surely he wants something.”

“Lord Eyre wants his granddaughter, mum. He will agree to the settlement and remove all claims if he can have his granddaughter. I believe when his grace learned of this request he said something to the effect that it would be a cold day in hell before Eyre ever saw that happen.”

Christine studied her hands in her lap, folding and then unfolding them. She hadn’t slept in a week. Only this morning, she had left Erik’s bedside, reassured by the physician his fever had broken. She reached out her hand and touched her aunt’s sleeve. “I don’t feel well…”

“Of course you don’t, dear. First, you nearly lose your husband and now you
do
lose your husband in the most idiotic of circumstances.” Aunt Sophie glared at Attenborough. “You are supposed to be the best solicitor in all Great Britain. Surely you could have found some legal loophole—”

“Aunt Sophie”—Christine clutched her aunt’s arm—“the matter is finished for now. Truly, I need to lie down.”

A knock sounded on the door. Boris entered the library. “Your grace,” he said to Christine. “Lord Sedgwick is awake and asking for you.”

Christine rose. “How is he, Boris? Is he well?”

“Yes, mum. The countess is still with him.”

After Becca had come to her the night Erik had been found, Christine had allowed his mother into Sedgwick Castle.

Christine still had many questions for mother and daughter, and though Christine did not trust the countess enough to leave her alone with Erik—a servant was always nearby—the woman was still Erik’s mother and had pleaded her case successfully. The questions regarding any association the countess might have with the Maxwells would have to wait. Though in light of today’s events, Christine was not even sure she held the right anymore to query his mother on the issue.

Turning her face away from the concern she glimpsed
in Boris’s eyes, she knew if she faced Erik now she would likely wrap her hands around his throat.

And do what?

He’d lied to her that day in the tower, yes, and told her they were still married. But not because he’d wanted to hurt or deceive her. He’d lied because he cared for her.

“Mum…”

Christine nodded. “Please tell him…”

Aunt Sophie rose in a
swish
of bright blue and green taffeta. “Please tell his grace that my niece is not feeling well, if you will, Boris. She will be in to see him as soon as she is able.”

Christine leaned against the tower window and stared into the darkness. The heavy leaded glass cool against her cheek, she watched the moon chase the clouds across the sky. She could not sleep. She’d been staring outside for an hour before she realized it and, with discontent, she gathered her robe about her and returned to the workbench. The aroma of that evening’s uneaten meal still lingered in the chamber.

Bracing her elbows on the workbench, she turned up the lamp. Shadows danced on the walls and the ceiling as the flame wavered in a draft that came up through the cracks in the stone. She had made this room into a laboratory of sorts, with two workbenches near the windows. At night, the lamplight reflected off the glass and made the windows like mirrors. Tonight she would rather not be looking back at herself.

She still had not gone to Erik’s room. Boris had reassured her when she had awakened from her nap in Aunt Sophie’s room that Lord Sedgwick was doing well. But after that afternoon, Erik had not asked to see her
again. She did not expect that he would. It would be beneath his station to do so.