Suzanne Robinson (31 page)

Kate made the mistake of confiding her suspicions to her mother. They were visiting Maitland House, inspecting newly arrived drapes. As soon as Kate mentioned that
there were too many deaths at or near Castle Richfield, Mama launched into a vapor.

“Oh dear,” Sophia said. “Ohdearohdearohdear!”

“What now, Mama?”

“You’re making trouble again. After nearly creating a scandal by running away, after shocking practically the whole of county Society with your behavior …”

Kate listened to her mother’s complaints, but this time something was different. This time she was aware of a feeling of repetition. Alexis. Alexis had criticized. Mama criticized, but Mama had been criticizing for as long as Kate could remember. She heard Mama say the word “ashamed” and her mind and heart burst into flames.

“Shut up, Mama.”

Sophia put a gloved hand to her throat as her mouth opened and shut. “Oooh.”

“I mean it, Mama.” Kate felt her throat go dry, but she was determined to finish what she’d begun. “I’m sick of being criticized. Do you know how much that hurts? Do you even care? If it weren’t for me being unladylike, you wouldn’t even be here. In fact, you just might be dead.”

Kate could feel the anger she’d held back for years ramming against the shield of her control. “Don’t try to interrupt, Mama. I’m going to say this, so that we understand each other from now on.” She swallowed while Sophia stared at her. “You aren’t willing to take the responsibility of doing all these things you criticize me for doing, like looking after the family business, but the only reason you have the luxury of pretending you don’t know anything about such tawdry things is because I do it all. But you’re quite willing to spend the money I have to guard, aren’t you? Well, if my unladylike behavior upsets you so much, why don’t you do some of the work so I can be delicate and ethereal like you?”

“Oh! To think that my child—”

Trembling, Kate couldn’t help shouting. “Your child?
You don’t want me for your child. You’d rather have somebody like Hannah or Ophelia. Well I’m sorry. You’re cursed with me instead, and I’m tired of apologizing for being myself. Why don’t you love me for myself, Mama? Am I so awful?”

Not waiting for an answer, Kate ran out of the house and down the road to Castle Richfield. She was crying so hard she couldn’t see the road, so hard she missed the rider trotting toward her until he was upon her.

“Kate,” Val said. “Kate, what’s wrong?”

He dismounted and caught her by the shoulders. Rubbing her eyes and face, Kate tried to stop her tears. When Val put his arm around her shoulders, she burst into renewed sobbing. Unlike Alexis, Val let her cry without trying to stop her. In a few minutes, she was able to blow her nose on his handkerchief and sigh deeply.

“Can I help?” he asked as he removed his arm from her shoulders.

“No, thank you.” She gave him a little smile, but it disappeared as she heard the rumble of a carriage.

He glanced over her shoulder. “It’s your mother. Would you like to ride with me?”

“You’re a smart man, Valentine Beaufort.”

“Not really. I just know how impossible it is to please one’s parents. I offended my father simply by being born.”

Kate heard Mama call to her.

“Damn.”

“My horse is fast,” Val said, grinning.

“I have to face her sooner or later. Might as well get on with it.”

Saluting her, Val mounted and turned away, cantering off in the direction he’d come as Sophia’s carriage pulled up beside Kate.

Placing her hands on her hips, Kate looked up at her mother. Nose and eyes red from weeping, Sophia held out a hand to her.

“My little girl, I’m so sorry.”

“Me too, Mama.”

“No, no, I’m the one to blame. I’m the mother. I should have realized how much of a burden I was shoving onto you. And about me trying to make you into a Lady, although I thought I was doing what was best for you, I hurt you, and that was wrong.”

Wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, Kate managed a smile, though she was about to start crying again.

“Thank you, Mama.”

“I do love you, Katie Ann. Just as you are.”

This time she did cry. Standing in the dusty road, in full view of the coachman, she cried. Sophia wrestled with the carriage door, then stumbled out and gathered Kate into her arms.

“Shall we try to be kinder to each other, my little Katie Ann?”

Kate snuffled into Val’s handkerchief and nodded.

“And you know something?” Sophia said as she patted Kate’s head. “If you’re right, we should be careful around the castle. I do wish Maitland House was ready.”

“So do I, Mama. So do I.”

Several days after the fight with Mama, Kate was waiting for Alexis with her usual impatience. He was closeted with Val, who was composing a letter of apology to the Earl of Cardigan. Alexis said he would put Val to the rack if he didn’t write the damned thing. The talk of racks piqued Kate’s curiosity, and she told Alexis to meet her in the dungeon when he was finished.

She took a lantern with her into the courtyard, then descended a flight of narrow steps that disappeared underground. Blackness surrounded her except for the patch of light cast by her lantern. She heard dripping water, and a
moldy smell made her nose wrinkle. As she stepped down onto the floor, something slithered past her foot. She shrieked and jumped. In the careening light, she caught a glimpse of a rat.

Perhaps she’d wait for Alexis. No, he would tease her for being a coward. She held up the lantern. Before her was a large chamber, empty except for a few chains hanging on the walls and suspended from the ceiling. She tiptoed farther into the room and beheld an open iron grille that separated her from another room. In it were iron cages, a wooden trestle that must be the rack, a table full of evil-looking instruments, and what looked like a forge.

Kate shuddered and lowered the lantern. The light swept across a small door set in the floor. Discarding the lantern, she grabbed the iron ring mounted in the wood and heaved. It took all her strength, but she got it open. Taking up her light again, she peered into the hole. It was like looking into the neck of a bottle. The hole was long and narrow, barely wide enough for a person to fit in it. About fifteen feet down it widened into a tiny egg-shaped chamber.

“They used a pulley.”

Kate screeched. She dropped the lantern, and it was caught by the speaker. Panting like a frightened puppy, she rounded on the man who had crept up on her.

“Hellfire, Fulke.”

He lifted the lantern high and pointed at the ceiling. “You see the pulley? A prisoner was lowered into the oubliette with it. The door was shut, and the poor soul was left to starve to death in complete darkness.”

“I’m glad they’re no longer used.”

“We have substitutes. They’re called mines.” He set the lantern down between them. “You can’t marry Alexis. You will corrupt him.”

“Me?”

“ ‘All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a
woman.’ You ensnared him with lasciviousness and have stolen his purity.”

“Purity? Are we talking about Alexis de Granville? Anyway, you’re repeating your quotations.”

Fulke muttered something under his breath. With a suddenness that made Kate jump, he shouted at her.

“You will not marry him.”

She began to wish Fulke wasn’t between her and the stairs. They were facing each other with the lantern between them still, but Fulke was closest to the light. The glow yellowed his face and turned his eyes to black hollows. Already furious, he grew more so by the minute.

“If he marries you, it won’t be for convenience. He won’t adopt purity after he gets an heir.” Fulke stepped around the lantern.

Kate edged backward, but kept her eyes locked with Fulke’s. “Don’t you think you should let Alexis decide his own future? We all have different needs, Fulke.”

“ ‘For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:/But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.’ ”

As she took another step away from him, he reached for her. Kate hopped back. She stumbled and put her foot back to catch herself. It met emptiness. As she fell, she heard a shout and a clatter on the stairs.

She landed with one leg in the mouth of the oubliette and one on the dungeon floor. Fulke loomed over her. A shadow leaped at him and knocked him aside. Alexis bent down and lifted her to her feet. She was caught in a bruising hug.

“Are you hurt?”

“Eh!” She pawed at his back, and he loosened his hold. “I’m fine, but you’re going to smother me.”

With lightning movements, Alexis released her and whirled on Fulke, who was standing behind them. He jabbed the older man in the stomach. Fulke grunted and
doubled over. Alexis stood over him for a moment, then stooped and grabbed Fulke’s cravat to jerk him upright. As he pulled back a fist, Kate swatted it with the flat of her hand.

“Hitting him won’t settle anything,” she said.

“It will make me feel better.” Alexis drew back his fist again, but met Fulke’s gaze. He hesitated, then released his prey. “Don’t come near Kate again.”

“Very well,” Fulke snapped. “Next time she’s going to fall in the oubliette, I’ll let her.”

Alexis looked from Fulke to Kate.

Kate flushed and put her hands behind her back. “I’m afraid I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“It’s his fault you were careless. Get out of my sight, Fulke, before I lose what’s left of my temper.” Biting his lip, Alexis stopped, then swore. “I’m sorry, Fulke. Please, you know I hate fighting with you.”

Rubbing his stomach, Fulke said, “I know, boy.” He squeezed Alexis’s shoulder and walked slowly to the stairs. He was halfway up when he let loose his final shot. “She has no breeding, Alexis. ‘As a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion.’ You will regret taking her to wife.”

Alexis growled, but Fulke was gone before he could say anything. Kate looked at his tight mouth and the working muscles in his jaw. She giggled, and he looked at her as if she were addled.

“I think old Fulke just called me a swine’s snout.”

She was rewarded with a smile that would have made Cleopatra swoon with rapture. Alexis grabbed her and swung her in a circle, laughing.

Kate hugged him while he still held her in the air. “I can imagine old Fulke as the evil lord of the castle,” she said, “throwing helpless peasants into the oubliette.”

“Haven’t you heard about Alexis Phillipe, the one with
the armor? He’s the one I resemble, and he’s the one who most liked to use the dungeon.”

Alexis set Kate on her feet. She smiled up at him, but he assumed an expression of cold, haughty evil and looked her up and down.

“A fine piece, you are, my lady. By God’s teeth, deny me not, for I’ll have you. Here, now, in my dungeon.”

Startled at the change in Alexis, Kate felt her smile waver. He took a step toward her, and she backed up. He kept coming, and she kept retreating.

“It will do you no good to run.”

Kate had backed away from the lantern now, and his words came to her from a figure cast into darkness with its back to the light. The figure lunged, and she felt arms sweep her up and pin her against a wall. Alexis pressed his body into hers and put his mouth on her neck. A terrible growl came from deep in his chest.

“I’m going to ravage you.”

“Alexis?”

“Grrrrrrrrr.” He lifted his mouth from her neck and kissed her nose, quickly, three times. “I’m a ruthless, lusting savage.”

She squealed as he tickled her ribs while popping the buttons at the back of her gown. By the time she stopped laughing, he had pulled her bodice down to expose her breasts. She felt his mouth travel from her neck to her breast, leaving a trail of moisture and goose bumps. The stones at her back were cold, but her skin was on fire. She managed to whisper his name.

He transferred his mouth to her other breast and started pulling her skirt up.

“Alexis, this is a dungeon.”

He silenced her by kissing her while he trailed his fingers from her knee to her inner thigh.

“We can’t,” she said.

“Yes we can,” he said in between kisses. “I can, and I will.”

She opened her mouth again, but he pressed her hard against the wall, and air rushed out of her lungs. He whispered to her while he unbuttoned his trousers.

“Sweet, sweet Katie Ann. Stop thinking.”

She did as he asked, and gave her body up to pleasure. When they were calm again, Alexis collapsed against her, pressing his hands to the dungeon wall.

“Dear Lord,” he said. “I’ve sealed my own doom.”

“Are all Englishmen so wild?”

“Must be our Viking ancestry, or that of my conquering Norman forebears. Somehow you strip away all the years of breeding in between, little savage. I’m not like this, not with—”

She grinned up at him. “A wise point at which to stop. Tell me, did your ravaging ancestors happen to make another way out of this dungeon, or are we going to parade past the whole castle staff in our present condition?”

He made a courtly bow to her and took her hand. “Come, wench, your lord will show you to your room by a privy way, but beware. I’ll have you again soon.”

“And I suppose next time it will be in the gate house, or on the tower stairs.”

“What a difficult choice.”

“Not at all, my lord. Next time I want a bed.” She thought for a moment. “Or perhaps a chair, or an ottoman.”

“Thank you, God, for sending her. Thank you.”

Kate woke early the next morning, and the second she opened her eyes, she was madder than a scorpion trapped in a basket. Dinner had started out beautifully the night before. There were no Dinkles gushing over Alexis. No Mademoiselle St.-Germain to make her feel as attractive
as a diseased moose. She had had Alexis to herself, and he had spent the evening bathing her in a gaze as blistering as the sun on the Carson Desert. She’d wanted to drag him into a closet and maul him.

And then Juliana had ruined it all. The woman had grown more and more despondent as the evening progressed with Kate and Alexis almost oblivious to everyone else. Her ill humor eventually erupted into active malice, and as always, she directed it at Alexis. Fulke jumped to his cousin’s defense, and he and Juliana were squabbling before anyone could stop them. Val, Sophia, and Kate listened in shocked silence as the two fought over the marquess. Alexis did nothing, even when Juliana called him a murderer.