Chapter 8
He’d been married.
It was a detail about the gentleman that his brother, nor Mr. Bennett, had thought to share with her, but one so very vital to understanding who he was… and what he’d become.
And his pain.
For it had been there, in ravaged eyes that had known loss. She knew it for she’d seen it staring back in the bevel mirror of her small Bladon cottage.
Seated on her bed, with only Bear and the flickering shadows cast by the hearth for company, Elsie abandoned all hope of attending the aging leather volume in her hands. She placed it gently atop the other precious journals that had belonged to her father.
The feminine touches throughout the residence bore the mark of the late duchess. The pale pink upholsteries, the walled-in garden, the delicate porcelain articles throughout were all marks of the departed woman’s influence here.
Dragging her knees to her chest, Elsie dropped her chin atop and rubbed back and forth, staring at the stacked logs ablaze within the hearth. “What happened to her?” she whispered into the quiet. How did William’s physical injuries connect to his wife’s death? And who had he been before that loss?
His visage flickered before her, as he’d been earlier that afternoon. With his bearded cheeks and wiry frame stalking toward her, he’d been all primal strength. And for one dizzying instance, she’d believed he intended to kiss her.
Is that an invitation?
She slapped her hands against her cheeks and did a horrified sweep of her temporary chambers.
Bear’s accusatory gaze met hers. “It is impossible,” she whispered. Of course she hadn’t wished for his kiss. She was here to determine if she could help him.
In that instant, you did want it. You believed he would dip his head and claim your mouth…
When no man ever had. And no man ever would.
She cringed at the humiliating truth of that.
And because she was no more a liar than her father had been, Elsie admitted to herself that she’d wanted to know his kiss. Had wanted a taste of the desire she’d seen in his gaze.
“Desire,” she muttered, grabbing up a journal. “Of course he does not desire you.”
To believe he did in any way was preposterous. William Helling, the Duke of Aubrey, had been surly and snappish since they met. Why, he’d given no hint that he even liked her a smidge.
She flipped through the pages of her father’s journal, fanning them and stirring a gentle breeze.
What manner of husband would he have been?
Had he always been the angry, icy figure who’d have shouted down the gardens? After all, a member of the Home Office, serving in the role he did, one would have to be without a single shred of humanity to one’s soul. That was what she’d come to believe after they’d cut her devoted father loose and left him and Elsie, because of her connection as Francis Allenby’s daughter, to their fates.
Something in her told her that there was far more there. That as angry in life as the duke was, he must have loved very much the woman who’d passed.
A muffled cackle echoed from outside her rooms.
Elsie jumped, and the book slipped from her fingers and toppled over the edge of the bed.
The previously dozing Bear hopped up with the same speed he’d possessed as a pup and growled at the door.
She stilled, braced for another hint of that grating, eerie laugh. All the while, her every nerve on alert, Elsie stared with an unblinking gaze at the door. The clock ticked six seconds.
Another half-mad-sounding laugh rumbled around the midnight quiet. This time more distant, muffled.
A mournful whine escaping the now thoroughly awake dog, he paced back and forth.
Leave this place… It is haunted…
“Do not be silly,” she whispered. There was no such thing as ghosts or hauntings.
But that was what her father had believed. He’d believed those who died wandered among the living long after they’d departed. As a child whose mother had perished delivering her into the world, Elsie had found great solace in the promise that the woman who’d given her life would always be there in some way.
But there was no solace now. Not in this foreign home with an angry duke mourning a wife.
Another cackle came, this one strident and high-pitched and slightly different than the one that had preceded it. Closer than before.
She shivered and hugged her arms tight to her middle.
Bear’s pacing took on a frantic rhythm. Periodically, he looked back over at her. For assurance? Or as a warning?
“Or to point out how very pathetic you are for your needless worrying,” she muttered. She gave her head a disgusted shake. She’d not only lived on her own all these years, but she had also faced men with souls blacker than Satan. Those men who’d tried to kill her had also proven that nothing and no one could surpass the living when it came to evil.
Forcing aside her disquiet, Elsie swung her legs over the side of the mattress and jumped down. She quickly grabbed the cotton wrapper thrown haphazardly at the foot of her bed. “Easy,” she said softly, for both herself and Bear. “It could have been anything.” And it surely was.
Nonetheless, she carefully picked her way to the front of the room, keeping her path to the soft Aubusson carpet to mute the sounds of her footfalls.
Touching a finger to her lips, Elsie clasped the handle. She waited, counting the passing seconds until at last the chiming clock struck up its announcement of the changing hour.
Taking advantage of that concealment, she let herself out. Bear slipped into the hall, joining her.
Not breaking stride, she pointed her finger down at the carpet just a pace behind her.
With that command, Bear moved along at the quick pace Elsie set.
Ears trained for a hint of that haunting laughter, she drifted in the direction from which it had come. It wasn’t her place to know to whom those cold expressions of mirth had belonged. It was undoubtedly safer that she not know. Safer to return to her rooms, turn the lock, climb atop her bed with covers drawn, and forget everything she’d heard.
The devil’s business was conducted here, only done so in the name of the Brethren.
And she’d learned firsthand the peril of burying her head from the danger her father had unwittingly drawn them into. Running away from it had seen her father killed, with no one at his side while she huddled like a pathetic creature under dense brush.
Elsie stopped and held a palm up behind her, staying Bear.
She peered down each intersecting hall, straining her ears.
There it was.
Gathering her wrapper, she shrugged into it and rushed onward toward the odd, eerie cackling. The sounds grew increasingly close. Not one. Not two. But three variations of that cold, empty laughter.
She turned the next hall quickly and then skidded to a stop, so quickly that Bear crashed into her legs.
Elsie stared past the scarred butler eyeing her impatiently. “Return to your rooms.” He clipped out the icy command, and his regal tones revealed plainly that he was no mere servant, but rather, a member of the ranks.
She pointedly ignored the order. She’d come here at the behest of Lord Edward and was charged with William’s care. She’d not be directed about like an underfoot child. “What is the meaning of this?” Elsie demanded, tipping her chin at the trio of scandalously clad beauties. Arms interlocked, they stared back at Elsie with a like annoyance.
With rouged lips and plunging bodices in silk gowns of crimson and black, there could be no doubting the manner of women they in fact were.
Why… why…
There were no ghosts here. They were mistresses.
She wrinkled her brow. Was it possible for one man to have three mistresses? Surely that was in bad form for a gentleman.
“Listen to the servant, lovey, and step out of the way,” a blonde-haired woman near in height to Elsie called over in thinly concealed Cockney. “We’ve a meeting with His Grace.”
A meeting. She snorted. “You do?” She glanced among them. “All of you?”
They laughed uproariously, as if she’d delivered the most hilarious of jests.
Elsie’s cheeks burned with embarrassment.
The towering, burly gentleman stepped between them. “Don’t bother yourself with His Grace,” he said to Elsie. “Step out of the way. He has company.”
The group took a collective step forward.
Elsie promptly planted her hands on her hips and blocked their path. Bear lined himself up next to her. “Do not bother myself with His Grace?” she asked incredulously. “I, sir, have been tasked with his care.”
“You?” One of the whores giggled. “Don’t seem His Grace’s usual type, but you can join us.”
Join them? Elsie choked on her swallow, strangled by it. Surely they were not suggesting… A sea of wicked conjuring entered her mind. Surely not.
“Do not knock it until you try it, lovey.” The leader at the center of the group winked. She angled her head in unspoken urging.
Elsie brought her hands up defensively. “Absolutely not.” She looked to the butler, who’d avoided her gaze since she arrived “These women are not allowed to see His Grace.”
Several moments passed, and then a series of cries and shouts went up.
The determined trio charged forward.
Bear sprang into action, planting himself between his mistress and the group, growling and barking until they’d backed up a handful of steps.
“Enough,” the servant thundered. “His Grace does not answer to you.”
Elsie lowered her eyebrows and met his fury with an equanimous calm. “As long as I’m living here, he most certainly does.”
She might as well have shouted the statement for the charged silence she ushered in.
Good, the sooner that this man, the duke and… and… the duke’s company understood her role and her place in this household, the better off they would all be. But there was one certainty… William’s days of drinking, whoring, and shutting himself away were at an end.
The tallest of the women stepped forward, her lips pursed tight from her annoyance. “Do ya think ya are going to stop us from seeing His Grace, lovey? Do ya think you are enough to satisfy him?”
“Satisfy him?” she echoed, and then the implication hit her. Elsie widened her eyes. “Why, you believe… you think…?”
Laughter exploded from her lungs, echoing around the halls. Elsie doubled over. They believed her actions were driven by jealousy? That she coveted the role of duke’s mistress? “You think…” She dissolved into another fit, unable to squeeze out the remainder of those words. The trio of beautiful women looked at her as though she had lost her mind and was in desperate need of a cart to Bedlam. “I assure you, madam,” she managed to rasp out through her hilarity. Elsie dusted tears of amusement from her eyes. “The last thing I desire is a place in His Grace’s bed.”
“Splendid.” The low, melodious baritone sounded from over her shoulder. “Now that we’ve clarified that important detail, will someone tell me what the hell is going on here?”
All hint of mirth fled, and Elsie froze.
She turned about slowly.
William stood, sans jacket, in nothing but a lawn shirt, breeches, and stockinged feet.
Oh, blast.