A Duke's Temptation (28 page)

“I hope not,” Lily said, coming to her feet. “I’ve gotten used to being entertained at all hours.”

A
lice complained over breakfast the next day that Lily could not continue to act as St. Aldwyn’s housekeeper. She would soon become the Duchess of Gravenhurst. Samuel openly agreed. At this point, however, he would have agreed to practically anything either woman asked of him, because he wasn’t really paying attention to their requests.

He planned to complete his revisions in the next few days and send a partial of the current book off to Philbert, along with the last chapter that still did not feel right but would have to do. He swore he wasn’t going to commit himself to another
Wickbury
until well after the wedding. Perhaps not even until after his honeymoon.

But with Lily and Alice amusing each other for a while, he could sneak off for a good stretch of work. They wouldn’t even notice he was gone. Then, over their second pot of coffee, Alice said, “You’ve always known how I feel about the castle, Samuel.”

“You like to visit once every so often,” he said absently, wondering if his paper and pens had arrived. He always started the week with a fresh crow quill and new paper. It was a ritual he had observed for years.

“I want to live there,” Alice said. “In the castle.”

He lowered his cup. “
Live
there?”

“Yes,” she said, not shrinking at his tone.

“It’s uninhabitable,” he said with a frown.

Lily broke in. “Alice said that Lawton has restored much of what the fire damaged.”

He stared at her. “But what about all the ghosts?
We
know they aren’t real, but other people don’t. She’ll become known as an eccentric.”

“Well, she has to live somewhere, Samuel,” Lily said, “and the castle is ever so much closer than Lynton. She and I will be close to each other.”

He grunted. “I suppose I will have to look it over, to make sure it is safe.”

“May I come?” Lily asked. “I do have some experience as a housekeeper.”

Samuel realized he’d been caught in a clever female snare. Lily knew he wasn’t about to leave her alone after Grace’s confession. If he did, it would only be to hunt Kirkham down and bring him to justice.

Alice also had to know he would not refuse her a home. He did, however, wish to make sure the castle was sound and not the mausoleum that it had become in his imagination.

“So it is all right if we leave tomorrow?” Alice asked, unsuccessfully holding back a grin.

“That soon?” he said. “It will take longer than a day to load the coach and collect my writing supplies.”

“We’ve already packed a few necessities,” Lily admitted, biting her lip. “Just in case you agreed. The staff can bring whatever else you need.”

“Wicked women,” he said in resignation. “What would my life be without them?”

 

 

 

The duke’s coach could follow the ancient track only so far. A menhir said by the locals to be one of the devil’s first teeth marked the road that climbed to the castle. Only the moor folk, the gypsies, and the occasional rider used it now. Every so often the coachman stopped so that he, Samuel, and the footmen could join forces to roll a rock that obstructed the way.

By sunset the coach started to descend the steep incline. Lily stared out the window at the castle so that she would not stare at Samuel. The last time she’d traveled in this coach she had been hoping to forget her past. And she had been wickedly tempted to throttle him.

Now they were traveling together to meet his past, and she was tempted to do things to him,
with
him, that she hadn’t dreamed possible during her initial journey.

The glint in Samuel’s eye, when inevitably she did meet his gaze, promised he had plenty of other dreams in mind. The look she gave him in return said she was more than game.

“I can see Lawton on the west barbican flying the Gravenhurst standard!” Lady Alice exclaimed. She swung away from the window, lifting her folded gloves to fan her face. “It’s awfully warm in here all of a sudden, isn’t it? I shall be glad to get out in the cool air.”

 

 

 

From the approach Castle Gravenhurst presented a forbidding countenance to discourage the uninvited. A pack of wolfhounds prowled the inner bailey. Their unholy howls raised the fine hairs on Lily’s neck. She glanced up slowly. Evening mist enshrouded the darkened towers. The teeth of the raised portcullis grinned as if preparing to snap the invaders in one fell bite.

“Good heavens,” she said to Lady Alice as the duke led the way across the groaning drawbridge. “I think His Grace has a good point. Are you certain you could live here? It does have a certain atmosphere.”

Alice glanced back across the moor and took a deep, bracing breath. The servants of St. Aldwyn’s straggled up the incline in the cart, lanterns flickering like fairy lights. “There is nowhere like Castle Gravenhurst in the world.”

Lily stared straight ahead, disinclined to argue. She glimpsed Samuel striding ahead in his cloak. Suddenly seven or so hounds materialized from the mist to encircle him. He pulled his small traveling case from their slobbering welcome and laughed, motioning over his shoulder for Lily and Alice to follow.

“I’m going in ahead,” he said as Lawton darted out from the northwest barbican to call back the hounds.

“Should we let him go alone?” Lily whispered to Alice.

“Why would we stop him?” Alice asked softly.

Lily didn’t answer for several moments. She could barely make out Samuel’s figure in the shadows, although he appeared to know where he was going. She felt a sudden chill, an awareness of something malignant in the air.

She looked up. An ominous shadow moved on the walkway that connected the two gatehouse towers. She blinked. How silly of her. It was only the Gravenhurst standard.

Samuel was the one who had made up all the stories about ghosts haunting the castle. There was nothing more menacing at Gravenhurst than unhealed memories, and those were unsettling enough. Lost in her thoughts, she suddenly noticed him looming in front of her.

“What is the matter?” he asked, taking her hand.

Warmth returned to her veins in a welcome rush. “Nothing. I don’t know my way around, that’s all.”

“It looks different in the day.”

She shook off her trepidation. It was hard to be afraid of anything with Samuel beside her.

T
he castle interior was not as dreadful as Lily had anticipated. The wall torches threw warm shadows toward the oak beams of the great hall and across the heraldic panels below. Whatever Samuel felt as he and Lily trailed Alice from one room to another, he did not reveal. Alice avoided the spiral staircase, which Lily assumed led to the solar.

She glanced at it once. Any damage the old fire had inflicted either was not visible from where she stood or had been repaired. She looked up to see Samuel staring past her with a resigned expression. “I remember playing up there,” he said, pulling her by the arm as if protecting her from some unseen menace. “And not much else.”

Alice took Lily’s other arm. “We had a family of jackdaws that set up residence in the fireplace after everyone left,” she said. “Lawton said it was almost impossible to move them out.”

“That is because jackdaws mate for life,” Samuel said. He lowered his head, his mouth grazing Lily’s ear. “And so, by the way, do St. Aldwyns.”

 

 

 

Two hours later the servants’ cart rumbled over the drawbridge and deposited the staff in the bailey, providing the disruption that Samuel needed to explore by himself. He climbed the spiral staircase and walked straight to the solar. Bittersweet memories of his life before the fire rose up in his mind. The old dogs lying in front of the hearth, muscles twitching. His father begging him to pay attention to the chessboard while his mother read quietly to Alice and his two younger sisters from Perrault’s fairy tales.

He closed the door and walked slowly down the stairs. When he reached the last step, he turned and looked up again. He had made peace with his elusive memories of the fire. He could not bear to think of his family having suffered. But as he told Alice, he knew somehow that they were safe.

One day, when he was old and tired, he would ascend the stairs a final time and find everyone he thought he had lost waiting for him to come up and rest.

Until then the lower world, with its work and play, its problems and joys, took precedence. He could not leave Lily unprotected. He had their story to watch unfold. With grace, it would be a fabulous tale to pass down to their children.

Samuel managed to sneak off after supper to the east gatehouse turret to work. It grieved him that he had lost time traveling to the castle, and lost the comfort of his office at St. Aldwyn House. Still, family came first. At least the watchtower provided seclusion. It also had a walkway on which he could take air and swashbuckle with his characters when he needed exercise.

At last he had found the perfect quiet.

He lit a lamp and sat on an uncomfortable oak settle. No chance of dozing off here. He leafed through the last chapter of his overdue manuscript.
Quiet
, he thought absently.

Several minutes later the castle wolfhounds began howling at heaven only knew what. Samuel got up, papers in hand, and descended the spiral staircase to the walkway. A light glowed in the window of the opposite watchtower. Lily, Alice, and Marie-Elaine had offered to set up a temporary library within to appease his complaints.

Strains of feminine laughter drifted in the stillness. He fought the temptation to join in their coterie. But then he would lose what was left of the night’s work.

Temptation.

Would it ever end?

Probably not, now that Lily was part of his life. His entire life, in truth.

Lily sent Alice and Marie-Elaine off to bed, promising she would not remain in the west watchtower much longer herself. She suspected they knew her true motive was to be close to Samuel. She would not have denied it had she been accused. She needed to be near him. She also enjoyed dipping into the books he had brought from St. Aldwyn House.

How could she resist peeking through the pages of a book entitled
Satan’s Invisible Principles
? Could she discover which, if any, of these works had inspired Lord Anonymous? It would be fun to try. A challenge.

And the west watchtower required a thorough cleaning. Lawton, the yellowed steward, and his gypsy staff of three had maintained the castle as best they could. The keep, where Alice would live, was more than habitable. In time Alice would hire more servants and invite friends to visit.

For now until her wedding, Lily would not relinquish her role as housekeeper. Perhaps, if Samuel continued to create clutter, she would always be tempted to tidy up after him.

She swept a bit. She unpacked most of the books he had brought. After organizing them in what seemed to her a logical fashion, she realized she had wasted her energy. He would have them disordered before breakfast the next morning. There were no shelves in the tower, in any event. She had to make do with a pair of trestle tables and an old trunk.

She sorted through a box of old papers. For a heady moment she thought she’d come across the original draft of the first
Wickbury Tales.
But it was only a collection of letters from his avid readers, most of whom appeared to be female and who confessed their undying affection. At length she sat on a stool to read a well-worn copy of
Don Quixote
.

The opening made her smile and forget the sad ending. Soon she was so caught up in the story that when she detected footsteps on the tower staircase, her heart gave an instinctive leap of fright.