Midnight Secrets (14 page)

Rebecca tucked her face into her mother’s lace skirts. I cleared my throat. “Milady, I wondered if I might arrange it with Mrs. Frye to play the piano for Rebecca on occasion. She enjoyed the music so much today and I thought it would be good for her.”

“You can do that?” Prudence’s soft eyes widened with awe.

“I’ve had some musical training, ma’am. Would that be all right?”

She smiled. “Yes, but don’t worry about speaking to Mrs. Frye. I’ll make the request myself and leave the time up for you and her to arrange.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” After a short curtsy, I knelt to Rebecca’s level. “I’ll see you soon, poppet.”

She nodded. Bridget and I left after Prudence and Rebecca disappeared into Prudence’s room. Just before we reached the stairwell, I stopped. “What room did the teacher have, Bridget?”

Bridget frowned at me. “Blimey. What makes you ask?”

“Just curious about her.” I wished now that I hadn’t asked.

“She stayed up here with Miss Prudence, Rebecca and the nurse in the green room across the hall. It faces the ocean. She often would watch it and paint it. Odd that it took her life, ya know.”

“Can…can we see it? Her room?”

Bridget looked about and shrugged before moving down the hall to a set of double doors across from Rebecca’s. “Don’t know what ya expect to see.” She opened the door.

I stepped inside the pastel-hued room, easily picturing Mary sitting in the sun, painting the sea. “Just wanted to see the ocean from this side of the castle,” I whispered to Bridget. Walking to the window, I gazed out over the sand and sea and slipped the pheasant shell from my pocket, running my finger over the carved M.

“We’d best hurry,” Bridget said.

“Yes.” I turned, scanning the room quickly for any sign of Mary in it. Other than the softness of the colors in the room and the darkness of the ocean stretching as far as I could see from the window, there was nothing of Mary there, and a sadness followed me from the room. Stepping into the hall, we found Rebecca’s nurse standing in the doorway, watching us. Bridget nodded to her importantly, “We best finish this errand for Mrs. Frye. It doesn’t appear that the maids have been dusting as well as they should, does it Cassie?” Bridget said, managing to bring a slight smile to my lips at her quick thinking. At least the nurse didn’t challenge our presence in the room.

On our return to the music room, I realized that Rebecca and Prudence’s rooms appeared to be situated directly over the stage portion of the theater. My playing the piano had enticed Rebecca from her bed, and she’d managed to slip past the nurse, who’d most likely fallen asleep and didn’t want to admit it.

Bridget and I had just finished the cleaning and polishing when Mrs. Frye made an appearance and surprisingly declared our chores for the day finished. She’d hired the new scullery maids, and our help wasn’t needed in the kitchen. Bridget went back to our room to rest and I decided to spend my spare moments outside.

The garden drew me the minute I saw the sun sparkling through it. I knew I shouldn’t, but I wandered that way, thinking no one would see me steal a few moments of pleasure there. I seemed to have lost any sense of propriety. Servants didn’t go for strolls in their master’s gardens, but the thought of doing what I shouldn’t didn’t seem as important as it once had, not at the moment. I knew the flowers would have lured Mary into the garden, and I wanted to feel close to her, walk where she might have, and to see what she would have. I had no answers to Mary’s disappearance, only more questions. The lives of those she was involved with revealed themselves to me like a growing fog upon a forbidding moor.

The extravagant wealth, exquisite design, and host of antiquities characterizing the inside of the castle spilled to its grounds. Each section of the formal gardens was a work of art. Queen Anne’s lace and gladiolas trumpeted a marble statue of some goddess, while across hedges sculptured like sea waves and dripping with frothy blue blooms, Poseidon reined in his team of racing sea horses. Seven women danced around what appeared to be Zeus sitting resplendently naked on an elaborate throne. Each of the women were embedded in a beautiful display of seven different patches of delicate flowers and Zeus, of course, had a bed of roses beneath him. I paused a moment, drawn to the bold lines of his sculpted muscles, the impressive breadth of his shoulders, and the authoritative angle of his chin.

Sean came immediately to mind, for his stature and bearing seemed to have similarities with the marble god. Something urged me closer to the statue and it wasn’t until I brushed my fingers along the hard, smooth stone of his thigh that I realized the sculptor continued his larger than life glorification of the Greek god to all areas of Zeus’s anatomy. Heat rushed to my cheeks and I immediately averted my gaze.

My word. Seeing such a sculpture was quite different than the insignificant depictions I’d seen before in art, and tremendously more intrusive than my study of anatomy books had led me to believe.

Last night’s incident in the kitchen with Sean played over in my mind and my gaze riveted back to Zeus’s maleness as a shocking realization burned through me. When I had pushed up from Sean’s lap, he’d been, well, hard all over too. Now that I thought about it, much hotter and more supple than the marble, but just as hard. If the Killdaren was as big as this Zeus was, no wonder I’d hurt him.
Oh my
!

Glancing back over my shoulder toward the castle, I made sure I hadn’t been caught studying Zeus so closely and hurried on. This time I kept closer to the castle and studied the sculpted hedges and the beauty of the flowers, chastising myself for letting my guard down. I’d been so bowled over by my discovery that anyone could have approached and I wouldn’t have known.

Unless I stayed vigilant about what might be lurking around the most innocent of corners, I too could meet with an ill end. My walk in the garden reminded me of Rebecca’s playroom, everything so beautiful, but so alone. A matching note struck inside me. I wanted something I couldn’t put a definition to. I missed my sisters, but I didn’t necessarily want them filling the void with drama or chatter about the next tea party. I didn’t even want Bridget telling me the latest gossip. But I wanted to share the beauty of the garden with another, a man perhaps. I found the notion completely unsettling.

Walking farther, I came to the outcroppings of the round room and studied the building a moment. Were one to erase the effects of the gargoyle and eliminate the shrouded windows, the room with its glassed dome would actually be very nice, although unusual. Lured, I kept walking, wondering what lay around its other side, wondering what lay behind its dark windows.

Dragon’s Cove, home of the Viscount of Blackmoor, lay farther down the coast, beyond the forest. I stared off in that direction, thinking about Sean’s refusal to hear anything his brother had said, and his resignation, that nothing could have changed what had happened between them and what would happen in the future. The death of one or both of them. I shuddered.

For a moment I tried to feel what Sean Killdaren must feel, but I couldn’t. I dearly loved my sisters and couldn’t imagine ever being so angry at them that I wouldn’t listen to them or that I’d wish them dead.

“You look as if you belong here, lass. Though I’d dress you in silk rather than wool, and I’d replace the mob cap with flowers.”

I knew the voice wasn’t Sean’s, still I whipped around and for a moment thought he was there. But as my eyes adjusted, I found the Earl of Dartraven standing in the shadows of a willowy-like tree on the edge the garden. Dressed in London’s best finery, he sported a handsomeness that defied age. Were it not for the gray at his temples and what appeared to now be a great sadness in his blue eyes, he could easily pass for a younger man—one who looked very similar to his sons, I thought.

“I apologize,” I said. “I shouldn’t be here. If I’d known the gardens were in use, I wouldn’t have intruded.”

“No intrusion. I assure you. The Killdarens pride themselves on thwarting ceremony, so having a servant wander the gardens is a nice addition. And a welcome one. I can’t be left alone with my thoughts for too long here. Too many memories.”

“In the garden, you mean?”

“Everywhere in Cornwall, but especially here. This estate belonged to my wife. She turned the castle from a lonely stone manor to a place of incomparable beauty. She had such a lust for life that she transformed everything around her.”

“You miss her.” I couldn’t ignore the sadness in his voice.

“No. Miss is too light a word for the anger I feel.” He walked toward me, his eyes now cold enough to send a chill stabbing through me. “God’s cursed everything I loved. But I showed him. I’ll leave you to enjoy what I can’t anymore.” He nodded as he passed and moved toward the castle.

“Wait.” I whispered. I didn’t want to know, but I had to. “How? How did you show God?”

He turned back, smiling. “I stopped loving.”

He stood there, waiting a moment or two for me to respond, but I didn’t and he left.

I wanted to ask,
How? How can you stop loving?
But my question stuck in my throat, tangled in the emotion there. It didn’t seem as far-fetched as it should that someone might mistake the earl for one of his sons, especially in the moonlight.

The garden’s glory dimmed and I left it for the call of the sea with Mary on my mind. I walked to the front of the castle and crested a dune to gaze down at the churning water kissing the land. I wasn’t alone there. Stuart Frye and Prudence were walking along the shore just a little ahead of me, their arguing voices carrying on the wind.

I started to call out and wave to them, but Stuart stopped and shockingly grabbed Prudence’s shoulders, shaking her. “Do you honestly think it is going to get any better for you and Rebecca by staying here, Pru? You need to go find a better life.”

She pressed against his chest, as if trying to free herself. “Let me go! You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve always had the best of everything and never had to go hungry or cold. I don’t regret for a minute what I did to change my life and I won’t ever let Rebecca do without either. No matter what I have to suffer to assure that. The Killdaren has done right by you and he’s doing right by Rebecca, too.”

“For what?” Stuart shouted. “So she’ll never have a world into which she belongs? She’ll always be the outcast. If you’re hoping she’ll marry a man with wealth, forget it. Bastard children aren’t welcomed in society. I know.”

Prudence slapped him and he released her. She turned and buried her face in her hands, weeping.

“Bloody hell, Pru. I didn’t mean it that way. You know that.” Stuart put his hand on her shoulders but she pulled away from him. He looked up then and saw me, and must have said something to Prudence, because she cried out and ran farther down the beach, away from the castle.

My stomach knotted. I didn’t want to see her going off by herself. All I could think about at that moment was Mary and how she had just disappeared.

Stuart marched toward me. Dressed handsomely in a peasant shirt and brown riding breeches, his skin darkly tanned and his hair windblown by the salty sea breeze, he looked like an angry pirate. I stepped back, sensing that the force of his ire unchecked could be twice that of his brother Jamie’s. No amusement or flirtation lay in his gaze now.

“Miss Cassie, have you ever the occasion to study the writings of Augustine?” His voice was tightly controlled.

I blinked in surprise at the odd subject. “No, I can’t say that I have. I know he wrote a number of things about the church, God and himself, but not in detail. Why?”

“Augustine once asked himself, ‘What was God doing before he created the universe?’ Do you know what he answered?”

I shook my head, fairly certain that I didn’t want to know.

“‘Creating hell for the curious,’” he said. “I’d be very careful if I were you.”

Chapter Eight

I waited on the crest of the dune until I saw Prudence making her way back to the castle then I slipped into the shadows of a vine-covered arbor stretching across a terrace and waited for her to pass. I couldn’t go back without knowing she returned safely. The change in Stuart gave me pause. At least with Jamie, he didn’t hide a dark side beneath smiling eyes. Jamie let you know exactly what he thought and what he felt, even though it was intense and frightening.

As I stood there, the sound of a door opening behind me drew my attention. Turning, I stared wide-eyed as the French doors swung open with no one standing at a threshold. Only black curtains rustled in the breeze.

“Who’s there?”

“Dare you venture where angels fear to tread, wandering rose?”

Sean. Before my feet could run, before my heart could race, before my mind could think, I walked his way. “Come where I can see you?”

“You must come to me, if you dare.”

I stepped closer, parting the black velvet curtain so that I could see into the room. A hand wrapped around my wrist and pulled me inside, firmly, not roughly. The curtain fell into place, drenching the room into darkness. For a long moment I couldn’t see, and I almost panicked at his hold on me. It was as if I was living the dream of my own demise as I disappeared into darkness.

“I hoped I’d see you.” He released my wrist. My eyes adjusted to the dimness to see books, a table and a desk, but not him. My relief at being freed from his all-too-disturbing touch was short lived as he stepped up behind me, his breath warm against my neck, and his body hot behind my back. He didn’t press himself to me. He didn’t need to. Just knowing he was so close set me afire.

“You did?” My voice was but a whisper.

“I dreamed of roses, and couldn’t sleep. Found myself even tasting them, lass.” He inhaled deeply, making the tendrils of hair at my nape tickle me. My toes curled, and I went dizzy from the sensations stealing though me. I closed my eyes and must have either lost my balance or his magnetism gained control of my body, for I fell back against him.

“Careful.” He grasped my shoulders; his hands were hot, burning through my dress all the way to my senses. I tried to straighten and he held me back, pressing the solid fire of his chest to me. “I imagine your skin is much like the petal of a rose; soft, seductive and fragrant, just right to taste, to sink myself into.” He slid his hand to my neck, brushing my hair aside, readying my skin for him. My lips parted as I waited. My heart thundered for I knew his mouth was about to connect with my neck much as a vampire would feast—