“Get away from that window.” Mrs. Porter rushed across the room, the hem of her dressing robe disturbing the dust on the floor. “You don’t want anyone to see that pretty face. Might give our neighbors some ideas.”
Edlyn pressed her bitten nails down on the windowsill. Mrs. Porter might not want anyone to see her face, either, smeared as it was with her Parisienne pomatum that promised to remove freckles, warts, and spots. Before she went to bed, Mrs. Porter would discover her costly elixir had removed something else, too. When sent to fetch the pomatum, Edlyn had come upon another jar of salve in the cupboard, which claimed to be Cleopatra’s secret formula for lifting off hair.
She swallowed bitterly. She had been a fool to believe Mrs. Porter’s story about her mother. She’d been a fool to sneak out of the castle one night to watch a troupe of traveling actors perform in the village. How the woman must have laughed at her naïveté, a duke’s daughter asking over and over if any of the players had met a woman who could be Edlyn’s mother during their travels.
She had given Rosalie Porter the idea for her abduction. She had believed the letters Mrs. Porter had sent from London convincing her that she had found Edlyn’s mother but that it must be kept a secret from the Boscastle family.
Edlyn’s entire past seemed to be a secret, which had begun the night her mother rowed her across a choppy lake to land on the shores of Castle Glenmorgan. She barely remembered the older man in the boat, her grandfather, his bearded face solemn. He had kissed her before lifting her out of the water. And Edlyn had stood, her teeth chattering with the horror of being abandoned. She had tried to believe she was only going to stay at the castle for a short while, and that in the sunlight it looked like heaven.
She had stared up, clutching her cloak.
The turrets of the castle touched the evening clouds, but it didn’t look heavenly at all, only dark and imposing. Still, gold light shone in the windows. And as she trudged up the drawbridge, she heard laughing voices, warm and lilting, and smelled the enticing fragrance of griddle cakes and leek soup. But then her mother had turned away.
She panicked. “You’re coming back for me, Mama?”
Her mother’s face looked ghostly pale. “When I can,” she’d whispered, and squeezed Edlyn’s hand so tightly they both started to cry. “Mama?”
“Edlyn, I will find you again.” “Please, don’t make me go.”
“They’ll be good to you. These people are kind, I promise. One day I’ll find you. I promise.”
Six years. And then nine. Edlyn looked from the tower first thing every morning and last thing at night for her mother to keep her promise. She was afraid that Mama and her grandfather had drowned rowing back across to the cove. No one had heard of the man and woman she described, not even when the duke, her alleged father, had ridden with his brothers and guards into every border town to find out who had left a little girl with unearthly-blue eyes at the castle drawbridge.
Had her mother been a gypsy? A debutante? A vicar’s daughter? A love-struck girl at a masquerade ball? Liam Boscastle had made pleasure his life’s pursuit. He fell in love with whomever happened to be in his bed. And forgot her in the morning, riding off into the woods without a thought.
Whether or not Edlyn was his love child, he had accepted her. But after a while, he said he did not want to hear another word about Edlyn’s mother. Ever. And Edlyn had to forget her, for she had obviously done the same.
Now, because she had disobeyed him, she’d walked into a trap. She cringed as Mrs. Porter came up behind her, smelling of grease and greed. “You didn’t open that window, did you? It was never so cold in here until you came.”
“What have I been telling you, woman?” Jonathan asked with a grim nod. “We’ve been bewitched. We can’t keep her. She’s gonna bring us down, I swear it.”
“She is only a girl,” Rosalie said, turning toward him. “And she is going to bring us a fortune, unless you ruin-”
He reared back, blinking rapidly and making gurgling sounds in his throat.
Rosalie sighed in exasperation. “What is it now?”
“Your-your-” He gestured at her forehead.
“Yes, it is my cream. You’ve seen it on my face a hundred times before.”
He nodded, finally recovering his power of speech. “Maybe so. But I’ve never seen your face without its eyebrows before.”
Griffin came home to find Harriet asleep on the sofa in his library. He bent and lifted her into his arms. She nestled closer to his chest, hooking one arm around his neck. “Did you find her?” she whispered, opening her drowsy eyes.
He swallowed. The warmth of her body stole over him. He wanted to hold her until he could think again. His mind was exhausted.
He carried her upstairs to her bed, glancing around the room to make certain no chambermaid sat in wait for news of Edlyn’s abduction. Would she be found? Would it turn out to be a hoax? He knew the questions being asked. Unfortunately, he did not know the answers.
“It must be five o’clock in the morning,” Harriet whispered as he sat down on the bed beside her. “Did you learn anything at all?”
He shook his head, staring across the room until she sat up and wrapped her arms around him.
“It’ll all be fine.” She put her head on his shoulder. “I know it will.”
He meant only to kiss her. But then she drew him down beside her, her eyes inviting him. He circled his hand down her back, over her hips, to the hollow behind her knees. “I should know that I can’t help myself whenever I touch you-”
“I want you to touch me,” she whispered. “I don’t want you to be able to stop.”
He closed his eyes, sinking onto the bed beside her. Her skin smelled of soap. He reached for her again, his fingers loosening her heavy braid.
Marry me, he thought as numbness crept over him, not knowing whether she was awake or not. When this is over, please be my wife. It was light when he opened his eyes. With concern not to disturb her, he furtively slid one stockinged foot to the floor and repaired his attire as best he could. He found his boots at the door. He hoped that Harriet would sleep another hour. He hoped she at least would be refreshed this morning. But as he stole into the hall, he heard such a bone-chilling scream come from her room that he dropped both of his boots on the floor.
Damn propriety. Damn what would be said. He returned without an instant’s delay to her side, taking her into his arms with an instinct that would not be denied.
“Harriet, what is the matter?”
She stared over his shoulder with a vacant detachment that raised the hairs on his nape. He shook her gently. “Harriet, was someone here?” he asked when he knew it was impossible.
He heard doors opening in the house, voices talking all at once. “You screamed,” he said under his breath. “What happened?”
“I screamed?”
He shook her again. “Don’t you remember?”
Her gaze came into focus. She regarded him in panic. “Why are you still here? We’re going to be found out.”
The door flew open. He leapt up and went to the window, searching the garden below for the cause of her disturbance. “What is going on?” Primrose whispered in a trembling voice behind him. “What are you doing in here, Griffin? What happened to make Harriet scream like that?”
Harriet drew the bedcovers up to her chin, wide awake and whispering in a sorrowful voice. “Oh, madam, please, I didn’t mean to scare everyone. It was a nightmare. I haven’t had one in ages. But I must have been so tired and worried and-I’m sorry.”
“A nightmare?” Griffin said with a relief he could not conceal. “A nightmare?”
She put her face in her hands. Griffin went to her side, his aunt watching in distress.
“What were you dreaming about, my dear?” she asked.
“My father,” Harriet whispered. “I was standing over the mean sod’s grave-” She paused. “I mean, I was praying for his poor departed soul, and there was a gravedigger flinging
sod in every direction.”
“How awful, but not uncommon,” Primrose said in sympathy, “to dream of one who has recently died.”
Harriet shook her head. “I wasn’t screaming because he was dead. I thought he’d come back to life from the grave. I felt this cold hand catch me by the ankle, and when I looked down-you know how you can’t stop yourself from looking at something horrible-I saw him grinning up at me like a ghoul.”
She lowered her hands. Griffin thought he might expire himself. “It’s too much to bear, Harriet,” he heard his aunt say like a dirge. “It is all too much to bear.”
He walked from the bed toward the door. His aunt reached for his hand.
“I forgot until now,” he said. He turned back slowly. “You left a string of glass beads in my carriage. I kept them, not knowing what they might mean to you.”
“They’re nothing. Toss them.”
He frowned. “They were from your father?”
He wondered if she might be crying. But when she looked up, she was composed. “He never gave me anything but grief in his life. Go back to bed, the both of you.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
He is a presence to be felt and known In darkness and in light.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Adonais
She slept for three more hours. Once she thought she heard a soft knock upon her door, but she couldn’t muster the energy to crack open her eyes, let alone call out to ask if anyone was there. By late morning she wondered if it had been the rain that disturbed her. When she dressed and went downstairs, the house was full of Boscastle cousins who had come to offer their support. The ladies comforted Lady Powlis in the drawing room. The male members of the clan had sequestered themselves in the library with the duke.
She listened for a long time to the low drift of their voices. She couldn’t bear feeling useless. How could pouring tea find a missing girl? Lady Powlis’s paid companion, a graduate of an elite lady’s academy in London, had promised that she would not put herself at risk during this personal crisis. But Harriet had given the duke notice.
She slipped out the kitchen door to the garden. The grass glistened with drops of rain. She’d be back before anyone even knew she had gone.
She didn’t look around. She blended in with the pedestrians hurrying to and fro, a young woman of modest appearance on an errand for her employer. She walked past the lavender sellers, who stood discussing the fate of the duke’s abducted niece and wondering how girls like them could expect to be safe when a proper lady could be stolen from a private school.
“Harriet?” one of them said in a startled voice, breaking away from her competitors. “Harriet, is that you?”
Harriet put her finger to her lips. The girl shrugged, muttering, “Sorry, I thought I knew you,” and Harriet continued briskly down the street. By the time the hackney coach she hailed deposited her a few streets from her old home, she wished she’d had the foresight to buy a bunch of lavender to hold to her nose. She was more concerned about stepping in a puddle of slop than about her personal safety.
There were few enough people to worry about, anyway, at this time of day, even though the over-leaning dwellings shadowed the street in a perpetual twilight. She recognized the elderly surgeon standing outside the public house. He stared at her without a trace of acknowledgment.
A group of boys and girls in ragged clothing clustered around her. “Got ’alfpence to spare, milady?”
“You ought to be at school, you little beggars,” she scolded, slapping the grimy hands that tugged at her skirt.
Nicholas Rydell lived in the cellar of a back lane lodging house. The windows had been boarded up, but she knew the moment she opened the door that she had been followed. She hunched her shoulders to climb down the steps that led to his room. He was feigning sleep on the floor pallet beneath a pile of stolen fur-lined cloaks. Harriet detected the scent of cheap perfume in the air, the clatter of heels echoing from the room above.
She stood over his bed, a pistol gripped in her right hand. “I know you’ve got a knife under your pillow, Nick, and I truly do not trust you. But I’ve a favor to ask, and you owe me one for digging that bullet out of your leg when you were careless enough to get shot.”
He laughed, his dark eyes slowly opening. He had long black hair and a hard-angled face, both cheeks bisected with knife scars. Half the girls on the street imagined themselves in love with him and believed he could be redeemed. Harriet knew otherwise. She knew what had made him who he was. His soul was dead. “You never needed an invite to my bed, love,” he said amiably. He folded his arms under his head. “What’s the matter, then? The duke ain’t livin’ up to your dreams?”
“I could shoot you dead, and your own mother would probably cheer. Now I just want to know one thing-do you or my father have anything to do with that girl’s abduction?” “I wish I’d thought of it.”
Her nape tingled. A step creaked in the stairwell behind. Nick lowered his arms. “Your father’s dead,” he said, staring at the broken looking glass collecting dust in the corner. “What makes you think ’e’d be clever enough to pull off a kidnapping, anyway?”
“It isn’t cleverness. It’s spite. He never forgave me for leaving. He made no secret of the fact. And as you and I both know, he’s as alive as one of the rats scratching inside these walls at night.”
He frowned. “I dunno where ’e is. Maybe ’e’s really gone this time. You can move in ’ere if you’re lonesome.”
“Lonesome?”
He laughed. “Oh, I’m good company in the dark.”
She backed away from the pallet. He sat up, his hand sliding under the pillow. “There’s a reward for that girl’s return,” he said with a shrewd look.
“You don’t know her family like I do. If you’ve got even a finger in this, they’ll hunt you down. And I’ll do everything in my power to help.”
She was gone before he could stop her, climbing up toward the figure who blocked the stairwell. The duke’s eyes glowed in anger. “I have more than enough to worry about without losing you.”
“I’m not afraid to walk in this neighborhood.”
“But I am afraid for you. Give me your word that you will not come here again.”
She hesitated, pushing against his tall, unyielding form. He stood his ground. She realized in resignation that he meant to exact the promise from her before he’d allow her past. “We cannot stay here like this forever,” she whispered.
“Then give me your word,” he said coldly. “It is a simple thing.”
She looked up into his eyes. “I don’t know if I can. Could we make a compromise?”
He cursed softly. “Of what sort?”
“I’ll come only with your permission.”
He gave her a grim look. “Absolutely not.”
“Then…” She hesitated. She knew that Nick could hear everything being said. “Fine. Then what if I promise that I will not come here unless you escort me?”
His mouth thinned. “That I will consider, but not right now.”
The man who was watching them in the mirror gave a quiet laugh. “I never laid a hand on ’er, your grace. But if you need my ’elp with your other problem, I’d be more than glad to give it.”
It was still early enough when they returned to the town house to revisit the afternoon that Edlyn had spent in the park. By unspoken accord, Griffin, Harriet, and his aunt decided to exclude Lady Constance from this encore performance. She would most likely have refused to cooperate, anyway. Yesterday evening, before the news of Edlyn’s abduction became public knowledge, Lord Chatterton had announced her betrothal to an elderly earl who doted on her.
“Isn’t that a shocker?” Griffin murmured after he read the newspaper report aloud in the carriage. “I wonder if she will invite us to the wedding.”
They reached the park at precisely the same hour as they had on their previous outing. Griffin recalled watching Harriet tumble out of the carriage before she and his aunt
had abandoned him to Constance. Edlyn had wandered off like a wisp of smoke. He had not kept her long in his view. Two governesses had been rescuing their charges from a cocker spaniel that had escaped its owner.
Or was he wrong? He frowned.
Perhaps only one of the bonneted, heavily cloaked women had been a governess. The other had been standing rather close to Edlyn. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he had been paying too much attention to Harriet to notice anything else. And he could not even pretend to remember what Edlyn had been doing when Harriet’s half brother sprang out from behind the tree to cut Constance’s purse.
His aunt recalled little of what transpired that day. She became annoyed when Griffin pointed out that she was muddling the proper sequence of events. She blamed Constance’s prittle-prattle for impairing her memory and scoffed at his suggestion of old age.
Harriet thought to mention that there had been three phaetons sitting at the corner of the park. As to be expected, Sir Daniel had already questioned the drivers and a dozen or so pedestrians. None offered any pertinent information except to mention that the cutpurse had struck so fast, he could be described only by the color of his hair.
Evening arrived. Sir Daniel sent a brief message, reassuring the duke that a widespread search was under way.
“Edlyn’s disappearance could yet prove to be a prank,” Griffin reminded his aunt.
She rallied at the thought, then said, “I tell myself that every minute, but I’m not sure even she is that cruel.”
Harriet was fully aware that the duke said little else and that her own efforts to raise hope had not dispelled the mood of grim uncertainty that had settled upon his house.
“I think we might all feel better after a good dinner,” she said. “Something warm and savory, like roast beef with pudding. I’ll talk to Cook right this minute.”
But they only picked at their meal, dispirited, deprived of adequate sleep. Still, there was work to be done, and shortly after sherry and biscuits they set out again. The Marquess of Sedgecroft had invited them to his Park Lane mansion to review what had happened during the two soirées he had hosted in Griffin’s honor. Without the benefit of cheerful music and the glittering array of guests, the ballroom took on a disquieting emptiness that Harriet had not expected.
The Wicked Duke Takes a Wife Page 17
