Too Wanton to Wed: Gothic Love Stories #4

by Ridley, Erica

  Alistair decided to save his housekeeper before she tangled herself up any further in her explanation. “What’s the word in Lancashire these days, Mrs. Tumsen? Has all this rain been flooding the Ribble and the Lune?”

  “They wish they’d got rain,” Mrs. Tumsen declared as she attacked the cheese and bread with gusto. “What they got was a fire that took out part of a school, from what I hear.”

  “A fire! Are the children all right?”

  “The children are fine. Seems there was violence between adults. One’s dead or injured, and one’s missing altogether. Nasty bit of business.”

  “Appears so,” he agreed, reaching in his vest pocket for his fob. “All the more reason to be grateful Lily’s safe at home. If you’ll excuse me, I’m on my way to see her now.”

  “Of course, of course!” Mrs. Tumsen’s cheeks reddened further, as if she’d just realized she’d been tongue-wagging at her employer. “Good day, sir!”

  Alistair wore a bemused smile as he made his way to the catacombs. What had come over him lately? Burying himself in books was nothing new, but teasing his manservant and gossiping with his housekeeper... Now there was a first!

  How long had it been since he had shared meaningful conversation with another adult? After Marjorie died, he hadn’t spoken much to anyone at all. That was, until Miss Smythe arrived. Everything had changed after she arrived. Even Lily.

  But not in the way that mattered the most. He sighed.

  If the past twenty-four hours had taught him anything, it was that his daughter’s belief that she wasn’t good enough was the greatest source of her unhappiness. And his as well. As her father, it was up to him to keep her happy. Once Lily was cured, she wouldn’t be inferior to anyone on the planet. And once he found that cure, his daughter would finally have a father she could be proud of.

  Smiling, he fished the key from his pocket and eased open the door to his daughter’s chamber.

  Lily was not yet abed. She was cross-legged in the center of the room, knee-to-knee with Miss Smythe—also cross-legged upon the marble floor—and giggling hysterically at some sort of rhythm game involving rhyming chants and the random slapping of one another’s hands.

  He leaned against the doorjamb, content to gaze through the crack at a barrier he hadn’t yet managed to cross with his daughter. His heart gave a sharp tug. How lovely it would be to play together... He yearned to join the fun, but had no doubt that his presence would only serve to ruin it. And when was the last time he’d heard Lily laugh? Alistair was more convinced by the day that Miss Smythe was less a miracle-worker and more an actual angel sent from God.

  Which was all the more reason to squelch his impulse to touch her, to kiss her, every time they were alone. Curse him for having been born a fallible man!

  He sighed just to look at her. So lovely and so pure. She was perfection itself. He would not be the one to spoil such goodness. Keeping a safe distance was best for everyone.

  He watched longingly as Miss Smythe easily swung a laughing Lily into her arms and carried her to the bed. For four long years, it had not been thus with him and his daughter. It had been tantrums and screaming and plugged ears and thrashing limbs. Not smiles and tight hugs and kisses on the forehead.

  Soon, he promised himself as he pushed open the door and entered the chamber. The upcoming cabal of physicians and scientists would be precisely what they needed to turn their fortunes around. He could feel it.

  Miss Smythe paused at his footsteps, one hand poised to release the cord tying back the bed curtain. “Lily, your father is here! Won’t you tell him goodnight?”

  All Alistair heard was silence. He did not need to see through the velvet drapery to suspect his daughter had pulled a face at the suggestion. He could only be grateful there was no more screaming.

  When he reached her side, Miss Smythe took a step toward the foot of the bed to allow him better access to Lily. His daughter’s eyes were focused on the tester across the canopy and did not move to acknowledge his presence.

  “Good night, daughter. I hope you sleep well.”

  Silence.

  “Lily.” Miss Smythe’s voice was a low warning.

  She turned her head away. “I have nothing to say to him.”

  He sighed, but did not yet take his leave. Even if she were not speaking to him, his daughter was still the most precious gift he had ever been given, and just looking at the dark lashes curled against her little cheeks filled him with an indescribable joy. Someday, she would be pleased with him, too. Please, God, someday soon.

  At last, he took a step back to allow Miss Smythe room to release the bed curtain.

  “Good night, Tiger Lily.”

  Just as the curtain fell home against the opposite panel, his daughter’s soft voice was barely audible above the rustling velvet. “Good night, Miss Smythe. I love you.”

  The wide-eyed shock on Miss Smythe’s face was nothing compared to the meteorite that had just slammed into Alistair’s gut. He was not jealous of the governess. He was not. And yet, how long had he hoped, had he yearned, to hear those words from his daughter’s lips once again?

  She hadn’t loved him since the morning she’d seen her own grave. He had not earned it. The governess—Miss Smythe—had succeeded where he had not. Had conquered the war when he had yet to win a single battle. If he had ever been in want of concrete proof of his failings as a father, well, he was in want no more.

  She reached out, as if to touch his arm.

  He turned away before contact could be made and strode back into the welcome darkness of the catacombs. He had prayed for her help, but he did not need her pity.

  She followed him from the room. The door clicked shut behind her, leaving them enshrouded in darkness. She did not move. He did not speak. She waited, without talking. And, by the grace of God, without touching. He could barely withstand his own skin without shattering. He needed a moment to think. To breathe. To remind himself that his feelings, his heart, were not his concern. Only his daughter.

  “How is she?” he said at last. “Truly?”

  At first he thought Miss Smythe did not intend to answer. Then he feared she was formulating a speech about what had just happened—or not happened—at his daughter’s bedside. At last, he heard a soft sigh, and quiet rustles indicating she had turned to face him, despite the darkness.

  “She won’t paint.”

  He found himself wishing for a candle after all, in order to read her expression, since he was obviously incapable of comprehending her words. “What?”

  “I said, she won’t paint.”

  “That’s... alarming?”

  “Very much so.”

  He frowned. “How can not painting be that bad? Until you arrived, she’d never held a paintbrush before in her life.”

  “I’d wager she never expressed herself before in her life, either. Now she has. And now she won’t.”

  He snorted. It sounded to him like Lily was expressing herself very clearly. She preferred her governess to her own father. What more was left to say?

  “I suppose you have a solution?” he asked, unable to keep the uncharitable edge from his voice.

  “I do.”

  “Well?”

  He heard her inhale deeply. Whatever she was about to suggest must be shocking indeed, if she needed to inhale that much of the dank catacomb air.

  “Art comes in part from experience,” she said slowly. “But life, on the other hand, is one hundred percent experience. And Lily has experienced nothing.”

  “I fail to hear a suggestion.”

  “She needs to see the world. Even if for her, ‘the world’ is only her own back garden by the light of the moon.”

  He took an involuntary step backward and nearly cracked his head against the crumbling wall of the tunnel. “No.”

  “Let’s take her outside. After dusk, when it will be safe.”

  “No.”

  “Just once,” she said softly, cajolingly, as if he wasn’t w
ell aware that “just once” was all it would take to lose his daughter forever. “Please. Just for a few moments.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Why not?” she burst out, angrily.

  “Given an inch, Lily will run away. She’s done it before, and she’ll do it again. The next time, she could die.” And with that letter he’d received… Alistair’s voice hardened. “The answer is no.”

  For a long moment, the silence was so absolute that he began to imagine himself alone in the catacombs, raving like a madman to the corpses sequestered within its walls. And then she spoke.

  “With all due respect,” she began, in a tone of such unveiled frustration that even he wasn’t fanciful enough to imagine any respect. “You are keeping your daughter from a potential source of happiness.”

  “No,” he returned, his voice carefully modulated. “I am keeping her alive.”

  “It’s not mutually exclusive,” she snapped. “Overprotection is counterproductive.”

  “Is it?” His fingers shook. She had not been the one to fetch a screaming five-year-old from a patch of sunlight. She had not been the one to soothe patches of blistered skin until the welts faded to angry scars. “What do you know about it? You haven’t stood in my shoes. You’re not her mother. You’re not anybody’s mother. Until you have a child of your own, you can’t tell me how to raise mine.”

  She sucked in a breath. He didn’t need a candle to realize his words had wounded far too deeply. When she spoke, her voice was uneven. “You’re right. I don’t know anything about mothers at all.”

  Alistair’s hands curled into fists of frustration. Punching a hole in the catacomb wall would likely bring the whole structure down upon them. Not to mention the likelihood of God striking him down for his sacrilege. He forced his white-knuckled fingers to release their tension.

  “I don’t think you understand,” he began, as calmly as he could.

  “I don’t think you understand,” she interrupted, her voice tight. “It’s not for you. It’s not for me. It’s for Lily.”

  “Miss Smythe—”

  “I’ll be with your daughter at every moment. We’ll both be with her. And we’ll never let her out of our sight.”

  He let his humorless chuckle echo along the packed soil and crumbling saints. “What makes you think mere sight can control her? Look what Lily did to the paintings you worked so hard on. Look what she did to her own painting that she had worked so hard on. We were both right next to her, keeping her in our sight, when she lashed out and committed irreparable damage before either of us could react. Think again, Miss Smythe. How can anyone control Lily if she can’t even control herself?”

  A swish, as if Miss Smythe had turned from him in the darkness, followed by the muffled click of boot heels against the ancient dirt floor. She was walking away from him without a word? Cutting him, as it were?

  He squinted into the darkness. “Are we done discussing?”

  Her footsteps did not slow. “Lily is a child. Children act out. She—”

  “She’s not a child. She’s my child.” He pursued the retreating footsteps into the blackness. “It’s my responsibility to ensure she not act out in a way that could cause her harm, much less kill her.”

  She spun around so suddenly that her hands had grasped his forearms even before he registered she’d stopped walking. “Lily is special. Did you see what she painted? How she painted? You looked, but did you really see?”

  He allowed his hands to settle lightly on her hips, but his tone remained as hard as his resolve. “What are you saying, Miss Smythe? That my daughter would be Michelangelo if only she could travel the world? I know how special Lily is! Why do you think I’m so desperate to keep her safe? To cure her?”

  Her grip on his forearms gentled, as did her voice. “Because you’re her father and you love her,” she said quietly, each word another dash of salt into his open wound. “You’d be desperate for a cure even if she couldn’t draw a straight line. You’re a good man, and you’re trying to be a great father. I see that. I see you.”

  Trying to be. Wanting to be. But accomplishing nothing. He stood in silence, letting her words fall upon him like dust upon a coffin. Unanswered. Because there was no answer to give.

  “The thing is,” she continued softly, her breath ghostly above the folds of his cravat. “When will you find this cure? Next week? Next year? In ten years?” She lifted one of her hands and laid the palm against the side of his face. “What about the quality of Lily’s life between now and then?”

  “I’m trying to save her life,” he ground out. “That’s precisely why it isn’t worth the risk.”

  She lowered her hand. “What if you never find a cure? What if there isn’t any cure to be found? Would it all still be worth it then?”

  “Never say that again,” he said furiously. He gripped her by the shoulders, then pushed her away. He did not want her touching him anymore. He did not want her opinions on childrearing. And he definitely did not want to hear poisonous negativity. His body shook as much in fear as in anger. “I will find a cure. I must. I shall.”

  She did not reply.

  Even though he could smell the soap upon her curls and hear the faint whisper of each breath, Alistair knew the truth. He was alone. Nothing would change that. Him against the world, against modern science, against God Himself if need be. For Lily.

  He would prevail or die trying.

  Chapter 19

  Violet’s eyes snapped awake in the darkness. Morning or half-midnight, she couldn’t be certain, but something had awakened her. Something that had her heart pounding like spooked horses.

  She held perfectly still. No sounds broke the stillness of the night, save the overloud whisper of her own breath sticking in her throat. No light seeped through the double layer of thick wood. Even the sullen orange embers had vanished from the fireplace. Was that what had woken her? A chill?

  Not a chill—a dream. A bad one, involving a depraved cracksman with an eye for young girls. Shaking, she propped herself up on her elbows. She closed her eyes and tried to shake the sleep from her head, but only succeeded in jumbling her thoughts about even worse. Why was she dreaming about the Spitalfields rookery? She hastened from the bed. There would be no more sleep tonight.

  Why had those terrible memories returned? Her current situation was not at all the same. Trembling, she bent before a large bowl and splashed cold water on her face. Mr. Waldegrave was nothing like the monster who had ruled her childhood. She did not labor here under lock and key. He was a desperate man, but a gentleman all the same. It was not in his nature to hold a guest prisoner. Was it?

  She squinted through the shadows at the closed door of her bedchamber. It was locked. Of course it was locked. All the doors in Waldegrave Abbey secured themselves automatically. But she padded across the room and tested the handle to be sure.

  The door was locked tight, but she was not trapped inside. She touched her fingertips to her chest. She carried her key on a chain about her neck. Why, she could walk through the door and on out of the abbey if she had a mind to. In fact, she would, just to prove she could.

  She jerked her fingers through her sleep-mussed hair. Her pelisse was right over there. If she felt so vulnerable that it was causing nightmares, she should put her theory to the test at once. She shrugged into the pelisse and shoved her feet into her walking boots. The edge of her night rail poked out from below the hem of the pelisse, and the cool brass key lay atop the lapel. Thus attired, she straightened her spine and strode to her door. Seconds later, she stood in the silent corridor.

  “See?” she chided herself under her breath. “Not a prisoner.”

  She hesitated only a moment before making her way toward the entrance of the abbey. Despite taking care to move cautiously, her footfalls seemed to slap against the marble floor. But no one came. No alarms were sounded. All were abed. As she should be, too. Instead, she stood at the abbey’s front door. She tried the handle.

>   Locked.

  Her heart quickened. Foolish girl. Of course it would be locked. That did not mean she was being held prisoner. It simply meant Mr. Waldegrave had a cautious nature.

  She slipped the thin chain from her neck and hefted her bedchamber key in her palm. When she had picked Roper’s pocket, there had been two keys—and she had selected the wrong one. It hadn’t opened her bedchamber. It hadn’t opened the door to the catacombs. It didn’t provide access to anything except the shrine to her employer’s dead wife.

  This key, on the other hand, did open Violet’s bedchamber. And the tunnel to the catacombs. And the art room, and the library, and the sanctuary, and the school room... The key slid through her fingers and caught, swinging from her upturned hand in a slow arc upon its slender chain.

  She stepped forward and slipped the key into the lock on the entryway door. It fit. Slowly, she turned the key. Tiny clicks ticked in the darkness as the bolt retracted.

  The skeleton key accessed the entire abbey! When Mr. Waldegrave installed all the locking mechanisms at once, the locksmith must not have had time to forge hundreds of unique locks. Either that, or it was simply easier for the household to deal with just one key, particularly when one was not accustomed to doors having locks at all.

  Now she understood the trust implicit in having been given a key of her own. Roper’s initial reluctance to share made much more sense. She’d been a stranger. One who had all but blown in with a gust of wind. No manservant in his right mind would hand over free reign to a trespasser.

  She curled her fingers about the icy handle and turned. The door swung open, briefly blinding her with moonlight. Chilly night air rushed across the starlit lawn to ruddy her cheeks and tangle her hair. She’d forgotten both her bonnet and her gloves in her haste, but for the moment she did not care in the least.

  Closing the door behind her, she stepped from the abbey and tipped her face up to the sky. Stars winked down upon her. A breeze tickled her hair. The scent of grass and flowers and recent rain enveloped her.