She accepted the maid’s suggestion that she lie down and rest after her journey. It was wonderful, she thought as she popped between the covers, to have a whole bed to stretch out in. But the truth was, she would have given all this up gladly to have spent another night squeezed into the captain’s bunk with Alec.
Several hours later, Damaris made
her way downstairs, clad in a light lavender gown that suited her best among the icy colors of Genevieve’s wardrobe. The maid, Gilly, had helped her dress, then had pinned her hair up into an appropriately formal style of knots and curls. Damaris made a few wrong turns before she found the dining room, where Alec and his aunt waited for her in formal splendor.
The long room was centered by an almost equally lengthy mahogany table. A chandelier of glittering prisms hung in the center of the room, supplemented by candelabras on the table and the sideboard. Marching down the center of the table, between the two sets of candelabras, were a large silver
epergne filled with fruit and two smaller ones. Vases of roses adorned the sideboard, casting their perfume upon the air.
Alec, Damaris, and his aunt took their places at one end of the vast table, and no less than four footmen stood at the ready to serve them under the watchful eye of Parsons. Damaris glanced at Alec, elegant in his snow-white shirt and black jacket. He looked so formal and distant that she hardly knew what to say to him. He asked if she found her room adequate, and she complimented its space and comfort. Aunt Willa commented on the weather and later asked Damaris where her home was.
The conversation limped along in the same manner throughout the long meal. Damaris wondered if it always took so long to eat here or if this was a special effort of the kitchen in honor of the earl’s return. When it was finally over, she and Aunt Willa left Alec to his Port and retreated to the music room, where Damaris occupied herself by playing the piano and Aunt Willa soon drifted off to sleep. She awakened with a start when Alec came in, though, and they continued their polite conversation until Damaris could not stand it anymore and excused herself to retire to her room.
Gilly helped her undress and get into one of Genevieve’s nightgowns of finest lawn. Damaris sent the girl on her way and sat down to brush out her hair. It was a relief to do so after the string of nights with only a cheap comb with which to try to manage her hair, so she brushed it until it floated around her shoulders like a jet-black cloud. Smoothing her hands down its length, she contemplated plaiting her hair to
keep it from tangling as she slept. It was what she often did at home, but Alec liked it loose and free.
She thought of his fingers drifting through her hair and the way he’d wrap it like a silk cord around his wrist. Had their nights of pleasure ended, she wondered, gone with their journey? Here, with all the servants and his aunt nearby, he might not risk coming to her room. She had just taken off her dressing gown and was about to blow out the candle before climbing into bed when the softest of taps sounded at her door.
Her heart began to pound as she went to open it, telling herself that perhaps she had only imagined the faint sound. She found Alec leaning against the doorjamb. The hallway was dark behind him, lit by only a single sconce halfway down the hall. He smiled at her, and she stepped back quickly to let him in.
“God, it’s been forever,” he said, grasping her shoulders and pulling her to him to kiss her. “I thought supper would never end.”
Damaris giggled. “I didn’t know if you would come to me tonight.”
“Always.” He wrapped his arms around her and rocked a little from side to side. “I thought about telling Parsons to put you in the chamber next to mine, the one for the earl’s lady, or even the one above mine, where one of the former earls’ mistresses was wont to stay and which has a clever staircase leading to it from my chamber.”
“Alec!” She looked up at him in amazement. “There is a secret stairway in your room?”
He nodded and grinned boyishly. “I’ll show you one night, if you’d like.”
“I would indeed. That is just like one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s stories.”
“Mm.” He bent and kissed her ear, tracing the shell-like whorl with his tongue. “Except with a happier result.”
Damaris giggled again, his tongue sending shivers through her. Suddenly her stay at Castle Cleyre seemed much brighter.
“But it would have been obvious to everyone that we were lovers if I had put you in one of those rooms, so I could not. Though, Lord knows, the servants no doubt guessed it anyway, the way I could not keep my eyes off you all evening.” He kissed his way down her neck. “I am looking forward tonight to a full, soft bed in which to love you.”
Alec bent and swept her up in his arms to carry her to bed. Damaris laid her head against his shoulder and smiled dreamily. It appeared her happiness had not ended after all.
H
er time at Castle Cleyre
turned out to be nothing like Damaris had feared. She soon learned that the servants’ devotion to the Earl of Rawdon meant that they turned a blind eye to any hints that the relationship between Alec and Damaris was not platonic. Aunt Willa seemed not even to notice if now and then Alec took Damaris’s hand and kissed it or sometimes swept her up in a hug. And no one said a word about the fact that they were together nearly all the time.
Their days were spent rambling about the estate—walking through the gardens or exploring the labyrinth of rooms and corridors that lay in and around and beneath the castle complex or riding out to a secluded meadow to share a picnic beneath the trees. And if their journeys together often wound up in an embrace or a kiss, there was no one to disapprove.
The nights they spent in Damaris’s bedchamber, locked in passion or murmuring in the dark, dozing in the warm glow of their satisfaction. The only thing that spoiled Damaris’s complete happiness was that each night before dawn, Alec slipped out of her bed and down the hall to his own
room. She understood—and was even grateful—that he sought to keep her reputation untarnished. But still, she could not help but think of the days during their journey when she would awaken each morning with Alec’s warm body next to hers.
Sometimes her mind drifted to the men who had tried to capture her and she wondered anew who lay behind the attempt. They should, she knew, do something about finding those men. But, in the face of her happiness, it was easy to let such thoughts slide by. The Bow Street Runner Alec had hired back in London would be bound to find something soon, just as Alec had told her, and then it would be time enough to take some action. Right now it was far too sweet to spend her days with Alec.
After supper, they usually visited with Aunt Willa in the music room or engaged in a spirited round of three-handed whist. And when his aunt retired, Alec and Damaris often lingered on the terrace, gazing at the moon and murmuring softly to each other.
One evening as they stood there, their fingers entwined, Alec gave her hand a squeeze and said, “Come. I want to show you something.”
Intrigued, Damaris followed him inside. He picked up a candlestick and climbed the wide central stairs to the next floor. There, taking her hand again, he pulled her up the next flight to the floor above.
“Where are we? Is this the servants’ floor?”
He shook his head. “They’re in the wing down there.” He
pointed toward the end of the dark hall, where another corridor shot off at a right angle. “This contains the nursery. Down there is where Genevieve and I lived with our governess.”
He did not go in that direction, however, but stopped in front of the nearest door and opened it. The room was obviously unused, its furniture draped with dust covers that cast eerie shadows in the dim candlelight.
“I trust you did not bring me up here to meet a mad Stafford you have locked away,” Damaris said lightly.
“No, all the mad Staffords are on the loose, I assure you.” He led her to the fireplace, where he pushed at one of the carved panels on the mantel.
To her astonishment, it slid aside, revealing a lever, which Alec pulled, and a portion of the wall next to the fireplace swung open. Damaris gasped. “The secret staircase!”
Deviltry lit his eyes. “Yes. Care to explore?”
“As long as you promise we will not get locked away in the walls and wither to skeletons.”
“I think it’s safe to say we won’t. I’ve used it a few times when I wanted to leave the house without my grandmother knowing. Follow me.” Holding up the candle, he started down the steep, narrow stairs. They curved down in a circular way, ending at a small doorway. Alec turned the handle and pushed open the door, and they stepped into a large, elegant bedroom.
“This is your room?” Damaris glanced around. It had to be.
The fact that Alec had always come to her room at night
made being in his bedchamber seem somehow more illicit. It was a grand setting, as befitted the lord of the castle, furnished with dark massive pieces and heavy burgundy draperies. In front of the fireplace stood a high wingback chair with an ottoman and, facing it, a sturdy old rocker. A small table piled with books lay between them. The bed itself was equally impressive, high and wide, with tall columns at each corner and a wooden tester across the top, matching burgundy velvet drapes tied back with gold cords at the posts.
“I wanted you in my room,” Alec told her, setting the candlestick aside and sliding his arms around her from behind. His voice was thick with desire. “In my bed.”
His hands came up to cup her breasts, and he bent to nuzzle the crook of her neck. Damaris closed her eyes, her insides immediately turning hot and liquid. She leaned back against his chest, arching up a little as if to offer him her body. He was quick to take her up on the gesture, moving his hands without haste over her breasts and down her front, then back up, awakening every nerve in her body.
Releasing her and stepping back, Alec began to strip off his clothes, yanking off his boots and tossing them aside, followed quickly by his coat and neckcloth. When Damaris reached behind her for the hooks and eyes that closed her dress, he stepped forward, saying, “No, let me.”
Slowly he undid the line of fasteners, and as the sides of the dress fell apart, he kissed his way down her spine. She shivered, the molten heat in her belly growing with each velvety touch of his lips. When her dress fell at her feet, he started
on her delicate undergarments, pulling loose the ribbons that tied them and lifting them from her. Finally he knelt and slid off her slippers, then peeled down each silk stocking, following the path of his fingers with his lips, until Damaris’s knees were so weak she feared they might give way.
He stood, looking at her, his heavy-lidded eyes roaming over her creamy body, taking in each swell and dip of her soft flesh, the proud thrust of her dark rosy nipples. “You are so beautiful.”
He bent to kiss each breast tenderly, almost worshipfully, then raised his head to look into her face again. “What have I done to deserve you?” he murmured.
Alec scooped her up and carried her to the high bed, laying her down on it with care. He unfastened his shirt and pulled it off, his eyes still drinking in her body. Suddenly a spark lit in his eyes, and he turned away, saying, “Wait here. Don’t move.”
Damaris watched, puzzled, as he disappeared into the dressing room. She heard the sound of a key in a lock, then a door opening, and a moment later he returned, carrying a small chest. Damaris sat up curiously as he set the chest down on the bed beside her.
“I owe you jewels, you know, to replace the ones you gave up in Gravesend.”
Damaris made a face at him. “A pair of earrings.”
He turned the key in the chest and lifted the lid. Inside lay a glittering array of jewelry.
She drew in her breath sharply. “Alec! How beautiful!”
“The Stafford jewels,” he said, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “No doubt all ill-gotten.”
“They’re lovely.”
“Not as lovely as you.” He bent and picked out a magnificent diamond tiara and settled it on her head. “Ah, now it looks much better.”
Damaris chuckled, taking off the tiara and setting it aside. “You are indeed foolish.”
“Which ones do you like best?”
Damaris peered into the box, her fingers trailing over a bloodred ruby necklace and another of equally brilliant emeralds and diamonds, then settled on a chunky old-fashioned gold necklace set with cabochon sapphires. It was not as elegant or as glittering as some of the jewels, but there was a sense of age and pride in the stones that touched a chord in her.
“These,” she said.
There was a certain satisfaction in Alec’s smile as he picked up the heavy necklace. “The Bride’s sapphires. You must be a Stafford at heart, my girl.” He laid it around her neck and fastened it. The chain hung heavy and cold against her skin, the large, unfaceted stones a deep blue that reflected her eyes. Reaching into the chest, he took out a matching bracelet and clasped it around her arm, ending by settling a circlet of gold, centered by a large oval sapphire, onto her head.
“They are the heart of the Stafford family. One Lord Rawdon before we were ever elevated to the earldom, so long ago
no one knows for sure which ancestor it was, gave them to his Scots bride. Some say he stole her from her father, some from her husband. Others vow he won her in battle. I have always preferred the story that they fell in love, and she stole out of her tower at night and fled down the hillside to where he waited, bringing the sapphires with her.”