What a Lady Craves (17 page)

Besides, he made you an offer.
She thrust the thought aside. No time to think on his proposal. Not with someone in her bedchamber. She could not hear so much as a breath, but she felt someone’s presence.

She pushed herself upright. Whoever was there might have evaporated into the night, for there was no sound—
none
—outside her own breathing and an eerie silence. And yet …

She curled her fingers about the solid weight of a candlestick, its light long since burned out. What she wouldn’t give for a flint and somewhere to strike it. But as a weapon, the length of forged wrought iron would suffice.

“Show yourself, or I shall scream.” An idle threat, for who would hear her in this remote corner of the manor? Only the girls slept close by. No help from that quarter, and she did not wish to frighten them.

Still no reply. Still no movement.

Brandishing her weapon, she eased herself from between the sheets and stood. The thin cotton of her nightdress fell about her ankles. The cool, humid air raised gooseflesh on her arms, but a trickle of sweat snaked down her spine.

One step. Another. She was nearly to the door. Still no sound within the room. She grabbed the handle, yanked the door open, and ran down the corridor. Safe, for now, but she dared not return to her bedchamber.

But what about the girls? They were her responsibility. She could not leave them alone with an intruder near at hand. No sound from the corridor behind her, but that meant nothing. There was something not quite natural about this presence. Was it even human? And if it wasn’t, what could she do about it?

She shook herself. How unlike her to be caught up in such fancies, and she must make a decision—alert the house or make certain the girls were safe.

The girls must come first.

Hurrying, she padded back the way she came. As she passed her open door, something brushed against her bare ankles. She choked back a screech. A shadow floated down the darkened corridor, low to the ground, like a furry wisp of smoke. Albemarle. Good heavens, had
it only been that blasted cat all this time?

Still, she ought to check on her charges. The door to the nursery was closed. She turned the handle and eased it open. In the faint light, she could just make out two sleeping forms sharing a bed. Two heads, one light, one dark, huddled together on the pillow, calm and collaborative as they never were during the day.

No sense of another soul, feline or otherwise. Backing out of the room, she returned to her quarters. The night remained still and calm. As she slipped beneath the covers, she wondered if she’d imagined the entire episode. Was it even worth mentioning tomorrow?

Henrietta marched into the morning room determined to hold her chin high in front of Alexander. Although she’d spent the remaining hours of the night pondering, she had not finished sifting through the possibilities of his proposal. She ought to turn him down outright, but she could not dismiss the specter of Helena from her thoughts. Banishing the child from her mind with reminders of all the reasons she should refuse Alexander did no good. Something was amiss in the relationship between Helena and her father.

If only Henrietta could put her finger on the specifics. Her gut told her the girl needed a champion, and as her stepmother, Henrietta could be just that person. Ought she enter into something so permanent as a marriage for such a reason?

You really just want Alexander.

Blast that tiny voice at the back of her consciousness. How many times over the past hours had she tried to brush it aside, but it kept poking at her, niggling, demanding attention. Unfortunately, that voice also had a point. She did want Alexander. He’d unearthed feelings she’d long thought buried. He’d pulled longings from deep inside, longings that grew and crumbled her resolve.

When she was eighteen and naïve, he’d roused her desire. Lust, nothing more, or so she’d tried to convince herself in the years since. Now when she was supposedly older and wiser, she no longer knew. Alexander, the feelings he reawakened in her, his children, the past, all the threads tangled in her mind until it rivaled the Gordian knot.

In the end, her act was for nothing. When she entered the room, only Lady Epperley sat at the table.

“What are you doing here?” Lady Epperley addressed her in a tone one might use on
discovering the scullery maid serving a formal dinner. “If you think to bring those children down to breakfast, you know very well Albemarle will not have it.”

Albemarle was installed in her usual place, polishing off a plate of kippers, oblivious to any other proceedings.

“The girls are breaking their fast in the nursery.”

The old lady spread jam across a slice of toast. “And will remain there, I hope.”

“Naturally.” Henrietta took a plate and concentrated on serving herself from the array of offerings. Some eggs would do nicely, along with a bracing cup of tea to fend off the fatigue of her shortened night’s sleep.

“You might as well eat something. Albemarle was just mentioning how you’re so scrawny you’re just as likely to waste away to nothing. He prefers a young lady with some meat on her. And you really ought to do something about your complexion. Those circles under your eyes.”

Henrietta set down her plate with more force than perhaps was necessary. “Yes, well, you may want to ask Albemarle the reason for that.”

“And what is that meant to insinuate?” Lady Epperley’s voice crescendoed to a shocked pitch. “Albemarle would hardly do anything so scandalous as invade a young lady’s chamber.”

Henrietta choked back a reminder that Albemarle was only a cat and thus expected to roam at night. “Nevertheless, I did have a visitor last night.”

“What’s this?” asked a distinctly masculine voice. “Someone came into your bedchamber?”

Damnation. Alexander would choose this moment to come down to breakfast. “It’s nothing,” Henrietta replied without looking up. It
was
nothing. She’d seen the cat. Any lingering sense that the presence in her room last night was much larger than any feline was a result of her overactive imagination. “Only Albemarle.”

“What utter nonsense,” Lady Epperley insisted. “Albemarle was in my apartments the entire time.”

“Begging your pardon, but I saw a cat.” Henrietta preferred to ignore the odd undercurrent that lay behind her employer’s statement. Not that she thought anything untoward was happening—outside an old lady’s faltering memory. If anything, Lady Epperley held fond recollections of a former lover, and preferred to transfer those thoughts and memories onto her pet. “If it wasn’t Albemarle, who was it?”

Alexander studied her closely. “How can you be certain you saw a cat in the dark?”

“Something woke me. I got up to see what it was.” There, that sounded brisk enough. No need to alarm everybody over trifles, when Alexander already sounded suspicious.

The muscles about his eyes tightened. “Whatever had you out of your bed sounds far more serious than a cat.”

“Yet that is all I saw.” She enunciated each syllable carefully, while holding his gaze.

He pressed his lips together before turning and loading a plate. Henrietta hoped that would be the end of the discussion.

But no, he let out a breath and set his plate on the buffet. “A word. In the study.”

He stepped to one side so she might precede him, thus missing the roll of her eyes. Good Lord, she’d be damned if he planned on making a production out of the incident. Incident. Such a dramatic word over nothing. And it was nothing.

Wasn’t it?

In the study, he leaned one hip against the former Lord Epperley’s massive oak desk, arms crossed, expression forbidding. “Who’s watching the girls?”

“Nobody at the moment.” At the hardening of his expression, she raised her chin. “Well, they’re perfectly fine. They’re not so small they need me standing over them while they eat.”

“We’ll see about that.” He turned and rung the bell to summon a footman. “In the meantime, I want you to tell me exactly what happened.”

She folded her hands in front of her and studied them, unable to withstand his scrutiny. He’d never had occasion to eye her with such severity. Fortunate, that, or in another life she may well have forgotten herself and allowed him to ruin her—a near thing, regardless. As it was, her insides were melting under the weight of his gaze.

No, she refused to let him do this to her. “As I’ve already explained, I woke up last night, and it turned out Albemarle was in my bedchamber.”

“A mere cat, one you’re used to, had you out of bed?” Damn him, he was watching her all too closely.

“Yes,” she grated. She would
not
say any more.

“I don’t believe you.” He pushed away from the desk and closed the distance between them. He stood so near, he blocked everything else from her field of vision. “Whether you’d like to admit it or not, I
know
you. I have known you. You’ve never been one to run and hide. You don’t act without reason.”

She pulled her lips into her mouth and bit down on them. “Why are you being so ridiculous over nothing?”

“Because it might be important. If you won’t think of yourself, think of my girls. Something spooked Tilly, and I’ve learned the hard way not to ignore my gut.”

His tone, all too compelling, all too earnest, tugged at her heart. Whatever else might lie between them, she couldn’t refuse to voice her fears, no matter how unfounded.

“When I first woke up, it felt like someone was in there with me. But—”

“Blast it all!” He brushed past her to yank the door open. “Where is the footman?”

“Here, sir.” The pounding of feet accompanied the reply.

“Go up to the nursery and remain there with my daughters until someone comes to relieve you. If you see Satya on your way, bring him with you.”

“Very good, sir.”

“As for you.” He closed the door with a
bang.
“Why did you not alert anyone?”

And by
anyone
he meant
him.
She anticipated that the same way she expected his reaction. Damn her pulse for accelerating at the notion. “I didn’t think anyone would hear me if I screamed, and I did not want to alarm the girls. In the end, it was the cat.”

He crossed to her, hands raised as if to take her by the shoulders, but then he dropped his arms before he made contact. “But what if it wasn’t the cat?”

“What would anyone have wanted? Clearly not me. When I woke up, I felt someone was there, but they never revealed themselves. It was as though they dissolved into the night.” She curled her fingers about her upper arms, as if that might ward off the renewed chill she felt at the memory. Now that Alexander was taking her apprehensions seriously, she’d begun to second-guess herself.

“So you didn’t actually see anybody.”

“I told you,” she insisted. Why could he not take her at her word? “Only the cat.”

“And the girls?”

Thank goodness, a question whose answer she could supply with assurance. “Perfectly fine when I checked on them during the night and this morning.”

Once again, he reached toward her, and once again, he apparently thought better of the action. “You and the girls should not be alone in that part of the house.”

“What choice have we got? That is where the nursery is. We can always alert the servants.”

“We can question them to see if anyone else heard anything. We can alert my aunt and make arrangements for different bedchambers.”

Under any other circumstances, she might have scoffed at such a suggestion. “She cannot
abide the children. She wants me to keep them out from underfoot.”

“That, in itself, is not such a bad idea. If someone is always on hand to keep an eye on them, we’re assured of their safety.” Urgency tinged his words.

She studied his expression for a clue as to why, but in that same moment, he closed himself off. Yet, he was protective of his daughters, perhaps more than simple parental affection explained. After Tilly’s odd reaction yesterday, Alexander had sent them all straight back to the manor, like princesses straight out of a fairy tale, to be locked in a tower.

“Their safety? But why would anyone harm them? They’re perfectly sweet and innocent. And no one came to their room last night.” She paused for breath. “I keep asking myself if I didn’t imagine it all.”

“No.” He shook his head. “No, I don’t think you did. As for why someone would want the girls …” He shook his head again, and a shadow passed over his features. “I do not wish to alarm you, but I owe you the truth. It’s beginning to look very much as if I’m a dangerous person to have around. Too many people close to me have ended up dead.”

Alexander watched closely as the roses faded from Henrietta’s cheeks. And why shouldn’t they? Blast it, if he hadn’t managed to phrase his warning in the most dramatic terms possible. All those years in India, and only a few days in the company of his aunt had been sufficient to pick up her habits.

“You cannot possibly mean …”

In for a penny, in for a pound. “I mean the circumstances under which my wife died were suspect. And before that, her father.” Yet another death had occurred, but far earlier. Too much to connect the three. Pure bad luck—on more than one level—had taken a colleague from them. Harry, his business partner in India, had been Marianne’s intended before his demise, but Harry’s passing had led to Alexander’s marriage. In a sense, it led him to his current circumstances.