Patrica Rice (22 page)

" 'Tis a pity you did not come in a grand carriage," she said almost mockingly at one point. "You could take Hodges and me into town with you to retrieve the painting and save yourself having to return."

"I will be happy to take Hodges with me on the morrow if you are concerned about the painting, but I have every intention of returning,," he replied stiffly.

"A busy gentleman such as yourself cannot have much interest in a country cottage once you have seen it. When you are strong enough, Hodges will take you about. That should satisfy your curiosity."

"It is not just curiosity." Peter wondered at this, but he trod boldly on. "Is there some reason why I cannot make the acquaintance of Lady Honora before I go?"

"Lady Honora knows where you are," Cecily answered airily. "She will find you if she wishes. But I contend that you are not strong enough to take the stairs yet. You may as well resign yourself to a few more days' rest."

Irritated but not quite knowing why, Peter set aside his empty plate and rose to his full height. Cecily was not really diminutive but seemed frail in comparison to himself, yet she did not flinch when he came to stand before her. She met his eyes boldly, almost with defiance, and before he quite knew what he was doing, Peter found himself reaching for her.

Her lips were warm and sweet beneath his, almost intoxicatingly so. Peter shifted her slender weight closer and Cecily swayed easily with his will, blending into his arms as if she belonged there. Her kiss pierced him with a longing so deep he almost forgot himself. When her hands crept hesitantly to his shirt, Peter was jarred back to the present by a very real and pressing desire, and he was thankful he had thought to dress for supper. It would have been most embarrassing to have this encounter wearing only Hodges' nightshirt.

But remembering where and who he was, Peter reluctantly set Cecily back from him, although he could not quite bring himself to release her waist. His hands easily encompassed her slimness, and he realized how terribly frail she truly was. Yet the eyes that stared back at him were not afraid. They searched his with a wonder that made his insides shake.

"I am sorry. I did not mean to insult you." He was the one ill at ease. He supposed in his younger days before he left home that he had kissed a few maids, but since then his encounters with females had mainly been of the commercial sort. He wasn't certain what was expected of him with the gently bred kind even if she were naught but a servant. He knew what his body wanted, but he was horrified at even considering treating her that way.

"I am sure there was no insult intended," Cecily whispered before stepping out of his hands and toward the door. "I had better go now. Hodges will be up later to see if you need anything.''

"Wait ..." But she was gone before Peter could halt her.

He supposed that was the way it should be. If he had persuaded her to give him a tour of the cottage there would have been more opportunities, more dark corners and beckoning nooks where he would be tempted to put his hands on her. Perhaps the ladies of society were quite right in barring him from their doors. He wasn't quite civilized yet. He hadn't realized it would be this difficult to keep from offending innocent women.

Yet she hadn't seemed offended. That gave him enough confidence to meet Hodges' suspicious glare with equanimity when he returned later for the supper tray. Peter was quite certain the little maid had liked his kiss, and he grinned at the manservant. It was good to know his uncivilized ways weren't entirely unattractive. Now if only he could track down the elusive Lady Honora…

He waited patiently until he was certain the house's inhabitants had all gone to their beds. He had slept for days now and felt no need of sleep as he sat beside the lamp and listened for any signs of life. Convinced that all was well for his midnight adventure, Peter checked the wick of the lamp and set out to explore.

His legs were weak, but they held him steady enough as he touched the dark walls and started down the hallway to his right. This wasn't how he wanted to see the cottage, but he felt compelled to show his ability to do so. Lying in bed having dreams of living inside a painting was somewhat disconcerting. He meant to prove that he was in a real house with real people, that he had somehow stumbled across Rosebud Cottage by accident and not fallen into delirium.

Kissing Cecily had certainly proved her reality. Peter wanted to try it again, almost hoped he would somehow stumble across her room as he had so fortuitously discovered the cottage, but he knew that would be beyond the bounds of proper behavior. He remembered well the rich scoundrels who had seduced the maids in his former home, leaving them with dreams of grandeur and babes in their bellies. He'd be damned certain his intentions were honorable before he touched any innocent, be she maid or lady.

The door to the next room was wide open, and he lifted his lamp to inspect it. A massive bed of Elizabethan proportions dominated the room. He could see little of the draperies other than that they must once have been velvet. They appeared a trifle moth-eaten in this light, and there seemed to be no other furniture to add to the room's doubtful comfort. Peter suspected the bed remained only because it was too large to move.

Almost unwillingly, his feet carried him onward. He wanted the house in his painting to be filled with light and laughter and carefree happiness. But every sign indicated that this place was falling into disrepair. A piece of plaster crumbled in his hand as he rested against the wall, and his toe caught and tripped in a bare place in the carpet. The next room was draped in holland covers, but it appeared to be a nursery. The rocking horse in one corner was covered with dust when he touched it, and it sent up a mournful squeak when he set it to rocking.

Peter didn't want to see this. He brushed a cobweb from a shelf of children's books and stared at the titles with tears in his eyes. He was a grown man, a rough sailor who had seen the worst the world had to give but he remembered a schoolroom with books like these and his envy of the children who had owned them. His own children would someday have every book that money could buy. But he wanted the children in this house to delight in these volumes. Why didn't they?

Jerking himself from the contemplation of children he did not know, Peter returned to the hall. He wasn't certain what he had proved to himself, but there seemed little point in going on. He was beginning to feel like an intruder. There was obviously something odd about this place, but he couldn't be certain how much of it had to do with his fevered dreams and his fanciful desires. If this truly were reality, he was behaving unforgivably. He turned his feet in the direction of his room.

That was when she appeared. Caught by surprise, Peter could do little more than stare as the lady hurried from a room at the far end of the hall. There was something in her haste to give the impression of fear, but her expression was implacable as she lifted her skirts and started down the stairs. In the dim light he could be certain of her features but little more. She seemed to carry the light of the moon with her, for she had no lamp or candle, and the rest of her was lost in shadow.

Feeling her fear as if transmitted through the air, Peter hurried after her. The congestion in his chest was clearing now, but he was still short of breath by the time he traversed the entire hall and reached the stairs. He just caught a wisp of white going through a doorway at the far end of the downstairs hall as he set himself after her.

He could not imagine what would cause terror in the middle of the night when all else was asleep. Perhaps one of the children had become ill, but already he was dismissing his fantasy of laughing children inhabiting these halls. They must have been neighboring children he had heard. That this house was empty he realized as he rushed after Lady Honora.

The musty stillness of the night enveloped Peter as he gasped for breath at the bottom of the stairs and forced himself to run on. He needed to cough, but the sound would no doubt bring the plaster crumbling down around him. He half expected to run into cobwebs and perhaps large rats, but the hall was amazingly unencumbered. The plank floor beneath his feet rattled and groaned upon occasion, but he was moving too swiftly for it to sound too loud.

Raising his lamp, Peter burst into the front room where he had seen the lady enter, only to discover Cecily standing wide-eyed and frightened in the circle of light from his lantern and hers. Her hair tumbled around her white-clad shoulders in a cascade of chestnut curls that amplified the intensity of her enormous blue eyes, and he was aware of the slenderness of the frail shoulders beneath the nightdress.

His gaze fell to the shape of her thinly covered breasts and he felt the same shock of desire he had experienced earlier. But before he could act on impulse, she raised the book in her hands to her breast as if in protection, and Peter was returned sharply to reality,

"Where is she?" he demanded.

Cecily stared at this figment of her imagination that she had conjured up with her dreaming. He was more than she remembered, more than she dared dream after the kiss they had shared, and the restlessness that had brought her down here stirred. His dark curls covered his collar in a most ungentlemanly fashion, and she longed to touch them. She noted that his shoulders strained at his coat in a manner even the best Bond Street tailors could not contrive. His weathered face was almost fierce as he faced her, but she had seen the laughing tenderness there, and she was not afraid.

"Who?"' she asked simply. She wasn't certain that she dared risk testing his forehead for fever under these circumstances, with the tension rippling between them, but she greatly feared his illness had returned with the overexertion of the day.

"Her ladyship, of course. She came in here. Something must have frightened her. Surely you saw her?" Peter was beginning to doubt his senses as Cecily stared back at him with incomprehension.

"I
...
I just came in." She ought to say something more, but his expression was so intent that Cecily began to sense some of his fear. Perhaps something was wrong. Something was always wrong. She shivered slightly and watched him for some signal as to how to proceed.

Peter was searching the corners of the room with his light, finding the various doors and windows and frowning. It was a room made for openness, as if it had no secrets to hide. But the number of draped exits made it easy to conceal a hasty departure. He turned his lamp back to Cecily.

"Something frightened her, I'm certain of it. I want to search the rest of the house, starting with the outside. I don't want to leave you here alone. Let me take you back to your room and you can lock your door.''

That seemed like quite a sensible thing to do if this madman meant to roam the house in search of the invisible. Cecily obediently lifted her nightskirt and hastened toward the door to the hall.

There was something in her gesture that struck Peter as frighteningly familiar, but he didn't have time to dissect the feeling now. He could almost sense an air of panic in the house, as if it waited for him to discover the menace. Catching Cecily by the waist when she didn't leave swiftly enough, he nearly carried her up the stairs, the urgency preventing him from enjoying the sudden closeness of her supple form.

She was breathless from the force of Peter's arm around her by the time they reached the top. Unhesitantly, she turned in the direction of the room at the top of the stairs, only to find him holding her back and staring at her.

"This room?" He held the lamp up at her nod and threw open the door. The pale light revealed a femininely appointed room of elegant proportions, obviously that of the lady of the house. The covers of the bed were turned down as if someone had just departed from it. The light caught on a small bed in a far nook, and he nodded in understanding. The maid slept with her mistress.

"Lock the door. Do not open it unless you hear me or the lady. One of us will come to tell you when everything is all right. Where is Hodges?"

She told him. Peter waited until she shut and locked the door before he returned to the stairs. He wouldn't find the manservant yet. He sensed whatever was wrong was outside the house, and it would be better if Hodges was indoors with the women.

He wished he could be certain that both women were inside the house. Lady Honora seemed to be amazingly capricious. If she was afraid of something, why would she seek it alone? It did not bode at all well. Could the lady be mad? Was that why Cecily looked at him strangely whenever he mentioned her mistress? He had the ominous feeling that he was treading too close to the truth.

Unbarring the front door, Peter stepped out into the still night air. No wind tripped the treetops or howled about the chimneys. The rain of his arrival had left the ground damp and soft, and an autumn chill permeated his bones as he advanced further onto the lawn. Turning around, he could scarcely see the shadow of the house, but he knew it was the same one as in the painting. He had memorized those rambling lines down to the last detail, and now he had stepped outside of it.

Oddly enough, he didn't feel the cold as he stared up at the steep tiled roof, finding the tiny dormer with the circular window, tracing the curve of the rounded chimney down to the bend of the roof over the upper line of windows. The toy had sat in that one on the left, and he greatly suspected that was the same room where he had been earlier, the one with the rocking horse, and the dust-covered books.

His gaze drifted to the ornamental lintels, but in the darkness he couldn't find the griffin. But there were traces of rose canes scraping against the stone on the side wall and shutters that would undoubtedly reveal rosebuds were he to run his hands over them. The picture had showed them as being painted, but he was quite certain they were carved as well.

That certainty depressed him. He was in grave danger of losing his mind in this place. The air was as calm and peaceful as it was in the painting. Peter half expected the moon to come out and reveal the laughing lady running through the woods with her arms held out. No wonder Cecily had looked at him as if he were losing his senses. He no doubt was.