Seduction Becomes Her (36 page)

“Don’t go,” she whispered. “Don’t go out there.”

Charles started to argue, but the reason for the bone-biting cold and the peculiar murky haze in the midst of a raging storm suddenly dawned on him. “The ghost?” he asked in a low tone.

Daphne nodded, her eyes on Raoul. “Katherine saved me.
She
forced Raoul here.”

Charles didn’t question her. His arm tightened around her waist, and he turned to look in the same direction.

There was little to see, Raoul’s body often obscured by the roiling, heavy mist in front of him. His arms waved madly as he punched and stabbed again and again into that writhing mass, all to no avail.

Across the space that divided them, Charles saw a look of abject terror fill his brother’s face as the cloudy mass towered menacingly above him. Raoul took a half step back, his knee hitting the broken edge of the parapet. The ancient stonework crumbled, and with a scream that Charles would hear until his dying day, Raoul disappeared, plunging off the battlement.

Charles and Daphne watched mesmerized, as the mist, as if it had accomplished what it meant to do, shrank and vanished.

His face set and grim, with Daphne at his side, Charles walked to the section of parapet that Raoul had gone over. Looking down, he saw his brother’s body lying still and unmoving amidst the fallen rubble. For a long time, Charles stared at Raoul’s twisted form far below him. He wanted to feel sorrow, remorse at his brother’s death, but he could not. Too many women had died because of him, and if Raoul had had his way, Daphne would have died by his hand. It’s over, he thought numbly. It’s finally over. The Monster is dead.

They kept Raoul’s identity a secret. Except for the five that had been privy to Raoul’s true nature, the poor man who had died so tragically in the fall from the battlements of Beaumont Place had been an itinerant peddler. Why he had been hiding in the bowels of the house and why he had attacked Daphne and Marcus remained a mystery. Amid curiosity and speculation, the peddler was buried in the pauper’s field, ironically to Charles, next to the body of the unidentified woman found on the beach. There was no marker on the grave, but Charles knew he would never forget its location. Like Raoul’s last scream, it would remain with him forever.

Julian and Nell, accompanied by a now-healed Marcus, had departed the morning after the burial. The two gentlemen would have liked to stay and help explore the hidden staircase, but Nell was longing for her children.

With the departure of guests, life at Beaumont Place returned almost to normal. Almost. The staircase with all its myriad junctions had yet to be fully explored, and then there was that hidden chamber…or so Adrian was convinced.

Three days after the peddler was buried, Adrian insisted that the wall be taken down. The old arrow slits had been opened, and lanterns and torches had been scattered up and down the staircase. Between the natural light and that provided by the torches and lanterns, the staircase, while still gloomy, was no longer shrouded in impenetrable darkness.

That sunny morning, while Adrian happily gathered up his workmen and prepared for the assault on the wall, Charles went in search of Goodson. Finding the butler polishing silver in the pantry, Charles studied him for a moment.

Becoming aware of Charles, Goodson looked up, startled. “Did you ring, sir? I’m sorry, but I didn’t hear it.”

“No, I didn’t ring,” Charles said. Pulling on his ear, he added, “Um, this is a bit awkward, but I wonder if I might borrow that crucifix of yours.”

Goodson stiffened, an expression of grave disapproval crossing his face. “Sir, never tell me that you have fallen prey to my sister’s outrageous tales!”

“You’ve never noticed anything odd about this old house? Never once felt a chill where there should be no chill?” Charles asked quietly, his gaze steady on Goodson. “Never heard the wind sounding like the faint sobbing of a woman? Never, ever caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of your eye, but when you looked, nothing was there?”

For a moment, their gazes held, then Goodson sighed. “I will get it for you.”

And that, thought Charles, was that. Goodson might not admit it, but the butler wasn’t above believing in ghosts, either.

Armed with the crucifix, Charles was almost sanguine as he joined the two servants and Adrian on the landing.

Daphne and April stood on the stairs a few steps above the landing, their expressions expectant. Excited anticipation was in the air as the hefty stable boy lifted the sledgehammer and struck a mighty blow, his companion following after with a powerful swing of the pickax.

Stone chips flew as the two servants worked in rhythm with each other. The work went fast, and Charles had actually begun to believe that Sir Wesley might not make an appearance when the now familiar bone-etching chill hit him.

His eyes met Daphne’s. She felt it, too. Everyone did, the two servants stopping their work as if they’d been frozen where they stood.

Adrian looked around, puzzled. “It’s dashed cold in here all of sudden, isn’t it?”

“Hmmm, yes, I believe it is,” Charles drawled, wondering from which direction Sir Wesley would strike. He gazed down the stairs, almost relieved to see a faint dark shape forming in the shadows. No one else had seen it yet. “These old houses,” he said idly, “well, they have odd humors, don’t they?” His fingers closed around the crucifix, and he took a step to the edge of the landing, placing himself directly in the path of the rising menace. Eyes locked on it, he murmured, “Shall we continue? The sooner we discover what is behind that wall, the sooner we can warm ourselves by the fire.” Nodding to the servants, he said, “Continue, please.”

At his words, the blackness billowed up from the bottom of the staircase. Like a thick, black fog, it loomed over them, the cold rage emanating from the mass nearly knocking Charles down. But he remained on his feet and whipping out the crucifix, he held it aloft and said, “Go and never return. You cannot stop us, and we
will
find what you have hidden. May God forgive you for what you have done.”

To his very great relief and no little astonishment, his incantation worked. Or perhaps it was the crucifix, Charles thought slowly. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that as suddenly as it had appeared, the iciness was gone, and the black, roiling mass melted away.

There was a moment of stunned silence, then Adrian demanded, “What the devil was that? What did you do?”

Putting the crucifix away, Charles looked back at him. A faint flush on his cheeks, he muttered, “Ah, I have been taking lessons from Mrs. Darby. I did that rather well, didn’t I?”

“Rather too well,” remarked his wife dryly. “You nearly frightened the rest of us to death.”

He smiled at her. “You have my word I shall never do it again.”

“Oh, but it was a splendid trick,” Adrian said, his eyes narrowed and suspicious. “I want you to teach it to me.”

“Absolutely not!” said Daphne firmly. Smiling at him, she added, “Shall we find out what is behind that wall?”

Distracted, Adrian promptly forgot about learning any magic tricks and urged his workmen on.

The wall proved to be surprisingly easy to break through—a half dozen more blows, and a small hole appeared. Several minutes later, they had demolished a section large enough for everyone to scramble through. With Adrian leading the way, they entered an antechamber and pushing open the heavy wood door at the end of it, a room was discovered. A room untouched for hundreds of years.

Concealed deep within the walls of Beaumont place where neither water, nor light, nor heat, not even the bitter cold of a December night had penetrated for centuries, the room revealed its secrets. There were signs of decay and age, but overall, the room and its contents were almost perfectly preserved.

It was a sealed tomb, Daphne thought as her gaze moved around the tapestry-hung walls. A splendid rug lay on the stone floor. Bed hangings of gold and cream silk draped the huge bed. Faggots were neatly stacked next to the hearth of a huge gold-veined marble fireplace.

Filled with dread, her steps lagging, Daphne approached the bed. A small woman, her once young skin mottled and dried with age, her long golden hair streaming out behind her, lay curled in the center of the bed. In her arms, Daphne saw that she held an infant. The woman’s cheek lay tenderly on that misshapen head, the babe cradled protectively in the woman’s arms. Around the two bodies, there was an ugly array of rusty brown stains, and at first, Daphne assumed they had come from the birthing of the child. Her breath caught as her gaze rested on the bodice of the woman’s once white linen gown—the same rusty stains were there, too. Only then did she notice the dagger, its blade dark with what could only be blood, resting on the edge of the bed.

So much was clear to Daphne as she stood staring at the pitiful remains. She understood now why the little ghost had appeared to her, revealing that first night the outline of the door that opened onto the concealed staircase. Katherine had wanted to be found. She had wanted justice for herself and her babe. And she came to my aid, Daphne realized, to stop Raoul from murdering me as Sir Wesley had murdered her. Everything made sense, especially Sir Wesley’s attempt to keep them from discovering this room. Even from beyond the grave, he’d not wanted his evil deeds to be found out.

Daphne’s fingers lightly touched the cold, stiff shoulder of the woman on the bed. But you foiled him, didn’t you, Katherine? she thought.

If the death of the peddler had caused a stir, the discovery of the bodies of the woman and her child in the concealed room at Beaumont Place was ten times worse. Everyone from Lord Trevillyan down to the lowliest scullery maid in the neighborhood had questions, and speculation was rife.

Before the burial two days later, a close examination of the bodies by the local physician determined that the infant had been female and had died from a crushed skull. The woman had died either by her own hand or had been murdered. She had been, in the physician’s opinion, stabbed in the chest, but he would not speculate further.

It was obvious from the room and its contents that the woman had been of high birth, and it was assumed she was a member of the Beaumont family. The two bodies were quietly interred in a place of honor in the family graveyard. For the present, a marble angel holding a laughing infant in its arms marked the grave; a name and date would be inscribed once their identity was established.

It was difficult for Daphne not to blurt out the truth, but then explaining how she knew would have created all sorts of problems. However, knowing that the bodies were those of Katherine and her newborn, Daphne was able to gently guide the search where she wanted it.

The room itself proved the richest source of information. Calling on the expertise of a scholar from London well-known for the study of ancient artifact, from the items and furnishings, he had dated the room to the mid-1500s. Within a decade or two, he reminded them with a wry smile before departing for London.

Once they started searching in that time frame, the clues were everywhere, especially since Daphne, ably assisted by Charles, made certain to point everyone in that direction. From the church records, the date of Sir Wesley’s marriage to Katherine Lehman on October 2nd, 1557, was found. Records of Sir Wesley’s death in early 1559 were also found. It was telling that there was no record of Katherine’s death. After her marriage to Sir Wesley, she vanished from all the public records that they could find.

The Lehman family in Cornwall had died out sometime in the 1700s, but in his collection, the vicar had most of the Lehman family papers and, to Daphne’s great joy, several letters from Katherine to her mother. Those letters were a treasure trove of information, but they made for unhappy reading as the details of Katherine’s wretched marriage to Sir Wesley were revealed. Katherine’s fear of her husband, her loneliness and longing to be with her family came through in every line she had written. In one letter, Daphne discovered the reason Katherine had been banished to the room off the secret staircase. Heavy with child, terrified of her fate and that of her child should she deliver a girl instead of the son her husband so desperately wanted, she had tried to flee to her father’s home. Betrayed by a servant, Sir Wesley and his men had caught her within five miles of Beaumont Place and dragged her back. He had ordered her placed under guard and safely locked away until she gave birth to his heir.

There was only one letter after that, dated November of 1558.

Mother,
Katherine had written in her heart-breakingly childish hand,
I long most desperately to see you and feel your gentle arms around me. My time is near, and oh, the joy that would be mine if I could only be at home with you and Father and my dear little brothers. I miss everyone. Kiss them all for me and tell them I love them.

It is lonely here in this prison he has made for me, and I yearn only for the day I shall hold my baby in my arms. I am frightened of the future. I cannot bear to think what will happen should the child be a girl. A son is all he can speak of, and I fear his rage and terrible temper if I do not bear an heir. Pray for me.

Prayers, Daphne thought grimly as she set the letter aside, hadn’t been enough to save Katherine from Sir Wesley’s wrath. As surely as if she had seen it with her own eyes, she was convinced that in a blind rage, Sir Wesley had smashed the skull of his newborn daughter and then stabbed his wife. She knew it. She just couldn’t prove it. No one could.

It wasn’t a great deal to go upon, but from what evidence they had found, even the vicar concluded that the woman and baby were most likely Katherine and her newborn daughter.

And so it was on a fine afternoon in late June, Daphne and the others gathered at the gravesite as the inscription was chiseled into the marble base of the statue marking Katherine’s grave. His work done, the craftsman gathered his tools, doffed his cap, and left for Penzance.