Suzanne Robinson (22 page)

“Indeed,” Lady Cecilia said as she gave him another long inspection. “Your appearance is most satisfactory and almost compensates for your low birth, Sir Lucas. No, there is no need to thank me.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Oh, I am fatigued. Miss Dane, you may show me to my rooms. Come, Mrs. Portloe. We must see that Oswald is settled. Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, Oswald requires a special diet. Filet, cooked until barely pink, for his breakfast. He likes a good stew or perhaps some roast for luncheon, and at dinner he insists upon mutton or game. And he does so like his little desserts. I will give you menus and recipes.”

Lady Cecilia swept out of the room with Mrs. Portloe and Prim in her wake. Luke could hear her comments to Prim as they left. “You will tell Mrs. Hawthorne about Oswald’s chills, won’t you, Miss Dane? He likes a carriage ride three times a day, but he must wear his little sweaters and a coat in chilly weather like this.”

When they were gone, he sank into the chair Lady Cecilia had just vacated and stared into the fire. His mother was the first to speak.

“Oh, dear, Luke. She is very fine, don’t you know.”

Tusser grunted. “I suppose she’s a proper fine lady,
being the daughter of an earl, Mother. Very grand. With a jewel case and a little dog on a cushion. Never seen a little dog on a cushion before.”

Luke didn’t respond. He was too busy adjusting his thoughts, for until now, he hadn’t realized how much he’d expected Lady Cecilia to be like Miss Primrose Victoria Dane.

The day after Lady Cecilia arrived, Prim paced the floorboards of the Old Library, her skirts sweeping up dust as they swayed and brushed the polished wood. Lady Cecilia had been an astonishment. The woman was insufferable! Prim had expected Luke to throw her out of the castle yesterday after she’d complained that the gentle sea-green and white colors of her rooms made her bilious. But no, he’d offered to repaint. The fool.

It made her ill to watch them together. Lady Cecilia vacillated between treating everyone including her host with grand condescension, and ogling Luke. Meanwhile Luke smiled at her and agreed with everything she said as if she were a high priestess or worse, royalty. Disgusting.

Prim stalked by the windows and glanced out to
see Luke and Lady Cecilia parade across the lawn in the direction of the shell keep. “Huh!”

Lady Cecilia had taken a liking to Prim, for no explainable reason, since Prim hadn’t said more than ten sentences to her.

“She likes me because I’m quiet. More opportunity for her to pontificate.”

Prim’s mouth fell open when Luke paused before the shell keep door, bowed over Lady Cecilia’s hand and kissed it. “Obsequious wretch. There’s no need for such overdone gallantry. Men are such fools. They see a fine figure and pretty face and become witless sycophants.”

Spinning away from the sight, Prim bit her lower lip and dashed a tear from her cheek. “Primrose Dane, you will not cry again. He wants a great lady for a wife, not some bookish spinster.”

She forced herself to keep her back turned to the window. Taking several determined steps away from it, she was distracted from her misery when the heel of her boot got caught between two floorboards. She pulled free and stepped back to examine the wood.

A small carpet usually covered this area, but it had slipped aside, revealing a misalignment of the boards. Prim bent and pulled the carpet toward the uneven spot, but stopped when she noticed a gap that seemed to form a square in the floor. Shoving the carpet under a nearby table, Prim knelt and pressed her hand on the square section. Nothing happened.

She retrieved a letter opener from one of the tables and slipped it into the gap. The section of boards came up as one piece to reveal a cavity in the floor.
Inside lay a wooden box. She was able to pick it up if she used both hands. Once she had set the box on the floor, she examined it.

The box was of carved mahogany, decorated with swirls, complicated knotwork, and abstract designs that she recognized as the distinctive style of artists in seventh-century Ireland. Prim carefully opened the box to find a book with a deteriorating cover lying inside. She lifted it and placed it beside the box. Using both hands, she opened the book to reveal a page of illumination the likes of which she’d only read about.

It was a carpet page, a page the whole of which had been decorated with illumination. The design, in lemon yellow, red, and deep copper green, was in the same style as the box—chevrons, diamond spirals, swirls, and knotwork all woven intricately with animal and bird motifs. The artistry was so delicate that Prim felt its beauty as a physical reaction. She caught her breath and felt a chill run through her body. She turned page after page written in Irish half-uncials.

This was one of a rare type of early book, the insular manuscripts of which the
Book of Kells
was the finest example, until now. Prim was certain that this manuscript would rival even that famous work. With great care she replaced the book in the box and closed the lid. Her hands trembled as she rose and set the box on a table. Prim was just pulling the carpet over the secret compartment in the floor when the door opened and she heard a most unwelcome voice, like the blare of a hunting horn.

“Are you certain she is in here? What an odd place in which to take one’s leisure.”

“Drat,” Prim muttered.

“Oh, Miss Dane,” Lady Cecilia trumpeted as she swept into the library. “Dear Sir Lucas feels it his duty to show me all over the castle, even that tedious library, and here I find you in yet another one. Imagine, two libraries.”

Lady Cecilia made a progress around the room, hardly glancing at the books, while Luke followed in her wake. “I told dear Sir Lucas that a complete tour wasn’t necessary, especially the library. After all, one book is much like another. Don’t you agree, Miss Dane?”

Prim sputtered, unable to form a coherent sentence. She mastered herself as Lady Cecilia completed her progress and came to rest in front of her.

“Are you trying to be amusing,” Prim asked quietly, “or are you simply stup—”

“Ha!”

Prim jumped at Luke’s interruption.

“You’re so perceptive, Miss Dane. It’s true that Lady Cecilia has a great gift of amusing conversation.”

Luke had settled beside his fiancée. He bowed in tribute to Lady Cecilia and avoided looking at Prim, who was staring at him and tapping her foot. Prim nearly snorted in disgust when Lady Cecilia placed her hand on Luke’s arm and smirked at him in response to the compliment. However, she had herself under control by the time Cecilia turned to her.

“Miss Dane, dear Sir Lucas suggested that we apply to you for a list of the places most congenial for me to see. Please join us.”

“I can recommend the Tudor Wing,” Prim said.
“Unfortunately I have a great deal of work to do and will be unable to join you.”

“Oh, fah, Miss Dane. You’re such a serious little thing.” Lady Cecilia’s glance took in the dust on Prim’s skirt where she’d knelt on the floor and the wisps escaping from the coil of hair at the nape of her neck. “I insist you come with us, and a guest’s wishes are always paramount.”

Prim was herded out of the library in spite of her protests, and soon she found herself pacing alongside Lady Cecilia. The woman linked arms with her and began a commentary on all the sights of the castle. Prim began to feel the anxiety Lady Cecilia’s perpetual discourse usually provoked. Useless to expect Luke to intervene in the deluge of noise, for he walked ahead, leading the way to the Tudor Wing, which lay between the family quarters and the Plantagenet Tower.

“Of course,” Lady Cecilia called in her French horn tones, “if I accept your offer, dear Sir Lucas, we will be spending the Season in London.”

Luke’s pace slowed and he gave his fiancée a distracted glance. “What, the whole Season?”

Lady Cecilia uttered a trill of laughter.

“Of course the whole Season, so we will have to have a new house there. One worthy of my position in Society.”

They had just entered a long gallery paneled in dark wood and filled with heavy Elizabethan furniture. Lady Cecilia surveyed the walls, which were covered with paintings of the families of previous
owners. Prim caught sight of a few Holbeins and miniatures by Nicholas Hilliard.

“Oh, dear,” Lady Cecilia said. “All these musty paintings will have to go, and this ugly old furniture with them.”

Speechless, Prim looked away until she felt a sudden pressure on her arm.

“I know, Miss Dane. I shall turn that Old Library into a billiard room. It will be perfect for gentlemen to smoke and play in after dinner. What do you think?”

Prim pulled her arm free. “I think—”

“Ah!” Lady Cecilia clapped her hands. “And the New Library will make a perfect sitting room for me.”

“But the books,” Prim began.

“Oh, don’t worry about them. They can be sold in lots.”

Insults threatened to burst from her lips, but Prim found herself unable to utter them because fury had paralyzed her. She could only stare at the woman in horror. No longer listening to Lady Cecilia’s interminable list of requirements for her consent to the marriage, Prim began to consider that there were some people who deserved to be kicked in the …

“Lady Cecilia,” Luke called from one of the windows opposite the paintings. “Isn’t that Oswald I see going out the castle gate?”

“What?” Lady Cecilia rushed over to the window. “I don’t see him.”

“I’m sure it was Oswald. He was scampering under the portcullis.”

“Oh, no.” Lady Cecilia hurried out of the gallery.
“Pray excuse me, but walking isn’t good for Oswald. He gets breathless.” She vanished, but her voice could be heard throughout the Tudor Wing, blaring. “Turnpenny! Turnpenny, come here at once.”

Luke walked to the door and closed it. He turned and grinned at Prim.

“You may thank me for preventing you from making a most unseemly remark to Lady Cecilia.”

“Me? I’m not the one who is unseemly. That woman is—is—I haven’t the words.”

“See, I saved you from being unladylike.”

Prim’s foot was tapping again. She allowed her gaze to settle on Luke’s pleased expression. Clasping her hands in front of her, she prayed for patience. She thought of how he had bowed and scraped before that woman. How he’d listened to her offensive suggestions and her ridiculous requirements.

“How could you fawn over that awful woman!”

Luke’s grin vanished. “Fawn? Fawn?” He stalked over to her. “You were the one who said for me to be agreeable. You were the one who said never contradict a lady. Did you or did you not tell me not to contradict Lady Cecilia?”

“About inconsequential things,” Prim said stiffly. “I didn’t mean for you to allow her to trod upon you like a muddy rug.”

“Oy! You watch your tongue Miss Primrose blighted Dane. You was the one who kept telling me to be mannerly and do what Lady Cecilia wanted. I been doing my part, and now you give me a thrashing.”

Prim was beyond rage at this man who seemed to
have lost his common sense along with his heart in the presence of the undeserving Lady Cecilia. “Having manners doesn’t imply becoming an obsequious, groveling simpleton.”

“Here, what’s this ‘obsequious’? I haven’t got my dictionary book.”

“It means cringingly subservient.”

Without warning Luke took a step that put him very close to her. Then he said quietly, “Why, Primmy, you’re jealous.”

She heard that quiet, menacing note in his voice. Nightshade was back.

“I beg your pardon?” Prim felt herself grow hot, then cold.

Nightshade lowered his chin and lifted his gaze to her burning face. The smoke from hell’s fires couldn’t have been as black as those eyes. In his expression was written a contract with pagans and demons. Prim found it hard not to back down from that stare. She was saved when he laughed softly and shook his head.

“Oh, it’s all right. Choke me dead, but I never thought to see it.”

“I am not jealous.” Her voice boomed down the long gallery and caused Luke to chuckle again.

“Stop laughing!”

He succeeded in complying, only to break out in a ruffian’s grin that made Prim want to slap him. Was he laughing at her for being in love with him?
Propriety, think of propriety
. She composed her features before she spoke.

“You have mistaken my outrage at that woman’s
behavior and my concern for your excesses, Sir Lucas.”

“What do you mean?”

Forcing indifference into her tone, Prim continued. “I mean that I was merely concerned that you have taken civility too far. I was trying to caution you that in doing so you are endangering that respect and acknowledgment of your own distinction which should be accorded you by everyone, including Lady Cecilia.”

Luke didn’t answer at once. He clasped his hands behind his back and walked away from her to stand studying a portrait of Mary Tudor.

“You mean you’re not jealous.”

“My temper was tried by that woman’s stupidity, Sir Lucas. That is the whole of it, and I hope I may be pardoned for being unable to support the affectations of a person of so little understanding and sensitivity.”

“Oh?” He looked at her with Nightshade’s glittering derision. “But you think she suits me all right.”