Lady Midnight (17 page)

That night, Kate couldn't fall asleep, even though she had felt so tired after her schoolroom dinner with Amelia that she retired early. Her chamber was silent, her yellow-draped bed warm and cozy, but still she lay awake, watching the black sliver of sky through the parted window curtains. It had been a very long, strange day, roiling with emotions beneath its quiet, conventional surface.

In her mother's house, there had been a Chinese puzzle box, brought to Lucrezia Bruni by one of her many admirers after his voyage to the mysterious Orient. It sat on a side table in the drawing room amid a myriad of other bibelots, jeweled snuffboxes and pearl-framed miniatures, alabaster fragments from ancient Greece and broken faience from Egypt. The Chinese box stood out not for rich ornament or bright colors, but for its striking simplicity among all the flash and dazzle. It was carved of a glossy dark wood, inlaid with only a few mother-of-pearl flowers on its surface. It appeared to be only a smooth block of wood, yet in reality it was a box—a box that would open only when pressed or turned a certain way.

When Kate was a child, she adored that box. She would hide beneath the violet satin-draped table for hours at a time, listening to the soft murmurs and laughter of her mother's guests and trying to decipher the box's secret. She turned it this way and that, shaking it, prodding at it with her little childish fingers.

One day, it finally did open, the panel gliding out smoothly, soundlessly, to reveal a tiny parchment scroll. The scroll was covered with small, indecipherable figures, which Kate never could translate. She had been so sure that if she only
could
read it, she would surely learn all the secrets of the universe.

The family she now found herself in the midst of was a great deal like that box.

The Lindleys hid their secrets well behind a smooth, country-gentry surface. Turn them and shake them as she would, she could only discover them in intriguing bits and pieces. A maidservant's quickly interrupted gossip. Christina's muttered comments about how her brother had not
always
been a gentleman. A pretty child's deeply held fear that everyone she loved would die, just as her mother had. A matriarch's cool re galness that just barely hid her love and concern for her family. A young lady pulling ineffectually against her proper place in Society. An angelically handsome man with scars, both on his body and in his heart. Nothing earth-shattering, perhaps—no kidnapped maidens in the attic, or bodies buried in the garden. But intriguing and disquieting all the same.

And most disquieting of all was the knowledge that the Lindleys' grand London sister-in-law was the daughter of Kate's mother's own protector. The one who bought her jewels and a country villa, who had her portrait painted by the finest artist in Venice. The one she died with, in that stormy sea.

Kate turned over in her bed, staring at the shadowed wall. She had the most irrational urge to pull the bedclothes over her head, as if that would shut out the wide world. As if she could thus escape.

She came all the way to Yorkshire secure in the knowledge that she
could
escape. No one in this remote corner would know her! Yet her old life had long tentacles, and they stretched even to Thorn Hill in the insubstantial forms of Mary Lindley and Michael's artist friend Elizabeth Hollingsworth.

"They will never come here," Kate whispered to the night. Christina had said her sister-in-law rarely left London, and there was nothing here for a famous artist. Even if they did, they would not know Kate. She had never met Mary Lindley, and only fleetingly seen Elizabeth Hollingsworth when she worked on Lucrezia's portrait in their drawing room. Surely Mary would know nothing of her father's love affairs in Italy!

These were very reasonable arguments, and surely would have reassured Kate in the sensible light of day. But in the darkness, they preyed on her already guilty heart. She knew sleep was a long way away; the night encroached on her bed, creeping in like cold hands to grab at her with fears and accusations. She pushed back the blankets and sat up, reaching for her dressing gown.

It would do her no good to lie here concocting wild doomsday scenarios, she thought. She might as well go down to the library and find something to read. Something
besides
the French grammars and etiquette guides of the schoolroom. Truth be told, Kate was also lured by Sarah the maid's descriptions of the Italian treasures housed in the library.

Kate lit a candle and slipped from her room into the cold silence of the corridor. Everyone was obviously tucked up asleep, as all respectable people should be at such an hour. Lady Darcy's door was firmly shut, and Christina's chamber emanated a strange, earthy scent, but it was quiet in there, too. Michael's—well, the less thought about
his
bedroom the better! Kate scurried past his door on fleet, slippered feet, as if the stout wood could suddenly sprout arms and snatch her into the tempting sins that awaited there.

But she paused at Amelia's room, thinking she heard a small noise. She worried about the child after their brief disturbing conversation that afternoon. All seemed well after Christina came back and jollied Amelia into laughing, as if a storm cloud had passed, leaving only sunshine in its wake. During dinner, they practiced French vocabulary and talked about music.

Amelia seemed an ordinary, if very intelligent, little girl. Kate still worried, though. She knew more than anyone that appearances could be most deceiving.

She slowly opened Amelia's door a crack and peeked inside, holding up her candle to cast away some of the shadows. Amelia rested in a fairy-tale confection of a bed, all swoops of white lace and pink silk bows. She had kicked away the pink satin counterpane and lay with arms and legs flung out. The fire in the white marble grate had burned down to embers and the room was chilly.

Kate hurried over to the bedside, her footfalls muffled in a thick pink carpet. She knelt down and drew the blankets up to tuck them securely around the child's tiny limbs. Amelia muttered in her sleep, her head tossing on the embroidered pillow. Kate smoothed back the tangled golden curls, and bent her head to press a gentle kiss to Amelia's petal-soft cheek.

The fierce wave of protectiveness that washed over her as she stared down at the little cherub astonished her. In only a very few days, she had gone from a woman who didn't care for children to a lioness guarding her tiny cub. But Amelia was a special child, and Kate rather liked these new, warm feelings, even as they frightened her. Her heart hadn't been frozen in that cold water, after all.

"I meant what I said, Amelia,
bambina
," she whispered. "You need never fear anything as long as I'm near. I will take care of you."

Kate saw a small, china-headed doll peeping from under the pillows. She tucked it beneath the bedclothes next to Amelia, and gave the little girl one last kiss before creeping from the room as soundlessly as she had arrived.

It was an easy voyage to the library, the rest of Thorn Hill being as quiet as the upstairs corridors. All the servants had long found their beds, and only the great, winding staircase stood between her and her destination. If there were any ghosts at Thorn Hill, as surely there must be after its long history, they were benign, invisible ones.

The library was smaller than Lady Darcy's domain of the drawing room, and more inviting. The walls were paneled in an elegant dark linenfold, no doubt a relic of Thorn Hill's days as an Elizabethan manor, and shelves stretched from floor to ceiling on two walls, filled with enticing books. The third wall faced the outside of the house, with three deep window seats cushioned and curtained in burgundy velvet. And the fourth held a vast fireplace, flanked by armchairs and footstools. A massive, carved desk lurked in the shadows like a desert lion waiting to pounce—a lion covered with papers and ledgers.

Kate remembered the maid's words about Michael Lindley's Italian collection housed in here, and indeed it appeared there
were
many paintings on the walls, framed in flashing gilt. And low, glass-topped cases crouched between the windows, holding the inviting gleam of Murano glass and Etruscan gold.

Kate longed to explore these lures, but it was too dark to see them properly and she had no time. She hurried on, intent on her errand to find a book, and promised herself she would examine them all one day soon.

The entire space of the library emanated an enticing scent, a combination of woodsmoke, paper and ink, leather, tobacco, and a hint of Michael's own scent, sandalwood soap mixed with fresh air. Kate inhaled it all with a shiver.
This
was a room where she could surely spend many happy hours, even all alone in the witching hour of the night.

She used her candle to light the heavy candelabra at either side of the fireplace, casting away all gloom, forcing the darkness into the corners. Then she approached a most pleasurable task indeed—finding something to read.

The lower shelves held no enticements—only dry, well-thumbed treatises on farming techniques and livestock cultivation. There were no novels or volumes of poetry, even though Christina had said she and her mother enjoyed
Pride and Prejudice.
No doubt such novels were kept tucked away, separate from serious works on soil enrichment and animal husbandry.

Kate climbed higher on the sturdy library ladder and found a complete set of Shakespeare, bound in handsome red leather and stamped with gold. She laid a fond touch on
The Taming of the Shrew,
her mother's favorite play and the source of Kate's own name.
Bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst...

But she had come here to chase memories away on this night, not court them. She climbed higher on the ladder, leaving the Bard of Avon and his shrew behind. On almost the top shelf she found what she wanted—a volume of local folklore and legends. She was intrigued by Christina's tale of the drowned city beneath Semerwater, and she longed to know more about it. Water, after all, could change anything, could make all things clean again.

She tucked the small book under her arm and started to climb down. Her slippered foot just reached toward the rung below her when the library door banged open, letting in a flood of new light.

Deeply surprised, Kate lost her balance. Her foot slid from beneath her and she fell backward, toward the hard wooden floor. She cried out, her hand flailing in a panic for the ladder, the shelf,
something
to break her fall. But her fingers closed only on empty air.

Strong, hard arms closed tightly around her body before she could hit the floor. Breathless and terrified, Kate squeezed her eyes shut, but she knew who held her. She knew as soon as her arms clasped about linen-covered shoulders and she inhaled that clean, outdoor scent.

Michael Lindley.
Michael Lindley had swooped down like his archangel namesake and saved her. And now she was in such trouble, because she didn't want him to let her go. Ever.

* * *

Michael had not thought he could possibly move that fast. He saw Mrs. Brown—Kate—slipping from the ladder, and in only an instant he dropped his walking stick and dived forward to catch her, sick at the thought of so much as a dark hair on her head being harmed.

She landed in his arms as light as a marsh bird—or almost. She was a small woman, short and slim, but she hit his arms at a great speed, and his bad leg nearly buckled beneath him. He tightened his clasp around her until they both were steady. Her arms wound about his neck, and her breath was cool and hurried against his bare skin. The loose braid of her hair fell over her shoulder against his arm.

For a long moment, they were caught in a silken web woven of silence, darkness, breath, touch. She lay in his arms, entwined against him, like a fairy creature of the night flown through the library window into his embrace. Surely in an instant she would fly away again, and he would find that this was only a dream.

But a dream he yearned to cling to, for as long as it lasted. She was soft in his arms, his fairy creature, and she smelled of summer roses and the powdery scent of old books and firelight. He could feel the length of her legs across his forearms, the slender shape of them beneath her thin night rail and dressing gown. There was the impression, the merest fleeting sensation of her breasts pressed against his chest. They were small and high, and conjured inside him sensations he thought long buried in his callow youth, when the merest glimpse of a woman's decolletage aroused all manner of erotic dreams and longings. She felt so very
right
in his arms, as if made to fit just there and no place else. His arms molded to her legs and her back, her head nestled on his shoulder just at the turning of his neck, as if they had embraced just so for a hundred years.

Yet, inevitably, cold reality intruded on this heated fantasy. A branch outside the window cracked against the glass, blown by the night wind, and Kate stirred against him. She lifted her head and stared at him with wide, chocolate-dark eyes, lips parted, as if she, too, was waking from a dream world.

For a moment, they just gazed at each other, bemused, dazed. Then she gasped, as a person would if suddenly pushed into icy water. She leaned back, straining against his embrace as her own hands slipped from around his neck to push at his shoulders. Her gaze shifted, moving past him to the window.

"You startled me," she murmured, her Italian accent more pronounced than usual. It added a richness and mystery to the moment, contributing to the dreamlike sense that this lady was
not
the governess, but a strange, unearthly creature.