Always a Temptress (32 page)

Bea mimicked her action. “Duet,” she said, her voice flat with intent.

“Oh, no,” Kate protested. “I will not ask you to come.” She turned to Drake. “Bea makes Glynis uncomfortable. Glynis can’t get over the fact that even though Bea is ‘unfit for social discourse,’ as Glynis puts it, Bea is still sister of a duke. Not to be dismissed lightly in Glynis’s very rigid world.”

“Come where?” she heard from the doorway, and her heart dropped like a stone.

Harry stood there, tidily dressed in a bottle-green jacket and buff inexpressibles, his newly shaven face folded into angles of protest.

“Good morning, my dear,” Kate said. “Finney, another plate, please.”

“Damn another plate,” Harry retorted, limping in. “You are not going to Moorhaven. I won’t allow it.”

Bea let go an inelegant snort. Drake focused on his cup. Kate battled a surge of resentment at Harry’s presumptive tone. “We’re merely discussing options. Let Marcus tell you about it. In the meantime, Bea and I have some work that needs finishing.”

“You’re not going to get around me this way, Kate. The answer is no.”

“I’m the logical one to retrieve it,” she said. “Especially if it’s in the priest hole.”

“No. I’ll be the one breaking into Moorhaven.” His argument might have carried more weight if he didn’t still look as if he were breathing through ground glass.

“And if you’re caught in the library at midnight, what will your excuse be?”

“I won’t be caught.”

She kept her opinion to herself. “How will you find the priest hole?”

“You’ll tell me where it is, of course.”

“It’s on the wall that backs the rose salon. You press a piece of bookshelf.”

“Which one? And which wall is against the rose salon?”

She shrugged. “I’m not perfectly sure. I was never good with directions, especially for a place I didn’t want to go. I hope Glynis hasn’t redecorated since I was last there.”

“And you were planning to just keep searching until someone caught you?”

“At least I have a reason to be sneaking around the castle at odd hours. I used to live there. I can wax nostalgic.”

In the end, Kate resorted to lies and laudanum. She drove out in the phaeton with Bea, ostensibly to look at stoves for the orphanage. What Harry didn’t know was that George waited around the block to transfer them to the traveling coach. With the laudanum Finney was to slip into Harry’s lunch tea, Kate hoped that it would be four o’clock before Harry wondered where she was, and by then she would be well on her way to Moorhaven. She even left a note.

I
t was precisely teatime the next afternoon when Kate and Bea pulled through the Moorhaven gates to see the castle rise stark and square-fingered from the chalk downs near Old Winchester Hill. Kate had always wondered at the Hilliards who’d named the place, since there wasn’t a moor within a hundred miles. It certainly looked like it belonged on a moor in one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s gothic novels, though, gray and square and unpretty. The Hilliards had ever been less interested in garnering their neighbors’ envy than their fear.

Inside was another matter, of course. The family tended to fling an inordinate amount of blunt at whatever decorator was in vogue. The last effort Kate remembered was by Robert Adam, with his neoclassical swags and medallions transforming plain square rooms into jewelry boxes. She had no confidence that Glynis had stayed true to the eighteenth-century master, though, which meant that it would be harder to uncover the priest hole. She hadn’t lied to Harry. She was abysmal at directions; she could remember a decor, though, and the library wall she wanted had backed the rose room.

Well, Kate thought, gathering her reticule and muff. If nothing else, this little travesty would tell the tale in her marriage. Harry would either be waiting at the house for her to return with the book, or he’d already be on a boat for Ceylon.

“Pull on through to the stables, George,” she ordered through the trap as they topped the drive. “I believe I shall make an entrance.”

Kate felt all the old pain and regret rise around her like fetid smoke as she looked on the grim face of her old home. She almost expected her father to step out of the great oak door, his white hair gleaming in the afternoon light, his brown eyes soft as sadness.

“You’ll never leave me, will you, Bea?” Kate asked on impulse, her gaze on the site of so much grief.

She’d wanted comfort, not honesty. But Bea was honest. “Inevitable.”

Kate swung around on her. “Not you, too.”

Bea lifted a papery hand to cup Kate’s cheek. “Love Harry.”

For a second, Kate couldn’t speak at all. She could only nod, tears crowding the back of her throat. “Ah, but will he love me?”

Then, before Bea could answer, George opened the door and set down the steps. Gathering her skirts, Kate descended. “The Ladies’ Parlor, I think. At this hour, the guests will most certainly be gathered for tea.”

Bea chuckled, straightening her elegant cream Cumberland bonnet. “Yoiks and away!” she cried, her favorite expression of engagement. Kate laughed back and squeezed her hand, hoping her voice didn’t sound as panicky to Bea as it did to her.

Just as she’d hoped, the day had stayed unseasonably warm, and the French doors into the salon had been thrown open, the women’s voices spilling through making it sound like an aviary. Kate guessed there to be in excess of twenty women in the wide, long room that had always been decorated in hand-painted red poppy wallpaper. Today the sun seemed to reflect off walls of unrelieved gold. As Kate drew closer, she saw that everything was gold: dark gold, light gold, gold brocade, as if the salon had been taken by King Midas. Good heavens. What had Glynis done to the once cheerful haven?

Kate focused on finding her sister-in-law and Elspeth, the only two people whose reactions she cared about. She hoped for happiness from Elspeth, and that Glynis didn’t summarily toss her back out on the lawn. From the militant expression on Bea’s face, it was obviously a suspicion shared by her friend.

“Ah,” Kate caroled as she stepped over the threshold to peel off her gloves, “there she is. Darling Elspeth, I have come, just as requested.”

Her arrival was met with stark silence, then cacophony.

“Aunt Kate!” Elspeth squealed, running for her full-tilt. “You came!”

Before the girl cast herself into her arms, Kate had time to take in overdressed blond curls and an overfussy pink dress, obviously chosen by Elspeth’s mother.

“Of course I did,” she answered, hugging her niece tight. “How could I refuse one of my favorite girls in the world? Good heavens,” she said, holding Elspeth back. “Who dressed you, Princess Caroline? Darling girl, you are made for clean lines and elegant colors, especially now that you are to be married. You look like a demented baby doll.”

Elspeth giggled. Beyond her, Glynis looked as if she’d turned to stone. “You will not use that vile diminutive when addressing your aunt, Elspeth,” she snapped, her jaw clamped tight. “It makes her sound like an Irish washerwoman. She is Your Grace.”

Kate grinned. “Actually, no, Glynis. Remember? I’ve rectified that mistake.”

“Really, Dolores Catherine,” Glynis protested. “In front of your husband’s sister.”

Unbuttoning her scarlet pelisse, Kate laughed. “Don’t be silly. Bea knows better than anyone what a paragon her brother was. Don’t you, Bea?”

Bea made a rude noise, which delighted Elspeth even more than Kate. “Sodom and Gomorrah,” Bea pronounced.

“Actually,” Kate mused, “that might have been the only vice Murther failed to practice.”

“Innocent ears,” Glynis snapped.

“Don’t be silly,” Kate said. “Elspeth is getting married. She should be prepared.”

“That is for her father and me to teach her.”

“Let me have Wiggins prepare some rooms,” Elspeth begged.

Kate looked up from where she was helping Bea. “Let’s see how things go, sweets. I know Bea would love some tea, though. Wouldn’t you, my dear?”

Since Elspeth was far more the lady than her mother, she immediately saw Kate and Bea to chairs, making introductions as she went around. Kate could tell which friends belonged to Elspeth and which to her mother just by the reactions, which varied from delighted to frigid.

“My, Glynis,” Kate said, accepting her Spode cup. “You’ve redecorated.”

“I have redone all the rooms,” Glynis informed her. “They were sadly out of date.”

“Yes, Harry did tell me that Livingston House is now all over crocodiles. Harry has a particular loathing for the things, as one bit off the leg of a friend.”

Kate had cornered Elspeth and was reimagining her wardrobe when Bea suddenly set down her cup. “River Jordan.”

As they’d planned, Kate followed suit and stood. “Of course, dear. I’ll show you.”

“To the River Jordan?” the pinch-faced Lady Bromwell asked, eyebrows raised.

Kate smiled. “The necessity. Bea never wastes her breath on the obvious.”

“I had heard she was an idiot,” Lady Bromwell whispered to the next matron.

Slowly turning, Kate leveled quite her most glacial duchess stare on the woman and was pleased to see her pale. “No, dear, I would have to say that the only idiot in this room is the one who finds herself unable to control a viperish tongue.”

“Indeed,” Elspeth said, jumping to her feet to her mother’s obvious dismay. “I’ve heard the story of how Lady Bea suffered her injury. She is a
heroine
. Isn’t she, Aunt Kate?”

Kate silently apologized to Bea, who loathed such notoriety. “Indeed she is. Unfortunately, that has left her prey to the snubs from all manner of ill-bred persons. Being the daughter of a duke, she is far too high-minded to retaliate. Being the daughter
and
wife of a duke myself, though,” Kate continued, “I have no qualms at all about chastising the mere daughter of a…what are you, dear? Oh, that’s right. A jumped-up shopkeeper. Come, Bea,” she said, taking her friend’s hand. “I need a bit of fresh air. Glynis, you haven’t turned the necessity into a billiards room or anything, have you?”

The plan was for Kate to use the time Bea took in the necessity to scour the library for the book. When she found it, she was to leave it tucked beneath the great Bellange desk, where Bea would retrieve it. No one would ever suspect Bea of theft, especially a book full of badly written erotic poetry. But Kate wasn’t at all convinced that Glynis wouldn’t search her luggage for stolen bibelots.

In the end, all that effort was for naught. For the first time in Kate’s life, somebody was actually using the library. She stumbled over Elspeth’s fiancé, Adam, sitting in a leather chair with his nose in a book. As much as Kate resented it, she would have to stay overnight.

The stay at Moorhaven was as nightmarish as Kate had feared. When Edwin discovered her in his parlor, he looked as if he might suffer an apoplexy. Just as Kate had known, though, there was nothing he and Glynis could do but include Kate and Bea in the festivities, which consisted of a paralyzingly formal dinner followed by three painful hours of musical offerings by various daughters in the party.

Just when Kate thought she would have to resort to throwing vases to bring an end to the evening, Elspeth did it much more tactfully by begging the chance to accompany Bea on the piano. Jaws dropped just at the suggestion. They didn’t close for a good hour after Bea’s spectacular rendition of “Dido’s Lament” by Purcell. Since it was impossible to follow, the party broke up.

Bea went to bed, exhausted by her performance. It was just as well. It would have been difficult to explain the old woman’s presence downstairs in the wee hours of the morning. Changed into a royal blue kerseymere dress for warmth, Kate waited in her grim, pea-green guest room for the men to retire. The house settled. When the old long-case clock at the bottom of the staircase chimed twice, Kate stepped out of her bedroom door.

The house was deeply dark, the shadows held off by a few well-spaced night lanterns. Kate really didn’t need light to know her way. She’d snuck through these corridors time out of mind. The library was only three doors past the great staircase on the ground floor. And inside it, the priest hole, waiting her return.

Her very own windowless hell. Would the phantoms that had populated it in her youth still lurk, or would she be able to see how puny those nightmares were compared with real ones?

Of course Glynis had redecorated the adjoining rooms out of recognition. Even the Adam ceilings, so elegant, had been painted to resemble an Egyptian sky. Kate scowled. Couldn’t her brother have at least married someone with a modicum of taste?

At least the library was unchanged, four identical walls stacked with books nobody read. She stood in the doorway, her candle holding off the encompassing gloom, struck by the well-remembered scent of leather and paper and glue she had loved and hated so much. Her penance and her salvation all at the same time. If she looked closely enough, she swore she would be able to see a painfully neat little girl bent over a book in some dim corner, her store of half-burnt candles still secreted behind the travel section.

Taking a steadying breath, Kate oriented herself. Then, before her courage failed, she made for the rolling ladder and positioned it, praying that an extra copy still lurked behind the
Epicurus
. Setting down her candle, she climbed.

The
Epicurus
was where she remembered, second shelf from the top, halfway down the wall. But the space behind it was empty. Uncle Hilliard must have made off with it.

Ah well, she thought, resting her head on the ladder. She’d have to see if the copy she’d snuck away was still in the priest hole.

It took her almost an hour to find the hidden door. By then her palms were sweating and her heart racing. How did one search for hell without resenting it?

And then,
click!
, and the wall parted. A fog of dust and damp wafted out, turning her stomach. God, she hated that smell. Praying that she wouldn’t actually become ill, she pulled open the door and bent to pass through, her candle leaping erratically. Light licked along the wall, a sluggish pale snake slithering over uneven stone. Kate wiped perspiration from her brow. She held her breath. It was better than inhaling a decade of must and memories.

Setting down her candle, she ran her hands over the cool stone until one felt familiar. She pulled. It rasped, but moved. Her poor heart was battering at her ribs, ready to fly faster than she. This was too familiar, each action calling up a host of memories.

Finally, though, it slid free. And there, tucked behind the stone, a little tin box that held candle stubs and a flint, and next to it, a small stack of books.
Tom Jones
, Pliny’s
Natural History
, and there.
Virtue’s Grave
. She smiled. She’d forgotten the subtitle:
Worshiping at the Altar of Hymen
. She hadn’t even understood most of the allusions; she’d just known they had to be sinful.

Flipping open the book, she smiled.

So it really had been that bad. She wished she’d had the chance to challenge her morally rigid uncle with his ownership of it. Grinning at the thought, she nipped out and slid the book beneath the desk for Bea to find. Then she bent back into the hole to retrieve her candle. She was just backing out when a draft of air alerted her.

“Well, well, well, so the rumors were true.”

Kate spun around to find Glynis standing just outside the priest hole’s door, still dressed for the evening in an ice-blue silk dress, a candle in her hand.

“Good Lord, Glynis,” Kate, breathed, hand on chest. “You startled me. If I’ve upset you, I’m sorry. I was just reacquainting myself with old ghosts.”

“I always knew you were unnatural. But I admit I am all wonder at finding you sneaking about my house in the dead of night. Although I thank you for finding the priest hole. We weren’t able to.”

Kate shrugged, praying Glynis hadn’t seen her secure the little book. “I wasn’t sure I would be able to, either.”

Glynis set her candle on a table. “You’ve become quite a sneaking creature. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Your father warned me years ago how it would be.”

The air seemed to disappear. “My father?”

“Of course. I was to marry Edwin. I needed to understand about you.”

Kate felt even more confused. Understand
what
about her? “How nice for you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take my little stash of books to bed for some light reading.”

“Did you find it?”

Kate felt the hair rise on the back of her neck. “What?”