Entrancing the Earl

by Patricia Rice

  She couldn’t possibly lift him. She might trust her queen, but even a bee queen couldn’t control all her workers. He had to be guarded.

  She settled on the grass, holding her breath in anxiety while she listened to his rattily breathing. The asthmatic reaction usually eased after a bit, and he seemed large enough to fight it. He hadn’t vomited yet. She didn’t know if that was a good sign. She hummed under her breath, and her queen hummed back. Her stepfather claimed she was insane, but he’d said the same about her mother and grandmother, and Iona had always thought them the wisest people she’d ever met.

  They simply talked to bees. It seemed perfectly natural to her.

  “You’ll be all right,” she reassured the earl, holding his hand and examining his wrist. Had she ever held a man’s bare hand? Doubtful. Her own father had died before she was old enough to know him. Her stepfather had sent her and Isobel off to a girls’ boarding school in England when they’d been six. Men were foreign creatures to be feared.

  She’d learned a little better since, but she remained wary of the gender. Still, she didn’t want to helplessly watch a man die.

  The welt on his wrist didn’t seem quite as angry now. She started to withdraw her hand, but his strong brown fingers caught hers. Not dead then.

  “Can you stand?” she asked, watching his chest rise and fall. His breath didn’t seem quite so raspy.

  “Who are you?” he demanded, rubbing the swelling on his jaw.

  “Nan, the beekeeper. The pain will go down if we can pour some willow bark tea into you. I can’t carry you back to the house, but I can’t leave you here in pain.” She tried to tug her hand free. He held it tighter.

  “Nan what?” His voice was still raspy.

  “Nan Malcolm, of course.” The beauty of being part of a large clan was that she could use her name and live in plain sight and no one would know the difference. That her small world knew her as Lady Iona Malcolm Ross mattered little.

  “Of course,” he said dryly. “Let’s see if I can stand without toppling again.”

  “You topple verra politely,” she assured him, rising up on her knees. “If you’ll use your walking stick and my shoulder, we might haul you up.”

  Dubiously, he studied her slender frame, but Iona was accustomed to being dismissed as weak. He followed her advice and used his stick as a brace to sit up. “Do I detect a Highland lilt?”

  She bit back a frown. Her boarding school accent normally disguised her origins. She must be more upset than she realized. She ignored his question and aided him in rising. Assured that he could stand without her aid, she turned toward the house. “I’ll go ahead and let the others know. Winifred will have better remedies than mine.”

  “Don’t,” he called after her. “You have no way of fighting off that dog. I don’t need physicking. Walk with me.”

  Iona hesitated, watched as he used his stick to steady himself and noted his color returning. A big man like that could fight off adverse reactions more easily than others, she reasoned.

  She preferred her usual strategy of avoidance. It was imperative for her safety and that of her sister and all the people at home who relied on her.

  She flipped her veil back in place. “On the contrary, my lord, you will be safer without my presence.”

  With that she began to hum. As she walked away, a steady stream of bees rose from the hives and followed her, keeping her safe from rampaging animals and reducing the numbers who might attack him.

  Three

  Gerard cursed the beekeeper, cursed his household of witches, cursed whatever malady caused him to topple from a damned bee sting. By the time he dragged himself back to the castle, the yard had filled with anxious women waiting to coddle him.

  “Begone, the lot of you,” he shouted, like some curmudgeon from a ha’penny novel.

  He was trained in courtesy. He never talked to anyone like that, much less his poor relations.

  The beekeeper was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the dog or his agent. His Great-Aunt Winifred, garbed in unfashionable full crinoline and a widow’s black, gestured for the others to depart. “Have the tea and poultices carried to his lordship’s chambers.”

  “I don’t want any damned blasted tea and poultices. I’m not an octogenarian.” He stalked toward the privacy of his tower keep.

  “Then suffer through the night,” his aunt said without sympathy. “I can see you are breathing. We can hope you won’t strangle in your sleep.”

  “I’m not an invalid. Tell Avery I want to see him.” He didn’t break stride.

  “I’m not your housekeeper,” she called after him.

  “I was under no illusion that you were,” he shouted back. “I thought you wanted to help. Sending for Avery is how you can do it.” Not by hovering, he muttered to himself.

  She probably sniffed in disapproval, but he was too far away to hear.

  Coming to Wystan was almost always a disaster. His estate was self-sufficient, but it was one of his many duties to oversee it. Theoretically, he supplemented his meager allowance with the profits, but the income was less each year, and he’d found no miracles to change that. Riches simply couldn’t be had from rocky fells and dales.

  Soon, he’d have to become a lawyer just to buy clothes—except he’d have to work at night when his duties to his father’s extensive business and political affairs didn’t interfere.

  In his suite, Gerard drank the nasty tea they sent. Despite his protest, he slapped the unwanted poultice on his swollen wounds, then picked at his dinner. He opened and closed the fingers the beekeeper had touched, fighting the notion that he’d almost felt her fear. His gift was for objects, not people. The last thing he needed in his life was people invading his head. He dismissed the thought as part of the pain he’d suffered.

  He wasn’t normally an early to bed, early to rise sort of person, but what the hell was there to do in the country once the sun set?

  He could study the stars through the old-fashioned telescope in the observatory, but he had little interest in places he couldn’t reach. He stored his other live artifacts up there though. He’d introduce the new one to them, see what happened. Did spirits talk to each other? They’d never done so to his knowledge.

  He tried to recall the beekeeper’s face, but his eyes had been watering and nearly swollen shut and the memory was a blur. He was pretty certain she had been talking to the bees, though. And judging by the swarm that had followed her, they were listening.

  Very little a Malcolm did could surprise him. More often, the know-it-alls irritated him. He made a mental note not to marry a Malcolm.

  His question to Rainford about what to look for in a wife now haunted him. Wealthy and not a Malcolm didn’t encompass it all, but it certainly eliminated everyone here.

  The topmost floor of the tower had been renovated with real windows for his great-great-grandfather, who had studied astronomy over a century ago. It was almost a museum of Ives’ hobbies. Gerard had boxed up a fair number of them to clear a table for his own collection.

  He set the Roman medallion next to a crude replica of a horse carved from limestone. He’d kept the horse because it contained the memories of its previous owner riding free and bareback across green hills and through thick forests. There hadn’t been forests like that in England in centuries.

  He picked up the small silver toothpick, but the old Georgian philosopher who’d once used it had nothing to say tonight. He set it on the other side of the medallion.

  “Talk to each other,” he said dryly. “Let me know if I deserve to find treasure. Otherwise I may marry and give you over to the housekeepers, who will box you up and store you in the dungeon.”

  Was that a ghostly hmpf he heard? He sat down to make notes in his journal, but his thoughts kept returning to the beekeeper, especially the part where she ran her hands over him. She had a lady’s tender skin, not a farm worker’s, but then, she was a Malcolm. They generally came from aristocratic families.

&n
bsp; The bell he’d installed at the back exit rang. It allowed the few men on the estate to reach him without going through a protective cordon of females.

  After finishing the meat pie the kitchen had sent up with the tea, Gerard clambered down the stairs to his ground floor office. If he was inclined to stay here for any length of time, he would hire a manservant to handle this sort of thing.

  Having no servants in the tower encouraged him to move on before winter.

  Avery waited outside. An educated man of good family, Avery had the thick shoulders and torso of a bull. The middle-aged estate agent dressed better than Gerard in rich tweeds and tailored doeskin. But then, the old bachelor lived on the estate and didn’t have anyone or anything eating up his pay.

  Gerard gestured at the usual chair in his office and took his oak one behind the desk. “That was prompt. I didn’t mean to convey urgency.”

  The steward propped his wool cap on his knee. “The ladies work themselves into a lather elsewise.”

  Gerard acknowledged the truth of that. “Am I wrong in thinking they object to your dog?”

  “We have badgers digging up the orchard, a fox after the henhouse, and rabbits gnawing their way through the early crops. The dog’s good at routing them. Makes a good guard dog as well. Don’t know why they’ve taken a dislike to the creature.”

  “I gather the animal takes his reward in honey. The beekeeper rightfully objects. The animal needs to be trained to stay away from the skeps.” Feeling the ache in his jaw and wrist, Gerard thought it a pity the beast didn’t learn from the pain of bee stings.

  “Your beekeeper is an over-reaching harridan,” Avery said with unusual anger. “She had the orchard dug up for flower beds while I was away at market. And now she’s demanding the carpenter build some new-fangled hives to coddle the insects, instead of burning them out the way it’s always been done.”

  Appeasing the tension between his excellent, but traditionalist agent, and the castle’s more open-minded tenants had always been a problem.

  “You should know by now that the ladies have my father’s full support. They do not take on projects at a whim. I’m certain the beekeeper met with a committee of the ladies to discuss what she can do to aid the estate.”

  Although Gerard was well aware that, to his tenants, providing bouquets for the hall would qualify as reason to dig up unused ground and plant flowers. But honey was a valuable crop and so they weren’t being unreasonable.

  “I tell you, the beekeeper is a trouble maker. You’ll regret encouraging her. I can’t keep the hound out of the orchard without a fence.” Avery scowled. Caught by surprise at Gerard’s unexpected arrival, he apparently hadn’t had time to visit a barber. His shaggy brown hair hung down his neck and his ferocious mustache bristled.

  “A fence around the hives wouldn’t hurt,” Gerard agreed without rancor, although he mentally winced at the additional cost. “The lady is out there alone and unprotected. If she’s contributing to the estate’s welfare, then we should provide what she needs. Keep the dog leashed until then. I don’t want to have to right more skeps while I’m here.”

  “Aye, will do,” Avery said grumpily. “You want me back in the morning to go over the books?”

  “I realize I’m too early for the harvest to be in. Give me time to study where we are. The day after tomorrow, perhaps?” He placated the man, knowing he was good at what he did.

  Rising, he escorted Avery to the door. As the agent strode off, Gerard noticed one of the women tending a rose bed in the evening gloom. Her gray gown almost disappeared in the shadows. He thought it might be the beekeeper, but she glanced up and vanished into deeper darkness.

  Hell, maybe she was a ghost. Weirder things had happened.

  Bored, he finally headed for the main house to greet the occupants of his castle.

  Finally, a spirit voice whispered. And he wasn’t even carrying the medallion. That sent a shiver down his spine.

  * * *

  Iona set the bouquet of late roses in a porcelain vase on the entrance table, where the fragrance of sun and happiness would permeate the old hall.

  Winifred, the healer who mothered them all, bustled down the stairs. “To the hall,” she cried merrily. “He’s headed this way.”

  “I am not needed, am I? I should draw up diagrams for the Langstroth boxes so the carpenter knows what to do.” Iona knew the flaw in that argument, but she hoped there were enough people vying for the earl’s interest that she wouldn’t be missed.

  “You cannot expect any of us to explain why you need new hives,” Winifred said in exasperation, finding the flaw immediately. “Now come along or we’ll spend the evening listening to Grace prose on about the lost art of spinning.”

  “Her woolens really are works of art,” Iona protested, falling in beside the castle’s queen bee. The older woman was much the same height as she but considerably heavier. If Iona sat behind her, she might blend into her shadow. . .

  Except Winifred took the chair in front of the fireplace, near the gas sconces so she was illuminated from all sides. Iona searched for a distant corner where the light didn’t reach. She wasn’t much of one for needlework, but she could jot the day’s notes while the others talked. More light would be nice, but her need for invisibility reigned over neat handwriting.

  “The spirts are restless,” Simone announced in puzzlement, sweeping in behind them in a swish of summery fabrics and transparent shawls more suited to a hot July day. “Has something stirred them?”

  After the isolation of Craigmore, Iona appreciated the various personalities populating Wystan. It wasn’t the same as her sister’s company, of course, but it kept her from being too lonely. They didn’t require that she do anything except listen, which she’d learned to do in long summers at her mother’s knee.

  Even after all these years, she missed her mother fiercely.

  Some of the older women were already gathered in their favorite seats. Iona didn’t usually try to disappear with this group, but if the earl meant to grace them with his presence—

  She carried a small chair to a corner near the dark windows, behind a hanging basket of ferns.

  The huge hall they used as a drawing room was large enough to hold a village, so the ladies didn’t precisely fill it with numbers so much as presence. Their lively chatter dispelled the gloom. Iona could sense their joy and anticipation and smiled at their eagerness. Sometimes, rural solitude could be tedious. Iona was well accustomed to it.

  “Where is Lady Alice?” Winifred called sharply.

  “She was not feeling well and has gone to bed,” one of the younger women replied.

  After the debacle in the duke’s library, Iona could see that Lady Alice might find seeing the earl a trifle awkward. Still, she was glad the desperate lady had taken up the offer of Wystan’s shelter. The Malcolm women had no difficulty embracing Alice and her scandalous condition. They were already preparing a nursery for an event almost seven months in the future.

  An almost visible sigh whispered around the room as his lordship entered.

  In a sea of feminine perfumes and rustling skirts, Lord Ives forged an imposing masculine presence. He wasn’t a bulky man like his agent, but elegantly muscled, filling out the shoulders of his coat to perfection. He was still wearing old tweed and leather, but his collar was stark white against his sun-browned features, and his cravat was correct in all ways.

  Iona studied him for the infamous Ives traits, but his dark eyes appeared more midnight blue than black. His nose was sharp and long but fitted well with stark cheekbones and square jaw. His hair was certainly Ives black with a hint of curl. He wore it off his collar in back, but a swathe fell across his high forehead. Trimmed sideburns softened the harshness of his jaw.

  He was formidably masculine. Iona ducked her head when his gaze swept the room.

  * * *

  “Aunt Winifred.” Gerard acknowledged his aunt on her throne. “You are looking delightful, as always.”

&
nbsp; He greeted distant cousins and was introduced to newcomers who made their presence known in the dimly-lit chamber. None of the people introduced appeared to be the beekeeper.

  “The wool this spring was very fine.”

  He thought the speaker, Grace, might be related to the wife of one of his uncles. The Ives side of his family had a distressing habit of marrying into the multitudinous Malcolms, probably due to proximity.

  To make reparations for his earlier ill behavior, he complimented her on the beauty of the woven blanket in his chamber. He praised the cheese made by another of the ladies and inquired about the herb garden tended by a different aunt. The women didn’t hesitate to mention improvements that should be made or ideas for new projects of interest.

  They were good women, he knew. They fed and clothed the poor with their efforts and employed a village with their projects. They did everything his wife might be expected to do—except share his bed, of course. He didn’t dare dip his wick in Wystan or the preacher would be at the door the next day.

  He had just discovered the slight feminine shadow in a distant corner of the hall when an unearthly moan echoed from above.

  One of his widowed cousins murmured “Oh, dear,” and turned to Winifred. “We had best see to Lady Alice.”

  Lady Alice? Gerard suffered a moment of pure panic at the thought of the deceitful widow talking to his female relations. Alice was here? In his home? Why?

  And what the hell was that keening—a banshee?

  Winifred was already on her feet and out the door. The herbalist cousin followed, along with the widow who apparently translated spectral howls.

  “Have a seat, Ives,” another aunt suggested tartly. “You needn’t hover. Tell us what you’ve been frivoling your time on.”

  “I’d rather know what the commotion is about.” He should have put the medallion back in his pocket. He’d like a spirit’s opinion of his haunted household.