Authors: Donna Lea Simpson
but no. He did not think it a good idea to be with her too often, nor in private. He could afford no distractions and she could most definitely be a distraction for any man denied for too long the pleasure of a woman’s company.
When it was all arranged to her satisfaction, Nikolas dismissed the harried footmen. “I missed you at dinner tonight, Miss Stanwycke,” he said, circling the room and examining her furniture arrangement, trying to imagine her purpose for each grouping.
“I beg your pardon, Count?”
“I missed you at dinner. Must I clarify that sentence? Is my English so bad? I expected to see you, and did not, thus I missed your presence at dinner.”
“I… but…” Elizabeth clasped her hands in front of her and gazed at him. “I am merely Charlotte’s tutor.”
“Still, I think you should be there.”
“But… Signor Vitali does not dine with the family.”
“Cesare is my secretary. Though in some households your positions would be roughly analogous, in this particular instance I think that Charlotte needs your presence to teach her how a true English lady behaves at the table.”
“This is what I have set up the table by the window for, sir.” She indicated an oval mahogany table and chairs set as for a small dinner party.
Nikolas shrugged. “Why a pale imitation when night by night she can see your behavior and emulate it?” He circled behind her and inhaled her scent, reveling in it, letting it bathe his nostrils. She was sweet as honey and yet her scent carried the faint tinge of alarm that was more clearly delineated in her stiff posture. He moved away from her. “You will dine with us, beginning tomorrow night. I will expect you to be there.”
Elizabeth nodded. “May I be excused for this evening from joining the family?”
“Since we have already had our dinner,” he said, with humor in his voice, “of course. And I will not expect you to join the rest in the drawing room.”
“Thank you.”
He glanced at her sharply, noting the tartness in her tone. For a lady wholly dependent upon his continued goodwill for her employment, she was daring indeed. And he liked her the better for it, though he supposed he oughtn’t.
She took in a deep breath and let it out, then turned to face him. “Count,” she said. “I have been told by your sister that I am not to use your library.”
Instantly Nikolas remembered their early morning encounter there. He had entered to find her standing by the lectern that held the family bible and had been startled into giving away his presence, when he would rather have entered unobserved. He saw the memory in her blue eyes, too, and wondered what she had made of his appearance in the middle of the night, snow flaking his cloak and his hair. He felt the memory physically, how as he got close to her, her warmth melted the snow and how it dripped down his hands and onto the carpet. “No one else uses it,” he confirmed.
“But may I?” Elizabeth said, staring directly up into his eyes. “There are many books there, and I wish to learn German while I am here.”
While she was in his home, the time limited by Charlotte’s needs, she meant; she was preparing for a future in Germany, then, or perhaps just saw it as an opportunity to make herself more invaluable in any circumstance. Silence. The clock on the mantel struck the hour
—nine o’clock—and chimed. Nikolas stared down at her while the clock chimed, taking in her pearly skin and oval-shaped face, the slope of her shoulders and how a single chestnut curl caressed her pale neck. A pulse throbbed at the base of her throat, life coursing through her, warm, rich blood feeding healthy pink flesh. Eager and vital, she challenged him with her direct gaze.
“You will take dinner with the family on the morrow. Tomorrow evening I will expect a private report on what you think Charlotte needs most in the way of tutelage.” He bowed, keeping his expression remote. “Good night, Miss Stanwycke,” he said and strode from the room.
SHIVERING from the frigidity of the great hall after the warmth of the yellow parlor, Elizabeth hastened up the stairs and toward the upper rooms.
Fanny met her in an upper hallway and curtseyed. “Miss, would you like to retire now? I have your room prepared.”
“Thank you. No, I think I will find Frau Liebner first and say good night. Is she in her room?”
“I believe she is up with the Countess Uta.”
Elizabeth took a deep breath. “Do you think I should join them? Would it be impertinent?”
She felt like she was still feeling her way through the labyrinthine formalities of life in Wolfram Castle.
“Countess Uta adores visitors, Miss Stanwycke, and she rarely sleeps. I think she would enjoy your company,” the girl said shyly.
“Then I will go up,” Elizabeth said. She made her way up to the old dame’s chambers and knocked on the door, then entered. But the room was empty except for the old woman, snoring in her chair by the window, and the mute servant. Elizabeth turned and was about to creep out, but before she could came a command.
“
Kommen sie hier, Fraulein
.” The old woman sat up straighter with an effort as her servant rushed to help her.
“I… I thought Frau Liebner was here,” Elizabeth stuttered, approaching and standing before the elderly countess.
“No, she was sleepy, and so to bed did go. But you I would speak to.”
“Certainly, madam.”
“Sit!”
Elizabeth, with as much grace as she could muster, sat down on the low stool the woman had indicated.
“What think you of my great-nephew?”
Elizabeth paused and thought, then said, “Christoph? He is—”
“Not him, and do not deliberately misunderstand, Fraulein. Of course I mean Nikolas.”
With the memory of their encounter in the yellow room so fresh, Elizabeth, exasperated, said,
“He is very… imperious.”
Uta shrugged. “He is man. Dey so often think it necessary. But else… what do you think of his looks? Lusty he is, ja? And handsome? Do you think him handsome?”
It was an impertinent question as far as Elizabeth was concerned, and she had no wish to answer. She shook her head. There was nothing she could say that could not be misinterpreted.
The old woman squinted. She motioned to her servant, and Mina, a large, strong woman with dark hair well-threaded with gray, approached and turned up the lamp.
“Does she not speak?” Elizabeth said, watching the woman retreat.
“No. Never. She can hear, but has never spoken.”
“You say she can hear, but you communicate with her by gesture. Why is that?”
“It is habit only. Now, tell me why you will not say what you think, dat Nikolas is the handsomest man you haf ever seen?” Her pale eyes glinted in the light.
Elizabeth gazed at her steadily. This was a woman hungry for information. Alone in her rooms all day with a mute servant, she must revel in the gossip and chatter she picked up from relatives, Elizabeth thought. “I will answer your questions, if you will first give me some answers.”
It was a daring gambit. If the old woman became offended, she would say nothing and their burgeoning friendship would die aborning.
Uta nodded slowly. “I cannot promise to answer everything, but you may ask three questions.
Beware: what you ask may reveal as much about you as what you tell.”
“All right.” Elizabeth rested her forearms on her knees and thought. “First, before we start, do you ever see Count Nikolas?”
“Dat is one question.”
“No, I meant… oh, all right. That is one question.”
Uta cackled. “Yes. He visits me every Sunday morning instead of going to church. I am his penance.”
“Penance? For wh… oh, no, that will not be another question,” Elizabeth said, catching the old woman’s sly grin. “Why does the whole family live at Wolfram Castle? I can understand Countess Adele, since she never married, but my understanding is that Countess von Holtzen and her husband lived here, and Bartol Liebner does, too.”
“Nikolas, and Johannes before him—his elder brother, you know—haf strong need to take care of family and also to control dem. It is ingrained, you know, like… like family pride and the hard demeanor. Gerta’s husband, he was… weak. Ineffectual, I think English word is. Dey did live elsewhere, but she was with child, the twins, you know, and wished to come home.
And den Hans died.”
The same day as Anna Lindsay von Wolfram. Elizabeth opened her mouth to ask what happened, but Uta spoke again.
“Bartol, he is not blood relation, but he was dere mother’s brother, and Nikolas swore to his mother as she lay dying that he would never expel him. He has no other home now.”
She had only one more question left. The room was dim beyond the reaches of the lamplight, the curtains drawn, the fire banked but throwing off heat. “Am I keeping you from your bed, madam? And no, that is not one of my questions.”
Uta cackled, and that laughter became a coughing fit. Mina came and attended to her mistress, holding a glass of water for her to sip, then faded back just as quickly as the old woman recovered. “No, I seldom sleep, apart from napping here in my chair. It is one of the penalties of old age, you know, dat dose of us with little to occupy our time haf the most time to keep occupied.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Why are Charlotte and Christoph kept here at the castle, but Countess Gerta’s children are sent away to school?”
“Christoph
was
sent to school. He was to join the military, you see, become an officer, but he was rejected. Dey said his health was not good enough.” Uta frowned and shook her head slowly. “I do not believe dem. His health is good. But what else? I do not know. Eva and Jakob, Gerta’s twins, dey are away at school, and dat is the natural way. Do not people in your country do so?”
“Yes, but it just seemed odd to me that the cousins were treated so differently, one set kept here at the castle, the other set sent away. It would make more sense if both boys were sent away and both girls kept here. That is often the way, that the ladies are tutored at home.”
“Dat is merely way it is. Now, I haf answered. Your turn it is to answer questions.”
“Ah, but just two,” Elizabeth replied with a smile. “For you tricked me, madam, and I truly only asked two proper questions.”
“You are clever,” Uta said, poking at her with one crooked finger. “And bold. Two questions den.”
Elizabeth waited, but the questions, when they came, were not what she expected, for the countess did not go back to the dangerous ground of how attractive her nephew was.
“Why did you come all the way here when you could haf stayed in your own country to work?”
How to answer honestly without giving away too much? “I am without family, madam, and…
and Frau Liebner was very kind to me. I was not needed anymore in my last position, and so when she mentioned that she might know of a job—your great nephew had written to her asking if she could find a tutor for Charlotte—I decided to take it. I have no ties to my country, and it was an opportunity to travel.”
Uta stared at her intently. “I think dat is only part of truth,” she grumbled.
“But it
is
truth,” Elizabeth said.
“Ja, I can see dat.”
There was silence for a long moment, and Elizabeth began to think the old woman had slipped into a nap, but her eyes were open.
Finally, she spoke. “Fraulein Elizabeth, if you had opportunity, would you marry?”
It was not what she had expected, and she wondered how to answer that honestly. She bit her lip, thought for a long minute, and then said, “It would depend upon a number of circumstances, to be quite honest; I am not completely opposed to the notion. But if you are truly asking another question, I did not come here to find a husband.”
Uta’s mouth cracked in a grin. Her teeth were stained and crooked, but her smile was merry and her eyes twinkled with laughter. “
Ach, gut
! Dat is much more dan I asked, for you answered two questions at once. Tells me great deal about you, you know. To bed now, you go. For much you have to do on morrow, no?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said, standing. On impulse she leaned over and kissed the old woman’s soft, wrinkled cheek, then was horrified she had done so.
But the old woman smiled complacently. “To bed,” she repeated sternly, pointing at the door.
To bed, but not to sleep. She was so far beyond tired that she could not, no matter how much she tried to fill her mind with mundane thoughts, rid herself of the notion that there was something she had forgotten to do or say. Fitfully she slept, for how long she had no notion.
But once she awoke, sleep abandoned her, and so she lay awake staring into the darkness. Had she done the right thing in coming so far? There had been other possible avenues, she supposed, if she had explored them. She had a maiden aunt in Yorkshire, and she would have taken Elizabeth in out of family loyalty, perhaps, but that woman had long abjured the frivolous abandon of her brother and sister-in-law and would no doubt censure the offspring of that union. Elizabeth had visited her once when a child and had found the woman’s life bleak and her disposition grim.
She had come so far in her contemplation when a noise outside her chamber caught her breath in her throat. It was the sound of footsteps, which paused at her door and then continued. A servant, no doubt, she thought as she turned over and closed her eyes, up late and pausing only incidentally by her door. She was merely anxious and unnerved by the state of the house since she had arrived, the melancholy she sensed. That had to be the explanation for her nervousness.
A shriek and moan ripped her from such a comfortable reflection. She bolted from her bed.
Perhaps that same servant had fallen and lay at the bottom of the stone steps in pain.
Perhaps…
She slipped on a robe, tied it loosely at the waist, and exited the room, looking to the right and left. No one in her passage, which meant the awful sound had to come from the gallery or the great hall. She flitted down the hall and toward the gallery, her slippers slapping softly on the luxurious carpet.
Flambeaux lit the gallery, throwing the wafting pennants into eerie relief, their fluttering patterned into batlike shadows. She approached the ornate oaken railing with trepidation, crouching in the shadows, not certain why she hid but following what eons of instinct taught her was right.