Authors: Donna Lea Simpson
She stopped, realizing she had begun to make little sense. She took in a deep breath and calmed herself, resolving to face her dismissal with fortitude. Turning back to face him, she caught his steady gaze on her, and she remembered well the treacherously wonderful feel of those perfect lips against hers, and how… she had to stop thinking, for the pink was rising to her cheeks and she hated being revealed by her own involuntary physical reactions to his fascination.
At least the dark and dismal expression had fled his eyes. “So, you don’t think I should dismiss you?”
Perhaps there was room for her to convince him. “No. I will do my best not to interfere in family matters again.”
“You do not promise to refrain from interference, I notice.”
“I can, on occasion, be somewhat impetuous,” she said with what dignity she could muster.
“You call molesting me and berating me like a shrew in front of my entire family impetuosity?”
“I beg your pardon?” she said, indignantly. “I did not be rate you like a—”
“But you admit you did molest me.”
“No! I don’t think… that is…”
He was, she noticed, clamping down on his cheek, and his eyes danced with an unusual light.
Was it possible he was— “You’re laughing at me, sir.”
He grinned, a wide smile of strange and terrifying beauty. Rarities were often the most appealing of things, she reflected, as one never had the opportunity to take them for granted.
“I am. I find your begging for your job oddly endearing and delightfully absurd.” Toying with a gold seal, he tapped it on the desk surface and watched her face.
“I’m not begging. Or…” She took a deep breath and let it out. “Yes, I suppose I am. I like my position here.”
He dropped the seal. “Do you?” he asked, sitting forward, his expression serious. “We are a morose and difficult family, Miss Stanwycke, and I…” He appeared embarrassed and frowned down at some papers, moving them slightly. “I have not made it any easier by taking unforgivable liberties. In truth I called you here to apologize for last night, something my family would tell you I never do.”
And never had done. Why he was apologizing to her he could not fathom, since an hour before he had been in a towering rage at her impudence. And yet, he had been on the verge of hitting Christoph, something he had only ever done once before. She had stopped him and he was glad of that, even though what his nephew had said was unforgivable. But Elizabeth had saved him from a deep regret, and he was grateful. “I am terribly sorry, Miss Stanwycke.”
He hoped she knew he was apologizing for his rudeness to her in the hall, as well, though he was outwardly apologizing for kissing her the night before. He had not intended to kiss her at all, his resolution in the drawing room earlier in the evening clearly the sensible route of behavior, but it was an impulse to welcome her into his arms, and when she did come so very close her face was against his chest and turned up to him. Her lips were so rosy in the candlelight and her body rested against his with such trusting surrender that he had been overtaken by a tenderness he had never thought to experience since life had sharpened him against the whetstone of tribulation. Desire he could understand, and lust was a familiar foe to be fought down and ruthlessly conquered—but tenderness! There was no room in his life for it, and he would need, obviously, to be wary when near the tempting Miss Stanwycke.
She was staring at him in puzzlement, and he realized he had been silent a long time. “I agree,” she said, slowly, watching his face, “that what occurred last night in this room must never happen again. It was… it was just the surprise, I suppose, or…” She shook her head.
It had nothing to do with the surprise of being together alone or any other mundane explanation, and she knew it, too, even though she tried to explain it away. If there had been merely desire and passion between them he would have welcomed a lusty interlude, but tenderness… there was danger in that softer emotion for him. He had no time nor inclination for those gentler passions. Desire could be fierce and powerful, but love could only weaken a man, as it had his brother and even his brother-in-law. Both had fallen victim to a powerful tenderness for the enchanting Anna Lindsay, another lovely Englishwoman. It had proved a destructive force indeed, and he had determined long ago there was no place in his life for that. “Yes, it was the surprise,” he said, deliberately hardening his tone. “The surprise I experience every time I find you in my strangely fascinating library in the middle of the night.”
She sat down and stared at her hands in her lap. The light from the window played over her cheek and jaw, the fluid line that led up to her delicate ear and down to her smooth neck and sloping shoulder. She wore no ornamentation, no rings, no necklace, nor even a broach, and he wondered as he watched her if it was that she purposely eschewed the vanity of it, or if it just didn’t matter to her whether her fingers or neck were adorned.
And yet she would gloriously complement jewels, eardrops and a sapphire necklace to match the azure of her eyes. A gold satin gown of more fashionable cut and with lace trim to mold to her lush figure; he could picture it, almost; her at the piano glowing in the candlelight, and him seated beside her, feeling the warmth radiating from her—warmth that would thaw his frigid heart—sharing the secret between them of what they would be doing once the household surrendered to Morpheus and he could ravish her, pulling the gold satin and pale lace from her body with his teeth while she writhed under him in splendid, passionate abandon. His heart accelerated as his breathing quickened.
“Why do you stare?” she asked suddenly, looking up at him, her expression full of distress and something more— distrust, perhaps.
He cleared his mind of the fog that had misted it. “I am just wondering what truly made you leave everything familiar to come here. It is an adventure most young ladies would not undertake unless pushed to it by severe privation.”
She took in a deep breath and examined him. “Why do you question my motives? Is it not enough that I came?”
“Yes. It is enough.” He pushed back from the desk. “Do not mind if I seem distrustful, Miss Stanwycke. I have long found that the only people I can truly trust are my family members.
That is just how I am. Please know, I am mindful of the difficulties of the task I have set you; Charlotte has not been well taught and requires refinement. I believe you will succeed. But I wish you could have more speedy results. I won’t wait forever.” He didn’t mean for it to sound ominous, but she paled. He couldn’t take it back. Perhaps if she was more aware that her situation in the castle was somewhat precarious it would keep her in her bed at night and from roaming where no good could come to her. There were secrets in the castle, secrets he shared with no one. Secrets that could bring her harm.
She stood. “Is this interview over, sir?”
“Yes,” he said abruptly, glancing back down at the papers in front of him. One was a letter from Jakob asking if he and Eva could come home and visit their mother, since she had sent them a letter pleading for them to come. How to answer?
“You look sad again, Count. Whatever it is that worries you, it will work out, I hope.”
He looked back up to find her steady, intelligent gaze upon him. “I am sure it will, Miss Stanwycke,” he said. “You may go, now.”
How changeable he was, Elizabeth thought, exiting and shutting the door behind her. One moment approachable, the next impossible. It should be enough to know she was not dismissed, but it wasn’t. This castle seemed to hold mysteries within its ancient walls, she thought, touching the frigid stone as she descended to the great hall. Among those mysteries she would have to add the inner workings of the man who commanded it all.
“Mademoiselle Stanwycke,” Count Delacroix said as he came in from outside, stamping his feet and blowing frosty breath while a footman stood waiting. “I have been,” he continued, undoing the frogged closure, “taking the air.” He shrugged out of his dark gray cloak and the footman caught it and left the great hall carrying it before him.
She shivered. “I’m not accustomed to so much snow and ice,” she said, rubbing her arms. “I admit, I cannot bring myself to go out as much as I should.”
“I will accompany you if you wish to go out with some support, mademoiselle.”
“Thank you. I would not like to bother you, though, sir.”
“Nonsense. It does me good. We all go out occasionally, even Bartol. He and I have even been down to the village lately. Now that is a bracing excursion, truly. But may I say,” he continued, approaching, taking her hand and bowing over it, “that it does us all much more good to have so lovely, compassionate, and intelligent a presence here at Wolfram Castle.”
His hand was icy, and she covered it with both hers to warm it somewhat. He smiled at her, his gaunt face illuminated by the charity in his expression.
“Thank you,” she replied, touched by his kindness. On an impulse, and remembering her conversation with Bartol Liebner the night before, she said, “Would… would you have a moment to talk, sir?”
He hesitated and glanced around, but then nodded. “Certainly, mademoiselle. Is this… a private matter?”
“Not really. I mean, I was wondering about something…” How was she going to broach the subject?
He took her arm. “Then let us go to your little yellow parlor; we can be comfortable there.”
They moved down the hall toward it, Elizabeth beginning to feel a strange tension that she could not place. Doors closed nearby, voices whispered in hushed tones. Servants bustled by, hunched and with worried eyes. It was eerily reminiscent of when she had arrived more than three weeks ago. Countess Adele came out of the lady’s library, which was just down the hall from the yellow parlor; she started when she saw them arm in arm, but only murmured a vague greeting before hustling off on some errand.
“Why is this family so… so divided. So difficult?” Elizabeth asked of the French count as they entered the yellow parlor and she closed the door behind them. “Why does everyone behave as though there is some deep, dark mystery, or some… some secret shame?”
He gracefully threw back the skirts of his jacket and sat in a chair by the fire; elbows on the arms of the chair, he steepled his fingers before his face. “Mademoiselle Stanwycke, I would say to you that your best course to attain success in your position here is to pay close attention to your student and to little else.”
Another veiled warning?
“Why?”
He sighed and shook his head. “Do not look at me so, for truly I have no answers.”
“But you do. You’re an old friend of the family. You were even here the night of… the night of the tragedy.”
A guarded look entered his weary gray eyes. “I do not know of what you speak.”
“I’m aware of the awful night fifteen years ago when Charlotte’s mother and Countess von Holtzen’s husband died.”
“But there is no mystery there. It was sad, yes, but fires occur,” he said, with a nonchalant wave of his hands. “The Countess von Wolfram was there in the cabin for some reason—who can say why—and Count von Holtzen, happening past, heard her screams, it is assumed, and went to rescue her, but both perished. Very sad, but no mystery.”
That was not the story Herr Liebner had told her the night before, nor had she said anything about it being a mystery. “Was Count von Wolfram here when it happened? Count Nikolas von Wolfram,” she clarified, realizing that the elder brother would have been Count von Wolfram then, too.
His eyes held an alert watchfulness in them. “I believe he was still traveling then.”
So, had Bartol Liebner lied to her? Why would he? “Are you sure?”
“Mademoiselle,” he said, rising, some agitation in his quick movements, “I begin to wonder why you ask such a string of questions. How can any of this be construed to have any purpose for you, who are here to tutor Countess Charlotte only?”
He was right, of course. It was none of her business. “I’m curious by nature, I suppose,” she said with a rueful smile to which he did not respond. “I’ve heard… conflicting stories.”
“It has been many years,” the Frenchman pointed out, mildly. “Memories fade, memories change.” He bowed. “I must go. I am to give Count Christoph a lesson in art this afternoon.”
“Certainly, sir. I apologize if… if I brought back sad memories.”
“Mademoiselle Stanwycke, this castle echoes with sad memories,” he said, waving his hands in the air. “What this family needs is someone who will bring some light, some joy to it.”
She sat for a time after he left and pondered his parting remark. He was right. If there was ever a family that needed joy, this was the one.
WHEN Nikolas entered the drawing room after dinner that evening, it was with a certain amount of trepidation. He had not been at dinner, as he had been wrestling with the letter back to Jakob and had taken his evening meal in the library.
But he was pleasantly surprised. Miss Stanwycke sat at the piano and played a light air that Christoph was accompanying on his violin. The boy was talented, that was certain, for he kept up with her, though she did not play from sheet music and the tune seemed to be a Scottish air, unfamiliar but cheery. He stood in the shadows by the door for a moment, watching. Miss Stanwycke’s slim fingers tripped lightly over the keys as Melisande Davidovich and Charlotte watched, chattering and smiling.
But as he turned his gaze around, he saw that not all were so happy. Gerta was huddled in a chair near the fire and Adele was drawing a robe up over her. Maximillian was playing chess at a table nearby, but he kept glancing over at Adele and Gerta, a worried expression on his lean, lined face. Bartol, Maximillian’s chess partner, was watching everyone rather than the board, his gaze darting to each vignette, a frown on his normally cheerful and ruddy face.
When he saw Nikolas he motioned, and reluctantly Nikolas joined his uncle, crouching near him to hear him out.
“Nikolas, I do not mean to make trouble, but it appears to me that Christoph is quite smitten with your English tutor. She has been smiling and flirting with him for half an hour, and I have never seen the boy so taken.”