Suzanne Robinson (16 page)

“Not another lesson in etiquette, Sir Lucas, until I have your word.”

She was dreaming of a ball. Acheson had rescued her from the shame of standing alone and unpartnered. They sailed around the hot ballroom, turning, turning, turning. Couples circled around them, the skirts of the women swishing on the polished floor. The heat and the flickering light from the chandeliers made her dizzy.

Suddenly Acheson was gone, and Montrose was dancing with her. Prim tried to see where Acheson had gone, but she couldn’t. Montrose spun her around the room while talking about books. His voice droned on, making her ill. She wanted to stop dancing, but Montrose turned into Harcourt, who whisked her around with renewed energy. They began to spin wildly, careless of the other dancers until they bumped
into a couple. The woman turned, revealing a bloodied gown and a knife in her chest. She gave Prim an unblinking stare.

Prim screamed; her partner grasped her arm. It was him, the murderer! The dead woman’s partner began to laugh as Prim backed away from the killer and his victim. The laughter grew loud and mean. Suddenly it was Luke Hawthorne, laughing so loud she had to cover her ears. Prim woke wondering if she had really screamed or if the sound she’d heard coming from her mouth had only been in her dream.

Prim glanced through the open door of the drawing room to make sure no one was passing. Then she scurried across the Aubusson carpet, climbed onto the window seat, and peered at Luke Hawthorne across the expanse of green lawn. He paused on his way to the shell keep to speak with the head gardener. As he did each day after they finished their lessons in manners and etiquette, he was attending to his business affairs. Prim was going to follow him.

Three days ago, after suffering from bad dreams and indecision, she’d decided not to keep her agreement with Sir Lucas. She’d been at the castle only a little over a week, but the kiss had forced the decision. No one had ever kissed her like that. He’d done it so slowly, and with his entire mouth, his entire body, and she had felt something quite amazing and entirely wicked. That was when she knew it was Nightshade kissing her.

With all her other troubles, she couldn’t remain in the same house with a Nightshade who had kissed her, even if that house was a labyrinth of a castle. After that kiss, she could feel his presence even if he was in the barbican and she was almost a quarter of a mile away in the most distant tower. No, that wasn’t honest. Since the kiss, she had
wanted
to feel his presence, no matter where he was.

That was why she had to follow him and discover the hiding place of the book of hours. Prim couldn’t bear leaving the precious little volume behind. She had to get it, break her word, and leave for America at once. Before leaving she would return the book to her brother. Then she would somehow get hold of and sell her modest jewelry to obtain the money for passage. It would mean arriving with less to begin her new life, but she had to escape. For she was very much afraid she was in love with Luke Hawthorne. No, she was afraid she was in love with Nightshade.

Prim ducked aside as Luke and the gardener turned to gaze in her direction. When the two separated, she watched her host continue on his way to the shell keep. She had been following him each day after the lessons. Their meetings had become stiff and guarded, but how else was she to maintain a proper distance between them? He certainly hadn’t wanted to. Indeed, he’d been horribly rude when she insisted he promise to use proper decorum—until she had reminded him of his fiancée.

After that, he had behaved. A few minutes ago their lessons had been interrupted by an unexpected visitor. Sir Lucas had received his guest in the room next to
the Duke’s Drawing Room, pulling the door shut between the two chambers. Prim didn’t hesitate to rush to the door as soon as he had disappeared.

Quietly opening it a crack, she spied the visitor. A constable! Sir Lucas was handing him a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. He ushered the policeman outside, and Prim was sitting in her customary chair by the fireplace, fuming, when he returned to the drawing room.

“Sorry for the delay, Miss Dane,” he said in that artificial, formal manner he had taken to employing since she’d insisted upon the new regime of propriety. “Do forgive me.”

“I shan’t,” she snapped. “You’re a vile wretch without principles.”

Now he drew himself up in what was becoming his most irritating habit—imitating her proper manner of speech. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’ve spoken to the authorities about my situation,” she said. “Don’t bother to deny it. I saw the constable.”

Sir Lucas looked down his nose at her. “Have you been spying on me, Miss Dane? How common.”

“Don’t berate me when you’ve already broken your word, sir.”

Shoulders square, nose tipped in the air, he looked down at her with an excellent copy of her own sneer. “I haven’t broken my word. The constable was here on a matter unrelated to you, difficult as that may be for you to imagine.”

His decorum and steady, unflustered manner began to make her feel unsure. Prim rose and faced him.
“What possible reason could you have to speak to a constable?”

“I decline to tell you,” he said with a mocking smile.

Prim colored and retorted, “Then you confirm my suspicions, and I consider our arrangement null. I shall leave as soon as possible.”

“Oy! Now you see here, Miss Primrose blighted Dane. You take yourself off, and you won’t live a week.”

“Then tell me what you said to the constable.”

“You’re a precious sly and deceitful creature.”

“Tell me.”

“Oh, all right, damn you. It was about Featherstone.”

Prim could only stare at him.

Sir Lucas looked away from her, and to her consternation, she could see a flush rising in his cheeks. What could embarrass a man as hardened and dangerous as he? When he mumbled something, she shook her head.

“What did you say?”

He scowled at her. “I said Featherstones have served at Castle Beaufort near as long as it’s been here.”

“I fail to see—”

“I’m trying to tell you, damn it.” He cleared his throat. “When I bought the castle, most of the servants was like Mrs. Snow, but Featherstone, he told them off. And he helped me, you know, understand the way of things. Still does. When I go to dinners and such, he tells me all about the people I’m going
to meet. When I visit, he comes with me as my valet. Helps me dress right and such.”

“What does this have to do with the constable?”

“Well, Featherstone is a right proper butler and valet. Even you said so.” He hesitated, as if uncertain of her response.

“Yes.”

“Yes, well, he’s an amazing bloke, is Featherstone, but he’s got one tiny little fault. He takes things.”

“Do you mean he’s a thief?” she asked in disbelief.

“Not a thief, really. If he was a thief, he’d be a terrible bad one. Featherstone takes things, but not for blunt. He just takes them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He can’t keep from it. It’s like those that can’t stop drinking. Featherstone can’t stop taking trinkets. Last month I went on a visit, and when we came home, he’d filched a silver cow creamer. He didn’t want to sell it for a profit. He didn’t want the thing at all, really. He just had to take it.”

“Dear God,” Prim said. “Was that what you gave to the constable?”

Luke fell to studying the red damask wallpaper. “He’ll see to it that it’s returned with my apologies. I got an arrangement with the county folk. Most of them are right understanding, probably because of my being the new owner of the castle.”

“Am I to understand, Sir Lucas, that you go about the countryside returning articles your servant has purloined and apologizing for him?”

“Featherstone’s a fine bloke,” came the response. “What do you want me to do, turn him over to the
traps? He’s always sorry, and he tries not to do it. It’s a terrible burden to him, this thieving.”

By this time Prim was smiling at him. “And I would be willing to guess that you’d hate it if Mr. Badger or that Maudie woman heard of your kindness.”

“Huh.”

“Your manner is furtive, Sir Lucas.”

He left off staring at the wallpaper, tugged on the cuffs of his frock coat sleeves, and glared at her. “You’re a vexation, did you know that, Miss Dane? And now, I decline to discuss this subject further.”

Still kneeling in the window seat, Prim found that she was smiling at his embarrassment about being exposed in an act of kindness. Then she stopped smiling. What was she doing crouching here, lapsing into bemused thoughts of a man with the heart of a devil and the ruthlessness of a—a brigand?

She had to keep her mind on her goal—finding the book of hours. Where had Luke gone? She gazed outside again just in time to see him speaking with a workman atop a hay wagon. Luke stepped away, and the workman continued on his way to the stables. Prim waited until Luke went into the shell keep. Hurrying out of the drawing room, she retrieved the mantle she’d placed in a cupboard near the great hall and went after her host.

This was the difficult part, following him without seeming to. She strolled slowly along the gravel drive, passing grooms, footmen, and maids on their various errands. A man was hauling a rake across the gravel to create a more even surface. She paused to admire a
spray of roses in a bed beneath the window she’d been using. Eventually her indirect route took her near the keep. She mounted the stairs and ducked inside when she thought no one was looking.

The shell keep was a Norman tower with walls over eight feet thick surrounding a central courtyard. On a high mound, it dominated the castle with its soaring height and sheer stone walls. Prim hugged the wall and descended the stairs that led to the courtyard. Sunlight beamed through at the end of the staircase, and she was careful not to expose herself as she reached the opening. All she saw, however, was another green carpet of grass upon which had been placed a new fountain. Water splashed from an urn held by a woman in a Grecian robe. Around the fountain lay newly dug beds of soil, evidently waiting for spring planting.

Luke was nowhere to be seen, but as she studied the sheer wall faces that looked down on the courtyard, she heard the sound of a boot on stone. Prim ducked back up the stairs and turned a corner. The keep’s walls were designed as two circles, one within the other, and the space between formed rooms.

Prim hurried past what had once been the kitchen and mounted stairs that would take her to the top of the keep. She found the going hard, for the stairs hadn’t been meant for a lady in a crinoline and corset. She had to pick up her skirts and press them to make them smaller while trying to keep up with the footfalls that told her where Luke was. He stopped only once, and Prim fell back against the wall, her chest heaving
against the confines of the binding? that kept her from taking deep breaths. She was almost at the top.

What was that sound? He was coming back down already! Prim shoved away from the wall. Her crinoline flew up past her head, and she had to battle it down and scramble into an alcove on the landing below. She barely made it before Luke walked past her without stopping. Craning her neck, she saw that he had nothing in his hands.

As soon as he was gone, Prim ran awkwardly upstairs to find an open door at the top landing. She ducked inside, but all that greeted her was a bare room fitted with an arrow slit. She looked outside and saw Luke descend the exterior stairs and head to a door in the wall between the Plantagenet and the Lion Tower.

Still breathless, Prim ran downstairs, and had to stop a moment before she could leave the shell keep with proper decorum. Once inside the defensive wall, she saw a swaying glow in the distance that meant someone was carrying a lantern. She followed it through what had once been soldiers’ quarters to a winding stair inside the Lion Tower. There she heard footsteps again. Reluctantly, she mastered her skirts again and trudged up the narrow, worn stone steps.

This time she passed a series of chambers that had managed to survive intact. Each was dimly lit by narrow slits and windows hardly more expansive. The lowest held remnants of stones once used for a trebuchet siege engine. The next contained rotting wood timbers, the remains of the trebuchet. By now Prim was perspiring, and gulped in air as if she were
suffocating. On the next floor she found a room empty except for a few ancient crossbows hanging from pegs in the walls.