Captive Bride (26 page)

How lovely it had been to fall.

She hurried to the great-aunts’ chamber and knocked.

Lady
Marstowe
opened the door and raised lofty silver brows. “Good afternoon, Beatrice. How did you sleep?” 

“Well, thank you,” for the two hours she actually slept. Chin high, she ducked into the bedchamber. “Thomas told me about Aunt Julia.” The bed curtains were drawn around the massive four-poster. “Is she very ill?”

“Groggy, rather.
She is asleep now, and seems not to have a fever, but complains of aches in her joints and a megrim. She believes it is rheumatism.”

“Rheumatism,” Bea said thoughtfully. “Do you think this is
Iversly’s
doing?”

“Do you?”

“No. Although . . .” She could not keep it from her great-aunt. “It could be.” 

“I assumed as much last night.”

“But Thomas said you—”

“Thomas hasn’t half your brains or a quarter of your character. I considered it your news to share if you wished.”

Bea bit her lip. “Well, he knows now. But thank you.”

“I presume Lord
Cheriot
means to marry you?”

Bea nodded.

“You don’t appear happy about it.” The dowager frowned. “Perhaps you haven’t as many brains as I thought.”

The trouble did not at all reside in Bea’s brain.

“I am happy, Aunt Grace. It is only that Aunt Julia has fallen ill, and now Mama and Papa . . .”

“Harriet always knows precisely when she is least wanted.” The dowager’s lips pinched.

Bea went to the door. “Will you send Peg to fetch me when Aunt Julia wakes?”

Lady
Marstowe
nodded, perusing Bea’s hair and gown. “You will do. And in any case it does not matter how you appear to them. You have only one person to please now.”

Bea’s belly twisted with tingles. She descended the spiral stair with a firm step, drawing in fortifying breaths until she reached the open parlor door. Her mother’s voice trailed out to her. She paused in the corridor.

“Good heavens, doesn’t anyone in this horrid place know how to make a reasonable tisane? I should have brought my chef along, after all,” Lady Harriet sighed. “You there, Claude, is that your name? Go tell that Cook person this beverage simply will not do.”

“You should be thankful you’ve got that at least, Harriet,” Bea’s father said in a stern tone. “I have never heard of such a thing—an old woman and a girl barely out of the schoolroom setting up house together in a castle in the middle of nowhere. How did my son get mixed up in this business?”

A footstep sounded behind Bea.

“Will you go in, or do you imagine they will come out here to meet you?” Tip’s voice washed over her like honey, smoothing out the kinks in her stomach with warmth.

She looked over her shoulder. He grinned. He wore a dark cutaway coat, waistcoat, and pristine white shirt and cravat. He had shaved, and he looked as breathtakingly handsome now as he had hours earlier in his bed with a shadow of whiskers and no clothing whatsoever. Bea’s throat tightened.

“I’m hoping that if I wait here long enough they will simply disappear.” 

“Come now. It cannot be all that horrid.” He touched the small of her back, sending delectable awareness through her exhausted body, and pressed her forward.

She took a deep breath and let the sensation of his hand make her smile.

Within the parlor, Lady Harriet held her habitual position, reclining upon a sofa, swathed in exquisite fabrics of gentian, azure, and cobalt to reflect her eyes and complement the gold in her shining hair. She enhanced the color of her coiffure with chamomile leaves and lemon juice, and Bea herself had ordered the gown and shawl in York according to her mother’s exact specifications.

Bea’s father stood at the window, his back to his estranged wife. At sixty years of age, Alfred
Sinclaire
was a robust, handsome man, with an almost military bearing about him. But Bea detected an extra rigidity to his stance now.

Thomas was nowhere to be seen.

“Hello, Mama.
Papa.”
She curtseyed. Tip no longer touched her, but his presence behind gave a tangible memory of how lovely life could be sometimes, if not entirely at this moment. Bea moved toward her father.

“Afternoon,
Cheriot
.” He nodded to Tip.

“How do you do, sir?”

“Beatrice.” Her father took her hand and allowed her to kiss him on the cheek as she had since she was a girl. “It’s been too many months since I last saw you. You look well. A little peaked, though. Have you been sleeping?”

“Papa,” Bea said, warmth crawling into her cheeks, “you sound like my mother.”

“And where is your kiss for me, Beatrice?” Lady Harriet cooed from the other side of the chamber. She and her husband were as far apart from each other as they could be in the space
.

Bea obeyed her mother’s summons. “What brings you here, Mama?”

“The carriage was horrid, not nearly as well sprung as I would imagine he would keep it. I have the most tiresome aches and fidgets from—”

“I brought her here,” Mr.
Sinclaire
said ominously. “When I arrived in York the other day to discover that you had gone on this harebrained chase after your brother, I demanded we set off to find you at once. Of course that was after your mother waited nearly all afternoon to tell me where you were.” He cast his wife a glowering look.

Bea clasped her hands tightly. Tip had seen her parents’ unpleasantness with one another before. She couldn’t fathom why it should make her feel especially ashamed now.

“Papa, I didn’t need to chase Tom anywhere. He wrote to me exactly where he was staying, and before I left home I gave the direction to Mama, which is how you come to be here as well.”

“What have you been doing to mix yourself up in this business?” he scowled. “You shouldn’t be chasing about the countryside after Thomas’s doxies. You will tarnish your reputation and your mother depends upon you. She needs you at home.”

“Lady Bronwyn is not a doxy, Papa. She is a fine girl. Haven’t you met her yet? Where has Tom gone?”

“He went upstairs to fetch you nearly an hour ago.”

Bea’s jaw tightened at her brother’s cowardice. “No doubt he will return soon,” she said, affecting serenity. “May I get you something, Mama?
Freshen
your tea?”
Anything to be gone swiftly.

“Beatrice, you are withholding information from me.” Her father’s stormy eyes narrowed. “What is going on in this place?” 

Bea’s stomach churned. “We are all quite well except for Aunt Julia, which I suspect you know. She is ill. I would like to go see her right now, in fact.” She did not dare edge toward the door yet. Her father’s face was too dark.

“Has your brother compromised this Miss Nobody?”

“Lady Bronwyn, Papa.”

“Is that what this is all about?”

“I am sure you should speak with him on that matter.”

“He
has
compromised her!” Lady Harriet wailed, draping the back of an ivory hand over her mouth.

“Has he?” Mr.
Sinclaire
fixed Bea with an accusing glare.

“How could you allow him to do such a thing, Beatrice—to throw himself away on
a
nobody
? Has she even made her bow to society? Good heavens, she must be Welsh.
How dreadful.”
She shook her head. “Oh, you are a faithless girl not to care for your brother more
dearly, and to protect my sensibilities with greater care, my third and most thankless daughter.”

Bea’s hands were clammy. “I don’t know that—”

“You don’t know by now that your brother depends on your good sense?” her father interrupted. “That without your guidance he is unable to make rational decisions? I hold you fully responsible for this mishap, Beatrice. I only hope I can find a way out of it before it is too late.”

“I suspect it is already too late, Papa.” Bea could not manage to raise her voice above a whisper. “Thomas is quite taken with her, and I believe he has asked her to marry him. But I am not certain.” Her last words were swallowed by her father’s exclamation and mother’s renewed wailing.

“Sylvia could have prevented him from making such a foolish match,” her mother groaned. “She always knew precisely a gentleman’s worth and how to gage his position in society. I gave you all the advantages of town for two full seasons, yet you didn’t learn anything of the kind.
Wretched failures, both of them.”
She waved a contemptuous hand.

Bea’s
breath
shortened. Her eldest sister, Sylvia, had married a man who once hired himself out as a lover to wealthy women at the French court. Sylvia had told this to Bea in private, and she had kept her sister’s confidence. Now the tip of Bea’s tongue itched to tell her mother the truth and dim some of the shine of her eldest sister’s perfection. She swallowed back the impulse, ducking her chin.

“You have proven a terrible disappointment to your mother in this, Beatrice,” her father said with a shake of his head.
“And to me.
You should not have allowed him to do this.”

“I don’t know that I could have halted him from it, Papa,” she said, knowing that Tip watched her too. Her parents must be truly distressed to speak to her like this in his presence. “But I ought to have tried, I realize.” Instead of flinging herself into adventure at the castle, she could have written Thomas a strong letter from the safe distance of the village, encouraging him to come home.
Georgie
would have done that sort of intelligent thing. Her father was probably thinking that right now.

Of course, she hadn’t known about the curse or that she would be trapped in the castle. But she might have thought ahead rather than spending hours worrying about her own imprudent infatuation—an attachment that until a few minutes ago finally seemed so lovely, perhaps even not entirely wrong.

Now her hopes all seemed foolish beyond measure. She stood completely immobile, hands cold and face hot, stunned at how swiftly all sense of freedom and happiness had entirely deserted her.

“Perhaps, sir,” Tip’s deep voice sank into her, “I might be of use in searching out Thomas so that you can speak to him directly.”

Bea’s pulse quickened. Her parents could not mistake his mild chastisement. But they would not heed it. Tip did not understand anything about the situation. How could he?

“Oh, dear me, yes, Lord
Cheriot
. We are a family lost and abandoned, and you are quite gracious to offer your assistance,” her mother trilled. She still called him by his title after so many years of familiarity. Abruptly, the formality seemed very silly to Bea, yet until a few days earlier she had insisted upon it—not out of respect for his consequence, she now realized, but to keep him at a distance.
To keep her heart safe.
But it had never been safe from the moment she met him.

“That is very good of you,
Cheriot
,” her father said. “Harriet mentioned that you have business in the region. How do your interests go along here?”

“Quite well, thank you,” he said lightly. He had not yet gone to
Porthmadog
. A dull ache swirled in Bea’s middle.

“You have no doubt had a great deal of messiness to deal with here,” her father said tightly. “I wish my son had the integrity that you do.” He shook his head
.

“It wasn’t too many years ago that I was stirring up trouble as well,” Tip replied.

“Your parents never despaired of you. Your father, I know, was always very proud.”

“And your beautiful mother so fond. And your sister, poor, sweet Elizabeth,” Lady Harriet sighed.
“Left without her mother at such a tender age.
My
Georgianna
was such a comfort to her, although I suppose she was already in Ireland with
Kievan
then, wasn’t she?” she said, as though the effort of piecing together the chronology of the past three years proved too onerous.

“Fortunately, my sister had already married by the time my mother passed away. She had two children of her own in whom to take solace.” 

“But, of course.” Lady Harriet laid a languid hand upon her brow. “How time slips away when one is closeted in the country with no pleasant company, no diversions, nothing but endless gray days and tedious, disobedient servants that never attend to one’s wishes suitably.”

Bea’s cheeks burned.

“Miss
Sinclaire
,” Tip said behind her. “Would you care to accompany me to the village in search of your brother? We might prevail upon Lady Bronwyn to return to the castle as well so that she can become acquainted with your parents.” He turned to them again. “Lady Bronwyn’s former governess took poorly yesterday. Our hostess generously spent yesterday evening at Miss Minturn’s cottage in the village.”