Beauty and the Duke Page 20

  “Yes.”

  Beast bumped his legs. Erik had been tripping over the cat since Christine’s arrival at Sedgwick. He lifted the one-eyed tom. He’d never had a pet. Wasn’t sure what to do with a cat. Christine seemed to love this one.

  But before he could figure out how to make the capricious thing purr, the cat was plucked from his arms, and Christine held it protectively against her, scratching his whiskers until the feline’s purrs rumbled loudly.

  Erik leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb. For an absurd moment, he saw himself as the world must see him in the face of that ugly cat.

  “I hope you do not intend to stop me from going, Erik.”

  “No, leannanan. I intend to go with you.”

  Chapter 13

  Erik watched Christine pause ahead of him, her mouth taut in concentration as she studied the ground, the waterfall roaring behind them. She lifted her head and saw him sitting against a moss-covered rock, one knee drawn up to his chest, admiring the scenery she presented.

  Her chignon pinned in a thick ball at her nape and her eyeglasses gave her a bookish look, a direct contrast to the uncivilized Scottish backdrop that framed her.

  Looking pointedly at their gear dispersed over the ground, she said, “You are in charge of setting up camp, Erik.” She stepped past him and began rummaging through one of the rucksacks.

  He edged up her skirts with his riding quirt, looking to glimpse the trousers beneath.

  She sidestepped him and placed her hands on her hips. “Obeying orders from one of your minions is a novelty I am sure, but I warned you before you decided to send Hampton back yesterday, those are the rules.”

  He held up his hands in mock surrender and climbed to his feet. “My will is yours to command.”

  “Good.” She brushed dirt off her hands and pointed to the hill. “Now I need you to carry all of our things up those rocks over there. Unless you would prefer that I ride back and get Hampton for the heavy lifting.”

  He peered doubtfully up the hill and tipped back his floppy felt hat. He’d sent Hampton back because he’d decided he preferred to do this little outing alone with his wife, even if it meant lugging about every knapsack on their packhorse from here to the peak of the highest crag.

  “And while you are doing that”—she released the ties at her waist and dropped her skirts, revealing her trousers—“I am going to look for a place to drive a stake into the ground.”

  There was nothing bookish about his wife, he considered, as he watched her walk toward the rock ledge. She was a woman in her element, and he’d spent three days playing guide and lackey, basking in the surprising pleasantries found in allowing her to take control. She had proven capable.

  In fact, when he’d embarked upon this expedition, as she’d called it, he hadn’t known what he’d expected.

  This morning they had ventured off the road where his work crew had repaired the pothole that had crashed their carriage weeks ago. He and Christine had followed the drover’s trail along the river’s path. At breakfast, she had droned on and on about her plans for the next few days, frustrated that yesterday the riverbank had not yielded one secret in the two miles she had walked, any more than the cliffs had surrendered anything the day before that. She had sighted a cave this morning near the falls and they had spent most of the day reaching a point in the hills where she could climb down to explore the opening in the rock face. Without comment, he’d followed.

  “This is not an exact science,” she’d explained, as if he’d considered it otherwise, and he could tell she was excited about the cave.

  After he finished setting up camp, she found him. She carried a thick coil of rope wound over her shoulder and an iron stake in the other hand. “I found someplace to put this,” she said.

  He slid the stake from her hand. “As long as it is not through my heart, love.”

  She laughed. “As if you would allow it, love.”

  She turned on her heel. He bent and picked up the sledgehammer lying among the other tools and followed her. She took him down a talus slope, dropped the rope, and instructed him to place the spike within the iron circlet she had already laid out on a specific place in the soil. Then she walked about ten feet, stood on a vertical wall of stone and looked down.

  “The cave is thirty feet below us, if you’d like to see.” She peered over her shoulder at him. “Chimney sweeps climb more dangerous heights than this,” she said as if that knowledge should reassure him.

  Chimney sweeps did not hang above a wall of crushing water.

  Erik drove the iron stake into the ground with one swing of the sledgehammer. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  She returned to his side and began looping rope through the iron circlet. “I am looking for a way into an underground cavern or lava tubes,” she explained. “From the trajectory of all Becca’s fossils and the human bones found along the river, we are in the right area.” Her hands paused. “We crossed the old drover trail that leads to St. Andrews. Would Elizabeth have had a reason to come up to this area?”

  “Inferring that she could have reached this area on foot in winter? I no longer know what to think,” Erik said.

  “Have you considered if we do find her…?”

  “That I will give the constable ammunition to charge me with her murder? Or perhaps she despised marriage to me so much she chose to kill herself instead. I have already been condemned, Christine,” he said simply. “Or have you not yet grasped that the real beast of Sedgwick shares your bed, my love?”

  She reached up to touch his face; his hand intercepted hers. His action was not unkind, but neither did he welcome anything construed as sympathy. Not from her. He brought her hand to his lips. “We have a few hours of daylight left,” he said. “We don’t want to waste time.”

  She looked over his shoulder at the position of the sun. “When I get to the bottom, I will signal you,” she said, having taught him how to belay and rappel yesterday on a less dangerous cropping of rocks. “Then you will bring up the rope and follow.”

  Holding firmly with one hand, she pulled a double length of rope between her legs and smiled up at him, that brilliant burning sunlight grin that never failed to heat him. “Did I ever tell you I once climbed up the side of our very tall house carrying an urn of tarantulas to my wicked governess? This is easy compared to that.”

  Christine went over the edge and, as she held the belay with one hand, he watched as she worked her way carefully down the rock face. She’d been a climber when he’d known her ten years ago, he mused, remembering she’d somehow talked him into scaling a tree outside her window at Somerset. The year he’d gone to Somerset House to wed her cousin.

  He’d been twenty-four, a duke, and he’d sat on a topmost limb risking his life, stargazing with a woman who hadn’t had the good sense to stay away from him. That night they’d talked about constellations. With whom had he ever talked about the stars? No one, he considered. Not before or since that night.

  His eyes on Christine, he wondered jealously if she’d talked constellations with Darlington—or any other man for that matter.

  He called down to her, “You told me you’ve climbed cliffs with Darlington.”

  “He taught me to climb years ago. It’s all the rage these days,” he heard her say. “There are climbing clubs all about Europe. Naturally, women can’t climb, so are not allowed membership.”

  “Naturally,” Erik murmured as she disappeared inside the cave and signaled for him to descend.

  He didn’t have to do this, he told himself as he pulled up the rope, then double wound the length between his legs and over his shoulder. Before he could question what the hell he was doing, he backed off the cliff.

  The cave entrance was an outward slope, slanting downward about six feet before a wall of rubble blocked the descent. When Erik entered, he found Christine squatting in front of the crumbled rock, frowning with disappointment.

  By the look of the mix of crushed granite, bird dro
ppings, and dust that layered the floor and walls, the cave-in was not recent. He could see evidence of habitation, the remnants of an old fire, a rusted mace. But if this cave had ever led to a larger cavern as she’d hoped to discover, it had not been in this century.

  Clearly, Christine was disappointed. She had worked hard and had held high hopes. The sun was a giant orange ball in the sky, hovering just below the misty line where the distant lake met the sky by the time they had finished their climb back to the ridge. Erik found her sitting on the rocks in a shallow wading pool, washing her hands and legs and feet. She had stripped out of her clothes—all remnants of Christine the paleontologist gone—and wore only her shift.

  The ancient mace she had brought up from the cave lay beside the rocks. It was a heavy medieval war club, missing half its spikes and mottled with age and rust, yet she’d protected and coddled it as she did that dreadful cat of hers.

  He squatted beside her as she continued to scrub. “I know you are disappointed.”

  “Don’t coddle me, Erik.”

  “Look at me, Christine.”

  She scrubbed her arms more vigorously. “I must be missing something.”

  “Searching for a forgotten or never-before-discovered cavern in a land where long ago, Picts and outlaw Scots’ survival depended on knowing the whereabouts of such caves is a forbidding task for anyone.”

  He was not expecting miracles.

  Nor had he expected to enjoy himself or to stay three nights encamped beneath a sky full of stars with Sedgwick Castle only a few hours away. But he had remained.

  “Do you think me odd? You must,” she said. “You have been patiently following me, taking my orders for days and we haven’t a fossil to show for our efforts.”

  “I think you are the most interesting individual I have ever known.”

  It was the greatest compliment he could pay her, he realized, for her expression became less guarded. Interesting implied someone special, out of the ordinary and relevant. She was also passionate and loyal.

  “This mace must be three hundred years old,” she said after a moment, lifting it to examine it more thoroughly in the fading sunlight.

  She could see by the amused look in his eyes that he conceived the piece worthless. “I have never understood the public’s infatuation with antiquity, the need to reach out and touch a long-dead past, as if it could give meaning to the present,” he said. “I don’t understand it.”

  “You must have something you are passionate about.”

  “Aye.” He laughed quietly, studying her face, noticing the smattering of freckles across her nose, before he looked away.

  “I understand the value of this land in a different way,” he said. “I look at it as a way of sustaining lives. Not just mine, but also thousands of others who live in this valley.”

  “Tell me, your grace,” she asked, “do you do anything for merriment? Something with no purpose other than the pursuit of your leisure?”

  Do you? he’d wanted to ask, for she seemed less adept at having fun than he did. “I’m here with you.”

  The sun was at her back, a light so powerful it silhouetted her body through the thin transparency of her shift. “This mace belongs in a museum,” she said, clearly appreciating the bit of history this represented to Sedgwick, even if he did not understand the sentiment.

  Instead, he kissed her.

  He was not an archeologist or paleontologist. He did not seek his fortune in fame though infamy often found him.

  He only knew as she opened her mouth and deepened the contact between them, her touch did not so much defeat him as it conquered him utterly.

  But even as she drew him deeper into the sensuous fantasy swelling between them, he felt her pull back and raise her head. Their warm breath mingled until at last his thumb slid beneath her jaw and tipped her face up.

  “I know you dislike being thanked,” she said. “But thank you for believing in me.”

  In the beginning, he’d carried all the gear because it amused him to do so. Then as the days had passed, he had done it because he enjoyed being outside the walls of his life, watching Christine work, enjoying Sedgwick in a way he’d never allowed himself to do before.

  He’d learned he could roam these grounds for a hundred years and still not discover all the treasures buried beneath his feet.

  “Do you believe in magic, Erik?” he heard her ask against his lips as he carried her back to their camp and laid her on the blankets.

  “Hmm,” he said, shifting her body against him. “As they say, one man’s charm is another’s curse.”

  Her eyes opened. “Who says that?”

  A shudder that was more than desire went through his body. “I do.”

  He brushed his fingertips against the cool tips of her wet hair before he drew his hand over her breast and down to the dampness between her legs. He touched her everywhere with his hands and his lips.

  Somehow her fingers laced with his. Then he was pressing into her, filling her, merging his body with hers until he was so deeply joined to her that it no longer mattered whose mouth kissed, whose hands touched. There was only her.

  And above them the night stars shone and the sound of the rushing waterfall faded in the rhythm of her breath against his lips.

  Later he held her, and she talked about tomorrow. But in the days that followed the river continued to run too high to safely venture on its banks, and he knew until it receded they would most likely find nothing new.

  Christine flung open the large double windows in her sitting room and stared across a sun-dappled valley stretching out before her beyond the high stone castle walls. She could barely make out the colorful tents in the distance. The summer festival had arrived in the valley.

  She’d been told that the fair came every year at this time and though it was not a grand party thrown for her, she found herself hoping that it might feel that way.

  A line of honking geese flew overhead, and Christine watched them until they dwindled to pale specks in a bright blue sky. At least the day was warm. “Your grace,” Annie said from behind her. “Lord Sedgwick wishes to know what has detained you.”

  Christine turned back into the room. This was the third time in the past hour she had been summoned by her husband. She made one final stop in front of the long silvered glass. She wore a dress of bright green crepe de chine stripes. Her hair was too thick to lie in perfect curls atop her head and Annie had folded it under and pinned it in a roll at her nape.

  Erik might accept their attendance today at the festivities as commonplace, but Christine did not. She had spent yesterday making sure she wore the right gown and had changed it twice already this morning. This from a woman who had made her one sensational splash during her only London Season by wearing black to her debut ball, because she thought the color made her look regal.

  “Mum, your cloak,” Annie said, rushing from the dressing room carrying the garment. “The sun may be out, but the air can still be a bit nippy.”

  She accepted the cloak over her shoulders. “Thank you, Annie.”

  Aunt Sophie, Mrs. Samuels, and Rebecca had already gone ahead. She and Erik would be arriving at the festivities in the official Sedgwick coach.

  Sweeping around the corner and appearing on the landing, she saw her husband pacing at the bottom of the stairs. They both came to a stop, his hand on the carved knoll of the banister. His eyes slid over her appreciatively.

  Her eyes widened. Good heavens!

  Her husband was not dressed in any such English garb as mundane as hers. Standing below her was a powerful laird. Erik wore a breathtaking tartan of hunter green, ancient red, and black, trimmed in tassels of gold. The pleated kilt reached his knees and was finished off by a sporran and a ceremonial waistcoat and jacket trimmed with gold buttons. All he lacked was a claymore and battle-ax.

  The man was magnificent.

  He held out his hand. “The festivities await, madam.”

  She glided downstairs on
slippers she worried would begin pinching her feet before the afternoon was gone. “Your grace,” she said softly and dipped in a playfully regal curtsey. “You look…”

  “Like a laird?”

  “Indeed, you do. We don’t match. Am I dressed correctly?”

  “Do I sense doubt in your tone?” He sounded astonished, as if she had never doubted herself. “You look charming, Christine.”

  She wanted to be beautiful to him. “I am only slightly ignorant of fashion, which makes me somewhat less than knowledgeable. But Aunt Sophie’s London modiste assured me this gown is the top of fashion. I would not wish to embarrass you, Erik.”

  She had removed her spectacles, and he eased them out of her gloved hand and returned them to her nose. “Put them back on if they help you see,” he said. “You will pass just fine as you are.”

  He could say that with casualness. Erik was the master of all he surveyed, after all. He had been the duke here since he was two.

  Yet, for the first time since being a girl in her teens, she found herself willing to remove her spectacles and be blind rather than be different from everyone else. She should have worn blue rather than green. Or something less extravagant. Or English.

  The carriage ride to the large hamlet of Sedgwick some miles away took less than an hour. She had visited the market and shops here over the last month, but today it was as if she were seeing the thatched cottages, brown chocolate-box houses, and winding streets for the first time. People stopped to stare as the carriage rumbled down the narrow cobbled main street and, as the coach and four slowed to a more sedate pace, she better glimpsed the faces of those who lined the road. Not all seemed welcoming.

  She stole a nervous glance at her husband sitting quietly on the bench beside her. “It is not you they dislike,” he said.

  She would almost have preferred that it was her they disliked or mistrusted. Erik did not deserve it. This past month had taught her that much. “How long has it been since you have been to the fair?” she asked.