Authors: Candace Camp
“It’s lovely,” she told Jessica with a smile. “I cannot believe that you convinced Cleybourne to let you do it.”
“I didn’t ask,” Jessica admitted, a trifle too breezily.
Rachel stared. “He doesn’t know?”
“No.” Jessica shook her head.
“You are a brave woman.”
At that moment there was a bellow from downstairs. “Miss Maitland!”
Rachel and Jessica looked at each other.
Jessica shrugged. “I think he has discovered it.”
Looking not the slightest bit worried, she got up and strolled out of the room.
It did not strike Cleybourne right off that the house had been decorated. He had made it almost to the stairs when the scent of the garlands finally sank in on his consciousness. He stopped and for the first time took a hard look around him.
There were garlands of greenery wrapped around the railings, dotted here and there with clusters of holly leaves and berries, and anchored to the fine wood with bright red bows.
He looked at the front door, then the open doorway into the drawing room, where a bundle of mistletoe hung in a wire ball. He swung on his heel and strode back into the Great Hall, through which he had just passed. Garlands of spruce festooned the huge fireplace at the other end of the hall, the one where they had always placed the Yule log. Fat red candles sat atop the mantel of the fireplace, encircled by holly and ivy leaves.
He turned at the sound of footsteps and saw Baxter approaching, looking at him with some trepidation.
“What is the meaning of this?” Cleybourne asked sharply.
“Good afternoon, Your Grace. Would you care for tea?”
“No, I would not. And don’t try to distract me. What the devil is all this greenery doing about the house? Did I not tell you I wanted no reminder of Christmas?” His voice was cool, but all the fiercer for it, his eyes dark and glittering in a too-white face.
“Ah, actually, no, sir, not this year. It has been some time since you said that, and I thought, especially seeing as we were back here at the Castle, and with the young miss and the other guests—”
“
You
thought?” Cleybourne’s voice deepened with suspicion. “The devil you did. Why did this thought not occur to you until that bloody governess arrived here? It was she, wasn’t it, who put this idea in your head, this mockery of—”
“No, Your Grace! No!” Baxter cried in a shocked voice. “No mockery, sir, I would never…”
“I know you would not. Just as you would not have ordered this without my say-so. Somehow that she-devil convinced you to do it.” When his servant looked uneasily about, not answering, he snapped, “Answer me! Didn’t she?”
The butler was several shades paler as he said, “Miss Maitland did say as how the young lady would miss the decorations, sir, and her being so sad and all, for her great-uncle. And she thought the decorating might give the, um, guests something to do to while away the hours.”
“Where is she?”
“I—I—the last I saw her, she was upstairs, Your Grace, with Lady Westhampton.”
“She is a fool if she thinks she can escape me by hiding behind Rachel’s skirts.” Cleybourne turned and shouted up the stairs, “Miss Maitland! Come down here this instant!”
Jessica did not linger, but neither did she hurry down the stairs. She walked at her usual pace, her face settled into lines of calm, her hands folded together. When she reached the wide staircase, she saw the Duke standing at the bottom of it, hands on his hips pugnaciously, his eyes glittering and dark with fury. Her heart began to beat faster, but she made herself walk down the stairs without haste.
“Did you wish to see me?” she asked collectedly as she neared the bottom step.
“No!” Cleybourne lashed out. Her calm infuriated him. And it was even more infuriating that as he watched her approach, all he was able to think about was reaching out and jerking the pins from her hair, destroying the prim knot at the nape of her neck and sending the fiery mass tumbling down over her shoulders as it had been last night.
“I would much prefer not to see you ever again,” he went on. “But you force me to do so. You are everywhere, disrupting everything.”
“I am sorry that you think so.” As he stood on the first riser of the stairs, Jessica’s face was level with Richard’s. If she leaned forward, their lips would touch. The thought alone was enough to send a little flicker of desire sizzling through her blood. She hoped that what she wanted was not written on her face.
“Perhaps we should go to your study to discuss this calmly,” Jessica continued, turning her gaze upward significantly, to where Mr. Cobb, Miss Pargety and Mrs. Woods were standing at the top of the stairs, watching interestedly. “I think you may be alarming your guests…and servants.”
Cleybourne glanced into the Great Hall and saw a knot of servants clustered to one side, looking anxious. “Oh, bloody hell!” he muttered, and stalked through the Great Hall and down the corridor into his study.
Jessica followed him, closing the door after her. She turned to face him. “Perhaps you would like to sit down.”
“No, I wouldn’t. Damn it, woman, what is the matter with you?”
“Nothing, Your Grace. I am feeling quite well. It is you who seem to be disturbed.”
“Yes, I am disturbed. Have you no sense? Have you no shame?”
“Yes, Your Grace, I think am amply endowed with sense. As for shame, I—”
“Damn it!” he roared, cutting her off. “You come here, poking your nose into everything, giving orders with no authority, changing things….”
“I am sorry if I have overstepped my bounds, sir.”
“No, you’re not. You are not sorry at all. Overstepping your bounds is precisely what you
like
to do. You do it at every turn. Telling my servants what to do. Telling
me
what to do. Damn it, we were all doing very well before you got here!”
“I beg to differ. This house when I arrived was a gloomy, disheartening place, where the servants were worried and sad, and the master of the house was contemplating doing away with himself.”
“I was not—” Richard shouted, then cut himself off abruptly, clenching his jaw and balling his hands into fists. It astonished him how much he wanted to grab Jessica and shake her. Why did she have to be so difficult? So stubborn? So infinitely desirable?
He took a moment to pull himself back under control, then went on in a lower voice. “What I did or did not plan to do is really none of your business, Miss Maitland. Nor are the state of my house and the feelings of my servants, who, by the way, are well treated and quite loyal.”
“Indeed, they are,” Jessica agreed. “And that is precisely why they are so sad and concerned. They worry about you and your sorrow. They know how low you have been, and how near to—”
“Nonsense!”
Jessica gazed back at him blandly. “How do you think I leaped so quickly to the conclusion that you planned to shoot yourself the other night? It was because of the concern of your servants.”
He stepped back, his brows drawing together. “No, they could not know.”
“Of course they know. Servants know everything. This house is their world, and you are at the center of it. Their very livelihood depends upon you. Of course they know your moods, your feelings. Moreover, your servants are quite fond of you.”
“Not fond enough, apparently, to follow my orders,” he retorted. “They knew I did not want these abominable decorations all over the house.” He cast a black glance at the holiday greenery over the mantel.
“I would have said cheerful, rather than abominable. However, the fact is that they did not ignore your orders. When I questioned them, it turned out that it was fully two years ago that you had told them not to. So I pointed out that if it were still important to you, you would have told them this year, and since you had not…”
“Miss Maitland, I will thank you not to be educating my servants on ways to get around my orders.”
“I merely pointed out that it would be unreasonable to expect people not to celebrate Christmas for years upon end.”
“You are treading on dangerous ground here.”
“Indeed? Well, Your Grace, unlike your servants, I do not live in fear of you or your moods. And I am certainly not going to pretend that you are reasonable about this whole Christmas issue when you clearly are not.”
“My people are not afraid of me.”
“No, they are afraid of hurting you. They are afraid of pushing you over the edge. They are afraid—”
“All right! I understand your point. But I am master of this house. I do have the right to decide what will or will not be put up in it.”
“You have no right to deny everyone else the joys of the Christmas season. There are your guests to think of, stuck here far from their homes during Christmas.”
“I did not invite them. They are a damned nuisance, and I wish they would all leave.”
“I am sure you do, but they cannot. So they must make the best of it, and I would think you could do the same. You certainly do not have the right to deny Christmas joy to Gabriela. She has been through enough. She should not have to spend her Christmas sunk in a black mood simply because you are too selfish to let anyone around you be happy.” Jessica was warming up to the argument now, her blood pumping fiercely through her, energy flooding her.
“How dare you?” Cleybourne took a long step toward her, light flaring in his eyes.
Jessica drew herself up, meeting his ire head-on instead of stepping back, and said, “I dare because it is the truth. The sight of Christmas things makes you unhappy, so you forbid them to everyone else in the house. Not just for one year or even two, but for four years.”
“I do not forbid them Christmas. They are welcome to—”
“Where? How? Your servants live here, they work here. There is church, I suppose, where they could find some little bit of cheer and happiness. Otherwise, their only choice is to leave your employ, and they are all far too fond of you for that. However, Gabriela does not work for you, and neither do I. Why should she have to endure the same restricted life that you and your servants do? I see no reason for Gabriela to miss what joy she can find in the Christmas season because you are too coldhearted to allow a few bows and bits of greenery to be hung about the house.”
“A few bows and bits of greenery? The place is covered in them!” Richard growled. He felt ready to explode with rage. This woman was the greatest damn nuisance he had ever met, and all the time he was looking at her, he kept remembering bits and pieces of the night before—how soft the orb of her breast was beneath his hand, and how her breath had caught in her throat when he toyed with her nipple. He could imagine her legs locked around his back as he sank deep inside her.
Richard whipped around, pacing away from her, struggling to control his voice. Finally he turned and said in a lower tone, “And, may I remind you, while I may not employ Miss Carstairs or you, I am her guardian.”
“You have given up your guardianship.”
He fixed her with a piercing glare. “Until I have turned it over to someone else, I am her guardian. And you are both residing in my house.”
His words hung on the air as Jessica said nothing, merely regarded him for a long moment. Richard began uncomfortably to realize that what he had just said sounded overbearing, even faintly like a threat.
“I realize that we are here on your sufferance,” Jessica replied, looking at him in a way that spoke of anything but submission. “And, of course, if you choose to have your servants take down the Christmas decorations, there is nothing Gabriela or I can do to change it. I will, of course, explain your position to Gabriela. However, if you want the
vast
amount of greenery and bows taken down, it is your servants you need to speak to, not me. As you pointed out, I have no control over them. I suggest
you
tell them to take everything down.”
Jessica looked back at him challengingly. She thought she knew the Duke of Cleybourne well enough to know that he would not, in the end, have the heart to disappoint his servants by telling them to take down the decorations.
He looked at her narrowly, aware of the pounding in his blood, knowning that if he stayed here much longer, his rage would burst its bounds, and then he would grab Jessica and kiss her and God only knows where it would stop. “The devil with it! Keep your bloody bows and twigs!”
He wheeled and marched across the room, flinging open the door. There, without much surprise, he found a cluster of servants. He gave them a grimace and said, “Oh, finish hanging the damned things!”
He strode off down the hallway, leaving the servants babbling excitedly.
I
t took Jessica a few moments to compose herself enough to leave the study. She knew all the servants would be studying her covertly, and she was determined to look unaffected by her encounter with the duke.
Walking along the corridor into the Great Hall, she nodded to one of the maids dusting a table and continued up the stairs to her room. Once inside her bedchamber, she let out an enormous sigh and sank down on her bed. She thought about the scene that had just taken place, but even as she was remembering just how Cleybourne had looked, her mind was taking in the fact that something was different. Finally the uneasy thought penetrated her consciousness far enough that she stood back up and glanced around the room. Something seemed wrong, but what was it?
Her gaze fell upon the dresser and moved on, then back to the dresser top.
Her jewelry box was not there.
She scanned the room, turning all the way around and coming back to the dresser. It was still empty of any small boxes.
Jessica strode over to the dresser and began to open all the drawers and look inside to see if perhaps a maid, while cleaning, had put the jewelry box away. But she could not find it in any drawer or behind the dresser or under the bed or wardrobe, or anywhere else she could think to look.
It occurred to her that perhaps Gabriela had taken it into her room to play with her jewelry. She had not done that sort of thing in over a year, but it had been one of her favorite pastimes when she was young. She had liked to take out the locket Jessica had inherited from her mother and read the inscription inside, and she had liked to put on Jessica’s bracelets and necklace and brooch, or fasten one of her hair combs, decorated with mother-of-pearl, in her own hair.
Jessica went across the hall to Gabriela’s room and rapped on the door. When there was no answer, she opened it and looked around. There was no sign of her missing jewelry case. Next she walked down the hall to Lady Westhampton’s room, where she found Gabriela sitting in a chair beside Rachel’s bed, reading to her. Both of them turned and smiled at Jessica as she walked in.
“Good, you are here,” Gabriela said, jumping up. “Lady Westhampton is quite enjoying the book, but I have to go help Miss Pargety with the holly wreaths. I promised her I would come back soon.”
“That’s fine. I will read to Lady Westhampton, if she likes,” Jessica said with a smile at her charge. “It is very good of you to spend some time with Miss Pargety.”
“She’s awfully fussy, isn’t she?” Gabriela said candidly. “But she is all right, as long as you don’t listen very carefully to what she says.”
“Gaby…did you take my jewelry box out of my room for any reason?”
Gabriela looked surprised. “No. Why? Is it missing?”
“Yes. I cannot find it anywhere. I thought perhaps you wanted to try on my locket or something.”
Gabriela shook her head. “No. I’m too old for that sort of thing nowadays, you know.”
“Yes, I know. I just cannot imagine…oh well, I shall look through my room again. Run along and help Miss Pargety. I will sit with Lady Westhampton.”
With a grin, Gabriela left the room. Jessica walked over and sat down in the chair beside Rachel’s bed. “How are you feeling?”
Rachel heaved a sigh. “Aside from the fact that I cannot breathe without opening my mouth, I suppose I am all right.”
“Oh dear, I’m sorry.”
“Miss Brown’s concoctions help some. Hopefully by tomorrow I will feel better.” She paused, frowning a little. “You are certain that your jewelry box is not there?”
Jessica nodded. “Yes. There are not that many places for it to be. I had hoped it was just Gaby borrowing it. But…”
“I cannot imagine any of Richard’s servants taking it. They are all good, honest people, and they have worked for him a long time.”
“I know. I have trouble thinking it was any of the maids, too. But there are a number of other people in the house right now, and I am not so sure about them. One or two of them are, frankly, a little havey-cavey.”
“Really? I met only Miss Pargety, when she came in to pick up the bows I made this afternoon.”
“Well, there is a very rough looking man named Cobb. I could believe him capable of almost anything. And Mr. Goodrich is exceedingly nervous all the time. It makes one wonder exactly
why
he is so jumpy. Mrs. Woods is something of an enigma. We don’t really know any of them. I suppose one of them could easily be a thief. The thing that is odd, though, is why would anyone have chosen my little box of jewelry? It has a great deal of value to me. It contained a brooch made with my father’s hair, and my mother left me a locket that her mother gave to her. It is a heart, and inside it has my grandmother’s initials. To me these things are priceless, and I cannot bear to think of losing them. But the case is small and not terribly expensive, and my jewelry is worth almost nothing in monetary terms. I feel sure that any of the other women in this house right now would have more and better jewelry than I.”
“It
is
odd,” Rachel agreed. “You ought to speak to Richard about it.”
“I am not sure the duke would be willing to talk to me about anything right now,” Jessica said wryly.
“He did not take the Christmas decorations well?”
“No, he did not. He was in something of a rage.”
“Oh dear.” Rachel looked worried. “Perhaps we should have pretended that I told the servants to put them up.”
Jessica shrugged. “I can live with his rages. Anyway, I am sure that he would have known I was behind it. You are much too considerate of his feelings to have done it. But he did not cast me out, and he did not tell the servants to take down the decorations, so I suppose it came out all right.”
“Really?” Rachel’s expression brightened. “Well, that is good, isn’t it? He has been in pain for so long, I—” She broke off, then said in a low voice, “Sometimes I feel that we really are a cursed family, and that we bring pain to the lives we touch.”
“Oh, no, Lady Westhampton! I cannot believe that.”
“Please, call me Rachel. There cannot be formality between us when you have sat here with me all red nosed and watery eyed.”
Jessica smiled. “All right, then, Rachel. And I am Jessica. But you cannot believe that your family is really cursed.”
“Most of the time we treat it as a jest, but…” Rachel shrugged. “We Aincourts have never been a happy lot. Who knows, perhaps it does all come from that ancestor who drove out the abbot. Or maybe it is just the sin of pride passed down from one generation to the next, beginning with him.”
“Pride? Excuse me, but you do not seem one puffed up with pride. You have been quite kind to me, and you must know that I—”
“What? That you were so misfortunate as to have a father who involved himself in a scandal? It is scarcely your fault, any more than it was mine that my father was a puritanical tyrant who cut his only son out of his life. But it is pride, don’t you think, when a family always marries for advancement, never love? We have always made ‘good’ marriages, you see, in the eyes of the world. Marriages for wealth, for position, for land or name—or almost anything other than for the heart. As a consequence, we have never been happy.”
“But your sister—”
“Richard loved her. I know that. I am not as certain that she loved him. Or perhaps I should say I think she found it easy to love a duke. Had Richard been a baron or, God forbid, had no title at all, I am not so sure she would have loved him.”
“Oh.” Jessica looked at the other woman, pale, her eyes shadowed, looking into a past that obviously brought her little joy. “I am sorry.”
“My husband and I have a…a pleasant marriage, I suppose most people would say. He is all that is kind, and he does not deny me anything I wish. I am free to live my own life in London, and he remains on the estate with his books and correspondence and…all the things that matter to him.”
“Rachel—” Impulsively Jessica leaned forward, putting her hand comfortingly on top of Rachel’s.
Rachel smiled at her a little sadly. “I’m sorry. I am burdening you with our lives much more than I should. It must be the illness. It makes me silly and weak. Michael and I entered our marriage knowing what it was. I loved another man, someone unsuitable—not that there was anything wrong with him, but he had no money, no future of any consequence. My family needed, always needed, money. So I did my duty. Michael did his. And we have been…satisfied with our life.”
Jessica, looking at the sadness lurking in the other woman’s eyes, did not believe for a moment that Rachel was satisfied. But she did not dispute it, just squeezed her hand gently.
“I guess that none of our lives turn out as we had thought they would, hoped they would,” she said. “We simply make the best of what we get. What else can we do?”
“You are right, of course.” Rachel gave her a sweet smile. “And sometimes things turn out even better. Dev married for the family, to keep Darkwater from going under, and they have turned out to be gloriously in love.”
“Well. There you are.”
“Yes. Sometimes miracles happen. And I am very glad one happened to Dev.” Rachel paused, looking at Jessica intently. “I hope that a miracle will happen for Richard, as well.”
“I hope so, too,” Jessica agreed. But she knew, with an inward stab of regret, the if that miracle of love came to the duke again, it was very unlikely that it would involve her.
Supper that evening was no more enjoyable, Jessica found, than it had been the night before. However, it was livelier, since this evening there was the fracas the night before to discuss. There were opposing opinions as to whether the intruder had come from outside or inside the house, as well as to what he had been seeking.
Miss Pargety was certain that it had been an outsider—more from wishful thinking, Jessica guessed, than from any reason—who had come to rob the duke.
“Last night?” Lord Kestwick replied with scorn, raising an aristocratic eyebrow. “Really, what sort of thief would come traipsing through all that snow, knowing it would equally impede his getting away?”
“Yes, my lord, there is that,” Reverend Radfiel said pacifically. “But why would anyone staying here rob His Grace, either, knowing he would be stuck here for who-knows-how-many more days? It would seem awfully dangerous to me.”
“Ah, but he did not take anything, did he?” Kestwick drawled in his supercilious way, dabbing at the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “Isn’t that true, Cleybourne?”
“What?” Richard, who had been watching Darius Talbot sending Jessica long looks, turned blankly to the man at his right.
“The man last night. He did not steal anything, correct?”
“No. I could find nothing missing.”
“Well, if he wasn’t a thief, then what was he after?” Lady Vesey asked, irritated that tonight she was not the center of attention. No amount of exposed bosom could match the excitement of an intruder.
“I did not say he was not a thief, my lovely Lady Vesey,” Kestwick told her with a thin smile. “My theory is that he was searching for what he would like to steal right before he leaves. I feel sure he did not plan to get caught and tip everyone off to what he was doing. What do you think, Mr. Cobb?”
Everyone turned toward Cobb, sitting at the other end of the table. “About what, my lord?” he replied phlegmatically.
“Why, my theory, sir, about the thief.”
“Aye, it might be a thief, my lord. As to what he was thinking, I’m afraid I’ve no idea of that.” Cobb’s face, while not exactly challenging, was not deferential, either.
“I, uh, I don’t like all this talk of thieves,” Mr. Goodrich spoke up, surprising them all. Jessica could not remember his saying anything at all the night before at the table; his attention had seemed to be fully occupied by the array of silverware before him. “After all, we do not know it was a thief.”
“Very true, Mr. Goodrich,” the minister said in his mellifluous voice. Though Jessica had not found that he usually said anything particularly striking, she supposed that his parishioners must enjoy listening to his sermons simply because of his lovely voice. “We do not really know why he was there, and doubtless we should not cast aspersions on the poor man.”
Jessica glanced at the duke and saw the corner of his mouth tighten. She suspected that Cleybourne would like to cast a few aspersions—and other things—at the intruder for the nasty gash over his eye.
“Funny thing, all these people breaking into houses,” Vesey said idly.
Cleybourne looked at him, his eyes narrowing. “What do you mean?”
“Well, there’s been a rash of them recently, hasn’t there? I mean, didn’t someone break in here a few nights ago? And then there was that night at the General’s house.”
Jessica frowned. “What are you talking about? When did someone break into the General’s house?”
“Oh, ’twas after you left,” Vesey said casually.
“What happened? Who was it?”
Vesey shrugged. “Don’t know. Do you remember what the innkeeper said, Leona? He was the chap who told us about it.”
“I don’t really recall,” Leona said, her tone expressing a vast disinterest in the matter.
Vesey frowned, obviously exerting his brain. “I think he said they had been in the study or the library or some such place. You know, I think he said nothing was missing there. Odd, don’t you think?”