Haunted by the Earl's Touch

by Ann Lethbridge

  He’d used the best of both his worlds. The strength of the coalminers he’d worked alongside in summer holidays and the power of the nobility given by the title he would inherit. He’d taken control of his life.

  No one would ever manipulate him again. Not his mother’s brother, or the earl.

  Bane glanced over at the watchers. If one of them, just one of these relatives, had taken pity on his mother, offered her their support, he might have been able to find a little mercy in his heart. But they hadn’t. He bared his teeth in a smile that would do Ranger proud.

  The old earl looked him over, his red-rimmed, faded blue eyes watery, his face a picture of scorn. ‘So, the scavengers are circling.’

  ‘You sent for me, Grandfather,’ he said his tone mocking.

  The earl’s gaze lingered on Bane’s face and he shook his head. ‘A curse on your mother for sending my son to an early grave.’

  Bitterness roiled in his gut at the vilification. A drunken lord driving his carriage off the road was hardly his mother’s fault. His chest tightened until his lungs were starved. Not that he was surprised by the accusation, just by his own visceral reaction, when there was nothing this decayed piece of flesh could do to her any more. ‘But for you, my mother would be alive today.’

  Yet even as he spoke the words, the old guilt rose up to choke him. The knowledge that he had done nothing to save her. ‘But she beat you in the end.’

  The old man sneered. ‘Did she now?’

  The urge to stop the vile tongue edged his vision in red. Involuntarily his fists clenched. His palms tingled with the desire to tighten around the scrawny neck, to feel the flesh and bones crush in on his windpipe. Watch the life fade from those cruel eyes and silence his lips for ever.

  He reached for his hard-won iron control over his temper, shocked at how close it was to slipping from his grasp at this long-awaited moment, grabbed a breath of air and let the heat dissipate. He would not let his anger overpower his reason. He knew the penalty for doing so. It would rob him of his victory as it has robbed him of his mother. There was no need for anger, not now, when he’d won. He shrugged.

  The old devil grinned a death’s-head smile. ‘Look at you, apeing the gentleman in your fine clothes, with not an ounce of nobility in your blood. It is a wonder decent society tolerates you at all.’

  He smiled his own mocking smile. ‘They welcome me with open arms. It is the prospect of a title that does it, you know.’

  Something flashed in the old man’s eyes. If Bane hadn’t known better, he might have thought it was admiration. It was more likely rage at being defeated in his plan to be rid of his cuckoo in the nest. Thanks to his rough-and-ready upbringing by his maternal uncle, and later his years of misery at school and university, Bane had no doubts about his ability to withstand any torment his grandfather might devise. He’d spent his life preparing for this moment.

  He moved closer to the head of the bed, lowering his voice. ‘You sent for me, old man, and here I am. Speak your piece. I am a busy man.’

  ‘A coalminer. A labourer for hire.’ Scorn dripped from the old man’s thin lips like poison. Spittle spattered his chin and the lapels of the silken robe bearing the Beresford emblem in gold.

  ‘Aye,’ Bane said. ‘I know how to earn my keep.’ Not that he laboured with his hands any more, but he could if need be. He let his gaze drift around the worn bed hangings and worn furniture. ‘And I know how to follow your example, spending money on idle pursuits in town.’ He’d done his share of playing the debauched nobleman since making his bows at court, much to the displeasure of both sides of his family. But he hadn’t been wasting his time, no matter what they thought.

  The old man raised a hand and pointed a crooked finger at the young men nearby. ‘They are real Beresfords.’ His whispery voice flicked like a whip at Bane’s pride.

  He bared his teeth in a hard smile. His was, after all, the final triumph. ‘Too bad. There is nothing anyone can do about it.’

  ‘No?’ A calculating gleam entered the faded blue eyes and his lips twisted. His gaze darted to the far side of the bed, to the huddle just beyond the lamplight. ‘Jeffrey. Gerald. Come to me.’

  The two young men came forwards. The dandy, Jeffrey, at a saunter, meeting Bane’s gaze surprisingly coolly. The younger cousin, Gerald, known to Bane only as a name, ran to the old man’s side and knelt, clutching one of those misshapen hands. ‘Grandfather, do not upset yourself.’ The boy looked up at Bane. ‘Leave him in peace.’

  Beresford pulled his hand free and stared at the two young men with a wry expression. ‘These are my grandsons. True nobility. Real Beresfords.’ He turned his head on the pillow to look at Bane. ‘But whose spawn are you?’

  Whose bastard, he meant. It wasn’t anything Bane hadn’t heard before. It barely registered, but the soft gasp coming from somewhere in the shadows cut at him like a whip. The girl. He knew it instinctively. He forced himself not to look her way, despite feeling the intensity of her gaze grazing his skin. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said coldly. ‘I am your legal heir, so that pair of spoiled ninnyhammers had best crawl at my feet if they want crumbs from my table.’ He took pleasure in speaking in the rough tones of his mother’s people.

  The old man grunted and struggled up on to one elbow, pointing at Bane’s face with a crooked finger. ‘Think you’ve bested me, do you? You’ve got nerve, I’ll credit you that. I’ve watched you. I’ve got your measure. If you want the wealth and power that goes with the title, then you’ll dance to my tune.’

  Ranger, by the door, rumbled low in his throat.

  ‘Grandfather!’ the young lad at his side said, trying to ease him back down on to the pillows.

  His grandfather brushed him aside. ‘It takes a clever man to best a Beresford.’ His laugh crackled like tearing paper. ‘I’m only sorry I won’t be here to see it.’

  Bane shot him a considering look. The old man seemed just too sure of himself. ‘I won’t be controlled, old man. You should know that by now.’

  As the dying man collapsed against the pillows, his gaze sought out the young woman he’d spoken to earlier. ‘Don’t be so sure.’

  Who the devil was she? Bane sent her a baleful glance. She inched deeper into the shadows, but her blue eyes, her Beresford-blue eyes, never left his face and they held a kind of fascinated horror.

  The earl’s gaze dropped to his other grandsons and moisture ran down his cheeks, glistening, running into the crevasses on his cheeks. Then he drew in a shuddering breath, his jaw working. He turned his head and his eyes, still wet with tears, fixed on Bane. ‘You’ll do your duty by the family.’

  ‘I have no family in this house.’ Bane let his scorn show on his face. ‘You failed to be rid of me when you had the chance and they bear the consequence. The sins of the father will be visited upon these children of your line. And there will be no more.’

  The old man chuckled, a grim sound in the quiet room. ‘Cocksure, aren’t you. And proud. Yet you hold the losing hand.’

  The wry amusement gave Bane pause. Intimidation. The old man excelled at terrifying those weaker than himself. Bane was not his or anyone else’s victim. He’d made himself too strong to be any man’s punching bag. He leaned over, speaking only for the old man to hear. ‘You forget, it will all be within my control. My only regret is that you won’t see the desecration of your family name.’ He flicked a glance at his cousins, the coolly insolent one who hid his true nature from the world and the half-scared boy. ‘It would do them good to work at some low honest task for their bread.’

  The old man groaned, but there was something odd in his tone, as if he wasn’t so much in agony, but stifling amusement. ‘You think you are such a cold devil,’ he muttered. ‘I will be sorry to miss the heat of your anger.’

  Bane drew back, searching that vindictive face. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  A resounding crack of thunder split the air at the same time as lightning flickered
around the room. The storm’s last violent convulsion.

  Ranger howled. The old man jerked upright in that wild blue light, the colour draining from his face, from his clothing, from the twisted hand clutching his throat. He sank back with a sigh.

  The kneeling boy uttered a cry of despair. Jeffrey leaned over and felt for his pulse. Mrs Hampton rushed forwards. The tall girl remained where she was, a hand flat across her mouth, her eyes wide.

  Bane curled his lip as he looked down on the empty shell of what had once been a man who had wielded his power to harm the innocent.

  Bane was the earl now. And to hell with the Beresfords.

  He spared a last glance for those gathering close around the bed and shrugged. Let them weep and wail at the old man’s passing. It was of no import to him.

  Weariness swept through him. After travelling hard for three days, he needed a bath and a good night’s sleep. He had a great deal to do on the morrow if he was to set his plans in motion. He had debts to pay and a coalmine to purchase.

  As he turned to leave, he caught sight of the young woman hanging back, her expression one of distaste. What mischief had the old man planned for her? Nothing his grandfather could do from beyond the grave could harm Bane. But he did not like to think of yet another innocent female destroyed by his machinations.

  Unless she wasn’t as innocent as she appeared. Was anyone in this family innocent? It was hard to think so. And if she wasn’t, then Bane was more than a match for her, too.

  He snapped his fingers for Ranger and headed down the corridor, hoping like hell he could find the way back through the maze of passages to his assigned chamber.

  * * *

  While the family members hovered and wept around the body of the old earl, Mary made good her escape. Her brain whirled. Her stomach cramped. And she ran like a cowardly rabbit.

  When she’d been invited to meet her benefactor, the man she’d recently learned had paid for her schooling, her every meal, for most of her life, she had wondered—no, truly, she had dreamed that at last some family member, some distant relative, had decided to claim her as their own. A childhood fantasy finally fulfilled.

  She’d certainly had no idea that the man was at death’s door until the butler guided her into that room earlier this evening. And when she’d asked her question with breathless hope and seen the surprise in those watery blue eyes and the wry twist to his lips, she’d felt utterly foolish.

  Was she a member of his family? The answer had been a flat no.

  Sally Ladbrook had been right. The man had viewed her as a good work, a charitable impulse, and was looking for recognition before he met his end. Unless he intended to impose the obligation on his heir.

  She shivered. Just the thought of the new earl’s overwhelmingly menacing presence in that room made her heart race and her knees tremble. She’d been transfixed by the sheer male strength of him, while he had stood in the shadows as still as death.

  She halted at the end of the corridor and glanced back. A sliver of light spilling on to the runner revealed the location of that horrid room. Never in her life had she witnessed anything so morbid. She rubbed at her jaw, trying to erase the sensation of cold papery fingers on her skin and shuddered.

  To make it worse, once the heir had stepped out of the shadows, the hatred in the room had been palpable. Like hot oil on metal, hissing and spitting first from one direction and then another, scalding wherever it landed.

  And the man. The new earl. So dark. So unexpectedly large, even handsome in a brutal way. A powerful man who had overshadowed his dying grandfather like some avenging devil.

  He didn’t walk, he prowled. He didn’t speak, he made utterances in a voice composed of velvet and sandpaper. And his eyes. His eyes were as deep as an abyss when he had stared directly at her. That look owed nothing to the gloom in the room, for it was the same when he stood within the light of the torches. Worse. Because she could see the pinpoints of flickering light reflected in his gaze and still make out nothing in their shadowed depths.

  She—who prided herself on being able to stand in front of a class of spoiled daughters and hold her own, at least on the surface, and who, as a charity boarder, had suffered pity and sly comments about her poverty all those years—had managed to stand up to the gloating way the old man had looked at her and crushed any hope that she might have found her place in the world.

  But when that piercing gaze looking out from the shadows in the doorway had tangled with hers, it had sapped her courage dry. She’d scuttled ignominiously back to her place without a shred of dignity remaining.

  The sooner she left this place, this house with its dark undercurrents, the better. She’d done her duty. Offered her thanks. Surely she was free to go? She would leave first thing in the morning.

  She glanced left and right. Which way? The maid who had brought her to the dying man’s room had found her way with unerring ease, but Mary no longer had a clue which way they had come, there had been so many twists and turns on their journey from her chamber. Not to mention the odd staircase.

  Part-dissolved abbey, part-Tudor mansion, part-renaissance estate, it sprawled and rambled inside and out. She’d glimpsed the house at dusk, perched high on a Cornish cliff, crenulated towers and chimney pots rising to the sky. A complete muddle of a house.

  Her room was in one of those square towers. At the north end, the butler had told her when he escorted her there upon her arrival. The tower nearest the abbey ruins. She could see them through her small window. She had also heard the muffled rumble of the ocean somewhere deep below the house, in its very foundations. A very ominous sound. She shuddered as she imagined the house undermined by the force of the sea.

  She eyed her two choices and selected the one that seemed to amble north. Picking up her skirts for speed, she hurried on, wishing there was more light, or a servant to show her the way.

  Another corridor branched off to her right, going south? Or had that last corner she had turned set her off course? The maid had turned off the main corridor, hadn’t she? More than once. She plunged into the new hallway. It looked no more familiar than the last.

  She needed help.

  She tried the first door she came to. A bedroom, its furniture huddled beneath holland covers. If there ever had been a bell rope, it had been removed.

  Blast. She returned to the corridor, heading for another room further along.

  Footsteps. Behind her. Thank God. Help at last.

  She turned around.

  A light flickered and stopped. Whoever held the candle remained masked in shadow.

  The wind howled through a nearby crevice, lifting the hair at her nape. Her heart picked up speed. The girls at school had told late-night stories of ghosts and hauntings that started like this. Deliciously wicked in their frightening aspects and heroic deeds. Figments of imagination. She did not believe in ghosts. People like her, practical people, did not have the luxury of such flights of fancy, yet she could not quite quell the fear gripping her chest. ‘Who is there?’ She was shocked at the tremble in her voice.

  The light drew closer. A candle held in a square-fingered hand joined to a brawny figure still in the darkness. Him. The new earl.

  How she knew, she wasn’t sure, but her skin prickled with the knowledge. Heat flushed up from her belly. ‘My lord?’ she said. Her voice quavering just a little more than she would have liked. ‘Lord Beresford?’

  The candle went upwards, lighting his harsh face.

  ‘Great goliaths,’ she said, letting go of her breath. ‘Do you always creep around hallways in such a fashion?’ Oops. That sounded a bit too much like the schoolteacher taking a pupil to task.

  The eyes staring down at her were not dark as she had thought in the old earl’s bedroom. They were as grey as storm clouds. And watchful.

  ‘Are you lost?’ he drawled in that deep mocking voice with its hint of roughness.

  ‘Certainly not,’ she replied, discomposed by his obvious indifference. He
at rushed to her cheeks and she was glad the dim light would not reveal her embarrassment. She let her gaze fall away.

  ‘Liar,’ he said softly.

  She bristled.

  ‘That’s better.’

  A snuffling sound drew her gaze down. The dog. It sank to its haunches and watched her with its head cocked on one side. It was enormous. ‘What is better?’ she asked, keeping a wary eye on the dog.

  ‘It is better when you stand up straight, instead of hunching over like a scared schoolgirl.’

  As a schoolgirl, she had tried to disguise her ungainly height. It spoke to her discomfort that she had fallen back into that old habit.

  She looked up past the wide chest and broad shoulders, past the snowy cravat and strong column of throat, his full mobile mouth at eye level, then up to meet his gaze. Most men were either her height or shorter. This one was taller than her by half a head—he must be inches above six foot tall—and he reeked of danger.

  What snatches of conversation she’d heard between him and the dying earl had been positively menacing. And, unless she was badly mistaken, some of the venom shifting back and forth between them had been directed at her.

  ‘If you will excuse me, I must be on my way.’

  ‘On your way where?’

  ‘To my room.’

  He shot her a wolfish smile. ‘So that was not your room. The one you just left.’

  ‘No,’ she muttered, making to step past him.

  ‘What were you doing in that chamber?’