Beauty and the Duke (15 page)

Beast squirmed and Christine set him down. She walked to the windows. Beyond the leaded-glass panes, daylight had begun to stretch across a moody sky. At least she could glimpse something now.

The room overlooked a mist-cloaked garden. Peering past the high stone walls half hidden in the hedge, she saw an octagonal dovecote with an arched cupola up top. Throwing open the window, Christine leaned outside. Milkmaids carrying pails, gardeners, and an assortment of other workers walked about the inner
courtyard near the scullery. A descending stone staircase would take her down the castle’s backside, past terraces overgrown with shrubs.

As the sun burned off the mists, Christine could see beyond the lake. On a distant hill she glimpsed what looked like a house. But even adjusting her spectacles, she could not be sure. “Who lives over there?” she finally asked.

“That be Lord Eyre’s estate. Lady Erin’s grandfather.” Bess reached around Christine and shut the windows. “Fortunately, his grace can only see the house on clear days.”

“Lady Elizabeth’s family?”

“It be ol’ Angus Maxwell, Lady Elizabeth’s great-grandda, what put the curse on the Sedgwicks,” her voice lowered to a whisper.

“I see,” Christine lowered her voice as well. “And was this curse cast before or after the first duke of Sedgwick was beheaded?”

“Oh, ’twas much later, mum,” Annie said in all seriousness. “The curse was cast only a century ago, for a hundred years.”

“What happens after a hundred years pass?”

“A princess will come and awaken the sleeping prince with a kiss,” Erik said from the doorway behind her.

Annie spun around. Erik leaned with his shoulder against the jamb, his arms folded across his chest. “Thus breaking the evil spell and saving the castle and the entire kingdom from certain doom,” he finished. “See that my wife’s breakfast is brought up here, Annie. She is going back to bed.”

The girl dipped. “Yes, your grace.”

Annie glanced briefly at Christine, then hurried across the room, pausing in front of Erik to make a brief
curtsey and finally easing past him through the door.

Christine’s heart did a ridiculous flutter in her chest. He wore a snuff-colored riding coat, dark trousers, and boots, and looked as if he was on his way to the stable. “Must you always sound so cross at everyone, Erik?”

“You, madam, are not supposed to be out of bed.”

“You are not my physician.”

“I’m your jailer. The one with keys to your chamber.”

Undeterred by his unsubtle threat, she turned her attention to the pitcher and sloshed the water into a porcelain basin, conscious of Erik standing tall and lean in the doorway behind her as she performed her toilette. She brushed her hair and parted it down the middle, then the side, then finally off her face, careful of the egg-size lump near her temple. She had never shared her toilette with anyone. It felt strange doing so now. Erik had made love to her many times, done things with his mouth, but he’d never watched her perform personal intimacies. To her, these things had always been private, like her writing and her studies.

She finally set down her brush, found her spectacles on the countertop, and reapplied them to her nose, as if they would shield her, like a mask. Erik still had not moved.

Gradually he abandoned his indolent stance and approached.

For a moment, a heartbeat perhaps, she glimpsed something in his eyes. Something reflected from hers perhaps. Then he tenderly touched the bump on her head. “Does your head hurt?”

She admitted that it did. “A little. I am dizzy.”

He walked her into her chambers. Placing his hands firmly on her waist, he moved her toward the bed. “When that knot is gone from your head and I am con
vinced you are well, then you may get out of bed.”

Beast lay comfortably sprawled like a peasant king atop the white ruched-satin coverlet on her bed. She lifted him into her arms. Erik looked down at the ball of patchy fur glaring at him from the crook of her arm. She realized by the shock on Erik’s face that he had never met Beast.

“Good lord.” Erik’s brows angled over the bridge of his nose as he moved closer. “What is it?”

Christine rubbed her cheek against Beast’s head. “Don’t be cruel, Erik. You know what he is. You’ll injure his sensibilities.”

Erik laughed. Christine watched his growing mirth with a narrowing of her eyes. After a moment he cleared his throat. “My apologies, Christine.”

“Be gone, Erik. Five minutes with you and my head is throbbing again.” She climbed into bed and set Beast prettily to the side of her.

Erik pressed his palms against the canopy above her head. “May I get you some water? Blankets? Are you warm enough?”

She eased her head onto the pillow and pulled the covers to her chin. He could climb into bed with her, she thought. “Will the summer eventually bring warmth to this chilly clime?”

His gaze moved unabashedly down the length of her. “The summer brings longer days and shorter nights, but a man’s warmth in this clime is not found basking in the sunlight, my love.”

He turned and strode to the door, only to look over his shoulder. His eyes touched the room as if reassuring himself naught was amiss. “Do your chambers meet with your approval?”

“I thought perhaps I would paint these rooms. If that is all right with you.”

“All that I have is yours, Christine. If you want to paint every room in this place, simply tell Boris the color.”

“When can I meet your daughter?”

He inclined his head toward the nightstand. “She has already been here.”

Someone had laid a small bouquet of ragged purple heather on the nightstand. Christine pushed up on her elbow and lifted the sprig to her nose.

“You can meet her when you are ready, Christine.”

Then he was gone. The emptiness in the room seemed to increase tenfold, swirling like a chilly mist to encompass her.

Setting the heather on the nightstand, Christine looked around her at the beautifully painted walls and wondered if she should paint them after all. It now almost seemed sacrilege. Elizabeth
was
Erin’s mother.

A woman who by all accounts was beautiful, delicate like a woodland sprite, who loved to paint daffodils on walls, and who had left Erik in the middle of the night—abandoning her child and her life to a terrible fate.

Why?

What had Erik done to make her hate him so?

T
he first tinges of amber had tipped the clouds by the time Christine awakened from a nap and looked outside her open window. This was the first time in days she had opened her eyes without a headache throbbing at her temples or had been so stiff she could not move. She’d suffered less pain the morning after the accident than after Erik had put her back to bed and she’d awakened barely able to move a muscle. Aunt Sophie had told her shock had originally numbed the pain. Pulling on her robe, Christine padded across the room to the adjoining chamber that connected to hers through a panel in the wall.

Erik’s bedroom was cold and showed no sign that he had spent any of the last five nights in his room. “Do not mind my brother’s absence,” Becca said from Christine’s doorway. “I don’t think he spends much time in that room except to change his clothes. He rarely sleeps.”

Christine turned as Erik’s sister swept into the room, looking pretty in white as she set a well-stocked tea service on the table beside Christine’s bed. The table had been there since Aunt Sophie dined with Christine a few days ago.

She withdrew and shut the door behind her. It seemed as if her bridegroom was perfectly content to let his servants and family members care for her these past days, she considered, as she had not seen Erik since he had offended her cat, then put her to bed. Alone. The physician had been by to see her that afternoon, examined the bump, removed three stitches, and pronounced that she would live.

“If you want to find him, I suggest that you go to the library in the mornings.” Becca poured tea into a cup. “He practically lives there when he is not at the levee site.”

Christine returned to the bed and crawled beneath the covers to warm her feet, her back braced against the pillows. “He does a lot of reading?” she asked.

“In a way, I suppose. Erik is an architectural engineer. Quite a fine one if I can say so myself. Much of this estate has seen the benefit of his skill. He has been working on designs for a library at St. Andrews, though still unfinished. His work gives him purpose, I suppose.” She sighed as she added a spot of cream to the tea and smiled warmly at Christine. “I am glad he has found someone who will love him. And who will love Erin and me…and everyone else at Sedgwick Castle…and all the tenants and the people of Sedgwick. I want you to love Scotland and never want to leave.”

“Becca…”

She handed Christine the hot tea. “I know I am being melodramatic.” Spooning sugar into her own cup, she smiled. “But I am merely happy, you see. I already feel as if you are my sister. I wish to become great friends.”

Yesterday, Becca had also kept Christine company, the entire day. They had shared tea, lunch, and supper. Earlier in the week, Becca had introduced Christine to Mrs. Brown, the housekeeper, and many other ser
vants, including the cook who braised fish for Beast. Despite Rebecca’s inexhaustible aptitude for conversation, Christine had been happy for the companionship if only because Erik’s sister gave Christine deeper insight into her brother.

But only a sixteen-year-old with a romantic view of the world could believe that one meeting between Erik and Christine on the stairs of the museum had been nothing short of “spontaneous combustion between two lonely souls adrift in the universe” as Becca so aptly framed the words, something Christine was sure must be a quote from Byron. Electing not to ruin Becca’s biased view of marriage with the truth, Christine cradled the warm porcelain cup in her hands and said instead what was uppermost in her mind. “I was hoping to meet Erin.”

Becca set a warm crumpet on a plate and laid it on Christine’s lap. “Not that Erin dislikes you. She has been around watching you.” Rebecca sipped her tea. “But it would do you no good to meet her until she’s ready. Erik would have to chase her down, and no doubt a scene would ensue.”

“Is she…?”

Becca laughed. “Normal? Mrs. Brown calls her Sedgwick’s fey child.”

“I was told her grandfather lives in the manse across the lake.”

Becca idly traced a fingernail around the teacup rim. “Yes. But only Lady Lara, Elizabeth’s older sister, is allowed here. She is the only one who would have anything to do with Erik after Lady Elizabeth vanished. Everyone was terribly cruel to him and still blames my brother for her disappearance. Lara didn’t. She visits on occasion to see Erin, but I think she comes here only to see Erik.”

Before Christine could digest the comment, Becca set down the teacup with a
clink
. “He said you will hunt our beast.” Her voice was infused with excitement. “You should have Erik take you to the river. Though you must never go alone. The river is quite swollen and over its banks.”

“Yes, he said he is attempting to reclaim farming land lost after the Western Railroad blew up part of the foothills leading into Sedgwick.”

“Their actions changed the course of the river and have caused other problems. Erik has been livid over the entire ordeal. To make matters worse, he is having trouble among his laborers since two have vanished and strange fossils have been washing up on the riverbank since last year. Levee work has stopped. He hasn’t allowed me to return to the river since last summer. I’m hoping your presence here will change his mind.”

Christine understood why Erik did not want his sister involved in this search, especially when the human remains washing up could end up being Elizabeth’s. What young woman would not be traumatized by seeing someone she once revered reduced to scarred bone?

Early morning mists still clung to the ground when Christine awakened the next day with a gift set next to her pillow. It was a small child-like portraiture of her. She looked at he dead flower stalks on her nightstand. After Annie helped her dress, she finally left her bedroom in search of her elusive husband. She wandered down halls that seemed to have no coherent direction and ended up lost before a chambermaid directed her downstairs toward the dining room and to Boris.

At the bottom of the stairs, she came face-to-face with a red firedrake displayed in the coat of arms hanging on the wall—a giant quadruped creature, wings
and sharp claws extended, a flame spewing from his snout. The crest was also etched in stone above the entranceway.

“They say the Sedgwick coat of arms comes from the Draco constellation, which wanders the sky over Fife in the wintertime,” Boris said from the doorway. He held a tea tray. “For centuries all Sedgwick dukes have carried the dragon into battle.”

She was astonished not to have known. Erik did not ride with a standard flapping on a carriage when he traveled. He did not publicly boast his rank. He never had.

“Mum?” Boris drew her around.

“Is Lord Sedgwick in the library?” she asked when she had found her voice.

“No, mum. He leaves for his morning ride just after dawn.”

Nervously clutching the portraiture in her hands, she asked for directions to Erin’s chambers. Christine felt silly constantly asking for directions. With a bit of sleuthing and following toys like bread crumbs to the third floor, she found Erin’s apartments. Wooden toys and blocks littered the floor. Dolls perched prettily atop white shelves. Bright yellow-and-pink wallpaper covered the walls and met a pale pink carpet on the floor. Christine stepped gingerly over a jack-in-the-box and walked through an adjoining chamber and into a dressing room lined wall to wall with dresses, pinafores, petticoats, shoes, and ribbons. She stopped just inside the connecting door.

“Boris informed me you were up here.”

Erik’s voice startled her. She whirled. Her hand went to her heart. “Must you always sneak up on me?”

He wore a dark blue waistcoat minus the jacket. His white shirtsleeves were rolled up to his forearms as if
he’d been interrupted in whatever task he’d been doing. “Boris was mistaken,” he said. “I have not been riding this morning. I would have come to your chambers this morning to bring you up here. My apologies for neglecting you, but I have been somewhat busy.”

It was not as if the rules of their contract stated he owed her his companionship, nor the courtesy of an inquiry about her health or an introduction to his fey daughter.

“Nothing too serious, I hope.”

“Everything these days is serious.” Then he shrugged sheepishly as if to apologize for his terseness. “This is summer, the height of estate repair work, including all my roads. My time is not my own.”

Nor hers either, ’twould seem. “I received this on my pillow this morning.” She presented him the portraiture. “Quite an excellent depiction,” she said, thinking the artwork actually made her look pretty.

His grin softened the grim set of his mouth and fairly set her breath in her throat. Erik was unbelievably beautiful when he tossed away his mantle of somberness. He raised his eyes and found her staring. A strand of his dark hair brushed his brow. “Come,” he said.

Erik walked past Christine into the adjoining bedroom. “Do not get up, Mrs. Whitman,” she heard him say to someone and, as Christine stepped into the bedroom, she saw a gray-haired woman sitting in a rocker reading, near the window. “Is she painting still?” she heard Erik ask the child’s nurse.

“Yes, your grace.”

Erik strode around the corner. Christine leaned forward slightly and glimpsed a white lace and pink velvet canopied bed against the back wall. He stopped just on the other side of an alcove set in the window that looked like a window seat. White curtains draped the
window in a waterfall of fine Belgian lace, and sunlight found its way into the room everywhere. Unlike the rest of the castle she had seen this morning, there was an air of perpetual sunshine in this room.

“There you are,” he said to someone who sat out of sight of Christine. “I think it is time to come out and greet the pretty lady, Erin.” He held out the small portraiture of Christine. “Did you paint this for her?”

He must have received an answer, for he knelt. “She has been waiting to meet you. She wants to thank you for the gift. Don’t you think it is time you introduce yourself to her? Erin?” Her father tenderly bade his daughter forward.

After a pause, a girl of about seven timidly appeared. Aunt Sophie had already told her Erik’s daughter was partially deaf. But Christine had not expected to meet someone so fragile, so breathtakingly beautiful, an image of the portrait Christine saw in the gallery on her way upstairs, which she now concluded was Lady Elizabeth. Erin wore an ankle-length pink calico and white pinafore. Her long blond hair had been swept from her tiny face and was tied neatly with a blue ribbon. Wide blue, furtive eyes stared back at Christine.

“This is Lady Sedgwick.” Erik smiled encouragingly then looked up at Christine as he lifted Erin into his arms. “As you can see…” he thumbed a blue-and-pink smudge from her cheek…“She wants to be a great artist.”

Like her mother, Christine thought, remembering the artwork on her own walls. This child was a prodigy. Christine approached and took the portraiture from Erik’s hand. “I have never received anything so wonderful,” she said. “I am glad to finally meet you, Erin.”

It was a positive sign that the child did not turn away.

Erik’s arm encompassed the room. “And this is the nursery. You are welcome here anytime.”

“She is all alone in this wing?”

A slight smile curved the corners of his mouth. “Only until she gets another brother or sister,” he said, pressing his lips against his daughter’s soft curls.

Christine blushed at the carnal intonation in his voice. But strangely, the thought of having a child with him did not fill her with the same uncertainty she’d first had in London.

The little girl said something in his ear. “Ask her yourself,” he encouraged.

She shook her head and buried her face against his shoulder.

Erik grinned. “I believe she has developed a
tendre
for a certain ugly-as-the-blazes cat.” He gave his daughter a wink.

“Erik!” Christine said.

“She wants to know if you will let her have Beast.”

Christine shifted her attention to the little girl, suddenly nervous that she would spoil this meeting. “Beast doesn’t belong to anyone, Erin.” She kept her words slow and precise. “You can’t own him.”

Her independent cat was rather like Erik in that respect.

You can’t make him love you,
an unfamiliar voice inside her said.

“You have to be patient,” Christine added, keeping her eyes on the little girl’s. “But I understand he likes braised fish.” She made a wiggling motion with her hand. “Maybe you can bribe him.”

A smile trembled on the girl’s lips. She cupped her mouth and said something else to her father. Erik grinned. “I believe she said that both she and he like Cook’s cream-filled crumpets.”

Boris suddenly stood in the doorway. He held a note in his hand. “Mr. Bailey is here about the road, your grace.”

“Tell him I will be down shortly,” Erik said.

He looked over at the older woman now standing next to the rocking chair. The woman approached. “Come, Erin.” He shifted her in his arms. “Mrs. Whitman will need to clean you up before your lunch.”

As Erin turned her attention to the approaching nurse, her small mouth tightened. “Erin. You are covered in paint. You need to wash up before lunch.”

Erin wrapped her arms around her father’s neck and with her head on his shoulder, her eyes watched Christine as he followed Mrs. Whitman into an adjoining washroom. Whatever else the devil duke might be to the rest of Britain, his daughter obviously loved him unconditionally.

A gust of wind swept through the treetops and fluttered the curtains. Christine walked over to the windows. She glanced out at the junipers and milkweed that blotted the wind-beaten landscape. Hardly a second passed when another gust of wind pushed against the window; then Erik was suddenly standing behind her. “I have business to attend. You’ll be able to occupy yourself today?”

“I will try not to be bored, Erik.”

Less than a half hour later, Christine was dressed for exploring. From Annie she’d learned there was an old drover’s trail that went up into the cliffs, but no one was allowed there anymore. She’d found Boris in the dining room preparing lunch for Aunt Sophie and asked if Lord Sedgwick had a topographical survey of the area surrounding the river that might have been commissioned for the levee work. A map? No one seemed to know.