by Christi Caldwell, Eva Devon, Elizabeth Essex, Anthea Lawson
“Ahem.”
She jumped, as the aging housekeeper at her back cleared her throat. Eve glanced over her shoulder at the ancient woman, who stood beside a servant, more boy than man. The lad’s cheeks were a stark white as he stole glances at the closed door. His audible swallow filled the hallway.
“There be ghosts here, ma’am,” the lad whispered. That eerie pronouncement raised gooseflesh on Eve’s arms. “You hear them in the dead of night. You can hear music playing—”
“Enough of that, Owen,” Mrs. Bramble ordered, glowering the boy to silence.
Owen flushed and scuffed his boot along the stone floor.
Taking mercy, Eve accepted the clean, porcelain chamber pot painted in pale pink and yellow roses. The piece was delicate and at odds with the austere stone walls of the hallways. “Thank you,” Eve said with a gentle smile.
“Captain Rayne doesn’t care for the servants to linger,” the housekeeper, Mrs. Bramble, shared quietly as she turned over a stack of white cleaning cloths. “And he doesn’t want a body wandering the halls past midnight.”
At that peculiarity, she tipped her head. What accounted for that particular command from the snarly captain? Shifting the burden in her arms, Eve accepted the cloths and stuffed them inside the pocket of her white apron.
“The best advice I may give is enter and leave as quickly as possible,” the older servant with white hair and kindly eyes advised. She handed over the broom and dustbin the way a commander led troops into battle. “Captain Rayne doesn’t like any knocking or noise.” Was there anything the gentleman did like? Eve bit back that dry question. “Her Ladyship is the only one permitted to. Everyone else...” Allowing that cryptic warning to trail off, Mrs. Bramble pressed the door handle and pushed it open.
Silence rang louder than cannon fire as Eve stepped inside the darkened rooms. She blinked until her eyes adjusted to the dimly lit quarters. Shifting the supplies in her arms, she pushed the door closed with the heel of her boot and took a step forward. She was not certain what she’d expected. Thunderous shouts, ordering her gone. Curses. Jeering barbs. Not this—thick quiet better suited to a family’s never-visited crypt.
“What are you doing?”
At Captain Rayne’s terse inquiry, she shrieked. Heart racing, she faced the man, prone in his bed. Even in the darkened quarters, she detected his piercing stare trained on her. A little fluttering unfurled in her belly. A man who frowned so should not have the devastating appeal of this hardened warrior, barking commands like they were still upon the battlefield. Be calm, Eve. You’re no shrinking miss. She forced a smile. “Why, I’m here to clean.” She motioned to the sloppy chambers.
“I ordered you gone,” he shot back, his voice scratchy.
With a nonchalance she did not feel, Eve drifted over. “You’ve run off how many servants, Captain? Seven?”
“Fifteen,” he said bluntly.
Fifteen. There had been fifteen before her? A mocking glint lit his eyes. Did he revel at having shocked her? “Yes, well, I have it on authority of the Earl of Lavery, my employer, that as long as I desire the post, it is mine. So...” She rested the broom briefly against the wall and set her supplies down on a bronze base table stacked with books.
“You’d disregard my wishes?” he seethed, bringing her head up. At the desperate glimmer in his eyes, understanding slammed into her.
How many soldiers had she known, not unlike Captain Rayne, who’d lost a part of their souls and been forever changed by war? But witnessing the results of her father’s betrayal up close, made his crime all the more real. Now she stood here, defiant of Captain Rayne’s wishes, robbing him of a desperately desired self-control, when he’d already had so much taken from him. Her throat constricted and, reflexively, she gripped the cloth in her hand. She could never undo her father’s sins, but mayhap she could make atonement for the hell he had wrought for this one man.
“Well?” he snapped.
“I will leave,” she said quietly, her voice surprisingly steady. His mouth fell agape. “But you must do something first.”
He eyed her warily. “Are you threatening me, Mrs. Nelson?”
“No.” Eve shook her head. She was helping him—an offer this proud, commanding man would rebuff ten times to Sunday. “I’m bribing you. Entirely different.” In a bid to dull the thick tension blanketing the room, she waggled her eyebrows.
The gentleman jerked his chin up. “I’m listening.” Gone was the earlier vitriol in his sharp tones. In its place was a reluctant curiosity.
Eve felt a sliver of satisfaction. Did the gentleman realize he’d let his guard slip? She’d wager her security with this very post that few had cracked his powerfully erected barriers.
“The day you step outside Castle Rayne, I’ll leave. In the meantime...” Her promise would see her sacked without work and, yet, some good would come from it. Eve drew out her cloth and returned her attention to that table.
“You’re mad,” he called out.
Yes, with the nightmares that came to her in the dark of night, one could say that. Refusing to rise to his bait, she fixed on her task. Curiosity pulled at her and she squinted in the dark, attempting to bring the titles of the books on the table into focus. What books did a man such as Captain Rayne, shut away in his chambers, snarling to keep the world out, in fact, read? She dusted her cloth along the first cover. Cassius Dio: Roman History. Setting it aside, Eve sifted through the small leather volumes. Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus: Life of Antony. Strabo: The Geography. Flavius Josephus: Antiquities of—
“You’re here to clean, not snoop.” That angry voice hurled from the bed and she shrieked, dropping the book. It landed with a loud thwack. “And then get. Out.”
Get out. With casual movements, Eve grabbed the broom and started over to the shards of glass at his bedside. “I could read to you,” she offered. “You enjoy the ancient classics?”
“I enjoy being alone,” he said bluntly as she set the broom to motion, gathering all the pieces into a small pile.
Eve snorted. “If you so desired to be alone, then you shouldn’t have made a mess of your chambers.” She paused and looked up. “Unless, mayhap, you secretly wish for companionship?” Did she speak of him in this moment or of her own selfish yearning for that precious gift? Their gazes collided and the air lodged in her chest.
His eyes, the piercing pale green the soft hue of a peridot she’d once seen captured in a painting of Cleopatra hung in the Louvre , held her riveted. That stone she’d long ago admired on a painting alone; light and hopeful amidst the darkness unfolding in Europe. And now, she noted details she’d been too anxious to take in before; his harshly chiseled cheeks marred by several days’ worth of beard. It leant him a rugged beauty. His aquiline nose. A hard, square jaw befitting a man of noble roots and power. Even the single, jagged scar, down the left side of his cheek, enhanced the primitive rawness to him. He really was—
“Did you have a good look?” he whispered. With cheeks afire, Eve returned her attention to her efforts.
Her earlier erroneous opinion had proved her wrong. One gentleman could be difficult. “Hardly,” she said, proud of her steady, slightly bored tone as she set the broom into motion once more.
There was a pregnant pause. “Hardly?”
A smile pulled at her lips. No doubt, a specimen of masculine beauty who had a face better suited to one of those works of art she’d long ago admired in her travels would be accustomed to ladies fawning. She’d never been the fawning sort. Eve hesitated and then looked up. “With that scruff on your face and lion-like mane, it’s nearly impossible to make out anything other than your scowl.” It was a blatant lie. Only a blind woman would fail to appreciate such male perfection in even this darkened space. “If you’d like me to trim your hair and shave you, I’ve experience—”
“No,” he clipped.
Only there was a brief hesitancy there that roused her interest. Did he wish to be free of the hair that hung past his s
houlders and free of this room? Tamping down questions she had no place asking, nor knowing the answers to, Eve brushed all the shards into the dust bin. With her every movement, she felt his gaze following her. Unnerved by that piercing scrutiny, she dropped to her haunches and carefully picked up the large pieces, adding them to the bin. Captain Rayne’s eyes revealed a man haunted and hunted by things he’d seen and suffered.
Having witnessed the aftermath of those battles waged, and fighting her own demons for it, she well knew the hell visiting him. All battle-hardened people dealt with their horrors in different ways. Some donned a false smile, while aching inside. Others retreated.
As Captain Rayne had.
Coming to her feet, Eve set aside the broom and fetched a cloth. Returning to the gentleman’s bedside, she proceeded to dust the mahogany nightstand. She paused, her gaze going to the copy of Plutarch’s Life of Caesar. She brushed her palm over the title. What an odd book for a man scarred by war to keep at his bedside; a work documenting the grandest feats and triumphs of the great Roman emperor.
“You said you were here to clean.” His deep voice rumbled in the quiet.
She jumped and the cloth slipped from her fingers, sailing to the surface in a silent heap. Eve forced her eyes to his, once more, and another bolt of awareness ran through her at the intensity of his focus. “No,” she said calmly. “You said I was here to clean. I said I’m here as a maid of all things, including a companion.”
Did she imagine the ghost of a smile pulling at the corners of his hard lips? Of course, a man such as him, like so many other soldiers she’d known through the years, had long ago forgotten how to smile. That same age-old hungering to drive back that bleak desolateness filled her.
“I’ve no need or desire for company,” he said belatedly, that telltale delay proving him a liar.
“I don’t believe that,” she countered as she knelt at his bedside and dusted his nightstand drawer. Small flecks danced in the air and she wrinkled her nose to stave off a sneeze.
“You presume to know what I need or desire after just one meeting?” he challenged, his voice a scratchy demand.
She’d seen the hell war wrought on a person. It turned them into wary, cautious, and guarded figures who’d keep the world out—in different ways. “I’ve known you but one day and you’ve stated your desire to be alone no fewer than four times.” Eve paused and balanced her weight on knees. “And that tells me you have need for the right company.”
A rusty chuckle rumbled in his chest. “That is presumptuous of you, love.”
Her heart skittered a beat. It was, of course, all manner of silliness to respond to that flippant address. And yet, gentlemen had treated her with deference for her status as their commander’s daughter or as a sister-like figure. Not a single one had ever wrapped an endearment in a husky caress as this stranger had. Would that be the case if he gleaned her true identity? “You’ve sent everyone away,” she said, when she trusted herself to speak.
“Run them off.” So it had been intentional. “Except you,” he added gruffly. “You’ve stayed a day longer than anyone before you.” The person who had least place to be here.
But he has let me in. Whether she deserved it or not...and Eve desperately wished to know more of Captain Lucas Rayne... a man who’d been scarred by the aftermath of battle—not unlike her. In him, there was a kindred bond she’d not known with a single person since her return to England. He knew suffering and, in that, shared sadness. She was no longer alone.
She pushed to a stand. “As I said, I’m made of far sterner stuff.”
***
Sterner stuff, indeed.
Lucas had known battle-hardened soldiers and lead commanding officers who didn’t show the same remarkable poise and strength as this tall, too-slender creature before him. Where crude comments and hurled chamber pots had sent others rushing off, this bold-as-you-please woman casually moved and touched artifacts scattered about the room as though she were mistress of the bloody place. Instead of fleeing and abandoning her post, she’d struck a deal of sorts with him. One that he’d gladly take, if he were capable, just to be free of her.
He dug around, searching for the proper fury and safe annoyance, but came up—empty of anything but...interest, and an unwilling appreciation for any woman who could look upon him with anything other than pity and fear. Lucas followed her movements with his gaze. “What is your name?” he called out, loudly.
She moved on to dusting the mahogany spiraled posters of his bed. “Mrs. Nel—”
“Your Christian name,” he demanded impatiently. “If we’re going to be forced into one another’s company, we might exchange our given names.” It was a lie. Since his brother-in-law had seen him rescued from that French prison, Lucas had not allowed himself to be forced into anything—including the servants selected by his family to tend his rooms. But this woman who stood undaunted before him, he needed to know.
Mrs. Nelson looked at him. Wariness filled her expressive brown eyes and, for a moment, he thought she would withhold that piece he longed for. “Eve,” she offered with the same relish as a lady being relieved of her possessions by a highwayman.
Eve. He rolled her name through his mind. Tempting, bold, it perfectly suited her. The unease grew in her eyes and she darted her tongue out. He took in that slight, subtle movement as she ran that pink tip over the plump flesh of her lower lip. An unexpected wave of lust slammed into him. I’ve been too long without a woman. There was no other accounting for this reaction whenever she came near. Unnerved by his body’s response, he jerked his chin and Eve immediately sprang into movement, flitting from corner to corner.
Lucas concentrated on his breathing to rein in this desire raging through him. “How does a lady come to be cleaning my chambers, Eve?” he asked suddenly and she stumbled.
Eve fiddled with the dusty rag in her fingers. “I don’t know—”
“Come,” he scoffed. “If you’re a servant born, then I am a charming rogue.”
“I am a widow,” she said, her voice peculiarly hollow. Why did that admission emerge so haltingly? “There are few options for women.” With that, she devoted her attention to her task at hand the way a scholar did a new journal.
So the lady was a widow. And yet... “Your husband left you uncared for?” It was curiosity, not callousness that called forth that question. At one time, he’d have been a gentleman who’d had words of regret for her loss. “What of his family?” Who was the bastard she’d wed that he’d left her relegated to the role of maid to Lucas’ miserable self?
“There is no family,” she said tightly.
Ah, so the lady didn’t wish to speak on it and, yet, she’d pressed him to allow her entry into his world. He opened his mouth to level her for that double standard, but the accusation died. Eve’s lips were drawn at the corners, her skin pale, and her eyes strained.
And mayhap he wasn’t the wholly deadened, emotionless monster he’d been taken for...he didn’t want to be the one to drag forth this lady’s pain. He’d already brought more suffering and endured far more than any person had a right. Lucas settled back into his bed and stared up at that cheerful mural, counting the moments until she went and allowed him to remember how it felt to feel nothing.
Then she began to sing.
“Was in the merry month of May
When flowers were a bloomin'
Sweet William on his deathbed lay
For the love of Barbara Allen...”
On the surface, there was nothing immediately memorable about Eve Nelson’s voice. Discordant, slightly off-tempo, and pitchy, she’d never grace the concert halls of Europe. And yet... As she sang, there was a husky realness to those lyrics. A flawed imperfection to her tones which were very real and very much...alive. When he’d otherwise dwelled within a state of numbness.
“...He turned his pale face to the wall
And death was on him dwellin'
Adieu, Adieu, my kind friends all
&
nbsp; Be kind to—”
“Must you do that?” he rasped, whipping his head sideways to where she stood.
Eve’s too-large eyes formed even rounder circles in her pale face. “I...” She sighed. “Yes, I must.”
He furrowed his brow.
“Not that I must do it,” she prattled, as she discarded one cloth for another. “Rather, I have to do it.”
What was she on about?
“It’s a dreadfully inconvenient habit,” she muttered, speaking more to herself as she set to work dusting his armoire. “As a girl, I used to have nightmares, and my...” She froze, her gaze trained on the mahogany piece before her, grew distant. Wordlessly, Eve resumed her cleaning in silence.
Her nightmares, past, present, and ones to come, were her own. Just as his demons would forever belong to him, holding him trapped inside the prison of his mind. “And what happened when the nightmares came?” Because he’d been haunted by them for two years, with still no mastery of himself or his past. Nor would he ever have that mastery. The war had stolen all remnants of the carefree man he’d been.
“My father taught me to sing through it,” she said, her words so faint he strained to hear. “Said only the weak admitted their fear.” There was not a thing weak about this woman before him. “He helped me reclaim control of my thoughts. To turn them over to something good and so when I’m distracted, I do it without thinking.”
That meant, as she’d been cleaning his rooms, she’d been in some way troubled. Should he expect anything else of a person forced to step inside his chambers? Only, Eve Nelson was not the weak and cowering figure like all the others that had come before.
“I’ve finished cleaning, Captain,” she murmured, gathering up her supplies. “If there is anything you require—?”
“There is nothing I require,” he barked out, by rote, more than anything.
