Strathmere's Bride

by Jacqueline Navin

  She could have killed him. Rebeccah stayed perfectly still in her chair, eyes downcast. Chloe wanted desperately to reach out a hand to the small shoulders so stiff with apprehension. “What a shame, monsieur, for the children would be so happy to hear such tales as those.”

  His gaze drifted once again to his youngest niece as he took another sip of his tea.

  Chloe resigned herself. It was an utterly disastrous afternoon.

  Sarah wriggled off her chair and took up Old Samuel the bear, stuffing him into a toy perambulator and wheeling him about the nursery. The stiff silence of the remaining three at the table was punctuated with crashing and banging as Sarah worked busily.

  “May I be excused?” Rebeccah said.

  Chloe would have answered, forgetting it was the duke’s place, but she was saved that embarrassment by Jareth’s quick reply in the affirmative. The child nearly scurried away, grabbing a picture book and curlıng up in the window seat with her back to them.

  He looked after her only a moment, then switched his attention to the younger, who was fussing importantly with her miniature pram.

  “Why do you keep looking at her?” Chloe asked.

  He blinked and lifted his eyes to hers for a moment before they wandered off, focusing on some faraway point beyond the window. Her question he obviously had chosen to ignore.

  “Well,” Chloe declared, rising. “This was très amusant. Please make your visits more frequent. The children enjoyed it so. And I have rarely been treated to such delightful companionship.”

  She immediately regretted her jest; it seemed cruel, but she was frustrated with his insensitive abstraction.

  He didn’t react to her sarcasm. He didn’t even seem to hear her. He appeared to be lost somewhere within himself.

  Without word or comment, he stood, folding his napkin and placing it on his plate with as much care as they had been in the formal dining hall. “On Monday, Lord and Lady Rathford and their daughter, Lady Helena, are coming to dine. I would like to present the children to them. Please prepare my nieces for the meeting. If there are any expenses involved, see the housekeeper, Mrs.—Mrs.—”

  “Hennicot.”

  “Mrs. Hennicot, yes.”

  “Very well, your grace.”

  As soon as he was gone, Chloe went to sit by Rebeccah, avoiding several collisions with the manic perambulator driver on the way.

  “What are you reading?” she asked the child gently.

  A pause. Then, “King Arthur.”

  “One of my favorites.” Chloe smiled gently. “I was speaking to the duke the other evening, and he was saying how well he liked King Arthur.”

  Ah, a spark of interest. “He did?”

  “Actually, I know a great secret about him.”

  The spark surged into a tentative flame. “I can keep a secret!”

  “I believe the duke is shy, and that is why he did not talk much to you today. He has no more idea what to say to you than you do to him.”

  She was clearly disappointed. “Was that the secret?”

  “No, ma petite amour. He is shy, c’est sûr, but he is not so when you are talking about the stars. You know, the night lights that wink and twinkle in the sky.”

  “Why?” she asked, quite skeptical.

  “It is his hidden passion—to watch the stars. That is the secret. Not many know of it. I am trusting you with the secret, but you must be worthy.”

  “Oh,” Rebeccah said with a wise nod. “I will be.”

  Chloe laughed a little. “So, what I was thinking was that if perhaps you and I work very hard to learn some of the constellations in the sky, the next time your uncle comes to tea, we would have something we could talk about and it would be a more pleasant time.”

  “Oh! Do you think it will work to please him? A very fine idea, Miss Chloe,” Rebeccah declared with as much arrogance as would make her grandmother proud. “Let us begin right away.”

  Chloe ruffled her hair. “So you have decided to like this uncle?”

  Rebeccah shrugged. “He is strange, but maybe he could be nice. If Grand-mère does not make him grumpy.”

  As Chloe perused the shelves for a book to help her teach the constellations, she thought that the child had spoken a profound truth in that last statement, indeed.

  “I have invited your cousin Gerald to come for a visit,” the dowager duchess said over deviled lamb’s kidneys the following morning.

  Jareth replied, “Did you? That should be delightful.”

  “Yes, I am quite fond of the rascal. It shall be good to see him.”

  “Indeed.”

  “He said in his letter he should arrive within the week.”

  “I hope you have his old room prepared for him.”

  “Mrs. Hennicot will see to it, of course.”

  Jareth rose and came to brush a kiss against her cool, papery cheek. “I am looking forward to Gerald coming.”

  “Yes, he was always a good friend to you boys.”

  They both stopped. Jareth swallowed, even this offhand reference to his brother putting a painful lump in his throat. “He was at that,” he replied gamely, and exited into the hall, thinking to head straight for the library, then reconsidering.

  He felt restless. Perhaps a ride would be the thing. Pulling aside a footman, he sent him to the stables to tell a groom to saddle his gelding, then headed upstairs to change out of his morning coat and into his riding breeches.

  When he was ready, the horse was waiting for him in the semicircular driveway in the front of the house. He mounted and kicked the beast into action, taking off at a breakneck speed across the front lawn and heading directly toward the woods.

  He slowed, giving the horse his head as they entered the tangled paths of the copse. The sounds of summer were gone. A growing chill brought a leaden silence to this part of the country. He opened his cravat and let the cool air twine into the collar of his shirt. He shivered when it touched his sweatdrenched back.

  In front of him, a deer appeared. A doe, a young one.

  He stopped, staring. The doe seemed to stare back. Stock-still, they faced off. Then she looked away, apparently unconcerned at his presence. The touch of the brisk wind traced cold fingers along his flesh, and he was filled with a trembling awe.

  “Hello, girl,” he said. His voice did not frighten her. Her nose quivered in the air, then her head dipped down to nuzzle the brown grass.

  “You aren’t afraid of me, but you aren’t curious about me, either.”

  She ate for a while, lifted her head and took a few steps to a new patch, then nibbled some more.

  Jareth relaxed. He had played in these woods as a boy, ridden in them when on holiday from school as a youth, but he had never known a deer to be so casually accepting of human company.

  Sliding off the horse, he flung the reins over a sapling and sat down on a rock, pulling his knee up under one arm.

  The quiet and the doe worked their magical spell on him.

  “Do you want to know something?” he said at last.

  The doe didn’t stop her meal. She didn’t react at all to his question. He answered anyway. “I am a fraud.”

  Her head came up, ears cocked forward, listening. It took only a moment for her to leap three times, then she was gone. He heard the fading sounds of her passage in the woods before all was silent again.

  He let out a great sigh and came to his feet, grabbing the gelding and swinging into the saddle.

  What do you know? he thought as he wove his way through the dying bracken, She doesn’t like frauds.

  Chloe was cutting paper dolls for the girls when Jareth came again to the nursery. He stood inside the door, appearing tall and out of place in the room full of miniatures. As soon as Chloe saw him, she stood, the trimmings from her project falling like a colorful rain onto the carpet.

  “Please continue with what you were doing,” he said, entering. His hands he had clasped behind his back, like a general perusing his troops.

&
nbsp; Chloe’s mind raced. What had she done lately that would merit a visit? Could she think of any transgression, however minor, that would explain his presence here? Nothing came to mind, but that didn’t comfort her.

  She sat down, deliberately feigning a casual attitude for Rebeccah’s benefit. The little girl’s body had gone stiff the moment the duke’s presence was noticed. Chloe began to cut again. “Perhaps we shall fashion her a ball gown?”

  Rebeccah didn’t reply. Chloe began to cut.

  “What exactly is that?” the duke asked.

  Chloe nodded to Rebeccah. “Chérie, show your uncle the paper dolls we have made.”

  The child obeyed, but appeared as if she were offering a sacrifice before a fickle god. He took up the proffered piece, considering it with a frown of thoughtfulness creasing his brow as he sank into a nearby chair.

  “These are shockingly good,” Jareth said, holding the paper figure up and turning it about. “You made these yourself? You must have some talent at sketching, Miss Chloe.”

  “It is a hobby, but not only good for recreation. It is an excellent method of acclimating the girls to proper dress requirements for the various social occasions they will be expected to attend when they are older.” She hoped she sounded convincing.

  He shrugged, picking up the riding habit she had sketched quickly and cut out for the doll. “Quite amazing. Of course, this sort of talent is always incomprehensible to those of us who cannot draw a straight line.”

  She smiled and returned to her task. “Did you have a particular reason for visiting us today, your grace?”

  “Ah, yes.” He sat back in his chair and smiled in turn at each of the three faces peering intently in his direction. “I recalled something I thought the children would be interested in. Something about pirates.”

  There was a leaden silence after this grand announcement. As it stretched on, the pleasure evident on his handsome features waned. “I was given to understand you liked pirate stories.”

  Coming out of her shock, Chloe said in a rush, “Oh, we do. That is, the children adore them. Do not be afraid they will become frightened. I can attest to the fact that they are quite bloodthirsty. Go ahead.”

  “Well,” he said with anticipation, “I was thinking about our talk last time, and realized that I had indeed met a buccaneer, a man of questionable reputation who was later tried and hanged for his crimes.”

  “What happened?” Rebeccah demanded. Bless her curiosity, for it forced her to overcome her awe.

  “I was on the docks one day, overseeing the loading of a particularly valuable shipment of home furnishings.”

  Chloe exclaimed, “Oh, my goodness, did he steal them right out from under your chin?”

  Jareth bit his cheeks. “I believe the expression would be ‘my nose.’ And no, he did not. He walked past me, brushing against my shoulder and not apologizing for it. Rather, he looked accusingly at me and seemed to consider for a moment whether or not to take exception to my rudeness at having been standing in a spot through which he wished to walk. When he went on his way, the fellow I was standing with, my partner, Mr. Burke, said, ‘Do you know who that was?’ and I answered I did not. He told me then that the fellow was a well-known privateer whose thin disguise of legality was known by all to be false. His reputation was fierce, and only a few short months after our altercation, he was caught and tried, whereupon he was found guilty and sentenced to hang.”

  Dead silence. It stretched onward, yawning into discomfort as Chloe struggled to find some suitable reply.

  Unfortunately, Rebeccah beat her to it. Even worse, she was honest. “That was it? He brushed up against you on a dock?” Her disappointment was palpable.

  Chloe shot him an apologetic smile and interjected her person in between the two of them. “I told you they were bloodthirsty. Nothing short of someone losing their head will satisfy them.”

  He was disappointed his grand tale had not been more of a success. Chloe almost felt sorry for him. He was lost when it came to all of this business with the children, but she so appreciated his trying.

  “Speaking of boats,” she said, casting her young charge a leading look, “Rebeccah has been learning a bit about them.”

  “Ships,” he corrected in a flat voice.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Not boats. Ships.”

  “Ah, trs biĦn. Yes, ships. We learned, your grace, that ships maneuver using the stars as guides.” She looked to Rebeccah and widened her eyes.

  “It is called navigation,” Jareth explained.

  “The con-sell-a-shun called ass-a minor is the Big Dipper,” Rebeccah blurted.

  Chloe let out her breath in relief.

  Jareth looked down at his niece, puzzled. “Pardon me?”

  Panic and confusion marred her hopeful face. Chloe laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “It is Ursa Major, ma petite. Is it not wonderful, your grace, that she has learned so quickly? She wanted to know all about the things that you like, so I showed her some books on the stars. Immédiatement, she loved it, too.”

  His eyebrows came down, but his look was more one of guardedness than displeasure. Then she saw his Adam’s apple bob with a hard swallow and she knew it was pure emotion on his face, as if he was touched that the children would wish to please him.

  Or perhaps he just couldn’t fathom that she would want to.

  “It’s the Big Dipper,” Rebeccah repeated with a wide-eyed stare of earnestness. “It looks like a giant spoon in the sky.”

  Jareth nodded solemnly. “I have seen it. And it does look exactly so. Have you ever viewed it through a telescope?”

  Rebeccah was unflustered by the question. “A telescope is an in-stru-ment used to see stars,” she recited, flicking a quick glance at Chloe, who beamed back at her with pride.

  “Just so,” Jareth agreed. “And I have one—several, actually. Would you like to see it sometime?”

  “But it has to be dark outside. I go to bed when it is dark outside.”

  “Yes, it is best to use it at night. Perhaps some evening when you have behaved particularly well and are deserving of a reward, and if Miss Chloe feels it is acceptable to part from your bedtime routine, I could show you one of my telescopes. We could look for Ursa Major.”

  Her head bobbed enthusiastically. “Yes, I would like to see it. Very much, thank you.”

  She was so solemn, her small features relaxing for the first time in the presence of her uncle, that Chloe felt a pang of joy threaten to bubble up from somewhere inside her chest. She pressed her hand over the aching spot and blinked back the tears welling in her eyes. Rebeccah looked to her and broke into a large, brilliant smile. “Did you hear that, Miss Chloe?”

  “I did, indeed,” she answered. “Now go and gather up the paper dolls for me.”

  Usually, such a request would be met with an argument, but Rebeccah’s good mood buoyed her contentious nature. “Yes, Miss Chloe,” she cried gaily, and skipped off.

  Chloe looked to Jareth, her smile trembling with emotion. “Thank you, so much.”

  He seemed genuinely surprised. “What did I do, Miss Chloe?”

  “Your kindness to Rebeccah. She needs so much. The attention you just showed her, well, it meant a great deal to her.”

  “But it was such a small thing,” he said dismissively. “Rather, I should be thanking you. I take it you encouraged her fledgling interest.”

  He stood smiling at her, a smile that warmed his eyes. They were a soft, deep brown, fathomless and beautiful with the heavy fringe of black lashes surrounding them. She felt warm, all of the sudden, and acutely self-conscious.

  A small voice inside her—her conscience, she supposed—argued this was bad. Bad to be aware of the duke as a man, bad to be noticing how beautiful were his eyes, bad to be having these giddy tremors shooting through her nerves like tiny jolts of lightning within her body. She was not naive about men and women. Her mother had not believed in the impractical sheltering of female children
and had argued that ignorance was dangerous, as many girls were unprepared for the feelings that developed when they became attracted to a man, and it often led to trouble.

  Not that Mama had been wrong, but no amount of discussion on the topic prepared Chloe for the actuality. Feelings were…so…very…powerful.

  If he felt it, as well, he gave no indication. After a moment, he said, “Thank you, Miss Chloe, I have had a lovely time.”

  “Thank you, your grace,” she managed to reply, though her throat felt dry and her voice sounded so faint and wispy, surely he would notice and know her shameful thoughts.

  He didn’t appear to. He paused to stare down at Sarah, who had sat so calmly during the entire exchange. A slight frown creased his forehead, and she wondered what it was that troubled him when he looked at the girl.

  He seemed to shake himself out of whatever it was and cross to the door without another word or glance. When he was gone, Chloe wandered to the window. The gardens lay below. She stared at them, but didn’t see them.

  Pressing her hands to her cheeks, she felt their heat against her palms. She wondered if she had been blushing and if, God forbid, he had noticed.

  “Miss Chloe, can we fashion some gloves for the doll?” Rebeccah asked, once again absorbed in the day’s project.

  “Yes, chérie, I am coming.”

  Chapter Nine

  Lady Rathford had him in her sights. Jareth felt rather like a specimen on a glass slide being inspected with microscopic fervor. His natural instinct was to stare back at her with a touch of his irritation heating his gaze, but impassive was the ultimate in blue-blooded deportment.

  He was getting better at it, he felt. Stilling his restlessness—how he longed to be out-of-doors, preferably near the sea!—he sat with his legs crossed and hands dangling over the carved armrests of the upholstered chair, beautifully at ease, though with everything in him he craved a yawn.

  Helena was reciting a poem, a sonnet by someone or other. Probably Shakespeare. Her voice was dulcet, well modulated and expressive. Jareth needed to yawn so badly, his eyes watered.

  “To this urn let those repair