Captive Bride (6 page)

“Did he speak to Whitney?” Tip inquired mildly.

“Yes. He told Charlie to sod off, so the bottomless
looby
did.”

Tip could not prevent himself from grinning. Thomas was only five years his junior, but he wore his emotions on his sleeve like a lad of ten.

“Thomas,” Bea said quietly. “Must you speak in such a manner?”

“Apologies, Bea,” he scowled.

“Your sincerity no doubt touches your sister,” Tip murmured. Bea’s gaze shot to him, her feathered brows drawn.

“Thomas.” She looked back at her brother. “If Lord
Iversly
has been trapped here for so many centuries, why hasn’t he yet had any luck in finding a bride?”

“Would you marry a ghost?” Thomas asked incredulously.

Bea’s cheeks glowed even brighter, and quite abruptly,
pretty
became
stunning
.

Tip’s
breath
shortened. He had never seen her features suffused with so much feeling. With him she laughed, quipped, and demurred gracefully. Now passion was all over her face. Good Lord, merely watching her blush tightened his breeches uncomfortably. Now who was the boy?

“No, of course I would not marry a ghost,” she replied slightly unsteadily. “But you and Lady Bronwyn said he only just returned to the castle. Where has he been?”

“Sleeping, apparently.”

“What do you mean, sleeping? Ghosts sleep?”

A simple, rational question.
Tip hoped this lasted. Her cool, measured sense he could manage well enough.

“I don’t know if his sleep is like ours,” Thomas said, as though indeed discussing a rational subject. “But he went away for a time, not leaving the castle mind you, but not bothering the inhabitants for quite a few decades, apparently.
Nearly a century, in fact.”

“Really?”
She seemed intrigued again, her dark eyes sparking with keen interest. Tip took in a slow pull of air. “Why did he wake up, as it were?”

“Well,” Thomas
flickered
an uncertain look to Tip. “You see, the curse has a stipulation.”

“What is it?” Bea asked.

“It seems that
Iversly
must marry a maiden,” he spit out the words.

Silence followed this revelation. Finally Bea spoke.

“A maiden?”

“You know, Bea.” Thomas rubbed his brow.
“A virgin.”

“Yes, Tom, I know what a maiden is,” she said in a low voice.
“Intimately.”
Her gaze slid to Tip. Now even her lips looked pinker than usual.
Nearly red.
Shapely and full.
Beautiful to the point that the fly of his breeches was not in the least bit suitable for public.

Tip nearly had to turn away, but the door opened behind him and Lady Bronwyn entered, calling Bea and Thomas’s attention. Bea seemed to study their hostess with renewed interest.

“Oh,” Lady Bronwyn said, “now Lady
Marstowe
and Miss Dews are settled, with a nice hot pan and a pot of tea and biscuits. Cook bakes the tastiest ginger biscuits. You must have some, Miss
Sinclaire
. Oh, may I call you Beatrice?”

Bea nodded with a gracious smile.

“Oh, Beatrice, we shall have so much fun now that you are here! I cannot go beyond the estate boundaries, but still there are the stables, and picnics to be had if the weather clears, and the gardener cleared walking paths before he left in July. Perhaps they shall still be usable.”

“Have you and your grandmother been here only a few months, then, Bronwyn?”

“Oh,
Grandmama
has been here for years. I was with my mother’s sister in Bath for several years, though not yet out in society. But I grew up in this castle. He was not here at that time, of course. There were no eligible maidens in residence then, you see.
Only little girls, old matrons, and men.”
She sighed, a theatrical trill of sound that filled Thomas’s eyes with longing and left Tip cold. “I wish I had believed in the curse then,” she continued. “I certainly would not have returned to be with
Grandmama
this summer if I had known it to be real.”

“I daresay,” Bea said.

“Oh, but where is the tea? I will fetch it myself. Cook must be very busy preparing dinner all alone in that enormous kitchen. Beatrice, would you like me to show you to your chamber so that you may freshen up?”

“Yes, thank you.” She moved toward the door, meeting Tip’s gaze as she passed. Her thick lashes fluttered ever so slightly,
then
she smiled.

Tip’s cravat grabbed at his throat, abruptly too snug. Remaining aloof from her during the journey had accomplished nothing except to make him more desperate for the sight of her, for her voice, words, scent,
touch
. It was the exact opposite of what he had intended.

But that seemed to be his perpetual trouble. Always the less he saw of her, the more he wanted her. Then when he finally had her near, he wanted her even nearer. He was the greatest idiot alive to imagine she would relent to his suit now simply because he escorted her here. Her comment about his business in
Porthmadog
made it clear she wished him gone already.

Thomas cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Tip, if I don’t
seem
myself today.” He thrust out a hand. “I’m glad to see you here.”

“Thank you, Tom. I regret to find you embroiled in this situation.”

Thomas shook his head. “I don’t regret it. I couldn’t wish myself elsewhere. Not for a thousand guineas.”

“Lady Bronwyn?” Tip could understand how a man might admire a girl as beautiful and vivacious as the castle’s chatelaine. He wouldn’t, of course, but his tastes ran to women with rather more in their heads than hair and feathers.
One woman, in particular.

“She is perfection itself,” Thomas said upon a heavy exhalation.

Tip’s palms went cold.
Perfection itself
.
His father’s favorite phrase to describe his wife, the woman he practiced infidelity upon for over twenty years despite his avowals of pure devotion.

“Is she?” 

“I mean to save her from her fate,” Thomas said firmly. “I would take her away from here straight off, but the curse traps a maiden here as soon as she arrives. Lady Bronwyn can’t leave.
You can see now, I must find a way to release the curse and rescue her. That’s why I wrote to Bea. She’s so clever and levelheaded. I don’t know how we got to be twins. She always knows precisely how to—” He stumbled to a halt.
“Tip?”
His brow wrinkled.
“
Cheriot
?”

Tip’s jaw had locked. With extraordinary effort, he loosened it enough to speak.

“I do not know how you came to be twins, either,
Sinclaire
.” His voice sounded dangerously low, even to him. “But then, you do have something in common: She thinks only of your well-being, and so do you.”

“I beg your pardon! I have only Lady Bronwyn’s safety on my conscience.” Thomas had the nerve to seem affronted.

Tip gripped his hands into fists to prevent himself from employing them.
“And what of your sister’s safety?
Did you pause one moment in pursuit of your conscience to consider hers?”

“Bea is perfectly safe. Why, she’s the most sensible girl . . .”

Tip’s gaze remained hard. Thomas’s words stumbled. Slowly his eyes went wide.

“Oh, good God,” he uttered. “I didn’t even think.”

Tip was not as satisfied by the look of shocked dismay on the other man’s face as he would have liked. It didn’t matter that this whole cock-and-pony story wasn’t real. Thomas believed it to be, and so his unthinking behavior was no less noxious. But he rarely ever thought of his sister before himself. He used her when he needed her, the same way her entire family did.
Except perhaps
Georgianna
.
Tip knew that
Georgie
cared a great deal about Bea. Unfortunately, that caring did Bea little good all the way across the Irish Sea.

“It is a lucky thing for you that this is all a hoax, Thomas,” he said, “or I would be hard pressed not to level you right now.”

Thomas’s brow lowered. “This is no hoax. It’s perfectly real. Mark my words, you’ll see—or hear, rather, because he isn’t visible to anyone but maidens.” He moved toward the door. “I must go speak with Bronwyn now. That is, Lady Bronwyn. She said something else about the curse, a detail, I can’t quite recall, but I think perhaps— I don’t know. I will see you at dinner,
Cheriot
,” he said with quick nerves and disappeared through the door.

Tip stared at the opening. Thomas
Sinclaire
was an inconsiderate pup. And his ghost story was a
Banbury
tale.

But Bea believed him. Recalling her bright eyes and quickened breaths sent hot pressure into Tip’s groin again. He hoped to Hades he had managed to keep the desire from his gaze. But the moment had surprised him.
She
surprised him.

If he were honest, she usually did. Each time he made the journey to Yorkshire to feast his senses upon her for a few days, she revealed something of herself he had never seen before.
Another tantalizing hint.

It had happened like that the evening in
Aldborough
four years earlier.

He had gone to York on a whim, wanting to see her but not realizing quite how desperately. He arrived late at the assembly rooms to find her dancing, graceful ease in each step. But he already knew she danced well. He’d been to plenty of parties she attended in London, paying her his careless attentions for two years when he was on holiday from university.

On this night she sparkled in the crowded, overheated hall, a shining opal amongst quartz. As the patterns of the set took her about the room, she watched her partner and the other dancers. Eyes luminous, she sought their gazes, and when they met she smiled, her doe’s eyes lingering with pleasure and gentle longing, her rose-hued lips curved in a reflection of enchantment.

Watching her, something had tightened in Tip’s chest, something vital and alive. Already at three and twenty he’d tried to dampen that sort of feeling. He had seen the damage it could do to
a man. But staring at Bea that night, he let it have rein.

Then she laughed—at her partner’s witticism, perhaps—throwing her head back with full-throated delight, her lovely neck a column of warm cream, and Tip could not breathe. When the set ended, in a haze of bemusement he stepped forward. Her gaze met his, illuminated with dazzling joy, and Tip lost his heart.

He realized only later that night, when she refused his
hand, that
in point of fact he had lost his heart to her the moment he’d met her years earlier.

“You gaze at her with lust.”

Tip started out of his memories. He’d had the very thought mere moments ago. But the voice that spoke did not come from within his head. Instead, it echoed through the chamber from no clear direction, low and gravelly, and peculiarly accented. Not altogether English.

Or, rather, not recently English.

He pivoted around slowly on his heels, studying the tapestries draped over the heavy walls, the ancient carved furniture. Nothing stirred in the empty chamber, no feet beneath the wall coverings, no figure crouched behind a table or chair.

Tip folded his arms.

“I beg your pardon?” he ventured. He may as well discover now if wanting Bea and not having her for so long had driven him to madness already. Talking to
himself
seemed a reasonable method of learning such a thing.

“You do so when she is not watching,” the voice rumbled.
“When none are watching.”

A shiver passed across Tip’s shoulders, but now he knew it was not his conscience speaking. The voice was too different from his, rougher and flat-toned.

“Except you, I presume?” he replied.

“You wish to bed her.”

Tip couldn’t blame the fellow for being observant, whoever he was.
“Perhaps.”

“Why have you not? Are you not man enough?”

Tip’s neck bristled. “Who are you? Show yourself.”

“I am
Iversly
. This is my home in which you sojourn.”

Tip released a breath. No game-playing, after all.
Just clear, simple bamboozling.

“I understood that this house belongs to Lady Bronwyn’s father,
Prescot
. Why don’t you come into the open where I can see you?”

“I stand before the tapestry that depicts a scene of hunting, by the north wall, near the window.”

Tip’s gaze shifted to the spot. There was nothing there, of course.

“You cannot see me,” the voice continued, “because you are not a maiden.”