Awaiting the Moon (3 page)

A door slammed somewhere and a susurration of voices echoed in the upper heights of the hall, perhaps from somewhere along the gallery. But Elizabeth’s attention was caught by another door opening closer, the light streaming out chasing away the shadows under the second floor gallery and showing her that there were clearly rooms off the main hall, formal reception rooms perhaps, with gothic arched doors of heavy, deeply carved oak.

One of these was the door that had opened and two men came from the room beyond—one of the gentleman older, with a paunch and a gray, balding pate, and the other tall and of middle years, distinguished and immaculately dressed.

“Ah, what a pleasure,” one of the men, the older, balding fellow, said in heavily accented English as he approached them. “This must be our new little teacher, and of course my dear sister, Katrina. How long it has been!”

He put out his arms to embrace her, but Frau Liebner merely stuck out one gloved hand and gruffly said, “
Tag
, Bartol.
Wie geht es ihnen
?”

“Ah, you have not changed,” he said with a comical look of dismay on his round face.

“Always, you are most cool,” he continued, waggling a finger at her. “But English, my sister, English, for I have been practicing; I had no English when you last saw me, but now… I speak so very well. We have a new little friend in our midst, and I would not exclude her.” He shook his sister-in-law’s hand and turned to Elizabeth. “Unless you speak German, my dear?”

“A very little,” Elizabeth said, taking his offered hand.

He tilted his head to one side and peered nearsightedly at her, as he cradled her hand in his large, knobby one. “So, you are the little teacher. How delightful you are, so pretty. We are fortunate indeed to have you in our midst.” He patted her hand and released it.

Such a gracious welcome warmed Elizabeth, and she relaxed.

Gräfin von Wolfram said, “This is Miss Elizabeth Stanwycke, Charlotte’s new tutor.

Elizabeth, this is Herr Bartol Liebner, my uncle.” With a softening expression, she turned then to the taller of the two men, a distinguished and courtly looking gentleman of middle years.

He had a mane of silvery white hair drawn back from a high forehead, and he was clad in a powder blue velvet jacket and silver knee breeches. “And this is Count Delacroix, our honored guest.”

The gentleman cast her a fond look and turned to Elizabeth, taking her hand and bowing low over it. “Mademoiselle. I am only a poor émigré from the terrible revolt in my land.” He kissed the air an inch above her hand. “My lady, the Countess Adele is too kind, for it is I, an exile from my suffering land, who treasures my time in this gallant and stalwart place.”

Elizabeth noticed a quickly concealed expression of concern on Gräfin von Wolfram’s gaunt face.

“As I said, my brother is this minute busy,” the woman said, interrupting the Frenchman’s courtly gesture of welcome. “But he will presently greet you properly. Come, and I will see you settled in your rooms, Miss Stanwycke, Tante Katrina.”

Her body trembling with exhaustion, her mind reeling from the last hour of strange happenings and this overwhelming welcome, Elizabeth wearily mounted the stairs, the stone steps worn in the center from centuries of feet, following Gräfin von Wolfram and Frau Liebner. They made it to the gallery floor, slowed by the oldest lady’s deliberate progress and the heaviness of their winter cloaks, but as they were about to mount the steps to the third-floor bedchambers—the lady of the house explaining that the second floor was taken up with family living areas since the main floor was formal reception rooms—a dark figure slammed out of a room and strode down the hall toward them.

Elizabeth, her nerves jangled by a difficult day, gasped, the sighing sound echoing up through the staircase.

“It is merely my brother, Nikolas,” Gräfin von Wolfram said, a tone of reproof in her hard voice. She cast Elizabeth an assessing look. “Nikolas,” she said, raising her voice, “we have here our Tante Katrina and new tutor arrived.”

The man, dressed in black breeches, black boots, and with a white silk shirt stretched taut over muscular shoulders and arms, looked up and stopped in front of them. His unsmiling face was ruddy, his lips compressed into a single hard line. His eyes were the dark gray of an angry autumn sky, and Elizabeth thought she had never seen such a handsome man in her life.

But it was more than mere good looks that made him attractive. He charged the air about them as a storm does, with electricity, and she felt the same exhilaration, the same anxiety mixed with excitement as she had as a child on the beach, watching a storm approach from sea.

This man was her new employer, the one she would have to impress with her skill and awe with her erudition. And she would have to do all that while ignoring the way he made her heart pound and palms sweat.

How awful.

FRAU LIEBNER, during their journey to Germany, had described Nikolas von Wolfram as slim and studious, retiring, diffident. Unless the lady’s memory was faulty, he had transformed in the years his aunt had been away from a boy into a man of unusual force of character and presence.

His steady gaze locked with Elizabeth’s and she could not stop staring, aware that her expression could be seen as unbecoming and forward, but unable to look elsewhere. She could feel the confusion mantling her cheeks with pink, the heat spreading through her body.

Tall and broad shouldered, a lock of raven black hair falling over his high forehead, he was casually dressed, his white shirt loose at the neck, exposing a shocking V of dark hair on a bare chest, the skin pale as alabaster. All of this she had taken in before their eyes met. She had the odd feeling that he had made a rapid assessment of her, too, his gaze traveling her body in the few seconds it took to meet in the hall. He was the first to break their connection, though, as he heeded his sister’s abrupt repetition of his name and turned to his aunt. “Tante Katrina, welcome home.”

“You have changed, Nikolas,” Frau Liebner said with a wry twist to her lips. “I left and you were a boy, but now… I would not have known you.”

He took her hand and squeezed. “Circumstances have made me who I am.” He then turned his attention back to Elizabeth and held out his hand.

She offered her own, but instead of shaking it he bowed and brought it to his lips. It was the merest whisper of a moment, but she felt the warmth of his breath on her naked skin and sighed. He stood, still holding her hand, and their gazes locked again; she saw confusion in his gray eyes, or was that just the mirror of her own emotions? Moments passed.

The Gräfin cleared her throat, breaking the silence. “I was about to show Miss Stanwycke to her chamber, brother, as she is undoubtedly exhausted after such a journey, and Tante Katrina, too, of course.”

He released Elizabeth’s hand and bowed. “Of course. Excuse me, and excuse my attire, ladies,” he said, mopping his damp brow with a cloth he had tucked in his waistband. “Cesare and I—Cesare Vitali is my secretary, Miss Stanwycke— have just been fencing. It is a habit of ours this time of day, for exercise in this frigid season is vital for the spirit and body.”

Gräfin von Wolfram, Elizabeth noted, gazed at him and raised her eyebrows. There was some silent communication between brother and sister, but it ended abruptly when the Graf bowed once more and excused himself, heading up the stairs ahead of them, bounding two steps at a time, muscles flexing and bunching under the tight breeches he wore for exercise.

Elizabeth would have sunk down to sit on the step if she were alone, for she felt light-headed and ill. He was nothing she had expected, and her stomach twisted with combating sensations of attraction and repulsion. He was very handsome, but it was in an alarming way; he had dark eyes and hair, a sensuous full mouth, broad forehead, and muscular physique only too evident under his breeches and damp, clinging shirt, and the overt masculinity of him was not reassuring to someone who depended on his kindness for her living. In her experience, such vigorously vital men were not gentle, nor were they forgiving of even the slightest errors.

And yet, his dark good looks and charismatic mien had enkindled a glow within her that she must conquer, for her own benefit. The last thing she needed was to be so attracted to her employer, for that could only mean trouble if he were a man like other men, willing to take advantage of a position of power. But she was stronger than such a weak feminine reaction to an attractive man, and she would maintain a distance. She had learned from the past and would never let herself be vulnerable again.

Stiffening her backbone, she took a long, deep breath. “Shall we go on?” she said and mounted the step, placing her foot in the damp footprint left by her new employer.

Her room, second from the stairs, was lovely, much more than she ever expected in such a large and ancient castle and for a woman in her position—tutor to a young lady of the house.

Left alone by Gräfin von Wolfram and Frau Liebner, Elizabeth sank down on the partially canopied bed and gazed around her as she undid the ties of her bonnet and loosened her cloak, welcoming the warmth of the blaze in the hearth.

It was a big room, but not so high ceilinged and fearfully tomblike as she had feared. The walls were covered in ivory fabric, and the bed was draped in the same material. A Turkish carpet covered part of the floor, though the rest was wood, and near the fire were two chairs with a table between them. By the high window, the curtains of which were closed against the darkening night outside, was a table and chair suitable for use as a desk.

On the far wall, barely perceptible in the gloom, was a large carved garderobe, and her trunk had already been placed near it.

How had the trunk arrived upstairs before her? Of course there must be another staircase used by serving staff, she reasoned. In such a large castle there were likely more than just two staircases, in fact, for it was clear from her brief view of it in the twilight that there was a central part to Wolfram Castle, the old stone portion of the castle, but then jutting additions built later, likely, flanked it, spreading like a raven’s outspread wings on either side of the main body.

She tossed her bonnet aside and lay back on the bed, closing her eyes. What had Frau Liebner once said about Wolfram Castle, that once you entered, it entered you, too, and never left, always to be a part of your soul? At the time it had sounded like superstitious nonsense, but now she thought she understood. The castle seemed to possess a spirit of its own, a powerful personality much like that of its master.

She blinked and sat up abruptly. It was best to face the truth at once and be done with it; she was powerfully attracted to the master of Wolfram Castle, but it was surely just the fleeting, transitory attraction of purely physical response, enhanced by exhaustion. It was imperative that she eradicate such wayward thoughts from her mind forever if she was to blot out the misdeeds in her past. Giving in to a physical impulse was dangerous for a woman, as she had learned to her everlasting regret. This opportunity, presented to her by the kindness of Frau Liebner, was a chance to cleanse herself of her indiscretions and she would not make the same mistakes over. Only a fool did that, and though she was impulsive and headstrong at times, she was no fool.

She heard an outcry and a scuffle and crossed swiftly to her door, wondering what was happening. But when she glanced out, she only saw a door close down the hall toward the end. Her overactive and weary imagination was making something out of nothing, she thought, closing the door and returning to the bed. If only she had time for a nap, just to cleanse her mind as a mint leaf cleanses the palate, for the jumbled impressions of a long journey, finished by the odd sight of that poor woman in the forest, had left her nerves jangled and raw.

However, she was expected downstairs for dinner, perhaps to meet her student, so she would have no time to calm her frayed nerves. She would, however, try to find peace in establishing herself in her new home and in changing out of travel-soiled clothes. Fighting fatigue, she shrugged out of her heavy traveling cloak and unpacked her trunk, shaking the wrinkles out of her modest wardrobe. She then unpacked her traveling desk, removing her quills, ink, sand, and sealing wax and then her most precious traveling companion, her journal.

She set the journal down on the desk and touched the engraved leather binding, tracing her name in gilt letters on the cover. Had she done the right thing coming all the way to this foreign land? Her English upbringing seemed so far away now, and there was a desolation in wondering if she would ever return. This land was interesting, and she had been welcomed with some warmth, but it wasn’t England.

A maid tapped at her door and entered with a pitcher of steaming water. When thanked in English she looked uncomprehending, and so Elizabeth repeated the thanks in her limited German. The maid curtseyed then and answered with a string of words of which Elizabeth only caught a fraction. How she wished she had spent more time with Frau Liebner on the journey learning more than her sparse smattering of German words! She had learned French as a girl, but no other language had been deemed important by her frivolous and flighty mother. It was a failure she vowed she would correct now that she was settled. As she taught English manners, so would she try to be the student, learning German.

Elizabeth stripped to her chemise and washed quickly, shivering in the chill away from the fire. Her pale face, framed by her dark crown of hair, looked ghostly in the mirror, and she was stopped by her own expression reflected there.

“You look,” she said sternly to herself, “as if you have been frightened by an apparition. You must calm yourself, for as you know from past troubles you are too imaginative by nature.

Frau Liebner was likely right about that poor woman in the woods.” She folded a cloth and patted at her neck and cheeks. “It was merely a domestic matter, and as much as you abhor physical correction of a wife by her husband, it is an unfortunate fact of life. Men are brutes.”