After the Kiss (3 page)

However bad a wife Penthia had been, both girls missed their mother, and they did not know how to break through the duke’s reserve to make of him a comfortable father. Nor did Marcus, for that matter.

Remembering Alastair, he met his brother’s gaze and saw the longing there. He yearned to say
They want to love you. Let them love you
. But he could not.

“Regina. Rebecca.”

At the sound of the duke’s stern voice, the girls turned to look at him.

“That is no proper way to greet a guest.”

It was precisely the greeting Marcus could have wished for—and he was no mere guest. But he knew better than to contradict Alastair. He set the girls back on their feet and stood, his heart in his throat, as they curtsied formally and said in unison, “Welcome home, Uncle Marcus.”

“Better,” Alastair pronounced.

Rather than bowing in return, Marcus bent down on one knee and once more gathered them into his arms. “Give me another hug,” he croaked through his
swollen throat. But he had not needed to ask. They already had their arms around him.

When he looked up again, Alastair was gone.

Two days later, Marcus was on his way to Somersville Manor, the Duke of Braddock’s summer home in Sussex. He rode with his batman, Sergeant Griggs, alongside a carriage that contained the twins, but no governess, and without the company of his elder brother.

Alastair had entered the immense bedroom in Marcus’s private wing of Blackthorne Abbey early the day before and stood at the foot of Marcus’s bed—which Henry II, once King of England, had supposedly slept in—waiting for him to awaken.

Marcus’s head was still pounding too loudly from the port he had overindulged in the night before to hear his brother’s footsteps on the carpet, but some subconscious warning soon had him sitting bolt upright on the feather mattress.

The first thing he laid eyes on was the grisly image carved into the footboard. A knight on a rearing horse had cleaved another knight nearly in half with an ax. The agony on the dying knight’s face was terrible to behold.

Nausea rolled in his stomach. He squeezed his eyes shut and grabbed his throbbing head in his hands to keep it from falling off his shoulders.

Alastair cleared his throat.

Marcus carefully opened his eyes again, wincing at the pinpoints of sunlight streaming through the moth-eaten black velvet curtains. “Oh, it’s you.”

“I must travel to London immediately to speak
with my solicitor,” Alastair said. “Some confusion has arisen about my hereditary right to Blackthorne Hall, the most profitable of my Scottish estates.”

Marcus rubbed the sleep from his bleary eyes and tried to focus on Alastair. His brother was already dressed for the journey to London in somber colors that matched his temperament. “This is not a ruse to avoid the Braddock party, is it?” Marcus asked suspiciously.

“Unfortunately, no,” Alastair assured him. “Look for me within the week. Will you take care of the twins for me until I join you?”

“Like they were my own.” Marcus bit his unruly tongue, but it was too late. The damning words were out. Anything more he said would only make the situation worse. And yet he felt the urge to say something. “Alastair—”

“I have no doubt Regina and Rebecca will delight in your company,” Alastair said curtly. He nodded stiffly—an irritated duke’s version of deference—and left the room.

Marcus groaned. What had provoked him to drink so much? What had made him say exactly the wrong thing to his brother, something guaranteed to inflame a never-quite-healed wound?

It must have been the sinister spirits that haunted Blackthorne Abbey. Sometimes he could hear them moving about at night within the stone walls. Not that he would have admitted such a thing, even under torture. There were no such things as ghosts or evil spirits. But it was easy to understand why others believed the Abbey was haunted.

The east wing of the Abbey, which included the
chapel, had been ravaged in some past century, and only a few rooms were still used. The rest was decaying, the crumbling walls damp and moldy the whole year round. Curtains put up by some recent generation of Blackthornes were steadily rotting, revealing glimpses of the mullioned windows.

Once upon a time, Marcus had planned to make extensive renovations. But that was before Penthia had leveled her accusations.

Now he rarely stayed for more than a night or two at Blackthorne Abbey. When he did, he needed alcohol to dull his senses so he could sleep. He told himself it was the macabre carving on the bedstead that kept him awake. And the ghosts in the walls. But he knew it was memories of Penthia coming to this room. To this bed.

Marcus reached for the bottle of port on the side table. He needed something to take the foul taste from his mouth. And to give him the courage to face two energetic little girls who were bound to chatter like squirrels the whole way to Sussex. To be truthful, he would enjoy conversing with the twins and making them laugh—once his headache had passed. Until then, thank God, their governess would have the care of them.

He should have known it would not be that easy.

The twins’ governess, Miss Balderdish, had exited the traveling carriage immediately after entering it when Reggie’s garter snake slithered across the toe of her polished black shoe. She had refused to return even when Marcus held the snake before her in his hands, proving it no longer inhabited the carriage.

“It is perfectly safe, Miss Balderdish. You may get back in now.”

Miss Balderdish quivered in place on the cobblestones at the front door to Blackthorne Abbey. “There is no telling what else those children may have hidden among the seats,” the pasty-faced woman steadfastly maintained. “You will have to find someone else to stay shut up with the two of them in such close quarters. It shall not be me!”

Reggie had not looked the least bit repentant.

“Really, Uncle Marcus,” Becky said in her best grown-up voice. “Such a to-do over a harmless little snake.”

“What else have you got in there?” he said.

Two cherubic faces smiled out at him. “Nothing.”

He leaned his head inside the carriage. A mewling sound issued from a leather traveling case snuggled close at Reggie’s side, and something was scratching inside a wicker basket at Becky’s feet. He opened his mouth and shut it again. He really did not want to know.

Marcus turned to his batman, who stood holding the reins of both men’s horses, and said, “You are not afraid of snakes, are you, Sergeant Griggs?”

“Not me, Captain.”

“Find a place for this, will you?” He handed the snake to Griggs. Griggs did not mind, but the two horses took serious exception to the presence of the snake.

Marcus’s Thoroughbred gelding tore free and bolted, while Griggs’s mount reared and trampled a lovely bed of daffodils that graced the cobblestone drive.

It took only half an hour to recover the Thoroughbred. It would take another growing season to restore the daffodils.

When they were ready to leave at last, Marcus stood at the carriage door and said, “I suppose you two can manage without a governess for the afternoon’s journey, since you have me and Sergeant Griggs.” He was certain there would be more female help available once they arrived where they were going. “But I expect both of you to be on your best behavior.”

“We will be, Uncle Marcus,” they chorused happily.

He should have known better than to believe them.

They stopped no less than four times before the first change of horses, twice for lemonade and twice for the necessary. On the fourth stop, at the White Ball Inn, a bare fifteen miles from Blackthorne Abbey, the contents of the leather bag—a highly agitated orange, black, and white cat—escaped into the barn.

Reggie stubbornly refused to get back into the carriage until the missing cat was located. Becky sided with her sister.

“We will have the innkeeper find your cat and keep her here until we can return for her,” Marcus cajoled in an attempt to finish the never-ending journey.

“You cannot really intend to abandon Frances, Uncle Marcus,” Becky said. “What if it were me or Reggie who was lost. You would not continue the journey until we were found, would you?”

“That would be a different matter entirely.”

“You cannot love us more than we love Frances,” Becky said.

Marcus shot his batman a beseeching look.

Griggs grinned and shrugged. “She has a point, Captain.”

“Frances is in the family way,” Reggie informed him. “What if she needs us?”

Much to Marcus’s chagrin, by the time they found Frances in the far reaches of the stable, the scroungy calico cat had already delivered one solid black kitten and another that was orange with a white nose and three white paws. It was clearly impossible to remove the cat from her nest before she was finished delivering.

Marcus was not quite certain he should have allowed the two girls to watch the birthing, but they squatted down inelegantly, but reverently, in the straw at Frances’s side to observe. He had no choice but to join them.

By then, a trip that should have taken an afternoon had stretched into something more. Marcus stood to leave, with the thought of securing rooms for the night at the inn, but Becky grasped his hand and pulled him back down beside her.

“Frances might need you, Uncle Marcus.”

He was not sure exactly how he could have been of any earthly help to a pregnant cat, but Becky’s grip on his hand precluded leaving.

“Griggs!” he called.

The sergeant appeared at his side with an ale in hand and hung a lantern on the stall where the cat had settled. The circular yellow glow kept the growing dark at bay. “I got us rooms for the night, Captain,
and arranged to stable the horses. Figured we wouldn’t be leavin’ right away.”

“You read my mind, Griggs. The ladies will be needing some supper, too.”

“A private dining room will be ready and waitin’ when the birthin’s done,” Griggs assured him before leaving them alone.

“Do you think there are any more babies inside her?” Reggie asked when Frances had finished cleaning off the second kitten.

Marcus watched the cat’s stomach ripple. “Possibly. We will have to wait and see.”

Nothing about the following births escaped the girls’ notice. Marcus found himself guessing at the answers to questions he knew some woman should be answering for them. But they had no mother, and were currently without a proper female companion. Griggs had retired to the other end of the stable to enjoy his mug of ale in peace, and Alastair was in London. There was no one left but him.

Becky turned a curious face up to him. “Is that how we were born?”

“Human babies come out of their mothers in essentially the same way,” he managed to say.

He waited for another question, like “How do they get inside there in the first place?” But he was spared that challenge.

At last, three more blind, mewling kittens had joined the first two in the straw, and Frances appeared to be reclining comfortably with her new family.

“We should let Frances rest now,” he said. “Griggs has arranged for us to have dinner inside.”

“We could not possibly leave Frances now,” Reggie
said, appalled at his suggestion. “What if a dog should come around to chase her? Frances and her kittens need us more than ever to protect them.”

“Reggie is right, Uncle Marcus,” Becky said. “We have a duty to protect those weaker than ourselves.”

He could not argue with that,

In the end, Marcus sent Griggs to fetch them all meat pasties and lemonade, and they had a picnic in the stall. It was no trouble for him to sleep on a bed of straw, but he was surprised that the twins insisted upon it. Warm blankets from the inn provided a coverlet, and after much shifting and arranging, the twins made a nest for themselves as comfortable as the one Frances had made for her kittens.

He listened to their prayers—God blessed an unending litany of relatives, servants, and animals—and kissed them each good night. They snuggled together instinctively to keep warm. Their faces and hands were dirty, their dresses wrinkled, but they smiled up at him as though life could not be more perfect.

He moved the lantern to the far side of the stall, and it was not long—he did not say “Go to sleep now” more than twice or thrice—before he heard the deep and even breathing that signaled their slumber.

Marcus sat with his back braced against the stall, his booted feet stretched out in front of him on the straw. He worked out a crick in his shoulder and rubbed at an old wound on his thigh.

It had been rash, maybe even reckless, he realized, to set out with two young girls and no female companion. Look what had happened. No governess would have let them get away with watching a scruffy, tattered-eared cat give birth. No governess would
have allowed them to eat meat pasties in the barn, or sleep on blankets in the straw.

Marcus smiled. He was glad he was there.

He closed his eyes, dozing as though it were the eve of battle, listening for the slightest sound that might mean danger to those for whom he stood guard.

He was instantly awake when the barn door creaked open, but he mistook completely where he was. This safe barn in England had become a bullet-pocked refuge in Spain, and the stealth of whoever had opened the door made him certain it was a French soldier come to kill him.

Marcus sat perfectly still, so as not to rustle the straw, but reached for a blade he carried in his boot, ready to meet the enemy.

A
t the advanced age of seventeen and a half, Miss Elizabeth Sheringham was running away from home. It was the only solution she could find to an intolerable situation. Her cousin Nigel, Earl of Ravenwood, with whom she had lived since the death of her father two years before, had made advances tonight that left no doubt as to his ignoble intentions. She was certain Nigel’s wife, Agnes, would be gravely disappointed if she knew of them.

Eliza had broken a pottery vase on Nigel’s head in the conservatory and made her escape. Her cousin was bound to be furious when he recovered, but she would not be there to hear him ranting.