Becoming aware of Charles, Goodson looked up, startled. “Did you ring, sir? I’m sorry, but I didn’t hear it.”
“No, I didn’t ring,” Charles said. Pulling on his ear, he added, “Um, this is a bit awkward, but I wonder if I might borrow that crucifix of yours.”
Goodson stiffened, an expression of grave disapproval crossing his face. “Sir, never tell me that you have fallen prey to my sister’s outrageous tales!”
“You’ve never noticed anything odd about this old house? Never once felt a chill where there should be no chill?” Charles asked quietly, his gaze steady on Goodson. “Never heard the wind sounding like the faint sobbing of a woman? Never, ever caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of your eye, but when you looked, nothing was there?”
For a moment, their gazes held, then Goodson sighed. “I will get it for you.”
And that, thought Charles, was that. Goodson might not admit it, but the butler wasn’t above believing in ghosts, either.
Armed with the crucifix, Charles was almost sanguine as he joined the two servants and Adrian on the landing.
Daphne and April stood on the stairs a few steps above the landing, their expressions expectant. Excited anticipation was in the air as the hefty stable boy lifted the sledgehammer and struck a mighty blow, his companion following after with a powerful swing of the pickax.
Stone chips flew as the two servants worked in rhythm with each other. The work went fast, and Charles had actually begun to believe that Sir Wesley might not make an appearance when the now familiar bone-etching chill hit him.
His eyes met Daphne’s. She felt it, too. Everyone did, the two servants stopping their work as if they’d been frozen where they stood.
Adrian looked around, puzzled. “It’s dashed cold in here all of sudden, isn’t it?”
“Hmmm, yes, I believe it is,” Charles drawled, wondering from which direction Sir Wesley would strike. He gazed down the stairs, almost relieved to see a faint dark shape forming in the shadows. No one else had seen it yet. “These old houses,” he said idly, “well, they have odd humors, don’t they?” His fingers closed around the crucifix, and he took a step to the edge of the landing, placing himself directly in the path of the rising menace. Eyes locked on it, he murmured, “Shall we continue? The sooner we discover what is behind that wall, the sooner we can warm ourselves by the fire.” Nodding to the servants, he said, “Continue, please.”
At his words, the blackness billowed up from the bottom of the staircase. Like a thick, black fog, it loomed over them, the cold rage emanating from the mass nearly knocking Charles down. But he remained on his feet and whipping out the crucifix, he held it aloft and said, “Go and never return. You cannot stop us, and we will find what you have hidden. May God forgive you for what you have done.”
To his very great relief and no little astonishment, his incantation worked. Or perhaps it was the crucifix, Charles thought slowly. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that as suddenly as it had appeared, the iciness was gone, and the black, roiling mass melted away.
There was a moment of stunned silence, then Adrian demanded, “What the devil was that? What did you do?”
Putting the crucifix away, Charles looked back at him. A faint flush on his cheeks, he muttered, “Ah, I have been taking lessons from Mrs. Darby. I did that rather well, didn’t I?”
“Rather too well,” remarked his wife dryly. “You nearly frightened the rest of us to death.”
He smiled at her. “You have my word I shall never do it again.”
“Oh, but it was a splendid trick,” Adrian said, his eyes narrowed and suspicious. “I want you to teach it to me.”
“Absolutely not!” said Daphne firmly. Smiling at him, she added, “Shall we find out what is behind that wall?”
Distracted, Adrian promptly forgot about learning any magic tricks and urged his workmen on.
The wall proved to be surprisingly easy to break through—a half dozen more blows, and a small hole appeared. Several minutes later, they had demolished a section large enough for everyone to scramble through. With Adrian leading the way, they entered an antechamber and pushing open the heavy wood door at the end of it, a room was discovered. A room untouched for hundreds of years.
Concealed deep within the walls of Beaumont place where neither water, nor light, nor heat, not even the bitter cold of a December night had penetrated for centuries, the room revealed its secrets. There were signs of decay and age, but overall, the room and its contents were almost perfectly preserved.
It was a sealed tomb, Daphne thought as her gaze moved around the tapestry-hung walls. A splendid rug lay on the stone floor. Bed hangings of gold and cream silk draped the huge bed. Faggots were neatly stacked next to the hearth of a huge gold-veined marble fireplace.
Filled with dread, her steps lagging, Daphne approached the bed. A small woman, her once young skin mottled and dried with age, her long golden hair streaming out behind her, lay curled in the center of the bed. In her arms, Daphne saw that she held an infant. The woman’s cheek lay tenderly on that misshapen head, the babe cradled protectively in the woman’s arms. Around the two bodies, there was an ugly array of rusty brown stains, and at first, Daphne assumed they had come from the birthing of the child. Her breath caught as her gaze rested on the bodice of the woman’s once white linen gown—the same rusty stains were there, too. Only then did she notice the dagger, its blade dark with what could only be blood, resting on the edge of the bed.
So much was clear to Daphne as she stood staring at the pitiful remains. She understood now why the little ghost had appeared to her, revealing that first night the outline of the door that opened onto the concealed staircase. Katherine had wanted to be found. She had wanted justice for herself and her babe. And she came to my aid, Daphne realized, to stop Raoul from murdering me as Sir Wesley had murdered her. Everything made sense, especially Sir Wesley’s attempt to keep them from discovering this room. Even from beyond the grave, he’d not wanted his evil deeds to be found out.
Daphne’s fingers lightly touched the cold, stiff shoulder of the woman on the bed. But you foiled him, didn’t you, Katherine? she thought.
If the death of the peddler had caused a stir, the discovery of the bodies of the woman and her child in the concealed room at Beaumont Place was ten times worse. Everyone from Lord Trevillyan down to the lowliest scullery maid in the neighborhood had questions, and speculation was rife.
Before the burial two days later, a close examination of the bodies by the local physician determined that the infant had been female and had died from a crushed skull. The woman had died either by her own hand or had been murdered. She had been, in the physician’s opinion, stabbed in the chest, but he would not speculate further.
It was obvious from the room and its contents that the woman had been of high birth, and it was assumed she was a member of the Beaumont family. The two bodies were quietly interred in a place of honor in the family graveyard. For the present, a marble angel holding a laughing infant in its arms marked the grave; a name and date would be inscribed once their identity was established.
It was difficult for Daphne not to blurt out the truth, but then explaining how she knew would have created all sorts of problems. However, knowing that the bodies were those of Katherine and her newborn, Daphne was able to gently guide the search where she wanted it.
The room itself proved the richest source of information. Calling on the expertise of a scholar from London well-known for the study of ancient artifact, from the items and furnishings, he had dated the room to the mid-1500s. Within a decade or two, he reminded them with a wry smile before departing for London.
Once they started searching in that time frame, the clues were everywhere, especially since Daphne, ably assisted by Charles, made certain to point everyone in that direction. From the church records, the date of Sir Wesley’s marriage to Katherine Lehman on October 2nd, 1557, was found. Records of Sir Wesley’s death in early 1559 wer
e also found. It was telling that there was no record of Katherine’s death. After her marriage to Sir Wesley, she vanished from all the public records that they could find.
The Lehman family in Cornwall had died out sometime in the 1700s, but in his collection, the vicar had most of the Lehman family papers and, to Daphne’s great joy, several letters from Katherine to her mother. Those letters were a treasure trove of information, but they made for unhappy reading as the details of Katherine’s wretched marriage to Sir Wesley were revealed. Katherine’s fear of her husband, her loneliness and longing to be with her family came through in every line she had written. In one letter, Daphne discovered the reason Katherine had been banished to the room off the secret staircase. Heavy with child, terrified of her fate and that of her child should she deliver a girl instead of the son her husband so desperately wanted, she had tried to flee to her father’s home. Betrayed by a servant, Sir Wesley and his men had caught her within five miles of Beaumont Place and dragged her back. He had ordered her placed under guard and safely locked away until she gave birth to his heir.
There was only one letter after that, dated November of 1558.
Mother, Katherine had written in her heartbreakingly childish hand, I long most desperately to see you and feel your gentle arms around me. My time is near, and oh, the joy that would be mine if I could only be at home with you and Father and my dear little brothers. I miss everyone. Kiss them all for me and tell them I love them.
It is lonely here in this prison he has made for me, and I yearn only for the day I shall hold my baby in my arms. I am frightened of the future. I cannot bear to think what will happen should the child be a girl. A son is all he can speak of, and I fear his rage and terrible temper if I do not bear an heir. Pray for me.
Prayers, Daphne thought grimly as she set the letter aside, hadn’t been enough to save Katherine from Sir Wesley’s wrath. As surely as if she had seen it with her own eyes, she was convinced that in a blind rage, Sir Wesley had smashed the skull of his newborn daughter and then stabbed his wife. She knew it. She just couldn’t prove it. No one could.
It wasn’t a great deal to go upon, but from what evidence they had found, even the vicar concluded that the woman and baby were most likely Katherine and her newborn daughter.
And so it was on a fine afternoon in late June, Daphne and the others gathered at the gravesite as the inscription was chiseled into the marble base of the statue marking Katherine’s grave. His work done, the craftsman gathered his tools, doffed his cap, and left for Penzance.
The rest of the family wandered off, leaving Daphne and Charles alone at the gravesite.
Seeing his wife’s woeful expression, Charles slid his arm around her waist and murmured, “It happened a long time ago, my love. You had nothing to do with it.”
Daphne sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “I know all that—it is just so sad. She was so young. Just a child herself. She didn’t deserve to be murdered by a wretched old man who was furious with her because he hadn’t been able to sire a son. I hope he rots in hell. None of it was her fault.” She looked up at Charles. “We owe her so much. She saved me from Raoul. She couldn’t save herself, but she saved me.”
Charles nodded. “She was brave and resourceful, rather like you.”
“Oh, Charles!”
“Oh, Daphne!” he teased. His gaze rested on the marble angel. “She gave us our future; we shall not squander it.”
“No. We shan’t.” Daphne hugged him. “We are so lucky. We have each other, and we have love.” And come next January, she thought dreamily, we shall have a child. Her hand crept to touch her still flat stomach. A girl. And I will name her…Katherine.
If you enjoyed SEDUCTION BECOMES HER, don’t miss Shirlee Busbee’s next wonderful historical romance,
Passion Becomes Her.
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A Zebra trade paperback on sale in July 2010.
From his place of concealment near the Marquis of Ormsby’s palatial London townhouse in Grosvenor Square, Asher Cordell watched the comings and goings of the multitude of handsome carriages that thronged the road in front of the brilliantly lit house. Any member of the ton still in town at the end of June, and fortunate enough to receive an invitation to Lord Ormsby’s annual masked ball, was here tonight. Instituted over two decades ago, in time, the Ormsby Masked Ball had come to signal the end of the season and after tonight most of the gentry would scatter far and wide across the breadth of England to spend the remainder of the summer at their country estates.
By London standards the hour was still early, approaching midnight, and Asher decided that he had wasted enough time determining that everything was going precisely as it should. Tonight’s task wasn’t difficult. It was a simple robbery—child’s play for him. He’d already done two dry runs and could, he felt confident, find his way over the rear wall, through the spacious gardens, and into Lord Ormsby’s library blindfolded. The previous evening, during the final practice run, standing in the middle of Ormsby’s darkened library, he’d fleetingly considered stealing the famous Ormsby diamond necklace then and there, but decided against it. Changing plans on whim, he’d discovered could cause fatal complications.
In the shadows of his hiding place, Asher grimaced. Christ. Could it ever! Last spring’s events at Sherbrook Hall had certainly proven that fact and he wondered if the outcome would have been different if he’d held to his original plan. He sighed. Probably not. Collard had been up to no good and there was no telling how it would have ended. Bad enough that Collard had murdered that unpleasant wretch Whitely. Bad enough that he’d shot and killed Collard, even if it had been to save his own neck.
He shook off the memory and concentrated on the task before him. This would be his last theft, he reminded himself; the last time he took such risks. After tonight, he would retire to Kent and spend his days overseeing his own holdings, becoming finally the respectable, wealthy gentleman farmer everyone already thought he was.
Eager to put the past behind him, he was on the point of slipping around to the back of the house, when he recognized the latest vehicle to halt before Lord Ormsby’s doors. The coach was not in the first stare of fashion and was pulled by four rather unimpressive bay horses but the moment the vehicle lumbered into position, as if royalty had arrived, the milling contingent of meticulously groomed gentlemen lingering on the steps leaped to attention.
Asher grinned. Who would have ever guessed that eighteen-year-old Thalia Kirkwood would take London by storm? Odes, poems praising her fair beauty were forever being written about her these past few months. Thanks to her, flower stalls all across London did a bustling business, the scented, colorful blossoms purchased by eager swains finding their way to the modest house just off Cavendish Square that her father, the retiring Mr. Kirkwood, had taken for the season. It was rumored that at least one duel had been fought over the fair Thalia and gossip claimed that since May her father had turned down offers from at least a half-dozen lovesick, imminently suitable gentlemen—a few with the prospect of a title in the offing. To the dismay and long faces of many young bucks tonight, the current betting in the gentlemen’s clubs was that before the family returned to Kent at the end of the week, that Thalia’s engagement to the Earl of Caswell would be announced.
It might be a masked ball, but there was little effort at disguise and there was no mistaking Thalia’s tall, voluptuous form as she regally mounted the steps to the house, the upswept silvery-fair hair gleaming in the torchlight. Her velvet cloak was sapphire blue, a perfect foil for her blond beauty, the color deepening, he knew, the icy blue of her brilliant eyes. The gentlemen swarmed around her, like bees to a fragrant bud, the servants bowing and scraping as they opened the heavy front doors.
Almost lost in the pandemonium surrounding Thalia’s progress was the descent from the coach by her widowed older sister, Juliana. Though her husband had been dead for four years, it still gave Asher a start to think of Juliana as a wi
dow. His lips twitched as he watched her gather up the folds of her pale green gown. At twenty-eight, though only five years younger than himself, he’d always considered her in much the same light as he did his two younger sisters and thinking of Juliana even being married had been a challenge for him. He shook his head. Damn shame her husband, the younger son of a baronet with extensive lands in Hampshire, had died of lung congestion only three years into the marriage. There had been no children, but Juliana had been well provided for and shortly after her husband’s death she had purchased a charming estate not five miles down the road from the home she had grown up in. With their mother long dead, upon Juliana’s return to Kent, she had fallen back into her previous role of surrogate mother to Thalia. Since Mr. Kirkwood abhorred the constant round of soirees and balls so necessary for a young lady’s successful season, Juliana stepped into the role of chaperon for her younger sister’s London season. The notion of Juliana being anyone’s chaperon was pure folly as far as he was concerned, recalling some of her youthful escapades; he decided that if anyone needed a chaperon, it was the elder sister, not the youngest.
Eyes narrowed, he watched as Juliana, a pair of elegant gentlemen on either side of her, followed her sister up the steps. Her cloak was in a soft shade of lavender and as tall as Thalia, she carried herself with much the same grace as her younger sister. There was a glimpse of sable hair as Juliana passed by the torches on either side of the door and then she was gone.
Annoyed for allowing Thalia and Juliana’s arrival to distract him, Asher shook himself and focussed on the task at hand. After a last look around the area, he worked his way around to the alley that ran behind the handsome homes that faced the square. His dark clothing making him nearly invisible, like a shadow he flowed along the wall at the rear of the houses. Arriving at the section of the wall at the rear of the Ormsby townhouse, he made a careful survey and seeing nothing to alarm him, he swung up and over the stone wall and silently dropped down onto the other side. Several feet beyond the place where he stood was the tradesmen and servants’ entrance to the house and in the faint light of the small flickering torch above the doorway, he saw that the area was deserted.
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