by Olivia Ritch
Kathryn could see the pride in Cassandra’s eyes as she recounted her brother’s heroic rescue. “So now I am on the edge of my seat. What did he do?”
“He called a footman to come attend me and gave him instructions that I was very ill and he was not to let me out of his sight, then he marched down to the Earl’s study and beat him silly. I heard him yelling words like ‘whore’ and ‘honor’ and ‘trash’ and oh yes, I heard one whole phrase ‘bloody well that he is already dead,’ then he rejoined me in the hall looking perfectly put together but his eyes burning in fury, and dragged me through the door.
“Did you attempt to kill yourself after that?” Kathryn asked now sure that she would not offend.
“No. I had Michael and he brought me here and I was free.”
Cassandra shrugged.
“So you never actually tried the act, just planned it, and wrote about it?”
“Correct. I never did anything to hurt myself except maybe shut myself up in this room.”
Kathryn wondered how Cassandra had worked through her grief and anger and fear. “Were you alone out here, after he went back, I mean?”
“No, his wife was here until she died. But I did not cry terribly long over her either.”
“I’ll look forward to hearing that story soon.” Kathryn gave her a conspiratorial grin. “But, for now, I promised Michael I would rest before dinner. It was a long ride out to the tenants and there was a lot of greeting and talking and well, Michael has promised entertainment.”
“Entertainment? Has he given any clue?” Her pitch dark eyes danced with this revelation.
“No. He just asked me if I liked surprises. I told him yes, then he 55
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sent me on my way. Well, actually he kissed my hand first. What am I supposed to make of that?”
Cassandra’s sparkling eyes lit up the delicate features of her stunning face. She might be tiny and frail and fragile but she had a natural beauty to rival any New York fashion model. In fact, she was just right for the cover of an haute couture designer’s brochure. “You should wear green,” she offered.
“What do you mean by that?” Kathryn asked, immediately noticing the twinkle had turned thoughtful.
“The color will set off your hazel eyes.”
“Oh.”
“Indeed.”
Kathryn was feeling especially successful after breaking the ice with Cassandra. The woman had been hard to reach at first but she warmed immediately after a few probing questions. Has no one ever tried it with her before? Her training as a counselor and her particular experience in women’s issues made it easy for Kathryn to recognize the symptoms and to attack them.
Cassandra was hurt and angry. Seeing that was easy. What was harder to cure was the self-flagellation she had endured by shutting herself off from the world due to the betrayal at the hands of her husband
– someone who was supposed to love and honor her. Sadly, Cassandra had felt like an idiot for being so naive as to not realize that she had never been important to her husband. Feeling that stupid was probably the most difficult of her problems to overcome but she had made a huge leap in telling Kathryn today. There were signs during the conversation that Cassandra was turning an important corner even as they talked.
Five years is a long time for self-loathing. Indeed, when women no longer felt stupid and taken advantage of and helpless, they usually began coming out of their self-imposed exiles. It was time for Cassandra Stafford Penthoven to start living, again.
* * * *
“Miss Primble, I have asked you to attend me here with a challenge.” “Yes, My Lord,” she whispered. He could tell that she was quaking with fear to be facing the master in his lair. There was nothing for it but to do this business in secret.
“My guest, your mistress, is in need of more gowns. She cannot continue to wear the same gown over again and men’s clothes.” He paused.
“Yes, My Lord.”
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“I am going to retrieve some of Lady Cassandra’s gowns and ask you to alter them to fit Miss Ragland…without her participation. I would not wish to argue with her over old, hand-me-downs which we all know she needs.”
“Yes, My Lord.”
He lifted a box off the desk and handed it to the maid. “And these slippers are for her evening wear. I believe they are her size. Please tell her they are a gift but make as little of it as possible. Also, can you have a fresh habit altered for a morning ride? She will wear breeches again of course underneath.”
“Yes, My Lord.” The maid held the box against her chest as if it were a treasure.
“I will have a gown delivered to your quarters. Thank you. You are dismissed.” She slid from the room with her gaze glued to the floor.
Thorpe came up behind him as the maid left the room. “If I may suggest, My Lord…”
“Yes, Thorpe?”
“Miss Primble has four more sisters at home and I daresay her father could spare her third or fourth sister to come join her here to act as seamstress.”
“Yes, make it so.” Michael agreed quickly.
Hallthorpe breathed a most contented sign as he left his master distracted and starry-eyed. This is what he had always wanted for this house…someone vibrant and full of life that cared about the people in it enough to make it a home.
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Chapter Six
Ellie responded immediately to the pull of the cord. “Yes, my lady.
We have your bath coming shortly.” She bustled around the room working at drawers and gathering as if her very life depended on how fast she got Kathryn into a bath.
“A bath. Wow, that sounds really nice but since there’s no bathtub, I don’t exactly see what I am going to sit in.”
“Ah it will be along shortly. Water was already warming for you miss.”
“Water was warming? How do they do it?”
“Buckets by the kitchen fire and strong footmen. It’s all right easy after all. We’ve been cleaning gentle-ladies for many years this way.”
“Well, I won’t argue since I can smell myself but it still sounds like a lot of work.”
“If I may be so bold, miss. You mentioned smelling. Would you like some smelling soap?”
“Would that be to hide the stink or keep the stink from getting bad again once it’s washed off?”
“My Lady, everyone starts to smell as the day wears on. S’why ladies change their clothes for each meal I figure, and probably to show off.”
She suddenly realized her mistake and gasped, bringing a hand to her mouth, ready to apologize.
“No need to apologize,” Kathryn murmured. “I am sure you are absolutely correct. I don’t find any need to change clothes all through the day, unless of course I really do smell bad. No question I want to smell better right now. What scents do you have?” And if you say powder fresh Sure deodorant I’ll kiss your hand!
“Jasmine, lemon, vanilla, and rosewater.”
“Vanilla tonight. I think it’s the most comfortable smell. I want to be comfortable.”
“As you wish. It is a very lovely fragrance.”
Ellie took extra care washing the mistress’s hair. It had such an array of color but it looked so much brighter when it was clean. The gold and bronze streaks were just glorious when not weighed down with the day’s dust and wear. She had warmed the curling tongs and secured all the pins she could find from the Dowager’s room and the former mistresses’ and 58
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found lovely strands of beads that would adorn the tresses.
Ellie’s sister had finished with the alterations to the first of Lady Cassandra’s dresses so she was screwing up her courage to tell the mistress that they had a new dress for dinner when the door creaked just a little. Ellie suppressed a squeak and then the door moved further ajar.
; She slid behind the large armoire because somehow she knew that she should.
Ellie did not yet know all the back workings of the manor house but this quiet invasion unnerved her. She backed behind the cabinet door and watched a maid’s feet step over the threshold. Miss Ragland splashed water over the tub and squealed at the slip of the soap and the maid’s steps stopped. When Miss Ragland quieted, the maid continued into the room.
Ellie studied the feet. They were well shod but she did not recognize them although she really had not had time to learn everyone in the household’s feet. Nonetheless, there was no one, not in the household of a Duke, that was allowed in the mistress’s chamber but her own ladies maid and the housekeeper and well, those were not the feet of Mrs.
Staggs, whose boots she remembered right away.
Ellie watched the feet and skirt, turn toward the bedside table and peeked around the armoire door. A woman, dressed in all the black and white of a house maid, deposited a tea tray for one onto the table by Miss Ragland’s beside.
No one. No one, was to bring Miss Ragland tea without Ellie’s knowledge. This was highly irregular and she immediately felt a spike of fear race down her spine. Ellie was one and twenty, old enough to know what’s done and not. Miss Ragland was destined to be the new mistress of this house and someone, someone was invading her private bedchamber and bringing her unordered tea.
The unknown maid, as she was with plain brown hair in a severe knot and no special color to her skin, surveyed the room and then she did exactly what Ellie expected, she poured something into the teapot. Ellie gasped but thankfully, at that exact moment Miss Ragland squealed. She must have squirted her soap free again and with that exclamation, the imposter maid made for the door and was gone.
“Ellie, are you there?”
“Yes, Miss Ragland, I am here,” she choked out, trying not to let her mistress hear her distress. Her mistress was especially astute to people’s feelings, uncanny like her knowing what’s what.
“I forgot to put my towel close enough to the tub. Do you mind bringing it to me so I don’t make a mess dripping everywhere?”
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“Yes miss,” she whispered and crossed to her Lady’s side. Ellie hoped and prayed Miss Ragland did not ask for tea. She was not yet ready with an answer about the mysterious pot but she knew she needed to get it out of there right away.
* * * *
Sometime later that night, in the Master’s study, the poison-laced tea was being examined by his Grace of Asterleigh and his close friend Julian Thornton, Earl of Weatherford, recently of the Guards and His Majesty’s Secret Service. The house had been scoured from the basement to the rafters and there was no sign of the well-shod house maid. “Arsenic?” Michael asked Jules. “Concentrated and deadly, but I am not sure what, although arsenic makes the most sense. This is something very sinister, expensive, to be executed by a hireling. And why, Michael? It’s very deliberate if Miss Primble is to be believed.”
“You don’t believe her?’
“Yes, I do.”
“I knew you did. Don’t tease me, Jules. What the hell is it?” He forced through clenched teeth.
“Something lethal and clean. Is that really what you wanted to hear?”
“Yes. Dammit, no! Do I want to hear that a guest in my home is the deliberate target of an assassin? What the hell?”
“I have been in this line for a number of years and I need to know. Is she just a guest in your home?” Jules was deadly serious. “It makes a difference.”
Michael knew it was true but he stiffened at the implication reflexively. He had not laid a demmed hand on the woman and no one could accuse him of any impropriety. “What the hell, I say?”
“Michael. Is she more to you than a guest? It may explain things.”
Michael hesitated before he answered because truly, he had only known this woman for half a day. What did he know of her at all? “She’s just a guest. Really, though, she is better described as a wayward traveler, a rescue of sorts. I spent the night at the Blue Bell and she was there alone.” He relayed her strange circumstances including the shoeless walk in his breeches, which elicited an evil grin from his friend, leaving out any mention of his utterly unexplainable sensibilities toward the woman.
“So she could have enemies? She could be lying about her lack of circumstances and trying to hide, right here in your house?” Jules suggested it and Michael was forced to answer.
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“I had been considering that this evening but she is so open, nothing is false with her. She is either a brilliant liar or she is who she says she is.” Michael had seen her, truly seen her and she was not a liar.
“I won’t ask for an introduction this evening while we sort this out but we must consider that she is here because someone wants her dead.
You’ll want to take precautions.”
Protectiveness was Michael’s most ungovernable emotion. Any woman in his realm was subject to its strictures and this woman, who had already breached so many of his usual defenses, drew out the most violent of tendencies in him to keep her safe. “I will see to it,” he growled low.
“I think we should also consider another scenario. You are the one who has recently returned and everyone knows you have been the heir since January. This assassin may have been following you and your lady friend had the unfortunate luck of being a target by association or simply accident.”
“Any of those scenarios fit Julian. I don’t need to tell you that strange deaths of the males in my family recently give me pause.”
“Yes, they may have been the accidents that the witnesses claimed but…”
“…there is a Dukedom to consider.”
“Indeed.”
* * * *
Kathryn had been looking out the window when the mysterious, dark-haired visitor had arrived on horseback. He had stayed for more than an hour and when she heard his horse being brought around, she watched him again from her perch in the window. Even in the deep shadows of the night, with the angles of his face hidden, he looked familiar. She had seen the man somewhere before.
But how was that possible? She had only been here in this place for less than twenty-four hours and at Michael’s for twelve hours. Though it did seem more like several days since this very first one had been so full.
But that man was very familiar. He reminded her in dress and carriage of a dark looking, slimmer Michael, but he was also Mediterranean with olive skin and wavy silk hair black as night. Like someone who had a French parent or parents. She could imagine the visitor as a spy, sleek, dark, dangerous, and maybe even a little wicked.
But none of that made him familiar. It was something she had actually seen before with her own eyes. She thought of the painting.
Maybe it was him. The period would be correct. She retrieved the 61
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painting from the spot she had hidden it in the desk and was struck literally with the force of recognition.
Michael.
Kathryn’s brain began working in overdrive putting the pieces together. Michael and his first wife Catherine had been unhappily married in approximately 1810 or 1811 so she thought based on the snippets from her conversation with Cassandra. Here she was in what she now knew to be an estate near Wilton in the year 1816. Kathryn’s breath caught and she looked closer at the image of the man while her mind’s eye added definition, angles, and texture and light and a raised brow to the plain painted face. She added color to his skin and a slight curl of the lips and she saw him clearly for the first time.
The painting was of Michael.
How had she not realized it before? It had not been until she saw the dashing French spy look-alike in person that she had revisited the people in the picture. Now that she could recall all four of the paintings, there had indeed been a dark-haired stunner who very much resembled the man
who had just ridden off. There was also her favorite of the mounted Cavalry officer, the sour couple she had purchased and a fourth. It was of a man with hounds, a more jovial looking blonder version of the other three. The Frenchman had stood, posed on his hearth with a sword.
As all of the confusion and frustration and unanswered questions of the morning coalesced into one unbelievable theory, she concluded that her presence here must be due to the painting. It was a most bizarre, unrealistic, crazy, insane…could she keep on going…theory but it was the only one that explained why she had been found and rescued by the man whose picture she had bought. Had he needed her? Did someone need her help and had she somehow been brought here by magic or conjuring. Did he have powers or was it just the power of one little magic painting?
And were the other paintings magic and were they here? Hope, thrill, and excitement grew, meshing with determination until she fairly burst from her room to search out the other artwork. This time, she didn’t crash into her tall, firmly built host as she hurried out into the hall, but Kathryn was equally as distracted as she realized something about Michael that had been different from the Regency Romance characters she so loved. He wasn’t lean and narrow-waisted as they usually were.
He was solid muscle and much more so than he had been in the painting.
No, he was more like GI Joe with bulging biceps and rock hard thighs, totally flat belly from the looks but not thin at the waist, probably able to bench press a woman. Michael looked like a big muscular soldier—like 62
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an Army Ranger—who had probably lugged, toted, slogged, fought hand-to-hand, and maybe even carried a wounded comrade or two on his back. His was the body of a workhorse who had done other equally manly activities every day for the last five years.
