Captive Bride (14 page)

“You cannot disagree,” she said, a wretched quaver in her voice. “See? It’s true. You ride up to York when it pleases you to escape whatever concerns you have at
Cheriot
Manor or in London, or to see Nancy and Lord
Marke
. You amuse yourself,
then
you leave the moment you see or hear something you don’t like. You never stay long enough to hear more. You might learn the unpalatable truth, then, mightn’t you, Lord
Cheriot
?”

“For your information, Miss
Sinclaire
, I have never heard or seen anything I dislike when I
am in your company.” His voice was very low. “Except of course for your repeated refusals of my requests for your hand, which by the way is no small reason for a man to decide it’s high time he bring his visit to a close. You are speaking nonsense.” But the peculiar gleam in his eyes suggested he knew perfectly well that she was not.

The truth hit Bea with the force of a storm. She stepped back and her words tumbled out.

“Why do you come to Hart House, Tip?” 

He seemed taken aback,
then
his eyes darkened. “I should think that would be perfectly obvious by now.”

“It is obvious why you believe you come.” She pulled in a harsh breath, screwing up her courage. “But now you may be relieved of your efforts, my lord. You needn’t visit again. I pray you, do not. The girl that you believe would make a comfortable wife does not, in fact, exist. She never did.
I
do. A prurient, amateurish Bow Street Runner with the speech of a
doxy
who is thrilled,
thrilled
to be trapped in a dark castle with a bona fide ghost. I’m terribly sorry to disappoint you.” The sarcasm slid across her teeth, cold and metallic, but her words trembled.

He stared at her, shocked comprehension suffusing his handsome features.

Bea’s heart felt like it imploded. It was true, what she had suspected for years but never wanted to believe entirely. Now, looking into his eyes, she saw that he realized his mistake.

She whirled around and fled
.

~
~
~

November 3, 1821

Great character and sense.

Great
character
and
sense
.

He thinks I am a girl of great character and sense.

I already knew he thought this of me. It is no surprise whatsoever. It is the very reason I could not accept him today, cannot ever accept the thing I want most in the world. He sees me submit to Mama, perhaps believes that I refuse him because of her dependency on me and my dedication to her happiness. He knows me to be generally content with my lot in this remote corner of England. Thus he concludes that I have great character and sense.

Sense—most certainly not.

Character—I am inclined to doubt.

He has no notion of who I am. No notion of the woman I would be if I could. No notion that I long to be loved the way
Georgie
is
loved,
the way Sylvia is loved, the way Nancy is loved. I am practical, sensible Beatrice, serving her mother quietly and steadfastly without complaint, who would serve a husband well in much the same manner.

To be entirely fair, he is not alone in holding that impression of me. Two other gentlemen have asked for my hand, assuming much the same thing. These pages record it, just as they record my refusals. Each professed his admiration. But they were not
him
.

Diary, he does not know me at all. He has no idea that I long for a towering castle, a wicked count, a dashing hero, and a happy ending. He has no idea that I long for him.

I could tell him, but it would not change him. That, of course, is my true weakness of character.

Is this pride?
Perhaps vanity?

No. It is an aching heart. Empty and longing to be loved, adored, and cherished. Not merely required.

~
~
~

CHAPTER
NINE

Tip stood frozen in place, panic gripping him.

She was magnificent. Dark eyes flashing, cheeks crimson, lips dewy, perfect breasts heaving in indignation. As she’d spoken, he’d barely been able to attend to her words. All his energies had gone toward restraining himself from hauling her to the couch and having his way with her.

But he
had
heard her order him to cease visiting Yorkshire.

He sucked in thick breaths, trying to still his chaotic senses and the voice—actually inside his head this time—telling him he was the greatest fool alive.

He’d always known all that she’d just said about herself. He had tried to pretend otherwise, but it was useless. She did not often reveal her passion, but it always simmered beneath her demure surface, glimmering in her warm eyes, ready to break free. The very night he fell in love with her he’d seen it in her gaze, muted for others then fully apparent to him. In an instant he’d lost both his mind and heart.

But he hadn’t lost his will, and for four years he had pretended he had complete control over the part of him that responded to her secret ardor for life like gunpowder to a spark. He wanted her so much he willfully blinded himself to who she had always been.
Practical, sensible, clearheaded—yes.
But also vibrant, ardent, and deeply feeling.

An image came to him of her beloved garden, a riotous mass of roses, a tumult of rich color and heady fragrance, with her at the center of it.

She was correct. She was not what he wanted in a wife. He wanted agreeable companionship, pleasant conversation, and a bedmate he would enjoy looking at in the morning with her hair in disarray and circles beneath her eyes because he’d kept her busy all night.

He did not want impassioned speeches, hurled accusations, or wide doe eyes sparkling with unshed tears. He certainly didn’t want to be called ridiculous names and have his masculinity questioned, or to share his woman with a damned impertinent ghost. He emphatically did not want this tangled tumult in his midsection, this difficulty drawing breath, this crushing sensation in his chest, this wild need to find her now, take her in his arms, and make love to her until her shouts of anger became cries of pleasure.

He dragged a hand through his hair, gripping the back of his neck, his arm unsteady.

Dear God, he was shaking.

Once he had come upon his parents after a particularly nasty row. He’d only been about ten at the time, and miserable over their screaming match though he hadn’t understood much of its content.

His father had been kneeling on the ground, his mother bent over him, stroking his hair and kissing his brow. The baron wrapped his arms around her waist and murmured soft words in a broken voice, and she cried, “My darling, you are trembling!” She had cradled his head to her, and Tip found he could no longer watch. He went straight to the stable, mounted his father’s fastest horse, and rode until the sun disappeared.

Years later he came to understand why they fought: his philandering ways, her intolerance of it; his pleading, her threats of leaving. It didn’t make any difference to Tip. Seeing his father weeping, a great man cowed by passion, and his mother, a gentle soul in such pain, he vowed he would go a different route. That sort of unbridled mania of the heart would never control him. He
would choose a wife wisely, a woman he could admire and who would respond to his affections with measure.

He had apparently chosen poorly
.

He had never simply admired Beatrice
Sinclaire
. He adored her from the start. At that Christmas gathering at her great-uncle Sir Jeremy’s home seven years earlier, she had bedazzled him—not even sixteen, yet already with the grace and self-possession of a lady. Her chocolate eyes had captured him, their thick, black lashes fanning down when she caught him staring at her,
then
lifting again so she could cast him a sparkling, irrepressibly honest smile.

The realization that his adoration was love had taken him three more years. In that time she had only grown more beautiful in both body and character.

He did know her. He simply did not know now if he could live with her.

The trouble was
,
he was quite certain he could not live without her.

Bea tucked herself into a ball on her bed and cried. She could not remember the last time she had wept so thoroughly or at such length. All the hurt poured out, the misery from the constant
unkindnesses
her mother practiced on her, the ache of her father’s negligence, and the pain over finally losing Tip.

He must already be packing to return to Derbyshire.

Then good riddance to him! Perhaps if she didn’t see him every several months, her heart could recover from him. In a few dozen years.

A scratch sounded at the door. “Beatrice?” Lady Bronwyn whispered. “May I enter?”

Bea uncurled, straightened her gown, swiped a hand across her cheeks, and went to the door.

Late afternoon sunlight came through the window, dust motes scampering about in the pale glow. Wearing a simple frock of white muslin, her black tresses bound in a knot and her gentian eyes wide, Lady Bronwyn looked like a
faery
, the sort Bea remembered from childhood stories. The sort she had always wished she could be, free and unfettered from everyone’s dispiriting opinions of her.

“How is your grandmother?”

“Oh, she sleeps much of the time now. But, oh, Beatrice, have you been crying?”

Bea turned her back and went to fluff the pillow on her bed. “I have been napping. I am a bit weary after all the excitement, you see,” she lied
.

Bronwyn perched on the dressing table chair and worried her cherry lip between her teeth. “My grandmother insists she is weary of life.” She paused. “Lord
Iversly
says he is weary of death.”

“Yes, he mentioned something like that to me, as well.”

“Your brother—” Bronwyn halted, took a breath, and began again with greater certainty. “I think he does not fully understand the danger I face.”

“I believe he does, Bronwyn. He was just saying the same to me. He has gone into the village to search for information about the curse.”

“Oh, he has?” The girl’s face brightened. “Beatrice,” she said abruptly sober again, “is he spoken for?”

Bea’s eyes widened.

Lady Bronwyn continued
,
head bent but her tinkling words quick. “Oh, what I mean to say is, I admire him very much. My father arranged for my betrothal to Mr. Whitney, but the contract was never signed.” She peeked up sweetly through long, sooty lashes. Bea could not wonder that
her brother had lost his head to this girl.

Privately she agreed with Tip that her twin required time to mature. At two and twenty he was still a boy, yet she herself was already on the shelf. “I do not know that Thomas has any plans to marry soon.”

“Oh,” Lady Bronwyn’s pretty face fell
.

“If he did have plans,” Bea offered, “I am certain you would be the first to know.”

Hope spilled from Bronwyn’s glittering eyes.

“Bronwyn?” a pallid voice whispered from the doorway.

“
Grandmama
, what are you doing out of bed? How brave you are!” Bronwyn hurried to her. Though Mrs. Canon seemed of an age with Bea’s great-aunts, she shared none of the cherubic health of Aunt Julia or steely energy of Aunt Grace. Instead she was thin as a rail and frail, her eyes wan and watery. She seemed more like a ghost than
Iversly
.

“
Grandmama
, this is Miss Beatrice
Sinclaire
, Mr.
Sinclaire’s
sister. I told you about her last night. She and her friends have come to help us scare away Lord
Iversly
.”

A tremor shook the elderly lady’s insubstantial frame. “The fiend,” she rasped,
then
coughed. Bronwyn hovered around her, looking helpless.

Bea took Mrs. Canon’s arm and led her to a chair. When she was settled, shrunk back into a corner of the cushion like a child, Bea asked, “Mrs. Canon, do you know anything of the curse that might help us solve this trouble? I understand that you lived here for quite some time before your granddaughter arrived.”

“Oh, she never heard the ghost before I arrived,” Bronwyn supplied.

“You did not? But he spoke with us nearly the moment we came here.”

“
Iversly
does not show himself unless a maiden resides in the castle.” Mrs. Canon’s
voice shook, from age or perhaps fear
.