Seduced by a Stranger (3 page)

“Well,” Catherine said brightly, “the colors are quite rich.”

The housekeeper threw back her head and laughed, a harsh sound that echoed through the cavernous space.

“And I suppose that if you cut off a limb you’d say it was fine luck that you still had three attached,” the woman observed in a brittle tone.

Catherine made no show of distress, no indication that the housekeeper’s words and behavior disturbed her in any way. She had faced barbs and nettles aimed at her by a master. This woman’s acrimony barely warranted notice.

She imbued her tone with a shade of hauteur as she asked, “You are the housekeeper, Mrs….?”

“Bell.” The woman’s eyes narrowed.

“Mrs. Bell”—Catherine allowed herself a tight smile—“I thank you for this most unique welcome.” Her tone hardened. “But my journey has been long and I should like to see my friend now.”

The housekeeper opened her mouth, closed it, and pressed her lips tight. She appeared to be engaged in some personal struggle. Then she heaved a sigh and said, “Miss Madeline sleeps poorly, and she is ever agitated during the day. Your being so late has only made it worse. You were expected by midday. She was up and fretting over you with the dawn.” She paused. “Given that it is her habit to remain abed past noon, rising at that hour has only added to her distress.”

Catherine offered no explanation. She owed none. That was a lesson learned and treasured. No longer did she allow herself to rush into stuttered apologies and desperate, convoluted excuses. That part of her was dead. She had murdered it with careful purpose.

“Then I suggest we attend Miss Madeline to straightaway,” she offered crisply.

The housekeeper sniffed, then stalked toward the stairs at the end of the vast hall. Catherine followed. She wondered at the woman’s manner. Perhaps it was mere habit. Mrs. Bell had probably been the housekeeper at the abbey for many years.

They climbed the stairs at the end of the open hall, traversed a dimly lit passage, then took two more flights, the way shadowed and gloomy, for the housekeeper carried neither lamp nor candle. The house was utterly silent. Only the faint shush of their footsteps on the thick carpets disturbed the quiet. A wide passage opened before them. The doors on both sides were shut tight, the atmosphere heavy, the air stale.

“Miss Madeline likes to be private.” Mrs. Bell cast a glance over her shoulder. “But she has determined that you are to be roomed in this wing. You will sleep here.” She gestured to a door on her right that was slightly ajar, revealing a glimpse of canopied bed. “Do you wish to stop for a moment? Perhaps splash water on your face?”

The kindness of the suggestion made Catherine wary. The housekeeper had been unfailingly rude since her arrival and the sudden concern seemed false. Too, she found it odd that Mrs. Bell had fussed about Madeline’s anxious state, yet failed to convey her to her friend with all haste.

“Thank you, no. I should like to see Madeline now.” Having stopped at the inn only a few hours past, Catherine felt no immediate need to find a moment’s privacy.

“As you please.” The housekeeper walked on. At the farthest end of the hallway she stopped before a closed door and rapped sharply. “Miss Madeline?”

There came no reply, but the woman turned the handle and pushed open the paneled door as if an invitation to enter had been issued.

The portal swung inward revealing a deep, cavernous room, quiet and still. An empty church had more noise. There was no light save the embers of a dying fire. Catherine looked past the housekeeper’s shoulder into the gloom, able to see only the heavy velvet draperies that were pulled across the windows and the outlines of a table and two chairs.

“Has Catherine come?” A whisper. A plea.

“I am here,” she said, making her voice gentle though her inclination was to berate Mrs. Bell, march forward, and drag the velvet curtain from across the window to let in what little light remained of the waning day.

Sidling past the housekeeper, Catherine entered the room and turned toward the bed. Madeline was propped on a mountain of white pillows, her pale hair spread in a bright nimbus. The massive, ornate headboard dwarfed her small frame, and Catherine felt a pang of dismay to see the purple shadows beneath her eyes, the near-translucent quality of her skin, the fretful plucking of her fingers at the coverlet.

The air was flavored with the scent of liniment; she could discern the faint traces of turpentine and perhaps mustard. She was torn between the urge to rush to Madeline’s side and the longing to fling open the window and let the wind swirl through the chamber to carry off the stink of sickness and despair.

Madeline’s eyes widened as she saw Catherine and in an effort to draw herself to a more upright posture, she wriggled on the pillows like a worm on a hook, twisting this way then that, and in the end, going nowhere. Then she simply flopped back and lay blinking, her exertions turning her cheeks bright crimson in her pale face. Catherine had seen similar coloring in a woman stricken by consumption. She wondered if that was the malady that laid her friend low, for Madeline had not been forthcoming in her letters other than to say she was in ill health.

Stepping close to the bed, Catherine reached down and took Madeline’s icy hand between both of her own.

“I am certain Mrs. Bell has been most welcoming,” Madeline whispered, turning her face toward the open door where Mrs. Bell stood with her hands folded beneath her bosom. In Madeline’s gaze, Catherine read both wariness and recrimination, and she knew then that Madeline was aware of exactly how the housekeeper had greeted her. She wondered, too, if the woman was less than kind to Madeline in her time of need.

Mrs. Bell drew a deep breath through her nose and backed from the chamber, leaving Catherine and Madeline alone. Madeline stared at the open doorway for a long while, saying nothing, her eyes burning in her pale face, her lips rolled inward and pressed tight together.

“She does not like me,” she offered at last, her gaze darting to Catherine, then back to the empty doorway. “She has never liked me.” The assertion made Madeline sound both petulant and very young. “You were the only one, Catherine. They never liked me. Not any of them. You were my only friend.”

Catherine offered no demur, for the assertion might well be rooted in truth. The girls at Browning had viewed Madeline askance. Even the teachers had regarded her with wary disdain. She was different, odd, unsettling. She asked troubling questions that had no easy answers.

What does it feel like to die?
Time and experience had offered Catherine at least part of the answer.

It felt like pure terror. Icy fear. Desperation and horror that went on and on. Or it felt like escape, freedom, a shedding of pain and suffering. She supposed it depended on the person doing the dying. But that knowledge had come to her with time. She had offered no answers when Madeline had asked so many years ago, for she had had none to give.

Now, she knew far too much of death and dying.

She closed her eyes for a moment, seeking strength. She would not think of that now, would not allow brutal recollections to claw her. Resolutely, she pictured a little black box, pushed the horror and the memories inside, slammed the lid and turned the key.

Opening her eyes, Catherine glanced about for somewhere to sit. There were books everywhere, stacks of them, covered in dust. They were piled on the floor, on the stiff brocade settee, on the round table in the corner. On the two chairs by the table. And everything was dark. The wood-paneled walls. The floor.

In the end, she eased down on the edge of the bed, rubbing Madeline’s hand between her own, trying to warm her icy skin.

“The girls at Browning…they feared me. Hated me,” Madeline whispered, her gaze darting again to the door.

“Browning was long ago, Madeline.” Catherine smoothed Madeline’s lank hair back from her brow. “Things that happened so far in the past cannot hurt you now,” she lied.

There were voices coming from his cousin’s chamber. One was a dreamy whisper, weak and soft. His cousin’s voice. But the mellifluous tone of the second speaker arrested Gabriel St. Aubyn in his path. The sound was modulated and pleasing to the ear, the voice of a woman confident of her words, the diction and enunciation clean and crisp. A decisive individual, if her tone was any indication.

Gabriel paused in the shadowed hallway and simply listened as the woman continued to speak, reassuring Madeline and coaxing her into conversation. Something stirred inside him, a mild curiosity that was so foreign and rare it caught him off guard. He was interested in very little of late, save his own personal demons, and
they
had grown frightfully tedious.

‘Twas time for a change of venue, a trip to London, even for a short while. There were all manner of distractions and entertainments there.

Stepping forward, he paused in the hallway outside the open door. He had an excellent view of the piles of books, the dark draperies, and the dying fire. But not the woman who spoke once more in that perfectly modulated voice.

He shifted a little and saw her then. First, her boot and the pale blue-gray sweep of her skirt. Another small shift and he saw her hand, her arm, and then the whole of her.

She was not at all what he had expected.

From her voice, he had already formed a picture in his mind. A woman cool and fair, tall and thin, ramrod straight in her bearing. But her appearance did not match the image he had conjured.

Tipping his head a bit to the side, he studied her from his shielded place. If she rose from where she sat at the edge of his cousin’s sickbed, she would not be tall and thin and straight. No, not at all. His lips quirked. The top of her head would reach perhaps to his shoulder. In direct opposition to his expectations, she was well curved and in slight disarray, the hem of her skirt a shade darker than the rest, damp and mud splattered. Her hair was coffee brown, pulled back in a simple style. A single long, waving tendril had escaped and slid over her shoulder to curl over her collarbone and along the full curve of her breast.

Interest stirred. He should like to brush that curl from its place. The inclination surprised him.

He recalled then that she was expected. Catherine Weston, his cousin’s childhood friend.

She stopped mid-sentence, as though her words were reined in with a sharp tug. Slowly, she raised her head, and her gaze fixed on the place he stood. Liquid dark eyes, veiled by a thick fringe of lashes that were very long and very straight. Seconds crept past, and her attention did not waver. She knew he was there, watching, though he was certain the shadows cloaked him from view.

“What is it?” Madeline asked, her tone high with fear, her fingers moving restlessly, plumping the coverlet into a lump. She would work herself into a state in a matter of seconds. He knew that from experience.

There was no help for it. He must don the mask of host, bow in greeting to their guest, exchange worthless pleasantries. The opportunity to further observe their visitor was welcome. His cousin’s company was not. For that reason only, he would have preferred to step back, feet silent on the thick carpet, and retreat unnoticed. Such cowardice—for that it was in bold truth—would allow his path and Madeline’s to continue traveling parallel to each other, never crossing. But if he departed now, his cousin would let the flames of her secret terrors rage. She would raise a hue and cry until her fears were assuaged.

And if he left now, he would not hear the wonderful music of Miss Weston’s voice once more.

Gabriel stepped forward, making his presence known. Or, more accurately, allowing Catherine Weston’s eyes to confirm what her other senses had already alerted her to. An interloper. A watcher in the shadows.

She stared at him as he paused in the doorway, her expression utterly blank, her features composed. There was no widening of her eyes at his unannounced appearance, no change in her expression, no movement at all, which led to the realization that she, too, wore a mask. He knew his own well enough to recognize such a thing in another.

Madeline was her usual distraught self, in no condition to offer polite introductions, so he took the task upon himself.

“Gabriel St. Aubyn.” He offered the words crisply, along with a shallow bow, leaving off the “Sir” and “Baronet” he might have used. Having spent so many years believing the appellations would never be his to claim, he had never become comfortable with them when they finally passed to him.

“Catherine Weston,” she replied with her crisp diction, so at odds with her lush, full mouth. Dusky rose lips, forming all those lovely consonants and vowels. Porcelain-pale skin. Brown hair, so dark it appeared black in this poor light. He had the inappropriate urge to thrust his fingers through her neatly pinned hair and set it free to tumble over her shoulders. Such an odd thing. He was not usually so fanciful.

As they watched each other in the dim, quiet room, the silence punctuated by the sound of Madeline’s nervous, panting breaths, Gabriel recognized a primitive part of himself uncoiling in a slow, sinuous stretch. He ran the pad of his thumb along the length of his index finger, though he truly wanted to run it along her full lower lip.

The urge stunned him. He was far closer to the edge of control than he had thought, and he rapidly shifted his plans. He had intended to wait until dawn on the morrow to leave for London, but as he held Catherine Weston’s calm gaze, he recognized his acute awareness of her, the danger of it, and he thought he ought to leave at once.

Because Miss Weston, with her cool gaze and cultured tone, her wide, lush mouth and carefully cultivated veneer, recognized it as well.

And there was danger in that.

Sir Gabriel St. Aubyn stayed for tea.

He had no wish to. Catherine discerned his distaste in the rigid set of his jaw and the way he stayed to the far corner of the room, near the open door, after he rang for the maid and instructed that a tray be brought up.

“Frightful weather,” Catherine murmured to fill the stilted silence as she fluffed Madeline’s pillows and helped her to sit up against them.

Madeline made no reply, but St. Aubyn offered the unusual opinion, “I prefer rain to sun,” in a bland, bored tone. He leaned one shoulder against the paneled wall, arms folded across his chest. His pose was casual, but Catherine read leashed tension in the long, lithe lines of his form. A fencer’s frame. Not heavy and bulky, but muscled nonetheless.

The silence returned, stifling in its weight. Madeline cast repeated, agitated glances in St. Aubyn’s direction, and then quickly looked away if his gaze rested upon her even for an instant. Catherine wondered at the obvious strain between them, wondered, too, if it was perversity that made him inflict his presence on his cousin. She was clearly uncomfortable when he was about.

No, she was more than uncomfortable. She was afraid. Which left Catherine unable to fathom his reasons for remaining. Perhaps he gained pleasure from Madeline’s unease. A disturbing possibility.

“Quite a downpour we had earlier,” she said, with a glance toward the curtained window, and knew at once that she ought not to have bothered.

St. Aubyn pushed off the wall and turned his attention full upon her. “Shall we venture into the exciting territory of the difference between a drizzle and a mist? Or perhaps between a torrent and a downpour?”

“You dislike the weather as a topic of conversation?” Catherine met his gaze. It would take more than a man’s disdain to cow her.

“I dislike conversation without purpose.”

“A great majority of conversation has no purpose other than to acquaint the participants with each other in some small measure and perhaps lead to further intimacy as that acquaintance blossoms and grows.”

His brows rose. “Intimacy, Miss Weston?” His tone was shaded with multilayered nuance.

Catherine kept her expression neutral, refusing to recoil and look away. Let him imply what he would. He knew perfectly well the intent of her statement.

He offered a spare smile, and then crossed to a small table piled high with books. Leaning down, he blew some of the dust away with three short, sharp puffs. Then he deftly removed the stacks of books to the floor.

“You must let the maid in to clean, Madeline,” he chided in a hard tone.

Madeline glanced at him with a quick, frightened shift of her eyes, then resumed her frantic plucking at the coverlet.

“I do not like the servants to poke about my things,” she whispered, her voice so low that Catherine needed to lean in to catch her words. “They watch me and judge me. They wait only for the opportunity to—” She gave a shaky exhalation and said nothing more.

Tension permeated the cousins’ exchange. Catherine wondered if Madeline’s unease was justified. Time enough to ask her later, when St. Aubyn left them and she was more relaxed. Closing her fingers over Madeline’s, Catherine stilled her movements and sent her a reassuring smile, though a tumult of questions danced through her thoughts.

Another stack of books slammed to the floor, and for an instant, Catherine was tempted to laugh at the bizarre nature of the situation. Here she was, ensconced in a dim chamber filled with dusty books and unspoken—but poorly concealed—enmities. Her introduction to Cairncroft Abbey verged on the ridiculous.

“Your trip was pleasant?” St. Aubyn asked, and it took Catherine a moment to understand that his low-voiced query was addressed to her.

“Pointless discourse, sir?”

“Genuine interest,” he replied. His tone was polite, but there was an undercurrent of solicitousness, as though he actually cared whether or not the journey had passed in comfort. His attention and consideration disturbed her far more than his thinly veiled disdain had. He seemed able to don the countenance of sincere regard at will. Such a skill was common in the polite world, but St. Aubyn managed it with uncanny talent. Somehow, he imbued his query with sincerity, though he had already made it plain that such dialogue did not interest him in the slightest.

He was either addled, or an excellent actor.

Had she even tuppence to spare, she would bet it on the latter.

“My journey was most pleasant, thank you.” If one enjoyed the smell of stale sweat and damp rot and a swaying, jolting ride that brought about a steady wave of nausea. “Most pleasant, indeed.”

St. Aubyn dragged the table close to the bed. The pedestal’s feet shushed across the carpet.

“You prevaricate well.” He leaned in and whispered as he passed her, his arm brushing her side, his breath fanning her cheek, his low-voiced observation telling her that he had intended the query as a means of finding out something about her.

Her heart stuttered.

Yes, she did prevaricate well, but she was not pleased that he had noticed, nor that he was so wily as to have discovered it with such ease. She was even less pleased that the scent of his skin lingered after he passed, faintly citrus. Fresh. Quite lovely.

She pressed her lips tight. There could be no doubt that he had deliberately set out to unnerve her, but she was clever enough not to let him see any sign of his success. Had she not been trained by a master…a monster?

She glanced at Madeline to gauge her response to their interplay, but her eyes were closed, her head tipped back on her pillows.

“So you see, Miss Weston,” St. Aubyn said, straightening from his task, “you disprove your own assertion and prove mine. Your prevarication prevents all hope of intimacy.”

He turned and stalked to a chair in the corner and began removing the stack of books from the seat, saving Catherine from the need to reply. As if there was any appropriate reply to that.

With his attention otherwise occupied, Catherine was free to study him from beneath her lashes. He was neither clean-shaven nor bearded, but rather had a disreputable, dark gold stubble glazing his strong jaw.

His hair was damp, falling in an attractive tumble of thick, messy waves, honey-hued and overlong. The front strands fell to his cheekbones, accentuating their high, curved line; the back strands were longer, the ends curling slightly outward at his nape.

His hair is damp
.

A fleeting recollection of the shadow in the woods touched her, and she wondered if it was Gabriel St. Aubyn she had seen upon her arrival at the abbey, if his hair was wet from the rain. If he had stood hidden by the tangle of trunks and limbs and watched her. As she now watched him.

He was beautiful. Alluring.

Distrust flickered and bloomed. In her experience, handsome men were neither pleasant nor good.

He removed a stack of books from a second chair, then dragged both to the table.

“Please,” he said, resting his hands on the back of the chair closer to the bed. The tone of his voice made a queer unease flip in her belly. Not a request. An order. Catherine sat, and St. Aubyn settled his long frame in the seat closest to the door, knees splayed in a posture that was anything but proper.

He blocked the only exit.

Her gaze flashed to his. His eyes were liquid topaz with thick, curled lashes, his nose straight and narrow, his mouth a hard, masculine line, the lower lip slightly fuller than the upper. There was a complete lack of expression in his features.

“You must be talented at cards, Sir Gabriel,” she murmured. “I suspect you never betray your advantage.”

He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “I suspect the same of you, Miss Weston.”

“Touché,” she allowed with a small smile.

A quick glance at Madeline showed that she yet reclined on her pillows with eyes closed. Catherine doubted she was asleep, and wondered if she simply played at slumber as a means to avoid conversation with her cousin. She pondered an appropriate way to ask him to leave, and stumbled upon none.

A faint rattling announced the arrival of a maid carrying a tray laden with a silver teapot, cups, and a plate of small cakes. The girl paused, stared down at the tabletop, still marked with dust, and hesitated with the tray hovering above the surface.

With a sound of impatience, St. Aubyn took the thing from her and set it down himself. She gave a nervous squeak, bobbed a quick curtsy, and departed in quiet haste. Behind her came a footman with a tea caddy, hot water urn, and a heater. After putting these in place, he followed the maid, closing the door behind him with a soft snick, leaving the room gloomy and silent as it had been a moment past.

A crypt would have more warmth and cheer.

St. Aubyn rose with lithe grace, stalked to the door, and flung it open once more. Startled, Catherine wondered what it was about closed doors that distressed him.

“I dislike the scent of old liniment,” he said as he resumed his seat. But she thought that was not the reason he had opened the door. She suspected it was a dislike of the closed door itself. No, not
suspected
…she was certain of it.

No longer feigning slumber, Madeline made a mewling sound of distress and wriggled back on the bed, as far from St. Aubyn as she could. Shadows hugged the corners and fell across her face, accentuating angles and hollows until she appeared a ghostly incarnation of herself, with blue eyes burning in a chalk white face.

Her patience frayed, Catherine gestured toward the single candle that battled the gloom, turned to St. Aubyn, and said, “Oh, do light more candles.”

He blinked.

“Please,” she added as an afterthought. ’Twas a word she despised, but polite conversation could not be had without it.
Ask nicely, my cat. Say please.

She suppressed a shudder at the memory, reminding herself that
he
was gone. Dead. She was free of him now, and she would never again allow herself to be in a position where she would be forced to plead.

St. Aubyn rose from his seat and did as she bid while Madeline made soft sounds of dismay that were merely noise without form. The tiny, freshly lit flames did little to ease the dimness. They only served to make the dust more apparent and lend the stacks of books a faintly menacing cast.

Taking his seat once more, St. Aubyn leaned forward and warmed the silver pot with hot water, his actions competent and sure. He had done this before, and that in itself amazed Catherine, for it was a hostess’s duty to brew the tea, not a host’s. But then, Madeline did not appear up to the task, so perhaps St. Aubyn had had some practice. She found it both unsettling and oddly appealing to watch him make his selection from the tea caddy, discard the water from the pot, and pour fresh boiling water over the leaves.

Catherine made several attempts to engage Madeline in conversation, but they only earned her monosyllabic replies and hasty glances. In the end, they sat in stilted silence as the tea steeped…five minutes…seven…an agony of uncomfortable quiet. And all the while, St. Aubyn’s gaze was fixed upon her. Catherine suspected that he orchestrated this fraught interlude to elicit her response. Perhaps he wished to see her squirm. He would be disappointed, then. Awkward silence was a mere inconvenience when measured against so many other possible trials.

“Shall I pour, Sir Gabriel?” Catherine offered when the tea was steeped, choosing not to wait for him to make the request, preferring to take control of the situation.

Madeline shifted restlessly, casting nervous glances at her cousin from beneath her lashes.

“Call me Gabriel,” he said, his tone cool and bored. But he watched her with a peculiar interest. Not lust. She was familiar enough with that to recognize it. No, it was something else, a puzzled intensity, as though he wanted to study the parts that made up the whole. One side of his mouth lifted in the hint of a smile. “Or St. Aubyn, if you prefer.”

She would
prefer
that he leave her alone with Madeline and take his masculine presence elsewhere. He made her uncomfortable. But she said none of that. Instead, she said in an equally cool, even tone, “I shall take that response as an affirmative.”

She left off the address altogether and grasped the handle of the pot before he could make his preference known one way or the other. She had neither the patience for nor the interest in whatever game he played.

“By all means, do.” St. Aubyn’s straight brows rose and his smile edged a little tighter.

She lifted the tea strainer to hold it atop the china cup, then poured and passed out the tea. Madeline’s hand trembled as she accepted the saucer, but Catherine was glad to see that she managed to steady it and even raise the cup to her lips for a sip.

“Raspberry tart?” she offered.

St. Aubyn stared at the plate of small cakes and tarts, revulsion crossing his features so fleetingly that she thought she must have imagined it.

“No, thank you,” both he and Madeline murmured, their replies so well timed as to overlap in perfect synchrony.

In the silence that followed, a dull thud sounded against the window, a blow from without, hard enough to rattle the pane. Catherine’s head jerked toward the sound.

“Oh, no. Not another,” she exclaimed, setting her cup on the table.

“Another?” St. Aubyn inquired, his attention snared.

“There was a blackbird on the drive, its wings spread wide as though frozen in flight,” Catherine replied as she rose and crossed to the window to draw the heavy draperies aside and peer down to the drive below. Of course, she could see nothing from this distance. “It must have flown hard against the window and fallen. I wonder if the blow we just heard was another such unfortunate creature.”

“No! A bird? A blackbird? Posed in flight?” Madeline’s cup rattled in its saucer. Catherine hastened to return to the bedside and take it from her. “Was it dead?”

“Yes. I mentioned it to Mrs. Bell.” Catherine could not imagine why a bird would cause such anxiety. Her gaze flashed to St. Aubyn. He sat in his stiff-backed chair exactly as he had a moment past, his teacup held in an easy grasp. There was nothing to make her think he regarded them with anything but meager interest. Yet, something…He was too posed, too controlled, his topaz eyes veiled by thick lashes, betraying nothing. It was the very lack of expression that made her wary.